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1 SERMON

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MARK Viii. 36.

XIV.

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lofe his own foul?

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HERE is not a person in this affembly, but who affents immediately to the truth of the maxim implied in the text. You all agree, that religion is the one thing needful, and that above all things you ought to feek the kingdom of God, and the righteousness thereof. But there is a wide difference between the affent of the mind to the truth of this principle, and that deep conviction of its importance, which, in Scripture, obtains the name of faith; fufficient to influence the heart, and to determine the life. A great part of mankind feem to have no steady belief

that they are endowed with fouls which are immortal; an eternity to come, is with them merely a matter of fpeculation, and their faith in a future world has little more influence upon their lives, than their idea of a distant country, which they are never to fee. Hence fpiritual and eternal things are heard with little emotion or concern, while they are delivered in the house of God. Some can give themselves up to listlessnefs; and others foon lofe all remembrance of what they have heard, in the next amusement, or in the news of the day. Even he who spoke as never man fpake, and while he difcourfed on points of such importance as the lofs of the foul, had occafion often to take up the complaint, that in vain he ftretched out his hands all day long to a disobedient people.

To call your contemplation, then, to these subjects, for they need no more but to be confidered aright, in order to be felt, I fhall endeavour to fhew you the value of the foul, from its native dignity, from its capacity of improvement, from its immor

tality,

tality, and from its unalterable state at death.

F

Let us confider then, in the first place, the native importance and dignity of the human foul. It is the mind chiefly that is the man. Our fouls properly are ourselves. The bodily organs are the minifters of the mind; by these it fees and hears, and holds a correfpondence with external things. It is by our fouls that we hold our station in the scale of being; that we rank above the animal world, and claim alliance with fuperior and immortal natures. As the foul is fuperior to the body, fo intellectual pleasures exceed the fenfual; as heaven is higher than the earth, fo the joys of a heavenly origin are fuperior to earthly enjoyments. I mean not in the common way, to depreciate temporal poffeffions, as being infignificant in themselves, and unworthy the cares or labours of a wife man. Such difcourfe is mere declamation; it is against nature, contrary to truth, and makes no impreffion at all. Let all the value be set upon wealth and temporal poffeffions which

they deserve, as affording a defence from many evils to which poverty is liable; as miniftering to the convenience, the confolation, and the enjoyment of life; as fupporting a station with decency and dignity. in the world, and as accompanied with an importance, by which a good man may find much pleasure arifing to himself, and have the power of doing much good to his fellow-creatures; let all the value which reafon allows, be fet upon temporal acquifitions and enjoyments, ftill they are inferior to those of an intellectual and moral kind; ftill the maxim remains true, that he would be an infinite lofer who should gain the whole world, and lofe his own foul. "Thou haft put more gladness into my heart," faith the Pfalmift, " than world

ly men know, when their corn and their "wine and their oil abound." And do not your own feeling and experience bear witness to this truth? Who will not acknowledge that there is more excellence in wisdom, than in mere animal ftrength? Who will not own that there is more happiness in the improving conversation of the wife, than in the tumultuous uproar of the debauched

debauched and licentious? Are the rays of light as pleasant to the eye, as the radiations of truth to the mind? Have fenfual gratifications a charm for the foul, equal to intellectual and moral joys? While the former foon pall upon the ap petite, are not the latter a perpetual feast? While the remembrance of the onerisi at! tended with no pleasure, is not the remem brance of the other a repetition of the enjoyment?.

But great as the dignity of the human foul is, it may be ftill greater; for, in the fecond place, it poffeffes a capacity of improvement. This conftitutes one effential difference between the intellectual and the material world. All material things foon reach the end of their progress, and arrive, at a point beyond which they cannot go. Inftinct grows apace, and the animal is foon complete in all its faculties and powers. Man ripens more flowly, because he ripens for immortality. Those enjoyments and purfuits of man alfo, which do not belong to him as an immortal being, come foon to their period. Amufement,