were resolved that he should try his fortune at an election which was drawing near in the college, of which the independent minister whom I have before mentioned was governor. The youth, according to custom, waited on him in order to be examined. He was received at the door by a servant who was one of that gloomy generation that were then in fashion. He conducted him, with great silence and seriousness, to a long gallery, which was darkened at noon-day, and had only a single candle burning in it. After a short stay in this melancholy apartment, he was led into a chamber hung with black, where he entertained himself for some time by the glimmering of a taper, until at length the head of the college came out to him, from an inner room, with half a dozen night-caps upon his head, and religious horror in his countenance. The young man trembled: but his fears increased, when, instead of being asked what progress he had made in learning, he was examined how he abounded in grace. His Latin and Greek stood him in little stead; he was to give an account only of the state of his soul whether he was of the number of the elect; what was the occasion of his conversion; upon what day of the month and hour of the day it happened; how it was carried on, and when completed. The whole examination was summed up with one short question, namely, whether he was prepared for death? The boy, who had been bred up by honest parents, was frighted out of his wits at the solemnity of the proceeding, and by the last dreadful interrogatory; so that, upon making his escape out of the house of mourning, he could never be brought a second time to the examination, as not being able to go through the terrors of it. Notwithstanding this general form and outside of religion is pretty well worn out among us, there are many persons who, by a natural uncheerfulness of heart, mistaken notions of piety, or weakness of understanding, love to indulge this uncomfortable way of life, and give up themselves a prey to grief and melancholy. Superstitious fears and groundless scruples cut them off from the pleasures of conversation, and all those social entertainments, which are not only innocent, but laudable: as if mirth was made for reprobates, and cheerfulness of heart denied those who are the only persons that have a proper title to it. He thinks himself Sombrius is one of these sons of sorrow. obliged in duty to be sad and disconsolate. He looks on a sudden fit of laughter as a breach of his baptismal vow. An innoceut jest startles him like blasphemy. Tell him of one who is advanced to a title of honour, he lifts up his hands and eyes; describe a public ceremony, he shakes his head; show him a gay equipage, he blesses himself. All the little ornaments of life are pomps and vanities. Mirth is wanton, and wit profane. He is scandalised at youth for being lively, and at childhood for being playful. He sits at a christening, or a marriage-feast, as at a funeral; sighs at the con clusion of a merry story, and grows devout when the rest of the company grow pleasant. After all, Sombrius is a religious man, and would have behaved himself very properly, had he lived when Christianity was under a general persecution. I would by no means presume to tax such characters with hypocrisy, as is done too frequently; that being a vice which I think none but he, who knows the secrets of men's hearts, should pretend to discover in another, where the proofs of it do not amount to a demonstration. On the contrary, as there are many excellent persons, who are weighed down by this habitual sorrow of heart, they rather deserve our compassion than our reproaches. I think, however, they would do well to consider whether such a behaviour. does not deter men from a religious life, by representing it as an unsociable state, that extinguishes all joy and gladness, darkens the face of nature, and destroys the relish of Being itself. I have, in former papers, shown how great a tendency there is to cheerfulness in religion, and how such a frame of mind is not only the most lovely, but the most commendable in a virtuous person. In short, those who represent religion in so unamiable a light, are like the spies sent by Moses to make a discovery of the land of promise, when by their reports they discouraged the people from entering upon it. Those who show us the joy, the cheerfulness, the good humour, that naturally spring up in this happy state, are like the spies bringing along with them the clusters of grapes and delicious fruits, that might invite their companions into the pleasant country which produced them.* An eminent pagan writer + has made a discourse to show that the atheist, who denies a God, does him less dishonour than the man who owns his Being, but at the same time believes him to be cruel, hard to please, and terrible to human nature. "For my own part," says he, "I would rather it should be said of me, that there was never any such man as Plutarch, than that Plutarch was ill natured, capricious, or inhuman." If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. He has a heart capable of mirth, and naturally disposed to it. It is not the business of virtue to extirpate the affections of the mind, but to regulate them. It may moderate and restrain, but was not designed to banish gladness from the heart of man. Religion contracts the circle of our pleasures, but leaves it wide enough for her votaries to expatiate in. The contemplation of the Divine Being, and the exercise of virtue, are, in their own nature, so far from excluding all gladness of heart, that they are perpetual sources of it. In a word, the true spirit of religion cheers, as well as composes, the soul; it Numbers xiii. Plutarch. Пepl Aeroidaiμovías. Plut. Opera, tom. i. p. 286. H. Steph. 1572, 12mo. banishes indeed all levity of behaviour, all vicious and dissolute mirth, but in exchange fills the mind with a perpetual serenity, uninterrupted cheerfulness, and an habitual inclination to please others, as well as to be pleased in itself. As I am one who, by my profession, am obliged to look into all kinds of men, there are none whom I consider with so much pleasure, as those who have anything new or extraordinary in their characters, or ways of living. For this reason I have often amused myself with speculations on the race of people called Jews, many of whom I have met with in most of the considerable towns which I have passed through in the course of my travels. They are, indeed, so disseminated through all the trading parts of the world, that they are become the instruments by which the most distant nations converse with one another, and by which mankind are knit together in a general correspondence. They are like the pegs and nails in a great building, which, though they are but little valued in themselves, are absolutely necessary to keep the whole frame together. That I may not fall into any common beaten tracks of observation, I shall consider this people in three views. First, with regard to their number: secondly, their dispersion; and thirdly, their adherence to their religion; and afterwards endeavour to show, first, what natural reasons, and, secondly, what providential reasons, may be assigned for these three remarkable particulars. The Jews are looked upon by many to be as numerous at present as they were formerly in the land of Canaan. This is wonderful, considering the dreadful slaughter made of them under some of the Roman emperors, which historians describe by the death of many hundred thousands in a war; and the innumerable massacres and persecutions they have undergone in Turkey, as well as in all Christian nations of the world. The rabbins, to express the great havoc which has been sometimes made of them, tell us, after their usual manner of hyperbole, that there were such torrents of holy blood shed, as carried rocks of an hundred yards in circumference above three miles into the sea. Their dispersion is the second remarkable particular in this people. They swarm over all the East; and are settled in the remotest parts of China. They are spread through most of the. nations in Europe and Africa, and many families of them are established in the West Indies: not to mention whole nations bordering on Prester John's country, and some discovered in the inner parts of America, if we may give any credit to their own writers. Their firm adherence to their religion is no less remarkable than their numbers and dispersion, especially considering it as persecuted or contemned over the face of the whole earth. This is likewise the more remarkable, if we consider the frequent apostasies of this people, when they lived under their kings in the land of promise, and within sight of their temple. If in the next place we examine what may be the natural reasons for these three particulars which we find in the Jews, and which are not to be found in any other religion or people, I can in the first place, attribute their numbers to nothing but their constant employment, their abstinence, their exemption from wars, and above all, their frequent marriages; for they look on celibacy as an accursed state, and generally are married before twenty, as hoping the Messiah may descend from them. The dispersion of the Jews into all the nations of the earth, is the second remarkable particular of that people, though not so hard to be accounted for. They were always in rebellions and tumults while they had the temple and holy city in view, for which reason they have often been driven out of their old habitations in the land of promise. They have as often been banished out of most other places where they have settled, which must very much disperse and scatter a people, and oblige them to seek a livelihood where they can find it. Besides, the whole people is now a race of such merchants as are wanderers by profession, and, at the same time, are in most, if not all places, incapable of either lands or offices, that might engage them to make any part of the world their home. This dispersion would probably have lost their religion, had it not been secured by the strength of its constitution: for they are to live all in a body, and generally within the same inclosure; to marry among themselves, and to eat no meats that are not killed or prepared their own way. This shuts them out from all table conversation, and the most agreeable intercourses of life; and, by consequence, excludes them from the most probable means of conversion. If, in the last place, we consider what providential reasons may be assigned for these three particulars, we shall find that their numbers, dispersion, and adherence to their religion, have furnished every age, and every nation of the world, with the strongest arguments for the Christian faith, not only as these very particulars are foretold of them, but as they themselves are the depositaries of these, and all the other prophecies, which tend to their own confusion. Their number furnishes us with a sufficient cloud of witnesses that attest the truth of the Old Bible. Their dispersion spreads these witnesses through all parts of the world. The adherence to their religion makes their testimony unquestionable. Had the whole body of the Jews been converted to Christianity, we should certainly have thought all the prophecies of the Old Testament, that relate to the coming and history of our blessed Saviour, forged by Christians, and have looked upon them, with the prophecies of the Sibyls, as made many years after the events they pretended to foretell." ADDISON. C. No. 496. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1712. Gnatum pariter uti his decuit aut etiam amplius, TERENT. HEAUT. ACT I. sc. 1, 80. Your son ought to have shared in these things, because youth is best suited to the enjoyment of them. "MR. SPECTATOR, "THOSE ancients who were the most accurate in their remarks on the genius and temper of mankind, by considering the various bent and scope of our actions throughout the progress of life, have with great exactness allotted inclinations and objects of desire particular to every stage, according to the different circumstances of our conversation and fortune, through the several periods of it, Hence they were disposed easily to excuse those excesses which might possibly arise from a too eager pursuit of the affections more immediately proper to each state. They indulged the levity of childhood with tenderness, overlooked the gaiety of youth with good nature, tempered the forward ambition and impatience of ripened manhood with discretion, and kindly imputed the tenacious avarice of old men to their want of relish for any other enjoyment. Such allowances as these were no less advantageous to common society than obliging to particular persons; for by maintaining a decency and regularity in the course of life, they supported the dignity of human nature, which then suffers the greatest violence when the order of things is inverted; and in nothing is it more remarkably vilified and ridiculous, than when feebleness preposterously at |