write a complete fyftem of the doctrine of happiness, as to examine fome of the most important particulars belonging to it; and to treat the fubjects in fuch a manner as was beft adapted to a thinking, and, for the most part, an enlightened audience. This last eircumstance will plead in my behalf, whenever fome paffages may appear more philofophical and abstracted than ufual. I had the happiness to address myself to hearers, who, in general, were fully competent to fuch difquifitions, and able to profit by them. The more rare this happiness is, the less excufable should I have been, had I difcourfed to them as to children, and not always endeavoured to lead them to farther advances in knowledge. And there can certainly be no harm in it, if the doctrines of religion aud morality are delivered in various methods; and, at times, even fo as that men, more addicted to reflection, may be taken and fatisfied with them. Experience has likewife taught me, that even people of more flender knowledge, and of inferior cultivation, learn more from such discourses, fo foon as they cease to be ftrange to them, than from others, compofed in a hebrew idiom, and exactly fitted to the fcholaftic fyftem, on which most commonly they never bestow one thought. Indeed difcourfes in general need not always operate immediately on the spot, unless in the cafe of charitable collections, but fhould be calculated to produce permanent effects on perfons not totally ignorant and incapable of making reflections of their own. Let a

man

man preach to these as he will, they will never be able to take in the whole scope of the discourse at one view, or even to form clear conceptions of any part of it. Here or there, they will comprehend fome detached fentence, some thought that strikes them, and will perhaps occafionally recollect it again; and, if only this happens, and that frequently, they must be always confiderable gainers by it.

Should several of the fubjects here treated of ap pear to others not clerical, or not theological and biblical enough; in regard to the former, I intreat them to confider, that every pulpit has its own circle of hearers, and that these hearers have their peculiar exigencies; and, in regard to the latter, to weigh in their own minds whether any thing that relates fo nearly to human perfection and happiness, can be either untheological or unbiblical. To me at least, every truth is a religious and biblical truth, that has for its object the fubftantial improvement and the lafting happiness of mankind; though it should not, as it were, immediately relate to God and to the future world, and is no where exprefsly and scientifically treated of in the Bible, which presupposes many things, which but slightly touches upon others in few words, and leaves the farther exposition and application of all to ourselves, or which even delivers the very fame things in a different phraseology. The force of the fcriptural doctrines by no means lies in the words wherein they were anciently promulgated to the jews and the heathens, but in the

truth and the importance of the doctrines themselves. In proportion as the civilization, the language, the manners and customs, the mode of thinking and of living, the compass of human knowledge and of human exigencies, undergo alteration; fo alfo may and fhould, not indeed the effentials, but the compass, the application, and the method of delivering the doctrines of religion and wisdom be altered and adapted. In the fermon concerning the christian paftoral office, which is the laft in this collection, I Have more circumftantially explained myfelf upon this fubject.

For the reft, the greater the importance of a right eftimation of things, and the stronger the certainty of the fact, that it is the foundation of all real virtue and piety, and the furest way to happiness both in the present and the future life, fo much the better grounded is my hope, that, under the bleffing of God, this labour may not be without its ufe.

SOME ACCOUNT

OF

THE AUTHOR.

GE

EORGE JOACHIM ZOLLIKOFER was born at St. Gall in Switzerland, the 5th of August 1730. His father David Anthony Zollikofer, is ftill remembered there as an eminent practitioner in the law, and as a pious and upright man. That he omitted nothing in the literary education of his fon may well be imagined; it is however ftill more manifeft, that by his own virtuous example he became his moral tutor, a tutor to whom posterity is under fuch infinite obligations through his pupil. Education at that time had not yet become a fubject of philofophical difquifition: among the Germans at least no one had hitherto enlarged upon Locke's principles in a view to render them of more general

utility. The various helps for awakening the curiofity, for opening the understanding and moulding the hearts of children, which so much abound in our days, being then utterly unknown, the formation of the character and habits was left generally to example, and that end was attained, perhaps even more fecurely. Young Zollikofer, when arrived at the proper age, was put to the gymnafium of his native town; from whence, being intended for the church, he was fent to profecute his ftudies, first at Bremen, and afterwards at the univerfity of Utrecht, " where the divinity profeffors are faid to have been then in high repute. It is well known that the generality of students at these great feminaries, are wont to adhere pertinaciously to what has been infilled into them by their academical tutors; never venturing to advance one pace beyond the ftring of ideas that during feveral years have been conftantly imprinted on their minds, in acquiring new ones for themselves, or even prefuming impartially and repeatedly to examine the stock they have obtained from others, and forming new combinations among them. Every thing therefore, in regard to their general ufefulness afterwards when they come into office, depends on what fort of tutors the young men have had during their stay at college; they being nothing more than organs through which the knowledge infused into them at the univerfities is brought into circulation, exactly as they received it. It would be beyond the defign of these few pages to expatiate on