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which it is intended, and may be named accordingly either material or personal.

Good material appetitive characteristics, or characteristics applying to good effects, are generally known by such expressions as The love of righteousness, A sense of duty, &c.; while one of the sort might be called a good appetite, a regular appetite, yes, and a wise appetite, on account of the blessing which attends it, as our Lord declares, "BLESSED ARE THEY WHICH DO HUNGER AND THIRST after righteoUSNESS: for they shall be filled" (Mat. v. 6). For we may observe, that there is both a regular and irregular appetite of the soul as well as of the body; an appetite of spiritual and intellectual, as well as of spiritual and material affinity or combination, and accordingly so ranged or considered. Good personal appetitive characteristics may generally be designated by the term Benignity; and other names are also found, to denote as many different species, shades, or degrees of the same. But more especially for a thorough comprehension of the subject of such good spiritual objective characteristics, the whole sort may be divided like the essential constituents on which it is founded, into three divisions, being the appetitive superior, equal and inferior, as before explained.

1, The appetitive superior division, or superior love, is that which looks downward upon objects either labouring under some temporary disadvantage, or else habitually inferior to the subject or lover. This superior love, in general called CHARITY, is also found to have its subdivisions distinguished also by their proper names; as Mercy, Pity, Sympathy, and the like: which would give a considerable latitude to the generic term, if fairly dilated, both in thinking and doing; and much beyond the meaning of a kind construction only in one department, and of an alms merely in the other; though by custom the meaning of Charity has been limited almost to these instances. Indeed the meaning of Charity is very properly limited by one circumstance, not belonging to the

general property of love or benignity, as the meaning of every specific term should be by some character or circumstance not common in its kind. This peculiar and characteristic feature of charity then is feeling, pleasant feeling too, and the more pleasant for being disinterested in its subject; by means of which an affinity is preserved between this class of good spiritual objectives and its sensitive class just considered, at the same time that the subject is also hereby repaid in some measure for any trouble or sacrifice that may be required of him on account of the object of his charity, whether such charity should emanate in the shape of Mercy, Pity, Sympathy, or any other particular cast.

To this should also be added as a farther characteristic and recommendation of the species, that neither this nor any of its particulars here alluded to will clash with any other kinds of righteousness, but rather help with them: and not only these but the two grand divisions of the same, righteousness of the head and heart, or wisdom and virtue are generally found so to harmonize and cooperate with each other. Thus,

-1, Mercy is not incompatible but rather concurrent with justice; as for example 1, in the case of avenging the innocent blood, and indeed in avenging or doing justice to any object of compassion; where mercy will have two parts to act in both tempering and inciting justice: 2, in disarming or deterring the violent for the protection of the meek: 3, and more remarkably, in the reformation of offenders; as it is written, " Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness" (Isai. i. 27). Then, and not before, may those who were only objects of charity become objects of esteem and friendship.

For it will be necessary to distinguish in every case between charity and esteem; considering that as a common, and this as a particular debt; that, as due to all men, without excepting even the worthless and the guilty; this,

as due only to the deserving and the innocent in proportion to their innocence and deserts. The flow of charity is spontaneous, and its fruit gratuitous; but the fruit of esteem must be earned, as well as paid. None but the doating and indiscreet will ever bestow their esteem any where without being well assured of the merit of its object, without being obliged thereto by his desert, without his extorting it from them in this way. In short, liking has its measures or qualifications as well as disliking; and to love without judgment were as bad in its kind as tó hate without mercy. If we rightly wish well to an of fender, we shall take as much pains to cross or correct him in a wrong course as we should to assist the same person in a right the corrective part of charity must be included in mercy with the forgiving. But the fairest type of this amiable characteristic is found in

-2, The part of Pity, Compassion, Sympathy, and similar appetites to which the Creator has assigned so large a scope in this world of tribulation: "For he hath founded it upon the seas, and prepared it upon the floods" (Ps. xxiv. 2). The convulsions of life and its consequent sorrows are the basis on which an all wise, good, and powerful Creator has founded the generous sentiment of pity through an harmless deception, like that of making other men's sorrows ours by sympathy; though the mistake, alas! will be but of short duration, very little experience in the world sufficing to teach us the difference between ourselves and others. There is no one perhaps, but has some circumstances in common with some, and more with some than with others: but of no two will the common circumstances be equal to their common liabilities. To shew, therefore, the scope or extent allowed for sympathy and its kind; it ought to be determined in the first place, who are their proper objects: and that more especially as some are often excluded by mistake from the benefit of this association who want it as much as any; our superiors, to wit; who however often require, and

may sometimes deserve our compassion. And this should never be denied to any who are themselves capable of feeling the same, or of the same feeling. No man who is capable of a generous sympathy himself can ever entirely dislike another who seems to be endowed with the same capability: it is only when one has lost the sense of compassion himself, that he ceases to deserve, and has no reason to expect it, either from God or man.

For a man who is incapable of sympathizing, or who has ceased to sympathize with his fellow men, whether in prosperity or adversity, is in the world like an insulated being. He feels no interest in the concerns of others, and consequently derives no pleasure from them; while the man who is blessed with abundance of sympathy will find it, like the general appetitive, love or charity, to which it belongs, replete with heartfelt delight, not only in that virtuous excitement which is itself an agreeable sensation, and in many living interests which could not otherwise be felt, but also as a source of recreation and improvement in the attraction which this virtue lends to history and other species of literature. For a well executed history is like an altar in the temple of Providence, standing to receive perpetually the offerings of spirit and intellect, or of wisdom and sympathy: when it is not the gross acts and incidents that affect us; but the spirit and intellect developed in them, which may have been offered long before, and we offer again—ANOTHER INSTANCE OF THE WAY IN

WHICH CHARITY EDIFIETH.

They say, that pity leads to love: and truly too. Pity, sympathy and such other graces will often lead their subjects to love through the grateful feeling with which they are eventually repaid for any uneasiness attending their conception. So that every kind and sympathetic heart must owe great thanks to its object for teaching or inspiring those grateful feelings which are better to their subject than his bounty to him, whatever it may be. Si

milarly sweet is the mild satisfaction, that one takes in lisping innocence, the high delight that one finds in a teacher from God, and the higher still in his blessed communion by the Holy Ghost, which are all of one in this respect, all portions of the good characteristic under consideration. So is the joy that one perceives in the fruit of good teaching, whether it consist in the edification of the righteous or reclamation of the wicked. This last species particularly is intitled to the epithet of heavenly, as well from the quality of the feeling, as from the superiority of its subject: and our Saviour plainly declares it to be an heavenly feeling, where he says, "That joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth" (Luke xv. 7, 10). But whatever may be the nature or foundation of their joy, on earth it is sympathy and friendly concern; it is the painful interest that we take in the sinner, like a mother's pangs on account of her offspring (Gal. iv. 19), that leads to heavenly joy on his account, when we have the happiness to see him regenerated. And were we to examine narrowly into the constitution of this (the good spiritual objective) class of characteristics, we should find in them generally perhaps an air of sweet melancholy, like that which painters have endeavoured to give to the portrait of the blessed Saviour of mankind; who "was wounded (as it said) for our transgressions" (Isai. liii. 5), suffering on account of others in mind as well as in person.

-3, A third scion of the same stock of charity, but rather more specific in its operation, is the divine property, as we often and justly call it, of Forgiveness: which indeed does not look so much like a property at first, as it does like an act or accident, but for want of a more proper denomination may stand for the property or habit of forgiveness, which is composed, like other properties, of habitual accidents, v. g. of habitual forgiving, just as love may be composed of habitual loving, or hate of habitual hating. But as the property, habit, or disposition to forgiveness is not usually

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