happiness, and in a strong desire to promote their welfare, temporal, spiritual, and eternal. In a family, the form in which love appears is gentleness, sweetness, prudence, and judgment; in a neighbourhood, it is courtesy; in friendship, it is sympathy; in distress, it is mercy; to our country, it is patriotism; to the world, it is benevolence; and in the church, it is brotherly kindness, dwelling together in unity, "The doctrine of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul." It regulates every opinion we receive, every connection we form, every arrangement we make, every course we pursue, every hope we cherish! How admirable will it appear, if we contrast it with the maxims by which unenlightened nations are governed! Hospitality to the stranger is almost the only expression of benevolence known among savage tribes; and if we see there the traveller welcomed to food and rest in their dwelling, and his life and property counted sacred, we behold captives assassinated, children sacrificed to idols, and the sick and the helpless left to perish. Among the most civilized heathen nations, patriotism is the only feature of love that we can discern; but it is a patriotism which sanctions the pillage, the slaughter, and the conquest of other nations. It is not in the maxims or doctrines of their sages that you will trace the noble workings of charity; nor can you meet with, in the laws of the Roman kings, nor among the decrees of the republican senate, nor among the edicts of the heathen emperors, a single ordinance for the promotion or guidance of any scheme of mercy. These, in all their forms, are the result of the law or doctrine of Jesus Christ.
