Religion, when it can produce tempers so sacred, and so benign, must necessarily display its nature in a course of external evidence before the world. Being in its effects “pure,” and preserving him who is the subject of it “undefiled” from the corruptions that are in the world, it must necessarily teach us to live “righteously, soberly, and godly,” amidst every temptation to injustice, intemperance, and impiety, to which we are every day exposed; as well as provide for the laws by which every relation in social life ought to be governed, from the prince and subject, down to the very lowest ranks of subordinate characters. But let us attend to the particular evidence adduced by St. James. “Pure religion and undefiled before God, even the Father, is this; to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” Of all the situations, which the calamities of life distinguish among the sons and daughters of affliction, none could be more to the apostle’s purpose, than that of the orphan and the widow; and none more apposite, as an evidence of true religion, than to visit _such_. The state of the orphan is greatly to be pitied, as being destitute of the guide of his youth, and deprived by a premature stroke of him, to whom nature directs him to look up as to his guardian and support; in a world too, in a passage through which, youth stands so much in need of all that a wise and tender father can do for his offspring. The widow is an object of still greater commiseration; who, besides the affliction of having been bereft of her dearest earthly friend, is left to struggle alone with the difficulties of a family and of the world, to educate with maternal solicitude the party that became an orphan by the same calamity which made her a widow, and to suffer an affliction, which is the more poignant, as her sex, age, and the tender relation in which she had been placed, would contribute to make her feel more sensibly the loss, to which the orphan seldom adverts. These are the parties, whom pure and undefiled religion enjoins us to visit; not for the purpose of mere form or curiosity, but for the purpose of administering actual relief, and mingling with the acts of beneficence the counsel and consolations, which the religion of Jesus inspires. But how few love to make _such_ visits! and how fewer still, to make them in _this_ style! Had our apostle made it a mark of religion to frequent scenes of dissipation, to run the round of worldly pleasure, to mix with each convivial assembly, and to visit only the house of laughter and levity, what multitudes would put in their claim to religion and to the recompense annexed to it! But let not the sons and daughters of dissipation deceive themselves. Religion seeks different society, loves different pleasures, visits the abodes of wretchedness and sorrow, and prefers the house of mourning, where it can shew its sympathy, impart its