ingredient of a religion, which is itself the truest source of personal and relative happiness. The human mind is so constituted, that it does not naturally maintain, for a considerable period, any unvaried state of feeling, and unbroken course of thought. The attempt to confine it thus, not only annoys, but is unsuccessful in a great measure. Hence the feelings are much better left to themselves. If you try to force yourself to be serious or sad, you may preserve an artificial manner, but, within, you will be likely to have more stupidity than sensibility, as the fruit of your effort. Our duty lies with principles; with sober, conscientious thought; with actions which at once manifest and cherish the devout affections; with services to God and men, which repay us with inward peace and joy. There is no need of our laying the least stress on seriousness, further than these will necessarily and naturally induce it. It may certainly be asked with our author, what good reason there is for selecting seriousness as the only or the most important trait in the newly improved character. Why should we not expect, and commend when we see it, a cheerful, gentle, tender, generous temper, as much as a serious tone and air? Why should not a parent find as good evidence of sincere piety, in his child's increased disposition to make all around happy, as in a manner which suppresses every word and look that is not decidedly solemn, and casts a silent rebuke on even the innocent prattle of thoughtless childhood? Why should a person, becoming pious, shrink from society, and be supposed no longer capable of enlivening the circle of friends, before so much regarded by him? It is very hard that religion should have to bear the blame of everybody's moroseness. 2 VOL. II-NO. I. The fruit of the spirit is love and joy; and if so, then religion directly leads to social intercourse and sympathy. For love must have objects, and will seek them. And joy, in a solitary, selfish retreat from society, would lose its best religious properties, even if it did not itself naturally prompt to a communication of happiness. But there is danger of erring on the other side, and from a like misapprehension of the meaning of terms, condemning the serious altogether, and preferring the light, and gay, and frivolous, as the most conducive to pure enjoyment. This is also a very injurious error. What is serious, is not therefore sad; nor is high and solemn thought, or the most impressive sense of God and duty, and our eternal destination, in any degree to be slighted, as if they were not sources of pleasure, or compatible with it. Religious subjects are serious, are solemn subjects. But so are all great topics, even those in which the most absorbing interest is often felt. We must not, in avoiding one error, fly to its opposite. We too readily allow gaiety and mirth to be the only signs to us of pleasure, and connect the ideas of a light mind and a happy one. There needs but a closer examination of the appearances around us, to bring us to a different conclusion. The fact is, there is often least pleasure where there is most show of it; and into all the enjoyments to which men have manifested a partiality, the quality of seriousness enters. View the sports of children, you will perceive that even they give the preference to those which require and which produce most engagedness of thought, and which even imply a degree of solicitude. Still more perceptible is this in the pursuits and amusements of adults. The pleasure which is felt so universally in witnessing theatrical representations, is never so intense and eager as when tragedy is performed; and many games, whose fascination seems to be irresistible, have the effect of absorbing those occupied in them so completely, as to occasion a deathlike stillness and solemnity. Books are sources of much enjoyment to large classes of mankind. But are we gay, when our attention is chained by some delightful author, and our hearts surrendered to his power? The enjoyment is rich, and never satiates; it is purely mental pleasure, and yet affords a transport which flows from no other gratifications. Yet surely there is no little seriousness implied in the application of thought and confinement of attention, which such reading supposes. Again, we experience a very high degree of the purest enjoyment, when we witness or hear some deeds of exalted goodness: but these are not moments of gaiety. A vast quantity of human enjoyment is drawn from the works of God: but on all those occasions, in which we taste this class of pleasures with keenest relish, we are as far from gaiety, as when we are engaged in prayer. The thoughts, when fixed in contemplation of the grandeur and beauty of natural scenery, acquire a seriousness approaching to melancholy. We gaze with ever increasing delight, but of a kind so allied to sadness, that persons who have recently sustained calamity, find no violent transition necessary to share in it, and often seem to be the more susceptible of it from that very circumstance. One might go on through the whole circle of human enjoyments, and find that the highest, purest and best of them, all partake of the character of those which flow from religion, and have no more of the temper of gaiety than they. The pleasures which are adapted most to the nature of man, as an intellectual and moral being, are not the light and superficial. Frivolity does not indicate the happiest state of which our minds are capable. Yet are not the joys of piety inconsistent with a proper degree of relish for those which are of a lower kind. Religion is far from being an enemy to innocent mirth and cheerfulness. It forbids not our participation in any of the satisfactions, for which God's goodness has furnished us with the means and the capacity. To the senses, as to the soul, it gives all the liberty which is compatible with the high purposes of our existence, and with true enjoyment. But its own peculiar pleasures are infinitely superior to the rest. To have tasted them, is to have known the highest delights to which our natures can attain. And these pleasures, unlike all others, never satiate, and never fail. The oftener we partake, the more is the relish for them increased. Not confined to any period or any condition of human life, they may be carried with us through the whole of our pilgrimage, and cheer us at its close. Nay more, they are here but begun to be enjoyed. They mingle with the last emotions of the departing spirit, and swell into rapture, increasing, as the ascending mind draws nearer and nearer the celestial choir and catches the melody of the angelic song. One cause of the mistaken separation of piety and enjoyment, may be our having witnessed cases, in which religion appeared to convert its subject into a gloomy and miserable being. But we are to remember here, that the fault, in such instances, does not lie with religion itself, but in the false notions entertained of its nature and requirements. There may have been, in such persons, a up predisposition to gloom and melancholy, which would have made them equally as unhappy if they had been less religious; or they may have lived in neglect of God, till some heavy judgment came to break their lethargy, and then God entered their minds for the first time in connexion with the most mournful thoughts; so that, long after the cause which produced it had passed away, this sadness and gloom remained, and in company with newly adopted religious views. In the largest number of cases of religious melancholy, the cause is to be found in false notions of the character of God, and of his will concerning his creatures. No one, who rightly apprehends the perfections of his Creator, or has been taught the truth as it is in Jesus, with any tolerable degree of correctness, can nourish a gloomy spirit by his piety. If there be a sovereign antidote to despondency, it is furnished by religion. That alone explains to us the mysteries of our being, and gives us a clue to guide the anxious and bewildered mind to a proper understanding of itself, and a quiet resignation to its lot. That alone affords to hope a basis, which cannot be shaken, and cannot be undermined. But even allowing the most that is possible-that some minds, of peculiar susceptibility, are made less cheerful, or even unhappy, by embracing religion. For one such instance, there are a hundred, who are infinitely more wretched for the want of it. Not to piety are the discontents, the murmurings and envyings, the griping cares and gloomy disappointments, which are most fruitful sources of misery, to be traced. On the contrary, the darkest shades ever thrown over human life, by mistaken notions of religious duty, are not to be compared to those which |