inmost recesses of our hearts. His religion does not mérely restrain our external actions, it penetrates where no human eye can follow it, and regulates the secret workings of our very thoughts.

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And herein is illustrated that profound and intimate knowledge of human nature, on which the precepts of him "who knew what is in man," are all built. To impose any restriction on the thoughts, might at the first view appear to be severe and cruel, and an unnecessary abridgment of the scanty stock of our harmless pleasures. What is so free, may be said, as thought, and what so innocent, as long as our actions are right, as to suffer our thoughts to range without controul? But our Saviour knew that it was in vain to prohibit actions, as long as the thoughts are suffered to rove at liberty; to attempt to check the flowing of the stream, when the fountain itself is open and unrestrained. The connexion between thought and action is so intimate and unavoidable, that in its most extensive sense, it may be said, that as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. The gospel therefore requires the government of the thoughts, not merely as a useful, but an indispensable discipline; not merely as auxiliary to the higher virtues of the christian character, but as altogether necessary to preserve us from the dominion of our sinful propensities. It does not teach us to wait for sin till it is strong and flourishing, but commands us to root up its seeds as they are bursting into life. It

carries order and discipline into our very fancies and conceptions, and by hallowing the first shadowy notions of the minds from which actions spring, makes our actions themselves good and holy.

I propose to occupy your time to day, in attempting to illustrate the importance and practicability of the government of the thoughts. In illustrating its importance, I shall endeavour in the first place to show that the discipline of our thoughts is necessary to the full and successful exertion of our mental powers; secondly, that it is necessary to our happiness, and to fit us for the scenes and duties of actual life; thirdly, that it is necessary to our virtues, and consequently to our everlasting well being.

I. It is necessary that our thoughts should be under regular discipline, in order to the full and What successful exertion of our mental powers. is called a vigorous and active mind seems, after all, to mean only a mind, of which the thoughts are all subjected to the authority of its governing powers, and may therefore all be brought to bear, with their whole force, on the business in which it is occupied. Attention seems only another name for that state of mind, when all its thoughts are fixed and collected, and bent to a single point; and it is a power of attention, much more than any original and native diversity of talents, which constitutes Newton the intellectual difference among men.

was accustomed to declare, that if he differed from his fellow men, he owed it to his power of patient

meditation; in other words to his power of fixing his thoughts intently and long on any subject with which he was occupied. We must have all observed the truth of these remarks in the course of our various pursuits. If we examine our minds at those periods when they are most vigorously and successfully exerted, we shall observe that all other objects are excluded from our minds, and that our thoughts are concentrated and engrossed by the task in which we are employed. If on the contrary we observe ourselves when our minds are indisposed, reluctant and inefficient, we shall find that our dominion over our thoughts is lost, that attention is dissipated and distracted by a multitude of unrelated images, which float through the fancy,and that all our powers are weakened, because discordant and divided. The effect of suffering our thoughts to wander without guidance and without object is too obvious to have escaped the most careless observer. It breaks up all our habits of regular inquiry, indisposes us for any thing which requires seriousness and patience, and especially unfits us for meditation on divine things, which from their nature the mind is with so much difficulty brought steadily to contemplate. If then we desire to effect any thing valuable in this short life; if we seek to use our talents according to the purposes of the Giver; if we would improve our own minds for the service of God, and the scenes of eternity; and contribute what we can, to the hap

piness and improvement of our fellow men, we must learn to control our thoughts, restrain our vain and wandering imaginations, and seek to make the proper business of life in our various callings, and the duties of devotion at their арpointed seasons, fill and occupy our minds.

II. That our thoughts should be brought under discipline, is necessary, in the second place, for our happiness in actual life, and to fit us for its common scenes and duties. A great deal of misery is produced, particularly among those, who have no absorbing occupation, and those in whom the illusions of youth have not been corrected by the experience of actual life, by indulging the imagination in forming schemes and hopes of visionary felicity; or as it is sometimes called, "building castles in the air." It is indeed very delightful to give the reins to the thoughts, to send fancy on the wing from this world of imperfection and pain, and sorrow and sin, to scenes where every thing is perfect, happy and fair; where nature wears an eternal bloom, where the skies are always blue, and the winds always balmy: where children are always virtuous, friends never faithless, and fortune is never fickle; where the eye knows no tear, and the heart no pang.

But this is not life as we must expect to find it. This is not the world in which we are to live, and in which we are to act. It is not intended that this state of trial should ever realize such dreams

of fancy. And the effects of indulging this luxury of vain imagination are neither salutary nor innocent. If we could descend, indeed, from these airy fabrics of unreal felicity, and return as before to the common duties of life, the harshest epithet which we could apply to this employment would be, that it was useless. But both our happiness and our fitness for our duties are lessened by it. When we awake from these delusions, we feel the full force of the contrast between what we see and what we have imagined. The scenes and duties of common life appear tame and insipid, after gazing on the beautiful creations of fancy. The effects on the mind are precisely similar to those produced by works of fiction, except that in this case we read merely the fiction of another, and in that, we make the romance for ourselves; and are therefore more in danger of mistaking it for reality. The realities of life must always fall far short of the pictures of fancy. When we descend from the lofty regions where in imagination we have been dwelling, and are called on to perform the common place duties of good husbands, and wives, and fathers, and children, and citizens, which of course can very seldom call us to feel much either of rapture or of anguish, we miss the strong stimulus to which our passions have been ac customed. We find that we have been nourishing a sickly and fastidious delicacy, which revolts at the plain and homely, and sometimes coarse and