AND NEGLIGENT PRACTICE. 27 mg between a sermon and a play, are often engaged in conversations, to which the most frivolous dialogues ever written would afford no adequate parallel ;° and they who would think it a sin to be study- ing the history of their country, are frequently, and perhaps eagerly enquiring into the gossip of their own village, and contributing new anecdotes to its idle annals. Many books are useful, that are not professedly religious, for we have minds as well as souls. We may be well in- structed for the purposes of this world, without invading on the more important business of another. If, then, they would adopt sober liter- ature, in exchange for indolent trifling, their understandings would improve in vigour, and their tempers in cheerfulness and candour. Every unoccupied mind lays itself open to the incursion of more dangerous enemies than those it intends to avoid ; such a mind takes refuge in what is more injurious than the supposed. evil, L 6
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