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prove this, was full to the purpofe; was peculiarly calculated to strike the Corinthians, being a familiar, and, as it were, domeftic fact, within the compass of their own obfervation. Its force is very little, if at all, abated, when applied to ourselves; but if we have a mind for fimilar inftances nearer home, they are to be found in abundance. We may fee numbers of our fellow-creatures, on every fide of us, undergoing the greatest labours and inconveniences in pursuit of the moft trivial and worthlefs objects. We fee the vicious man frequently taking more pains, and struggling through greater diftreffes, in order to gratify his paffions, than it would coft him to fubdue them. We fee the avaricious man tormenting himself with continual care and anxiety, fubmitting to the meanest and most fordid artifices to acquire wealth and to retain it; practifing feverer mortifications than the utmost rigour. of monaftic difcipline would exact, denying himself not only the most innocent gratifications, but the common neceffaries of life; and sometimes even perishing for want in the midst of abundance. And what is the great object of all this voluntary felf-denial? It is to

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amass a hoard of wealth which he has not the spirit to use in this world, nor the power of carrying with him into the next.

We fee others who cannot justly be charged with avarice; yet ftimulated by the ambition of raising themselves and their families to opulence and diftinction, and with that view facrificing their youth, their eafe, their health, their comfort, the best and happiest part of their days to the labour of fome most painful employment, which at laft, perhaps, rewards them with a fortune, when disease, or old age, or death, render them incapable of enjoy ing it.

We fee the man of adventure and of enterprize penetrating the most remote and inhofpitable regions of the earth, expofing himself to unwholesome climates and untried oceans, encountering the dangers of rocks and tempests, of famine and disease, of treachery and violence from unrelenting favages; and all this in the purfuit of knowledge or of emolument, which seldom answer his expectations, or of a vifionary fame, which perhaps commences not, till he is gone "to that land where all things are forgotten."

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These are inftances of felf-denial which we every day before our eyes; and shall we, then, be deterred from the purfuit of our eternal interests, and of immortal glory, by the restraints and the difficulties attending our Chrif tian warfare, when we fee men voluntarily and chearfully encountering far greater hardships, and far feverer trials for the fake of acquiring what appears to them most valuable in this life, but which they find in the end to be delusive and unfatisfactory.

It is, in fhort, a vain and a foolish attempt to think of feparating, in any inftance, great labour and difficulty from great attainments. And the more valuable the acquifition, the more fevere are the hardships that obftruct the way to it. The lowest mechanic arts can never be carried to any degree of perfection without much toil; works of imagination, intellectual accomplishments, require ftill more; virtue and religion, as being the greatest ornaments of our nature, moft of all. But then the reward is in proportion to the labour; and to renounce the one through a cowardly fear of the other, is one of the meanest thoughts that can enter the human mind.

VOL. II.

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It is hard fometimes, it is confeffedly hard, to deny a craving appetite, and to fubdue a vicious habit; but is it not ftill harder to lofe everlasting happiness for a momentary indulgence; and, like the wretched Efau, to fell Heaven in reverfion for a mefs of pottage?

Let us eat and drink, fays the voluptuary; let us indulge without delay, and without reserve, every appetite of our nature, for "to"morrow we die," to-morrow we may cease to exift, and all poffibility of any further enjoyment will be for ever gone. Let us, then, take our full measure of it while we can. "Let us enjoy the good things that are pre"fent. Let us fill ourselves with coftly wines "and ointments; and let no flower of the

fpring pafs by us. Let us crown ourselves "with rofe-buds before they be withered. Let "none of us go without his part of our volup

tuousness. Let us leave tokens of our joy"fulness in every place; for this is our por"tion, and our lot is this *." This language cannot be wondered at, from the man who rejects all idea of a future existence. But it would be folly and madness in him, who be

Wisdom ii. 6. 10.

lieves the Chriftian doctrine of a refurrection, and a retribution in another world. To him the conclufion, from the very fame premises, must be a directly oppofite one. It must be plainly this: Let us keep our hearts with all diligence, and reftrain our paffions within the bounds of duty, for to-morrow we may die; tomorrow we may be called to give an account of our moral conduct to the great Sovereign of the Universe, who has peremptorily commanded us to be temperate in all things. Let this confideration, then, be deeply fixed in our hearts, and be conftantly present to Our thoughts, and it will, in the hour of trial, add ftrength to our refolutions, and fortitude to our fouls. It is not, it must be confeffed, a very easy task to keep that strict and steady command over ourselves which Christianity requires. But we must not be much furprized, if the rewards of Heaven are not to be had for nothing. Immortal glory, and everlasting felicity, are not fuch very trivial things, as to be obtained without any exertions on our part: Some price muft furely be paid for fuch an acquifition, fomething must be given up in prefent for an inheritance of such infinite value in

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