The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant / Being a collection of select pieces from our best modern writers, calculated to eradicate vulgar prejudices and rusticity of manners, improve the understanding, rectify the will, purify the passions, direct the minds of youth to the pursuit of proper objects, and to facilitate their reading, writing, and speaking the English language with elegance and propriety

by John Hamilton Moore

The present Life to be considered only as it may conduce to the Happiness of a future one.

SPECTATOR; No. 575.

1. A lewd young fellow seeing an aged hermit go by him barefoot, Father, says he, you are in a very miserable condition, if there is not another world. True son, said the hermit; but what is thy condition if there is? Man is a creature designed for two different states of being, or rather, for two different lives. His first life is short and transient; his second permanent and lasting.

2. The question we are all concerned in is this, in which of these two lives is our chief interest to make ourselves happy? or in other words, whether we should endeavour to secure to ourselves the pleasure and gratification of a life which is uncertain and precarious, and at its utmost length of a very inconsiderable duration; or to secure to ourselves the pleasure of a life that is fixed and settled, and will never end? Every man, upon the first hearing of this question, knows very well which side of it he ought to close with.

3. But however right we are in theory, it is plain that in practice we adhere to the wrong side of the question. We make provisions for this life as though it were never to have an end, and for the other life as though it were never to have a beginning.

Should a spirit of superior rank, who is a stranger to human nature, accidentally alight upon the earth, and take a survey of its inhabitants, what would his notions of us be?

4. Would not he think that we were a species of beings made for quite different ends and purposes than what we really are? Must not he imagine that we were placed in this world to get riches and honours? Would he not think that it was our duty to toil after wealth, and station, and title? Nay, would not he believe we were forbidden poverty by threats of eternal punishment, and enjoined to pursue our pleasures under pain of damnation? He would certainly imagine that we were influenced by a scheme of duties quite opposite to those which are indeed prescribed to us.

5. And truly, according to such an imagination, be must conclude that we are a species of the most obedient creatures in the universe; that we are constant to our duty; and that we keep a steady eye on the end for which we were sent hither.

But how great would be his astonishment, when he learnt that we were beings not designed to exist in this world above threescore and ten years; and that the greatest part of this busy species fall short even of that age?