Sunday Lectures

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1828 edition. Excerpt: ...honesty, and sobriety: every failure of these virtues would instantly strike them; but those minuter shades, which are but too often the presages of a dereliction from integrity, escape their casual observation. Obliged to labour from the earliest dawn to procure that bread which is to sustain life, if they see their children growing around them in health and strength, they ask no more. The ceaseless toil which procures their daily food, sends them to early and sound repose; the lark carols not his morning song unheard by them; their hasty tread brushes the silver dew; and before the rich man quits his down they have toiled many an anxious hour. Scorched by the summer's sun, and chilled by the wintry breeze, food and repose is all they know of the enjoyments of life. Their children are sent into the world new to its temptations and unprepared to resist them. If among the numbers thus exposed some should fall, who can wonder? Dazzled by all they see, incapable of appretiating its value, they think every good is centered in wealth, every evil in poverty. Acting upon this fallacious and, to them, fatal idea, temptation assails them in every varied form; the struggle of virtue is short and feeble; vice approaches with hasty steps, and to have been tempted, to yield to temptation, and to fall, is their sad history. If in its inscrutable decrees Providence has removed such temptations from the rich, it is not that they should learn hardness of heart, nor arrogate to themselves, as a superior degree of virtue, that exemption from vice which is perhaps due rather to their situation than to their conduct. They ought never to forget that their youth was sheltered from every injurious impression. They quitted not the protecting guardianship of their...