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ELEGANT EXTRACTS,

FROM THE MOST

EMINENT PROSE WRITERS:

BOOK III.

PRECEPTIVE: AS RELATING TO MORALS AND EDUCATION.

A FATHER'S ADVICE TO HIS SON.

FIRST, my beloved child, worship and adore God, think of him magnificently, speak of him reverently, magnify his providence, adore his power, frequent his service, and pray to him constantly.

Next to this, love your neighbour, which is all mankind, with such tenderness and affection as, you love yourself; think how God loves all mankind, how merciful he is to them, how tender he is of them, how carefully he preserves them; and then strive to love your fellow-creatures as God loves them.

Let truth and sincerity be the only ornament

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of your language; and study to think of all things as they deserve.

Let your dress be sober, clean, and modest. In your meat and drink observe the rules of christian temperance and sobriety: consider your body as only the servant of your soul; and only nourish the one so as it may best perform a humble and obedient service to the other.

Let every day be a day of humility; relieve the wants and rejoice in the prosperity of your fellow-creatures: compassionate their distress, overlook their unkindness, and forgive their malice.

The time of practising these precepts, my child, will soon be over with you: the world will soon slip through your hands, or rather you will soon slip through it: it seems but the other day when I received these same instructions from my dear father, that I am now leaving with you.

Law.

THE MIND SHOULD HABITUATE ITSELF EARLY TO

SERIOUS THOUGHT.

As soon as you are capable of reflection, you must perceive that there is a right and wrong in human actions. You see that those who are born with the same advantages of fortune, are not all equally prosperous in the course of life. While some of them, by wise and steady conduct, attain distinction in the world, and pass their days with comfort and honour; others of the same rank, by mean and vicious behaviour, forfeit the advantages of their birth, involve themselves in much

misery, and end in being a disgrace to their friends, and a burden on society. Early, then, you may learn that it is not on the external condition in which you find yourselves placed, but on the part which you are to act, that your welfare or unhappiness, your honour or infamy, depend. Now, when beginning to act that part, what can be of greater moment than to regulate your plan of conduct with the most serious attention, before you have yet committed any fatal or irretrievable errours? If, instead of exerting reflection for this valuable purpose, you deliver yourselves up, at so critical a time, to sloth and pleasure; if you refuse to listen to any counsellor but humour, or to attend to any pursuit except that of amusement; if you allow yourselves to float loose and careless on the tide of life, ready to receive any direction which the current of fashion may chance to give you; what can you expect to follow from such beginnings? While so many around you are undergoing the sad consequences of a like indiscretion, for what reason shall not these consequences extend to you? Shall you only attain success without that preparation, and escape dangers without that precaution, which is required of others? Shall happiness grow up to you of its own accord, and solicit your acceptance, when, to the rest of mankind, it is the fruit of long cultivation, and the acquisition of labour and care?-Deceive not yourselves with such arrogant hopes. Whatever be your rank, Providence will not, for your sake, reverse its established order. By listening to wise admonitions, and tempering the vivacity of youth, with a proper mixture of serious thought,

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