and to throw in some expressions of kindness along with his censures.  And here, though it be a digression, let me conjure you never to undertake the unthankful office of censor.  You will find some inexperienced persons who will desire you, as an office of friendship, to tell them all their faults.  Be sure, if you undertake this with a friend, your friendship will be short.  It will lead you to look continually at the dark side of your friend’s character, and, before you are aware, you will find yourself losing your esteem for it.  Very soon, you will beget the suspicion that you have conceived some dislike.  If the cause is continued, this suspicion will corrode and increase; and the result will be, a mutual alienation of affection.  However sincerely such an experiment may be entered upon, it can hardly fail, in the nature of things, to produce this result.

It may, however, be said, that we are bound, by our covenant obligations, to watch over our brethren. But there can scarcely be a greater misapprehension than to understand this duty in the sense of an incessant lookout to discern and discover the little faults and foibles, or even the more marked and glaring defects of character, in our brethren.  The injunction is, “If thy brother trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault,” &c.  But I know of no passage of Scripture which requires us to procure a magnifying-glass, and go about making a business of detecting and exposing the faults of our brethren.  On the contrary, there are many cautions against a meddlesome disposition, and against being busy bodies in other men’s matters.  We are required, with great frequency and solemnity, to watch ourselves; but where is the injunction, “Watch thy brethren?” Even the Saviour himself did not thus attempt to correct the faults of his disciples.  He rebuked them, indeed, and sometimes sharply; but he was not continually reminding them of their faults.  He was not incessantly brow-beating Peter for his rashness, nor Thomas for his incredulity, nor the sons of Zebedee for their ambition.  But he “taught them as they were able to bear it;” and that rather by holding up before their minds the truth, than by direct personal lectures.

Our covenant obligations unquestionably make it our duty to watch and see that our brethren do not pursue a course of life inconsistent with their Christian profession, or which tends to backsliding and apostasy; and if they are true disciples, they will be thankful for a word of caution, when they are in danger of falling into sin.  And when they do thus fall, we are required to rebuke them, and not to suffer sin upon them.  But this is a very different affair from that of setting up a system of espionage over their conduct, and dwelling continually upon their faults and deficiencies.  This latter course cannot long be pursued, without an unhappy influence upon our own temper.  The human mind is so constituted as to be affected by the objects it contemplates,