XIII. SERMON well as towards God. It is a common and just observation, that they who have lived always in affluence and ease, strangers to the miseries of life, are liable to contract hardness of heart with respect to all the concerns of others. Wrapped up in themselves, and their own pleasures, they behold with indifference the most affecting scenes of distress. Habituated to indulge all their desires without control, they become impatient of the least provocation or offence ; and are ready to trample on their inferiors, as if they were creatures of a different species from themselves. Is this an amiable temper, or such as becomes a man? When appearing in others, do we not view it with much displeasure? When imputed to ourselves, can we avoid accounting it a severe reproach? By the experience of distress, this arrogant insensibility of temper is most effectually corrected; as the remembrance of our own sufferings naturally prompts us to feel for others when they suffer. But if Providence has been so kind as not to subject us to much of this discipline in our own lot, let us draw improvement from the harder XIII. harder lot of others. Let us sometimes step SERMON aside from the smooth and flowery paths in which we are permitted to walk, in order to view the toilsome march of our fellows, through the thorny desert. By voluntarily going into the house of mourning; by yielding to the sentiments which it excites, and mingling our tears with those of the afflicted, we shall acquire that humane sensibility which is one of the highest ornaments of the nature of man. Perceiving how much the common distresses of life place us all on a level, and render the high and the low, the rich and the poor, companions in misfortune and mortality, we shall learn to set no man at nought, and, least of any, our afflicted brother. Prejudices will be extinguished, and benevolence opened and enlarged, when looking around on the multitude of men, we consider them as a band of fellow-travellers in the valley of woe, where it ought to be the office of every one to alleviate, as much as possible, the common burden. While the vain and the licentious are revelling in the midst of extravagance and riot, how little do they think of those scenes of sore distress A a 3 XIII. SERMON distress which are going on at that moment throughout the world; multitudes struggling for a poor subsistence to support the wife and the children whom they love, and who look up to them with eager eyes for that bread which they can hardly ́procure; multitudes groaning under sickness in desolate cottages, untended and unmourned ; many, apparently in a better situation of life, pining away in secret with concealed griefs; families weeping over the beloved friends whom they have lost, or, in all the bitterness of anguish, bidding those who are just expiring the last adieu. May we not appeal to the heart of every good man, nay almost to the heart of every man who has not divested himself of his natural feelings, whether the admission of such views of human life might not, sometimes at least, furnish a more worthy employment to the mind, than that mirth of fools which Solomon compares to the cracking of thorns under a pot*; the transient burst of unmeaning joy; the empty explosion of giddiness and levity? Those sallies of * Eccles, vii. 6. jollity jollity in the house of feasting are often forced from a troubled mind; like flashes from the black cloud, which, after a momentary effulgence, are succeeded by thicker darkness. Whereas compassionate affections even at the time when they draw tears from our eyes for human misery convey satisfaction to the heart. The gracious appointment of heaven has ordained that sympathetic pains should always be accompanied with a certain degree of plea sure; on purpose that we might be more interested in the case of the distressed, and that, by this mysterious bond, man might be linked closer to man. The inward satisfaction which belongs to the compassionate affections is, at the same time, heightened by the approbation which they receive from our reason; and by the consciousness which they afford us of feeling what men and Christians ought to feel. In the fourth place, The disposition recommended in the text, not only improves us in piety and humanity, but likewise assists us in self-government, and the due moderation of our desires. The house of SERMON XIII. XIII. SERMON mourning is the school of temperance and sobriety. Every wise man will find it for his interest to enter into it sometimes of his own accord, lest otherwise he be compelled to take up his dwelling there. Seasonable interruptions of our pleasures are necessary to their prolongation, For, continued scenes of luxury and indulgence hasten to a me, lancholy issue. The house of feasting too often becomes an avenue to the house of mourning, Short, to the licentious, is the interval between them; and speedy the transition from the one to the other. But supposing that, by prudent management, the men of pleasure could avoid the pernicious effects which intemperance and dissoluteness are likely to produce on their health or their fortune, can they also prevent those disorders which such habits will introduce into their minds? Can they escape that wrath of the Almighty, which will infallibly pursue them for their sins both here and hereafter? For whence, so much as from the unchecked pursuit of pleasure, do all those crimes arise which stain the characters of men with the deepest guilt, and expose them to the severest judg ments |