Morning milder with clouds and a little snow. I amused myself in reading Voltaire’s Letters, some of which relating to his corrections of his pieces are interesting.

Attended divine service and heard N. Hall of Dorchester. 2. Samuel 14. 14. “For we must needs die.” I saw little in the discourse beyond a recourse to the ordinary and somewhat superficial views which are taken of death. A great exaggeration of the thing itself and an affected impressiveness which is not in good taste. Death in itself is nothing but the termination of life—A process of nature which is common to all, animals, insects and men, a rule of decay which is co-existent with the creation of the world’s inmates. The man who lives on the battle field or a pestilential city becomes familiarized with its appearance and has no time to moralize. But the sedentary student who indulges a faculty of imagination dresses it up as an extraordinary wonder. To be sure the subject is not an agreeable one because man’s natural instinct makes it otherwise. Pain is the portal interposed between to relax the otherwise overstrong tendencies to pass through. But the point is to live, and that in such manner that death when it comes shall have no superfluous terrors, none which relate to any thing other than physical suffering. This is my doctrine and therefore I dislike such Sermons as this.

Afternoon Mr. Frothingham from Matthew 5. 47. “What do ye more than others.” An excellent discourse upon two common excuses for indifference to moral perfection by many—A wish not to be singular, but to do as others do, and an attempt to palliate known misconduct or negligence, by professing that it is committed by others and may as well be by one’s self. Mr. Frothingham discriminates nicely in matters of moral obligation, far more so than one would suppose possible with his necessarily limited knowledge of human nature.

I afterwards read a Sermon of Dr. Barrow in continuation of the subject of obedience to spiritual authority. This defines obedience. I take comparatively little interest in such discourses. They are too strong of the Church. Evening, Mr. Degrand came in and passed a couple of hours but had no interesting conversation. Goethe.