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DUTY AND INCLINATION.
163

endeavour and devoutly pray that the kingdom of the Lord will be more and more established within us, bringing forth the fruits of righteousness, and establishing the heart and mind in the peace of Heaven."

After an interval of silence, the General resumed the conversation by saying, "The subject we have discussed, Doctor, being that of religion, recalls to my mind the opinions of a young man I once knew who was educating for the ministry, and who, in adopting some exclusive opinion was quite overjoyed in the agreeable and fascinating conceit of its being his own discovery; thus his faculties and thoughts ever recurring to the favourite idea, he could not exist at length but in the regions of imagination."

"And in those of self-love, with all its train of evils, I fear," replied the Doctor; "this followed as the natural consequence,—the ideas possibly confined but to one article of faith, giving to that one a total precedence, to the exclusion of every other; this is the rock on which they split who do so."

"I doubt it not," continued the General, "and that was the cause which led to the ruin,—that fatal moral ruin in this unhappy young man it was my sorrow to witness."

"God send he has since," devoutly ejaculated