For in all other pursuits, such as those of sensual pleasure, the pleasures of imagination and ambition, we are liable to frequent disappointments; the gratifications in which they terminate are inconsistent with themselves, and with each other; and they almost entirely deaden and disqualify the mind for the nobler pleasures of our nature. It is the love

of God, the love of mankind, and a sense of duty, which engage the minds of men in the noblest of all pursuits. By these we are carried on with increasing alacrity and satisfaction. Even the pains and distresses in which we involve ourselves by these courses are preferable to the pleasures attending the gratification of our lower appetites.

Besides, these noble pursuits, generally at least, allow us even more of the lower gratifications of our nature than can be obtained by a direct pursuit of them; for a little experience will inform us, that we receive the most pleasure from these lower appetites of our nature, as well as from the highest sources of pleasure we are capable of, when we have their gratification least of all in view. There can be no doubt, for instance, but that the laborer who eats and drinks merely to satisfy the calls of hunger and thirst, has vastly more pleasure in eating and drinking, than the epicure who studies the pleasing of his palate.

They are the pleasures of benevolence and piety which most effectually carry us out of ourselves; whereas every other inferior pursuit suggests to us, in a thousand respects, the idea of self, the unseasonable intervention of which may be called the worm which lies at the root of all human bliss. And never can we be completely happy till we "love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and our neighbour as ourselves."

This is the Christian self-annihilation, and a state of the most complete happiness to which our natures can attain: when, without having the least idea of being in the pursuit of our own happiness, our faculties are wholly absorbed in those noble and exalted pursuits in which we are sure not

to be finally disappointed, and in the course of which we enjoy all the consistent pleasures of our whole nature. When rejoicing with all that rejoice, weeping with all that weep, and intimately associating the idea of God, the Maker of all things, our father and our friend, with all the works of his hands, and all the dispensations of his providence, we constantly triumph in the comfortable sense of the Divine presence and approbation, and in the transporting prospect of advancing every day nearer to the accomplishment of his glorious purposes for the happiness of his creatures.

If this be the proper and supreme happiness of man, it may be asked of what use is the principle of self-interest? I answer, that though an attention to it be inconsistent with pure, unmixed happiness, yet a moderate attention to it is of excellent use in our progress towards it. It serves as a scaffold to a noble and glorious edifice, though it be unworthy of standing as any part of it. It is of more particular use to check and restrain the indulgence of our lower appetites and passions, before other objects and motives have acquired a sufficient power over us. But though we ought, therefore, to exhort those persons who are immersed in sensuality and gross vices, to abandon those indulgencies out of a regard to their true interest, it is advisable to withdraw this motive by degrees. However, as we shall never arrive at absolute perfection, we necessarily must, and indeed ought to be influenced by it, more or less, through the whole course of our existence, only less and less perpetually.

The principle of self-interest may be regarded as a medium between the lower and the higher principles of our nature, and, therefore, of principal use in our transition, as we may call it, from an imperfect to a more perfect state.

Perhaps the following view of this subject may be the easiest to us: A regard to our greatest happiness must necessarily govern our conduct with respect to all those virtues which are termed private virtues, as temperance, chastity, and every branch of self-government; but it always does

When, therefore,

harm as a motive to the social virtues. self-government, which is our first step towards happiness, is established, we ought to endeavour to excite men to action by higher and nobler motives; for, with regard to all those virtues, the ultimate object of which is not private happiness, an attention to self-interest is of manifest prejudice to us, and this through the whole course of our lives, imperfect as we are, and as much occasion as we have for every effectual motive to virtue.

We are now come, in the last place, to see what considerations, drawn from the Holy Scriptures, will farther confirm and illustrate this maxim of human conduct, which was first suggested by them.

That the Scriptures join the voice of all nature around us, informing man that he is not made for himself; that they inculcate the same lesson which we learn both from a view of the external circumstances of mankind, and also from a nearer inspection of the principles of human nature; will be evident, whether we consider the object of the religion they exhibit, (that is, the temper to which we are intended to be formed by it,) or the motives by which it is enforced and recommended to us in them.

That the end and design of our holy religion, Christians, was to form us to the most disinterested benevolence, cannot be doubted by any person who consults the Holy Scriptures, and especially the books of the New Testament.

There we plainly see the principle of benevolence represented, when it is in its due strength and degree, as equal in point of intenseness to that of self-love. "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." The plain consequence of this is, that if all our brethren of mankind with whom we are connected, have an equal claim upon us, (since our connexions are daily growing more extensive, and we ourselves are, consequently, growing daily of less relative importance in our own eyes,) the principle of benevolence must, in the end, absolutely swallow up that of self-love.

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The most exalted devotion, as even superior both to selflove and benevolence, is always every where recommended to us and the sentiments of devotion have been shown greatly to aid, and, in fact, to be the same with those of benevolence; and they must be so, unless it can be shown that we have some senses, powers, or faculties, which respect the Deity only.

In order to determine men to engage in a course of disinterested and generous actions, every motive which is calculated to work upon human nature is employed. And as mankind in general are deeply immersed in vice and folly, their hopes, but more especially their fears, are acted upon in the strongest manner by the prospect of rewards and punishments. Even temporal rewards and punishments were proposed to mankind in the earlier and ruder ages of the world. But as our notions of happiness grow more enlarged, infinitely greater, but indefinite objects of hope and fear are set before us. Something unknown, but something unspeakably dreadful in a future world is perpetually held up to us, as a guard against the allurements to vice and excess which the world abounds with; and still farther to counteract their baleful influences, the heavenly world (the habitation of good men after death) is represented to us as a place in which we shall be completely happy, enjoying something which is described as more than eye hath seen, ear heard, or than the heart of man can conceive.

These motives are certainly addressed to the principle of self-interest, urging us out of a regard to ourselves and our general happiness, "to cease to do evil, and learn to do well." And, indeed, no motives of a more generous nature, and drawn from more distant considerations, can be supposed sufficient to influence the bulk of mankind, and "bring them from the power of sin and Satan unto God.”

But when, by the influence of these motives, it may be supposed that mankind are in some measure recovered from the grosser pollutions of the world, and the principle of selfinterest has been played, as it were, against itself, and been

a means of engaging us in a course and habit of actions which are necessarily connected with, and productive of, more generous and noble principles, then these nobler principles are those which the sacred writers chiefly inculcate.

Nothing is more frequent with the sacred writers than to exhort men to the practice of their duty as the command of God, from a principle of love to God, of love to Christ, and of love to mankind, more especially of our fellow-Christians, and from a regard to the interest of our holy religion: motives which do not at all turn the attention of our minds upon themselves. This is not borrowing the aid of self-love to strengthen the principles of benevolence and piety, but it is properly deriving additional strength to these noble dispositions, as it were, from within themselves, independent of foreign considerations.

We may safely say, that no degree or kind of self-love is made use of in the Scriptures but what is necessary to raise us above that principle. And some of the more refined kinds of self-love, how familiar soever they may be in some systems of morals, never come in sight there. We are never exhorted in the Scriptures to do benevolent actions for the sake of the reflex pleasures of benevolence, or pious actions with a view to the pleasures of devotion. This refined kind of self-love is nowhere to be found in the Scriptures.

Even the pleasures of a good conscience, — though they be of a more general nature, and there be less refinement in them than in some other pleasures which are connected with the idea of self, and though they be represented in the Scriptures as the consequence of good actions, and a source of joy, as a testimony of a person's being in the favor of God, and in the way to happiness, are perhaps never directly proposed to us as the reward of virtue. This motive to virtue makes a greater figure in the system of the later Stoics (those heathen philosophers who, in consequence of entertaining the most extravagant idea of their own merit, really idolized their own natures to a degree absolutely