In the mean time, it is by affliction chiefly that the heart of man is purified, and that the thoughts are fixed upon a better state.  Prosperity, allayed and imperfect as it is, has power to intoxicate the imagination, to fix the mind upon the present scene, to produce confidence and elation, and to make him who enjoys affluence and honours forget the hand by which they were bestowed.  It is seldom that we are otherwise, than by affliction, awakened to a sense of our own imbecility, or taught to know how little all our acquisitions can conduce to safety or to quiet; and how justly we may ascribe to the superintendence of a higher Power, those blessings which in the wantonness of success we considered as the attainments of our policy or courage.

Nothing confers so much ability to resist the temptations that perpetually surround us, as an habitual consideration of the shortness of life, and the uncertainty of those pleasures that solicit our pursuit; and this consideration can be inculcated only by affliction.  “O Death! how bitter is the remembrance of thee, to a man that lives at ease in his possessions!” If our present state were one continued succession of delights, or one uniform flow of calmness and tranquillity, we should never willingly think upon its end; death would then surely surprise us as “a thief in the night;” and our task of duty would remain unfinished, till “the night came when no man can work.”

While affliction thus prepares us for felicity, we may console ourselves under its pressures, by remembering, that they are no particular marks of divine displeasure; since all the distresses of persecution have been suffered by those, “of whom the world was not worthy;” and the Redeemer of mankind himself was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief!”

No. 126.  SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 1754.

 —­Steriles nec legit arenas
  Ut caner et paucis, mersitque hoc pulvere verum. LUCAN.

Canst thou believe the vast eternal Mind Was e’er to Syrts and Lybian sands confin’d?  That he would choose this waste, this barren ground, To teach the thin inhabitants around, And leave his truth in wilds and deserts drown’d?

There has always prevailed among that part of mankind that addict their minds to speculation, a propensity to talk much of the delights of retirement:  and some of the most pleasing compositions produced in every age contain descriptions of the peace and happiness of a country life.

I know not whether those who thus ambitiously repeat the praises of solitude, have always considered, how much they depreciate mankind by declaring, that whatever is excellent or desirable is to be obtained by departing from them; that the assistance which we may derive from one another, is not equivalent to the evils which we have to fear; that the kindness of a few is overbalanced by the malice of many; and that the protection of society is too dearly purchased by encountering its dangers and enduring its oppressions.