That there are prohibitions in scripture sufficient to prevent detraction, if properly attended to; and lastly, I recommend to my younger brethren and sisters, to remember the words of the blessed Saviour, "What I say unto you, I say unto all, watch!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

CONCLUSION.

Now, full of anxious solicitude and discouragement, I write my concluding pages with humble but heartfelt earnestness, pressing once more on the attention of my readers the following list of preventives or remedies for detraction.

SELF-EXAMINATION,

THINKING BEFORE WE SPEAK,

The maxim, "DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD THAT OTHERS SHOULD DO UNTO YOU,"

And CULTIVATION OF THE MIND, or KNOWLEDGE, which Solomon desires us to receive "rather than choice gold."

SELF-EXAMINATION, or in other words, the self-knowledge which is its result, would, even in a worldly point of view, be our best policy, because by giving us a thorough knowledge of ourselves, it would prevent us from incurring ridicule, by censuring in others the faults which we ourselves commit; and conviction of our own frailties, by teaching us indulgence to those of others, might forbid us to give way to detraction.

THINKING BEFORE WE SPEAK would lead us to put this precautionary question to our

selves. "Should I like to have what I am about to say, repeated to the subject of it?" and if the answer is in the negative, we must know that by persisting to say it, we should fall into the sin of detraction. The maxim of "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you," if it were constantly uppermost in our minds, and considered as it ought to be a sure guide for all our actions, must entirely, and for ever, preserve us from the sin of detraction, and the crime of defamation.

And CULTIVATION OF THE MIND, by enabling those who meet in social intercourse to talk of things in preference to persons, would prevent the treacherous indulgence of backbiting and detraction.

These preventives, or remedies, as I have ventured to call them, are not the suggestions of an Empiric, for they are to be found in the BOOK of "the GREAT PHYSICIAN."

They are few, and simple also.

It requires no learning or science to understand them; nay, such is their virtue, that they can not be injured even by the weakness of the person who prepares them, for their origin is not human, but divine, and they are stamped with the sacred and inimitable seal of TRUTH and REVELATION.

THE END.