

"You have," said Sir John, "exposed the latent principle; it remains that you suggest its cure."

"I believe," said Dr. Barlow, "that the most effectual remedy would be, to excite in the mind frequent thoughts of our divine Redeemer, and of his estimate of that world on which we so fondly set our affections, and whose approbation we are too apt to make the chief object of our ambition."

"I allow it to have been necessary," replied Sir John, "that Christ, in the great end which he had to accomplish, should have been poor, and neglected, and contemned, and that he should have trampled on the great things of this world, human applause among the rest; but I do not conceive that this obligation extends to his followers, nor that we are called upon to partake the poverty which he preferred, or to renounce the wealth and grandeur which he set at naught, or to imitate him in making himself of no reputation."

"It is true," said the Doctor, "we are not called to resemble him in his external circumstances. It is not our bounden duty to be necessarily exposed to the same contempt; nor are we obliged to embrace the same ignominy. Yet it seems a natural consequence of our Christian profession, that the things which he despised, we should not venerate; the vanities he trampled on, we should not admire; the world which he censured, we ought not to idolize; the ease which he renounced, we should not rate too highly; the fame which he set at naught, we ought not anxiously to covet. Surely, the followers of him who was 'despised and rejected of men' should not seek their highest gratification from the flattery and applause of men. The truth is, in all discourses on this subject, we are compelled continually to revert to the observation, that Christianity is a religion of the heart. And though we are not called upon to partake the poverty and meanness of his situation, yet the precept is clear and direct, respecting the temper by which we should be governed: 'Let the same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.' If, therefore, we happen to possess that wealth and grandeur which he disdained, we should possess them as though we possessed them not. We have a fair and liberal permission to use them as his gift, and to his glory, but not to erect them into the supreme objects of our attachment. In the same manner, in every other point,
