II. with moderation the advantages of the SERM. world, neither lifted up by fuccess, nor enervated with fenfuality, he meets the changes in his lot without unmanly dejection. He is inured to temperance and reftraint. He has learned firmness and felf-command. He is accustomed to look up to that Supreme Providence, which difpofes of human affairs, not with reverence only, but with truft and hope. The time of profperity was to him not merely a feafon of barren joy, but productive of much ufeful improvement. He had cultivated his mind. He had ftored it with useful knowledge, with good principles, and virtuous difpofitions. These resources remain entire when the days of trouble come. They remain with him in fickness, as in health; in poverty, as in the midst of riches; in his dark and folitary hours, no less than when furrounded with friends and gay fociety. From the glare of profperity, he can, without dejection, VOL. I. withdraw D SERM. withdraw into the fhade. Excluded from +} several advantages of the world, he may be obliged to retreat into a narrower circle; but within that circle he will find many comforts left. His chief pleasures were always of the calm, innocent, and temperate kind; and over thefe, the changes of the world have the leaft power. His mind is a kingdom to him; and he can ftill enjoy it. The world did not bestow upon him all his enjoyments; and therefore it is not in the power of the world, by its most cruel attacks, to carry them all away. II. THE diftreffes of life are alleviated to good men, by reflections on their past conduct; while, by fuch reflections, they are highly aggravated to the bad. During the gay and active periods of life, finners elude, in fome measure, the force of conscience. Carried round in the whirl of affairs and pleasures; intent on contrivance, or eager in purfuit; amufed by hope, or elated by enjoyment; they are sheltered II. by that crowd of trifles which furrounds SER M. them from ferious thought. But con science is too great a power to remain always fuppreffed. There is in every man's life, a period when he shall be made to ftand forth as a real object to his own view: And when that period comes, Wo to him who is galled by the fight! In the dark and folitary hour of diftrefs, with a mind hurt and fore from fome recent wound of fortune, how fhall he bear to have his character for the first time difclofed to him, in that humiliating Light under which guilt will neceffarily prefent it? Then the recollection of the past becomes dreadful. It exhibits to him a life thrown away on vanities and follies, or confumed in flagitiousness and fin; no station properly fupported; no material duties fulfilled. Crimes which once had been cafily palliated, rife before him in their native deformity. The fenfe of guilt mixes itself with all that has befallen him. He beholds, or thinks that he beholds, the hand of the God whom he hath offended, D 2 II. SERM. fended, openly stretched out against him. -At a season when a man stands most in need of fupport, how intolerable is the weight of this additional load, aggravating the depreffion of disease, disappointment, or old age! How miferable his state, who is condemned to endure at once the pangs of guilt, and the vexations of calamity! The Spirit of a man may fuftain his infirmities; but a wounded fpirit, who can bear? Whereas, he who is bleffed with a clear confcience, enjoys, in the worft conjunctures of human life, a peace, a dignity, an elevation of mind, peculiar to virtue. The testimony of a good confcience is indeed to be always diftinguished from that presumptuous boast of innocence, which every good Chriftian totally dif claims. The better he is, he will be the more humble, and fenfible of his failings. But though he acknowledge that he can claim nothing from God upon the footing of defert, yet he can truft in his merciful acceptance through Jefus Chrift according But II. cording to the terms of the gofpel.. He SERM. |