makes a bad government; and he that considers how few can properly adjust their own houses, will not wonder that into the multiplicity of national affairs deception or negligence should sometimes find their way. It is likewise necessary to remember, that as government is difficult to be administered, it is difficult to be understood; and that where very few have capacity to judge, very few have a right to censure.
The happiness of a nation must arise from the combined endeavours of governours and subjects. The duties of governing can be the lot of few, but all of us have the duties of subjects to perform; and every man ought to incite in himself, and in his neighbour, that obedience to the laws, and that respect to the chief magistrate, which may secure and promote concord and quiet. Of this, as of all other virtues, the true basis is religion. The laws will be easily obeyed by him who adds to human sanctions the obligations of conscience; and he will not easily be disposed to censure his superiours, whom religion has made acquainted with his own failings.
SERMON XXV.
[WRITTEN BY DR. JOHNSON, FOR THE FUNERAL OF HIS WIFE.]
"Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever
liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die." John xi. 25, 26. former
part.
To afford adequate consolations to the last hour, to cheer the gloomy passage through the valley of the shadow of death, and to ease that anxiety, to which beings, prescient of their own dissolution, and conscious of their own danger, must be necessarily exposed, is the privilege only
