in the faith of religion, or glorious in the hope of immortality, I would bespeak your candid attention. Upon fuch fubjects, and. others connected with them, I mean to addrefs you in the best manner I am able, andfrom the beft motives. May the Supreme of Beings blefs the attempt, and grant me the felicity of contributing to yours!

ON

THE REVERENCE

WHICH

YOUNG MEN OWE TO THEMSELVES.

MY HONOURED FRIENDS,

fet forth your importance in life,

Tin fociety, in the general fyftem, to

point out the good qualities which you have received from the Fountain of Goodness, and to demonstrate the Refpect with which you ought, on both accounts, to be treated, was the chief object of the preceding Addrefs. To explain and enforce the Reverence which, on many accounts, you owe to Yourselves, is the purpose of the prefent. At the tribunal in your own breafts, I am to plead your caufe. It is the cause of Humanity, and of Heaven.

After afferting the regard due to you from others, and confcious as I am of paying it: among the reft, I fhould be forry to fee you forget your juft confequence, or act as if you did.

Is there danger then, that youth should treat themselves with difrefpect? Have they not often been accused of magnifying their dignity in their own opinion, as well as claiming from others a degree of esteem to which their right was not very clear? Let us distinguish.

That young man who pretends to more merit than he poffeffes, or who values I imself on trifles which imply none, will, from the difcerning, draw contempt instead of honour. In the eagerness of his purfuit after praises which he does not deferve, he will be apt to overlook the advantages which he really has, and to neglect the cultivation of those virtues with. which he was endowed by the Author of his