equally as disobedient as their predecessors. To counteract the growing evil more effectually, my mission was now renewed and attested by tremendous signs; and although confined, in a more especial manner, to one part of the world, its beneficial tendency was experienced by thousands, who rejoiced under it, and have left upon record testimonials of those happy effects which it produced in their own lives and conduct. By degrees, their testimony and my advice were again discarded, for the pursuit of folly and the gratification of vicious propensities. Punishment repeatedly succeeded these continued instances of disobedience, but was as frequently forgotten. Again I received a new manifestation from Heaven; my powers were enlarged, and their sphere of action extended over the globe. every quarter my influence was felt, and acknowledged to be the choicest boon which could have been bestowed on mankind. Various circumstances, however, have at different periods been permitted to arrest, in a certain degree, the universal diffusion of the benefits flowing from my sway, but, in the eye of reason and impartiality, the blessings I have already produced can never be sufficiently appreciated. In If those persons who profess to relieve bodily diseases, are justified in complaining of the obstacles they have to encounter, arising from prejudice or imposture, the injury which I have sustained, from the prevalence of these, is incomparably greater. Almost every species of crime that has infested the world, some one or other of my enemies has attributed to me. I have been accused of raising terrible persecutions, in which oceans of blood have flowed; of breaking the dearest bonds of society; of exciting dissensions in families, and causing the child to betray the parent, and the wife her husband; of producing melancholy, insanity, and despair; although one of my principal objects has ever been to extirpate these evils, as a reference to the precepts which I have laid down for the government of my votaries will sufficiently evince. Indeed the impartial inquirer must be convinced, that the horrid consequences above enumerated and laid to my charge, are the work of deceivers who have assumed my name, and of whose crimes I am completely innocent. It is some consolation, however, to reflect, that a time is promised and will speedily arrive, when these misrepresentations shall all be done away. My influence shall then be established on an immovable basis, and falsehood and imposture no longer usurp the place of true RELIGION. NUMBER 6. Praise undeserv'd is satire in disguise.-POPE. WHATEVER reasons men may fancy they have for cherishing a spirit of resentment or animosity against any of their contemporaries, such feelings commonly subside when the objects of them have paid the debt of nature. There is something of an humanizing tendency in those solemn reflections which the consideration of our mortality is calculated to inspire, and which incline us to examine with a less scrutinizing eye, failings, that under other circumstances had produced very different sensations. Many of the exciting causes of envy or malevolence have then ceased to exist. A sympathizing sense of the hapless condition of those who were lately our rivals, joined with the knowledge that, ere long, we must be placed in a similar situation, disposes us rather to Than "Seek their merits to disclose-❞ "Draw their frailties from their dread abode." Such conduct, and such sentiments, are indeed an honour to human nature. But if they appear justly entitled to our approbation, when flowing spontaneously from minds that formerly had few F enjoyments in common with the deceased, cold and unfeeling must that heart be, which, on similar melancholy occasions, will not make some allowances for the partiality of friendship and the overflowings of affection. When the ties that connected us most closely with the world are severed by the death of our dearest friends, their errors and foibles, inseparable from a state of humanity, are either forgotten, or remembered only with sentiments of compassion; while on the other hand, 66 busy meddling memory In barbarous succession musters up It is undoubtedly owing in a great measure to the operation of these causes, that the friends of those who have been snatched away by death, are so anxious to convey to the world a favourable opinion of their characters. In some cases, however, other motives, originating in sources of a less honourable nature, may, perhaps with equal truth, be assigned for this peculiar disposition. The possession of one good quality, although evidently more the result of natural constitution than cultivation, or the practice of one single virtue, from which neither situation, opportunity, nor bodily temperament ever offered a plausible temptation to deviate, may be ostentatiously brought forward as a counterpoise to qualities or vices of a different kind, and which are carefully withheld from public notice. Among the most abandoned of mankind, few will be found who could wish to see those persons they most esteem plunged into the same vicious career with themselves. The libertine, whose principal gratification is found in inflicting disgrace and infamy upon the families of others, is, in general, exquisitely sensible to the slightest attack of a similar nature upon the honour of his own. From these considerations a reason may be deduced, why individuals, who themselves appear to have discarded all pretensions to the approbation of society, are yet anxious to secure a portion of it to their deceased relatives and friends. On the other hand, they who strictly adhere to the paths of propriety and virtue, are apt to consider their own characters as implicated in some degree in the misconduct of those connected with them through the ties of blood or friendship; and consequently are stimulated to remove, as far as possible, those stains upon the memories of others, which might ultimately affect their own reputation. To this cause, perhaps, we must partly attribute those softening touches, those fine shades in the portraits of deceased friends, |