will refresh and fertilise the moral soil around us, and whiten the fields unto harvest.

VII. ON THE TERM GENTLEMAN.

There is an emphatic tone and manner, in which the term gentleman is sometimes pronounced, which is very painful to my feelings. Even serious persons will speak of what they call a "perfect gentleman," as if he were a being endowed with moral qualities which could belong to no one else. They will erect themselves, as if some new passion stirred within them, when they disclaim, for their own parts, or that of their friends, the doing any thing unworthy of a gentleman. Now, all this, I own, appears to me to want the leaven of Christian humility. Nor can I avoid suspecting that it has its root in evil. It has, in fact, its foundation in natural pride, or in that principle which constitutes man a fighting animal. Whatever that consciousness is which characterises the gentleman, one thing is clear, that the other sex can know nothing of it. It is a sense, of which they must be totally devoid. And this alone would make me suspect its antichristian character. For in Christ Jesus "there is neither male nor female:" the image of God is

the same in both; and nothing can be morally or religiously good, which is possessed by one to the exclusion of the other. Why, then, cannot a woman feel this, so called, elevated emotion? I answer, simply because a woman is not a fighting animal.

But in this gentlemanly feeling there is something which strikes me always as ungenerous. It is of its very essence to exclude all who are not of a certain rank in life, from its privileges and prerogatives. However wise, however brave, however refined in mind, or pure in heart, a man may be; yet if he has not been placed by Providence in a certain station, he cannot participate in the feelings of a gentleman. At least, whatever his feelings may be, he must smother them. If he or the females of his family are insulted, he has no right to treat or repel the outrage, as if he were one of the privileged order. Here, in fact, lies the very essence of the matter. The differentia essentialis of the gentleman is, that he can fight. He bears the same relation to other men, that the game does to the dunghill cock. Let duelling cease, and the name of gentleman would cease also. It would lose at least its generic distinction, and fall into the specific rank and place which the law allows it, namely, between that of esquire and yeoman. I do not mean to say, that

in the present state of society, the gentlemanly spirit, or honour, or even duelling, could be dispensed with. Such wretched stimulants, if withdrawn, might leave nothing but a mass of sordid baseness behind. I am convinced, however, that if the world were Christian, no such distinction as that of gentleman, except in its specific meaning, would remain. Noblemen, men of fortune, clergymen, military officers-all ranks, in a word, which the law and constitution recognise; these would continue, and preserve whatever is solid and beneficial in the graduated order of society. But once let pride, and profligacy, and duelling be removed, and Othello's occupation would be gone the mere gentleman at large would no more strut and bully upon the stage.

The truth is, that this vague assumption rather confounds, than establishes, the principle of subordination. For what can be more subversive of right order, than that every subaltern officer and briefless barrister should have the privilege of bearding to the face the highest nobles of the land; while to the wealthy trader, whose daughter he would in vain solicit in marriage, he refuses the claims and rights of a common nature? No. The more it is considered, the more it will appear, that the emphatic use of the term gentleman, is not in sympathy with Christian feeling. In a

sermon, the minister may speak, if his subject leads to it, of the duties and the peculiar responsibilities of those whom Providence has intrusted with rank or large possessions. But could he, with the same propriety, speak of gentlemen in the sense above described? Or could the word gentleman, in that peculiar and emphatic sense, be introduced with decency into prayer? If not, why should the Christian employ the term, so understood, at all?

VIII. A PROOF THAT MAN WAS FORMED FOR
HAPPINESS.

That man was formed for happiness, and that, consequently, without it he feels himself out of his natural place, to have fallen from his rank, and lost the perfection of his being, is in nothing more strongly evinced, than in the universal desire to appear happy in the eyes of others. It is this desire alone, which confers value on those glittering prizes, so ardently contended for by the children of this world. If rank, and riches, and literary fame, were associated, in men's minds, with the notion that the possessors of them were unhappy, the contest would at once be over. They have, in fact, no value, but inasmuch as

they exhibit, however delusively, the appearance of happiness to the world.

I do not mean that any labour for these distinctions, on a settled principle that the semblance, and not the reality, of happiness, is the object of their anxiety. No. Man must, (for it is the prime law of his nature,) keep happiness in view, in every thing that he pursues. But in these instances, the point aimed at is the gratification of being looked on as possessors of those envied treasures, with which the ideas of happiness and enjoyment are commonly associated.

The same instinctive persuasion that we ought to be happy, is manifest in the shame which men often experience, at whatever discovers, or seems to discover, the nakedness of their misery. It is this, still more than mere physical privation, which renders poverty and a low estate so trying to flesh and blood. This will exhibit itself in a thousand shapes. To take one instance which I have witnessed myself. If some brilliant equipage drives up to the door of a family of inferior condition, what hurry and bustle immediately ensue! What pains are taken to huddle into some corner, or hide in some concealment, whatever may betray the contrast which the scene exhibits to the splendid home from which this visitor arrives! If, unfortunately, this family should be caught at