part of my life. Sickness brought it back, and I hope I have never lost it fince."-B. " My dear Sir, what a man must you have been without religion! Why you must have gone on drinking, and swearing, and -." 7. (with a smile) " I drank enough and swore enough, to be fure."-S. One should think that fickness, and the view of death, would make more men religious."-7. " Sir, they do not know how to go about it; they have not the first notion. A man who has never had religion before, no more grows religious when he is fick, than a man who has never learnt figures can count when he has need of calculation."

A gentleman was mentioned as being too ready to introduce religious discourse upon all occafions. Johnfon observed, Why yes, Sir, he will introduce religious discourse without fecing whether it will end in instruction and improvement, or produce some prophane jeft. He would introduce it in the company of ******, and twenty more such."

Mr. Bofwell mentioned the Doctor's excellent distinction between liberty of confcience and liberty of teaching *. Johnfon faid, "Confider, Sir; if you have children whom you wish to educate in the principles of the Church of England, and there comes a Quaker

* Ante, Page 216.

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who tries to pervert them to his principles, you would drive away the Quaker. You would not trust to the predomination of right, which you believe is in your opinions; you would keep wrong out of their heads. Now the vulgar are the children of the State. If any one attempts to teach them doctrines contrary to what the State approves, the magistrate may and ought to restrain him."-S. Would you restrain private conversation, Sir ?"7. "Why, Sir, it is difficult to say where private conversation begins, and where it ends. If we three should discuss even the great queftion concerning the existence of a Supreme Being by ourselves, we should not be restrained; for that would be to put an end to all improvement; but if we should discuss it in the prefence of ten boarding-fchool girls, and as many boys, I think the magiftrate would do well to put us in the stocks, to finish the debate there."

A gentleman once expressed a wish to go and live three years at Otaheite or New Zealand, in order to obtain a full acquaintance with people so totally different from all that we have ever known, and be fatisfied what pure nature can do for man. JOHNSON. "What could you learn, Sir? What can savages tell, but what they themselves have seen? Of the paft,

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past, or the invisible, they can tell nothing. The inhabitants of Otaheite and New Zealand are not in a state of pure nature; for it is plain they broke off from some other people. Had they grown out of the ground, you might have judged of a state of pure nature. Fanciful people may talk of a mythology being amongst them, but it must be invention. They have once had religion, which has been gradually debased; and what account of their religion can you suppose to be learnt from savages? Only confider, Sir, our own state: our religion is in a book; we have an order of men whose duty it is to teach it; we have one day in the week set apart for it, and this is in general pretty well observed; yet ask the first ten gross men you meet, and hear what they can tell of their religion."

Mr. Murray one day praised the ancient philofophers for the candour and good humour with which those of different sects disputed with each other. " Sir (faid Johnson) they difputed with good humour, because they were not in earnest as to religion. Had the ancients been serious in their belief, we should not have had their Gods exhibited in the manner we find them represented in the Poets. The people would not have fuffered it. They difputed with good humour upon their fanciful theories,

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theories, because they were not interested in the truth of them; when a man has nothing to lose, he may be in good humour with his opponent. Accordingly, you fee in Lucian that the Epicurean, who argues only negatively, keeps his temper; the Stoick, who has fomething positive to preferve, grows, angry. Being angry with one who controverts an opinion which you value, is a neceffary confequence of the uneasiness which you feel. Every man who attacks my belief diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneafy; and I am angry with him who makes me uncafy. Those only who believed in revelation have been angry at having their faith called in question, because they only had fomething upon which they could reft as matter of fact." Mr. MURRAY. " It seems to me that we are not angry at a man for controverting an opinion which we believe and value; we rather pity him," JOHNSON. "Why, Sir; to be fure when you with a man to have that belief which you think is of infinite advantage, you wish well to him; but your primary confideration is your own quiet, If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary confideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him

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him down first, and pity him afterwards. No, Sir; every man will dispute with great good humour upon a fubject in which he is not interested. I will dispute very calmly upon the probability of another man's fon being hanged; but if a man zealoufly enforces the probability that my own fon will be hanged, I shall certainly not be in a very good humour with him." Mr. Bofwell added this illustration, " If a man endeavours to convince me that my wife, whom I love very much, and in whom I place great confidence, is a disagreeable woman, and is even unfaithful to me, I shall be very angry, for he is putting me in fear of being unhappy." -MURRAY. But, Sir, truth will always bear an examination." -JOHNSON. Yes,

Sir, but it is painful to be forced to defend it. Confider, Sir, how should you like, though confcious of your innocence, to be tried before a jury for a capital crime, once a week."

Talking of devotion, he said, "Though it be true that God dwelleth not in temples made with hands, yet in this state of being, our minds are more pioufly affected in places appropriated to divine worship, than in others. Some people have a particular room in their house where they say their prayers; of this I do not disapprove, as it may animate their devotion."

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