Page:The Works of Samuel Johnson ... A journey to the Hebrides. The vision of Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe. The fountains. Prayers and meditations. Sermons.v. 10-11. Parliamentary debates.pdf/374

 gay imagination may be amused in solitude and ease, but which the first survey of the world will show him to be nothing more than a pleasing delusion. Nothing has been mentioned which would not certainly be produced in any nation by a general piety. To effect all this, no miracle is required; men need only unite their endeavours, and exert those abilities which God has conferred upon them, in conformity to the laws of religion.

To general happiness, indeed, is required a general concurrence in virtue; but we are not to delay the amendment of our own lives, in expectation of this favourable juncture. An universal reformation must be begun somewhere, and every man ought to be ambitious of being the first. He that does not promote it, retards it; for every one must, by his conversation, do either good or hurt. Let every man, therefore, endeavour to make the world happy, by a strict performance of his duty to God and man, and the mighty work will soon be accomplished.

Governours have yet a harder task; they have not only their own actions, but those of others, to regulate, and are not only chargeable with their own faults, but with all those which they neglect to prevent or punish. As they are intrusted with the government for the sake of the people, they are under the strongest obligations to advance their happiness, which they can only do by the encouragement of virtue.

But since the care of governours may be frustrated, since publick happiness, which must be the result of publick virtue, seems to be at a great distance from us, let us consider,

the world, particular men may, by the practice of the duties of religion, promote their own happiness.
 * How much, in the present corrupt state of

He is very ignorant of the nature of happiness, who imagines it to consist wholly in the outward circumstances of life, which, being in themselves transient and variable, and generally dependent upon the will of others, can never be the true basis of a solid satisfaction. To be