at another, he has been endeavoring to seduce some unhappy maiden:  at one time he is seen quarrelling with his neighbor; at another, he falls out with one of his own family, after which he grows mad with every one around him, and, at last, equally mad and out of humor with himself.  He has been selfish, griping, and avaricious on all occasions, and what he has saved or gained by oppression and fraud, he has spent on his profligacy:  he has got drunk with the money which he has acquired by dishonesty, and he has paid for his debauchery at night by the sum which he has contrived in the morning to keep back from the poor.  At the same time he has been turbulent, factious, and complaining—­always talking of what is amiss in others, and very sudden and severe in judging them, but very proud and confident in himself, disdaining even the smallest blame.  Would you get into favor with him, you must flatter him at every word; and you will please him best by doing it grossly and to his face, for he is quite used to praise:  he has long lived among those who look up to him as their patron, or gape at him as their principal wit, or glory in him as their chief songster, possibly as the chairman of their drinking club, and as their merry leader in debauchery.

To all these sins he adds that of being the decided enemy of every religious man.  Is the gospel preached at his very door, he stands in the front rank of its enemies; he denies its efficacy, makes a joke of its doctrines, reviles its followers, and is the avowed hinderer of its progress.  Christianity, indeed, is against him, and therefore it is no wonder that he is against Christianity.  Hence it is, that the religion of every man around him, however pure and excellent, if it is but zealous and fervent, is declared, without distinction, to be mere hypocrisy, enthusiasm, bigotry, and cant.

But let us look a little also to the various consequences of his life of sin.  Who can trace a thousandth part of the miseries which have arisen even from one single source; I mean from the levity and inconsideration which have made one leading feature in his character?  Who can calculate the effects of all those evil principles which he has scattered at random, reaching even to distant places and generations?  Who can calculate the mischief which he may have caused even in one of his light convivial hours?  View the inscription on that gravestone, which is now almost overgrown with thorns.  Ah, it is the name of an old companion, an ale-house friend, who once used to sing with him, in one joyful chorus, “the praises of the flowing bowl,” and who thus was encouraged in those habits of intemperance which led to that untimely grave.

Let us open one other source of no less painful reflection.  Behold that miserable female, once the gay partner of his guilty pleasures, whom if he has not been the first to seduce, he has at least carried on and confirmed in a life of sin, and whom he has left afterwards to sink in want, to grow loathsome through disease, and to become a nuisance to the village or the town.  He has helped to ruin but not to deliver her; he has soon left her to the tender mercies of some of her own sex as hardened as herself, among whom she has sunk, and groaned, and died.