My Record of today can have but little of interest in it. I pursued my reading of Gibbon without material interruption. Finished the fifth volume and the Roman Empire under Arcadius and Honorius. No letter from my father. His occupation in the House now employs him so much that he will not give me a syllable even upon the most necessary topics. My Mother writes occasionally.1

Afternoon quiet at home. Finished the Oration for Cluentius, which on this reading strikes me as about the summit of this kind of Oratory. The vigour and yet the flow of the language is admirable. I wonder if I could form to myself any thing like the same style. It would be worth all the gold in the world.

Evening quiet at home. Finished the Bible. We have been reading the Chapters of Revelation. Of which neither she nor I can make any thing. Part of it certainly betrays ignorance of the doctrines now received of the Constitution of the Universe and no apparent light to supply it’s place from above. It makes the sun and moon and stars much more tributary to the earth than their relative size and importance in the Creation would seem to justify. I must confess it looks to me much more like the vision of a heated brain than the natural result of the mild and heavenly doctrine and practice of the Saviour. In him there was no rant, no extravagant visions, every thing is adapted to reason and to the conduct of life. Perhaps this single point is one of the greatest in which he can be contrasted with all mere men who have arrogated similar powers. They all more or less display the weak parts of the human mind. An imagination inflamed into wild enthusiasm, and showing itself in visions and ravings. He on the contrary works miracles and preaches Peace. Finished Hunt’s book. And Began Rose’s translation of Ariosto.2

Nothing can be worse than our Weather has been for a considerable time past. The Alternations have been so rapid from cold to warm, and from dry to wet that the systems of People must be severely tried. I attended Divine Service all day. Heard in the morning a young man by name Chapman,1 a brother of him who was my Class-mate at College. His Text from Matthew 18. 3. “Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven.” The subject, the purity necessary to a holy character. The Preacher did not lean to the doctrine of innate depravity for he spoke of Children as perfectly innocent and pure. Indeed it is difficult to make any thing out of the Text unless we suppose Children to be pure. Yet what becomes of the great orthodox doctrine if we do. Mr. Ripley preached in the Afternoon from Matthew 14. 23. “And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray.” He inculcated the propriety of private meditation and secret prayer, giving in the mean while something of a reproof to the prevailing fashion in these days of resorting to sympathy and public excitement for religious feeling. There was much sense in what he said, but he is dry in manner, as are nearly all of our Clergy.

I lounged over Spence’s Anecdotes of Pope an hour or two and read Massillon’s Sermon upon the small number of the elect. “And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the Prophet, and none of them was cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian.” He gives three reasons why there can be very few saved. 1. They must either be innocent, or having been sinners, truly repentant. Of the first there are scarcely any, and no great number of the other. 2. Most people are led away by the voice of the Majority, and pay implicit deference to the regulations of the world which are not compatible with their salvation. 3. The rules which are most commonly rejected, are the most necessary to that salvation. This must be the Sermon which is said to have produced so powerful an effect that all the Auditors rose at one passage. That bold one in which he imagines the presence of Christ. On the whole the Sermon is a very powerful though far from a convincing one. There is too much effect in it, too much harshness in sentiment to be agreeable to my notion of the Deity and Religion.

Quiet Evening. Began the Old Testament to my Wife which I propose to read to her two Chapters nightly. Read a good deal of Grahame’s second volume.