Page:Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse.pdf/170

158

vanity of anticipation; and since we know not what a day may bring forth, to teach us our complete dependence upon him "who holdeth in his hands the keys of life and death?"

........

Physiognomy is an uncertain standard of character. The emotions to which a person is most subject may, indeed, mark correspondent lines upon the face, if their exercise is violent or protracted. But how at first sight can we gain that hidden knowledge of human nature, which after many years of painful study we often fail of attaining? We may suppose that we are but imperfectly acquainted even with our intimate friends, if we consider how little we know of our own prevailing errors, our own imperceptible motives of action; and recollect that the sages of antiquity pronounced it the most difficult part of knowledge, for man to know himself.

........

Why will some sects deny the necessity of literary knowledge to Clergymen? While the opposers of religion assiduously cultivate human learning, and strengthen the weakness of their cause by their own erudition, should its advocates be deprived of an useful weapon, and the "children