are alone before God than in any other situation. Firm and untainted virtue, indeed, cannot be so easily and efficaciously acquired, as by practising the precepts of Christianity in the bowers of solitude. Religion refines our moral sentiments, disengages the heart from every vain desire, renders it tranquil under misfortunes, humble in the presence of God, and steady in the society of men. A life passed in the practice of every virtue, affords us a rich reward for all the hours we have consecrated to its duties, and enables us in the silence of solitude to raise our pure hands and chaste hearts in pious adoration to our Almighty Father! How “low, flat, stale, and unprofitable, seem all the uses of this world,” when the mind, boldly soaring beyond this lower sphere, indulges the idea that the pleasures which result from a life of innocence and virtue may be faintly analogous to the felicities of heaven! At least, I trust we may be permitted unoffendingly to conceive, according to our worldly apprehensions, that a free and unbounded liberty of thought and action, a high admiration of the universal system of nature, a participation of the divine essence, a perfect communion of friendship, and a pure interchange of love, may be a portion of the enjoyments we hope to experience in those regions of peace and happiness where no impure or improper sentiment can taint the mind. But notions like these, although they agreeably flatter our imaginations, shed at present but a glimmering light upon this awful subject, and must continue, like dreams and visions of the mind, until the clouds and thick darkness which surrounded the tomb of mortality no longer obscure the bright glories of everlasting life; until the veil shall be rent asunder, and the Eternal shall reveal those things which no eye hath seen, no ear has heard, and, which passeth all understanding. For I acknowledge, with awful reverence and silent submission, that the knowledge of eternity is to the human intellect like that which the color of crimson appeared to be in the mind of a blind man, who compared it to the sound of a trumpet. I cannot, however, conceive, that a notion more comfortable can be entertained, than that eternity promises a constant and uninterrupted tranquillity; although I am perfectly conscious that it is impossible to form an adequate idea of the nature of that enjoyment which is produced by happiness without end. An everlasting tranquillity is, in my imagination, the highest possible felicity, because I know of no felicity upon earth higher than that which a peaceful mind and contented heart afford.