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SERMON II.

ECCLESIASTES VII. 2, 3.

It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to the boufe of feasting.

TH

HAT I deny but let us hear the wife man's reafoning upon it for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to his heart: forrow is better than laughter for a crack'dbrain'd order of Carthufian monks, I grant, but not for men of the world: For what purpose do you imagine, has God made us? for the focial fweets of the well watered vallies where he has planted us, or for the dry and difmal deferts of a Sierra Morena? are the fad accidents of life, and the uncheery hours 3 which

which perpetually overtake us, are they not enough, but we must fally forth in queft of them, belie our own hearts, and fay, as your text would have us, that they are better than those of joy? did the Best of Beings fend us into the world for this end to go weeping through it,-to vex and frorten a life fhort and vexatious enough already? do you think my good preacher, that he who is infinitely happy, can envy us our enjoyments? or that a being fo infinitely kind would grudge a mournful traveller, the short rest and refreshments neceffary to fupport his fpirits through the stages of a weary pilgrimage? or that he would call him to a fevere reckoning, because in his way he had haftily snatch'd at fome little fugacious pleasures, merely to fweeten this uneafy journey of life, and reconcile him to the ruggedness of

the

the road, and the many hard juftlings he is fure to meet with? Confider, I befeech you, what provifion and accommodation, the Author of our being has prepared for us, that we might not go on our way forrowing how many caravanfera's of rest - what powers and faculties he has given us for taking it

what apt objects he has placed

in our way to entertain us; fome of which he has made so fair, fo exquifitely for this end, that they have power over us for a time to charm away the sense of pain, to cheer up the dejected heart under poverty and fickness, and make it go and remember its miferies no more..

I will not contend at present against this rhetorick; I would choose rather for a moment to go on with the allegory, and fay we are travellers, and, in the most affecting

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affecting fenfe of that idea, that like travellers, though upon bufinefs of the laft and nearest concern to us, may furely be allowed to amuse ourselves with the natural or artificial beauties of the country we are paffing through, without reproach of forgetting the main errand we are fent upon; and if we can so order it, as not to be led out of the way, by the variety of profpects, edifices, and ruins which follicit us, it would be a nonfenfical piece of faint errantry to fhut our eyes.

But let us not lofe fight of the argument in pursuit of the fimile.:

--

Let us remember various as our excurfions are, that we have still fet our faces towards Jerufalem-that we have a place of reft and happiness, towards which

we

we haften, and that the way to get there is not so much to please our hearts, as to improve them in virtue; that mirth and feafting are usually no friends to atchievements of this kind-but that a feafon of affliction is in fome fort a season of piety not only because our fufferings are apt to put us in mind of our fins, but that by the check and interruption which they give to our purfuits, they allow us what the hurry and buftle of the world too often deny us,→→ and that is a little time for reflection, which is all that most of us want to make us wiser and better men; that at certain times it is fo neceffary a man's. mind should be turned towards itself, that rather than want occafions, he had better purchase them at the expence of his prefent happiness. He had better, as the text expreffes it, go to the house of mourning, where he will meet with fome

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