worms.

pursued and torn to pieces, through the earth, the air, and water. In man there is more wretchedness than in all the other animals put together. He smarts continually under two scourges which other animals never feel-anxiety and listlessness-which make him weary of himself. He loves life, and yet knows that he must die. If he enjoys some transient good, for which he is thankful to Heaven, he suffers various evils, and is at last devoured by This knowledge is his fatal prerogative; other animals have it not. He feels it every moment rankling and corroding in his breast. Yet he spends the transient moment of his existence in diffusing the misery that he suffers; in cutting the throats of his fellow-creatures for pay; in cheating and being cheated; in robbing and being robbed ; in serving that he may command; and in repenting of all he does. The bulk of mankind are nothing more than a crowd of wretches, equally criminal, and equally unfortunate; and the globe contains rather carcasses than men. I tremble on a review of this dreadful picture, to find that it implies a complaint against Providence, and I wish that I had never been born."

Rousseau, too, had his lucid moments. In one of those moments the truth seems to have flashed upon his mind with the brilliancy of noon-day; and then it was that he drew the character of the Author of Christianity, with an eloquence and force never, perhaps, surpassed by an uninspired pen.

"I will confess to you," says he, "that the

majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel has its influence upon my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers, with all their pomp of diction,-how mean, how contemptible are they, compared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that such a book, at once so simple and so sublime, should be merely the work of man? Is it possible, that the sacred personage whose history it contains, should be himself a mere man? Do we find that he assumed the tone of an enthusiast, or ambition of a sectary? What sweetness, what purity in his manners! What unaffecting gracefulness in his delivery! What sublimity in his maxims! What profound wisdom in his discourses! What presence of mind in his replies! How great the command over his passions! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live and so die, without weakness, and without ostentation? When Plato described his imaginary good man, with all the shame of guilt, yet meriting the highest rewards of virtue, he describes exactly the character of Jesus Christ; the resemblance was so striking, that all the Christian fathers perceived it.

"What prepossession, what blindness must it be, to compare the son of Sophroniscus [Socrates] to the Son of Mary! What an infinite disproportion is there between them! Socrates, dying without pain or ignominy, easily supported his character to the last; and if his death, however easy, had not crowned his life, it might have been doubted whether Socrates, with all his wisdom, was anything more than a

vain sophist. He invented, it is said, the theory of morals. Others had, however, before, put them in practice. He had only to say, therefore, what they had done, and to reduce their examples to precept; but where could Jesus learn, among his competitors, that pure and sublime morality, of which he only has given us both precept and example?

"The death of Socrates, peaceably philosophizing with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could be wished for; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst of agonizing pains-abused, insulted, and cursed by a whole nation-is the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates, in receiving the cup of. poison, blessed the weeping executioner who administered it; but Jesus, in the midst of excruciating tortures, prayed for his merciless tormentors! Yes!

if the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus were those of a God!

"Shall we suppose the evangelic story a mere fiction? Indeed, my friends, it bears not the marks of fiction: on the contrary, the history of Socrates, which nobody presumes to doubt, is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such a supposition, in fact, only shifts the difficulty, without obviating it. It is more inconceivable that a number of persons should agree to write such a history, than that one only should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the gospel,-the marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable, that

.

the inventor would be a more astonishing character than the hero."

What a mind, to conceive ideas so beautiful and so just! The dignity of the New Testament is displayed as with a sunbeam. But, alas! Rousseau's whole life, as unblushingly avowed in his "Confessions," was a tissue of falsehood and profligacy: "He loved darkness rather than light, because his deeds were evil." When, therefore, he subjoins, as he does, "I cannot believe the gospel,” he should rather have said, "I will not obey the gospel."

LECTURE V.

SAFEGUARDS OF YOUNG MEN.

"Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My Father, thou art the guide of my youth ?"-Jer. iii, 4.

"In the outset of life, we are in a state between sleeping and waking; we have indistinct but glorious glimpses of strange shapes; and there is always something to come better than we see. So I have loitered my life away-reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing, on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy; but wanting that, have wanted everything. As we advance, we exhaust our fund of enjoyment and of hope. We are no longer lulled in elysium. As we taste the pleasures of life, their spirit evaporates, the sense palls, and nothing is left but the phantoms, the lifeless shadows of what has been."

This is the language, my young friends, of one who possessed more than ordinary powers; one who might have accomplished much; and, having enjoyed "the luxury of doing good," as he passed along, might, at the close of life, have looked back with pleasure, and forward with joyful anticipations of a most glorious future. But, like many others. he weighed anchor and put to sea with no particular port in view; and he became the sport of

every