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tion drives him presently back. His breaft heaves with a tumult of diftrefs; and his dying hour clofes upon him like the gloom of a stormy night. Whereas in the next world only the religious His faith and hope carry him into regions of happiness. His eye looks beyond the trifling accidents of life into the glories of eternity. His great intereft, he knows, lies not here, but there. He fees, like the dying martyr, heaven opened, and Jefus fitting at the right hand of God. Lord Jefus, receive mỹ spirit, is a prayer, which in fpite of bodily pain-in spite of all the weakneffes of decaying nature, awakens transport through all his feelings.

Having thus, my brethren, endeavoured to prove the truth of the text, that godliness hath the promise of the life that now is, I fhall just obferve farther that as God's great provifion of happiness for his rational creatures, is a future world, we fhould be very careful not to mistake the means for the end. If we conceive this world to be a ftate of happinefs, we invert that divine order, which intends it only as the means of happinefs. We should be very cautious therefore how

we

we fuffer the ideas of happiness, and the world, to enter our minds together. In our most joyous hours we should be most on our guard; and never allow ourselves in the happiest moments of this world to lofe fight of the next.-And -And yet it fhould be matter of great thankfulness, that God hath made our state of trial fo happy as it is; and that he hath put it fo much in our own power, to increase its comforts, and leffen its diftreffes.

Let us then confider this world in the gracious light in which God intends. Let us not in our thankfulness overrate the bleffings it holds out ; nor be too much depreffed by its misfortunes: but let us confider them both, as the scale, by which we afcend to future happiness.

In few words, we may make this world a very comfortable place, if we please; and conclude it with everlasting happiness.- -On the other hand, if we abuse God's bleffings, we may turn it into a ftate of great unhappiness; and in the end, into the means of future mifery. We may take our option of these two ways of poffeffing the world; and may God almighty affift us in the direction of our choice!

SERMON

SERMON XIII.

PSALM 119, Ixxi.

IT IS GOOD FOR ME, THAT I HAVE BEEN IN

TROUBLE.

THIS

HIS was David's opinion of trouble; with which he had been exercised in various

fhapes and if he thought it good for himfelf, no doubt, he thought it good for every body elfe. Let us then confider it as a truth confirmed by the experience of this wife and pious prince, that it is good for us all to be in trouble; and as fuch let me endeavour to explain it.

The truth of the obfervation is founded on the

nature of our fituation in this world; which is intended, we know, as a state of trial, to prepare us

for

for a better state.—Now a state of trial must be conducted by a due mixture of happiness and trouble. Both thefe are the fources of many virtues, and many vices, which could not be derived from either alone. However as David in the text, fpeaks only of the troubled part of a ftate of trial, we will at present leave out the comfortable part; and fee only what good arifes from our being in trouble. Indeed the chief good arifes, as far as we ourfelves are concerned, from the troubled part. Let us then examine what that good is, which arifes from it.

In the first place it tends to open, and explain to us, (what few confider fufficiently) the nature of our fituation in this world. If we are ignorant of that, it is impoffible we can act right. Life is converted into a dream; and fancy presides, instead of reafon. If a man living in a cottage, should behave as if he lived in a palace-if he should order his fervants about him---command his table to be filled with the moft coftly food---and call for the richest apparel; what would his neighbours, who faw things in their true light, fay of him? The leaft they could say of him, would be, that he ran into all thofe extravagancies from being igno

rant

rant of his proper ftation; and from his fuppofing he had a command of happinefs, which he really had not. Now if you put the world for the cottage, and the generality of mankind for the peafant, who inhabits it, and fee them every where craving after degrees of happiness, which belong not to their station, you fee every abfurdity of the cafe I have just represented---you see the abundance, and fuperfluities of the palace expected in the cottage.

But an acquaintance with the nature of our fituation here, corrects all this. We find the world is by no means meant for a state of happiness---but that it has its forrows, as well as joys. In our happieft moments therefore, we should never lofe fight of thofe evils, which we know will befal us, in fome part of our paffage through life. This preferves us from tumultuous joy; and gives us temperance in our pleafures:, it draws us frequently back to the fituation in which we stand: it fhews us where we are and what we are; and in fhort, if we have the piety of chriftians about us, it inculcates ftrongly the ideas of a state of trial.

Being poffeffed practically of this great truththat the world is not to be confidered as a ftate of

happiness, but as a ftate of trial, let us next fee

that

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