A summer’s day. I walked out upon the Common for an hour after breakfast with my Wife and child and took the benefit of the balmy 294air. Attended divine service and heard Mr. Walker of Charlestown preach all day from Ezekiel 18. 25. “Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not equal, Hear now, O house of Israel: Is not my way equal? Are not your ways unequal?” He laid down the position that all sin and evil was the consequence of misconduct proceeding from the inequality of man’s nature—That the Deity was the Judge but not the capricious cause. The other text was 2. Corinthians 5. 4. “For we that are in this tabernacle do groan being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.” The nature of death. How much more influence man exerts after his death than is commonly supposed, the fear of it should not regulate the course of human action because we can look to a future state with hope and confidence. My abstract is very lame, but the preacher was eloquent and touching.

Home. Read Atterbury. Text blank line in MS A sermon to prove that Christianity must be a state of suffering, and the example of the Saviour a precept and exhortation to endure it. This is another shape of the argument in Mr. Bennets Funeral Sermon. I do not assent to it because although I cannot agree that bodily pain is consistent with happiness, yet I do maintain that happiness must arise from virtuous conduct and a virtuous mind and can spring from no other source. Quiet evening at home.

Fine day. I went to the Office and was occupied in Accounts to some extent. Conversation with Mr. Walsh and lounging at Insurance Offices. The interest taken in political affairs is now much greater here than usual and the result of the New York election though not decisive is sufficiently so to inspire confidence into the opposition forming against the Government.

Walk. P. C. Brooks Jr. dined with me and in the afternoon I went down to the Boylston Market to a Meeting of Directors but none was held. Returned home and finished the fifth Tusculan of Cicero. Evening, Mr. Davis passed an hour or two.

I received from Washington my father’s speech which he did not deliver upon the subject of the Bank of the United States and Mr. Taneys reasons. He has published it nevertheless. It eclipses all other Speeches yet made, and breathes the same tone of fearless invective which has always distinguished his writings.1