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ced this wearinefs of life, and been SERM. tempted to wish that it would come to a close. Let us now examine in what circumstances this feeling may be deemed excufeable; in what it is to be held finful; and under what restrictions we may, on any occafion, be permitted to fay, My foul is weary of my life.

I SHALL confider the words of the text in three lights; as expreffing, First, The fentiment of a discontented man; Secondly, The fentiment of an afflicted man; Thirdly, The fentiment of a devout man.

I. LET us confider the text as expreffing the fentiment of a discontented man; with whom it is the effufion of fpleen, vexation and diffatisfaction with life, arifing from caufes neither laudable nor juftifiable. There are chiefly three claffes of men who are liable to this disease of the mind: the idle; the luxurious; the criminal.

First, THIS wearinefs of life is often found among the idle: perfons commonly in eafy circumstances of fortune, who are not engaged in any of the laborious occupations of the world, and who are, at the fame time, without energy of mind to call them forth into any other line of active exertion. In this languid, or rather torpid ftate, they have fo many vacant hours, and are fo much at a lofs how to fill up their time, that their fpirits utterly fink; they become burdenfome to themselves, and to every one around them; and drag with pain the load of existence. What a convincing proof is hereby afforded, that man was defigned by his Creator to be an active being, whofe happiness is to be found not merely in reft, but in occupation and purfuit? The idle are doomed to fuffer the natural punishment of their inactivity and folly; and for their complaints of the tiresomeness of life there is no remedy but to awake from the dream of floth, and to fill up with pro

per

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per employment the miferable vacancies SE RM. of their days. Let them ftudy to become useful to the world, and they fhall foon become lefs burthenfome to themselves. They fhall begin to enjoy existence; they fhall reap the rewards which providence has annexed to virtuous activity; and have no more cause to fay, My foul is weary of my life..

Next, THE luxurious and the diffipated form another clafs of men, among whom fuch complaints are ftill more frequent. With them they are not the fruit of idlenefs. Thefe are men who have been bufied enough; they have run the whole race of pleasure; but they have run it with fuch inconfiderate fpeed, that it terminates in weariness and vexation of fpirit. By the perpetual courfe of diffipation in which they are engaged; by the exceffes which they indulge; by the riotous revel, and the midnight or rather morning hours to which they prolong their feftivity; they have debilitated

SERM, their bodies, and worn out their spirits.

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Satiated with the repetition of their accustomed pleasures, and yet unable to find any new ones in their place; wan-dering round and round their former haunts of joy, and ever returning difappointed; weary of themselves, and of all things about them, their spirits are oppreffed with a deadly gloom, and the complaint bursts forth of odious life and a miferable world. Never are these complaints more frequent than at the clofe of rounds of amufement, and after a long repetition of feftal pleasures; when the spirits which had been forced up, as by fome intoxicating drug, to an unnatural height, subside into profound dejection. What increases the evil is, that it is not among the infirm and the aged, but among the young, the gay, and the profperous, who ought to be reputed the happiest men, that this diftaste of life moft frequently prevails.

WHEN perfons of this description, in their peevish and splenetic hours, ex

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claim, My foul is weary of my life, let s ERM. them know, let them be affured, that this is no other than the judgment of God overtaking them for their vices and follies. Their complaints of mifery are entitled to no compaffion; nay, they are finful, because they arife from a finful caufe; from a mind broken and debased by luxury and corruption. They are the authors of their own mifery, by having thrown away on the follies of the world thofe powers which God had bestowed on them for nobler ends.-Let them return to the duties of men and chriftians. Let them retreat from frivolity, and abstain from excefs. Let them ftudy temperance, moderation, and felf-command. By entering on a virtuous and manly course of action, and applying to the honourable discharge of the functions of their station, they will acquire different views. They will obtain more real enjoyment of life, and become more willing to prolong it.But, after the warnings which God has given them of