we should remember that, in many instances, a fault once committed may be atoned for; and, that an imputation once true is not always true: we do not derive that useful lesson which we might derive from the consciousness of our own infirmities. If there are very few, even of the best, and most approved among us, who would dare to lay open the secret history of thought, word, and deed, from infancy to this hour; if many are conscious of secret sin, many of those numerous perils on which their virtue has been nearly wrecked; if they are sensible, as they must be, how often they have been indebted to accident, rather than wisdom, for escape; how powerfully do all these considerations inculcate upon our minds, precepts of tenderness, and mercy, for the infirmities of our nature? not that crimes should be sheltered from evil report; but that, when they are not of too deep a dye, they should be forgotten. The faults of youth ought not to follow the same being through every stage of his existence ;-there is no cruelty so great as to keep the fallen man for ever in the dust; and to blast his reviving hopes with the malicious memory

of past misconduct; but the misfortune is, we want the vices of others to keep up our own halting virtue; and we cannot afford to lose them; a good man is ever looking inward to the bright image he has formed of christian purity, while it is the genuine habit of baseness to found reputation upon the imperfections of others, and of suspected virtue, ferociously to insult its own vices, in the lives, and conduct of the rest of the world.

Whatever be our opinion of the guilt of others, it is not always necessary to propagate, and diffuse it ;-in the administration of public justice, punishment is separated from accusation: but, at the tribunal of the world, they are often the same things: If men were as ready to investigate calumny as they are to receive it, the evils of its diffusion would be much less; but the disease travels faster than the remedy can follow; to give credit to defamation, though neither the generous, nor the just, is considered as the safe side, and many receive the accusation, who are too careless to listen to the defence, or too timid to admit it.

To promote the righteous judgment of our neighbour, it is our duty to defend him where we can do so with any colour of justice; this we are frequently prevented from doing, because it is unpopular; it checks a source of amusement from which we are all apt, at times, to derive but too much pleasure, it recalls those who hear us from a state of mirth, and compels them to listen to the dry, unamusing, suggestions of justice: But this temporary displeasure it is our duty to incur, from the most exalted motives of Christian duty;-to consider the real degree of credibility due to evil report; the temptations to misrepresentation; and the chances for mistake;-to take the fact with all its favorable colours, and extenuating circumstances; to wait for the answer of the accused party; to insist upon all the good which we have previously known of him ; all this is in the power of the most inconsiderable being among us; and if there can be a proof of a truly good, a truly noble, and a truly Christian disposition, this it is: While others listen eagerly to the narrative of folly and of crime, and every one secretly exults and says, thank God, I am not as this

:

man is;-forget not thou thy absent brother, and, in the midst of his enemies, let thy voice be heard for the defenceless man;-look not for short-lived favour, and the praise of a moment, by trampling on him who is already fallen; but cherish a fixt concern for human happiness let your words, and actions shew, that in your eyes the absent are sacred; and check, with serious benevolence, that mirth which is cruel, and unjust.-This it is to look down upon the world from an eminence, to live upon the grand, to act upon a noble, and commanding scale, and to lay deep the foundations of inward approbation, and public regard.

There are many, I believe, who are so far from listening to the means by which this satisfaction, at the misconduct of others, may be checked, that they are rather inclined to doubt of the disorder, than to adopt the remedy: It wounds our pride as much to confess the fault, as it gratifies our pride to practise it: No man chuses to avow that he wants the faults of others, as a foil to his own character; no man has the desperate candour to confess, that the comparison

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and he believes man knows the

which he draws between himself, and his brother upon hearing of any act of misconduct, is a source of pleasure; and that, in such cases, the feelings of self overcome the rules of the gospel; if you ask any man such a question, he will say, that he depends upon his own efforts, and not on the failure of others; he will contend, that the errors of his fellow creatures are to him a source of serious concern; he says so that he says the truth; for no secrets of his own heart; but if it is true, why are the wings of evil fame so swift, and so unwearied? Why is it not as difficult to lose, as to gain, the commendations of mankind? Why does it require a whole life to gain a character which can be lost, and unjustly lost, in a single moment of time? It is because we are reluctant to exalt, and ever willing to pull down; because we love the fault better which gives us an inferior, than the virtue which elevates an human being above us.

I say these things not to offend, but to promote Christian charity; not to lower our ideas of human nature, but to recall it