Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

natural tenderness, he will intimate his forrow, if it should be as you conceive, and will add very fagely, It is a debt we muft all pay it is pity a man of spirit fhould ever die; but fince it cannot be avoided, you must even fubmit to your fate as gracefully as poffible: with more to the fame purpose-And is this all? Can you give no better confolation to a perfon in my condition? The neceffity you urge is one of the very evils I lament: but the greatest is the dread of an hereafter. Tell me fomething that may calm the apprehenfions of guilt which now befet me; fomething that may mitigate, if it cannot remove, the agonies of diffolution; fomething that may inftill, if it be not yet too late, the hopes of pardon into my anxious foul. He will then, it may be prefumed, reply, that God is much too merciful to punish his creatures for a few trifling and tranfient pleafures; that he gave them paffions to be gratified; that in gratifying yours you meant no harm; that you was VOL. II.

I

very good-natured, did many generous things, injured nobody but yourself, and therefore have nothing to fear.-Is this a ftrain fit to fatisfy or compofe a mind alarmed at the approach of death, agitated by the forebodings of confcience, and trembling over the ftupendous abyfs.of eternity? Go, thou miferable comforter, and mock not that poor afflicted youth with confiderations calculated only to wound him deeper: for I think they can scarcely deceive, I am fure they cannot help him. Go, and learn to provide more effectually against the terrors of thy own departure, whenever it shall happen. Alas! my hearers, would you dignify with the name of Friendship, that species of regard, which muft in every valuable sense prove fo despicably useless, at his greatest extremity, to the man for whom it is profeffed? Are none of you, while I speak, ashamed of having fuffered any to impose fo vilely on your understandings, as to make you believe they merited your highest

esteem and confidence-they who, if they confidered you at all, and not themfelves merely, confidered you but as the fport of appetite and accident, that muft, after a few years of indulgence and vanity, be parted from them by an irresistible ftroke, which they have no folicitude to foften when it fhall fall, and which will leave them without expectation or defire of ever reuniting? And is it nothing to them, that the men whom they chufe for their affociates, whom they extol as the moft agreeable characters living, with whom they pass what they reckon the "happiest part of their time, and without whom they are ready to declare that life would be infufferably dull-is it nothing to Them, that when a fhort and uncertain space is measured, those very men shall, with all their imperfections on their heads, plunge into night eternal, to emerge no more? There seem to me in fuch minds a poorness of thought, and a want of feeling, equally piteous and contemptible.

The imagination, the judgement, and the heart, revolt together from a system that fruftrates and mortifies every nobler ambition, and every better hope, they can entertain. Many of you, I am perfuaded, fee it in this light, and have too much tafte, fhall I say? as well as too much worth, to be fatisfied with that inferior and defective commerce which breaks up at the grave-What! fhall your highest efteem, your tenderest endearments, your conftant services, your fervent wishes to give and to receive delight, be all thrown away on objects that may in a few days be to you as if they had never been? "Such a tranfitory tie," fays a forcible writer, "gives gives a fecond dart to death, "and a double diffolution to departing "man; that of foul and body scarce

more fevere. Would to Heaven," cries he, that all Friendships were evidently "Friendships of immortal men; such, I "mean, as give proof of their having each

other's everlasting interest at heart!"

What sweetness and fublimity would not thofe connexions, in this cafe, derive from the confcioufnefs of their elevated tendency and unceafing duration? The amiable man, who now poffeffes and returns fo large a fhare of my affection, will continue to poffefs and return it ten thousand ages hence, with new improvements proportioned to new excellence, and in happier circumftances that shall admit of no termination. Our prefent. confonance of thought and difpofition is only a prelude to the joint part which we fhall bear in the never-ending anthems of Heaven. Such a confideration, duly impreffed, would ferve above all others to fupport under one of the heaviest blows that can reach a fufceptible breast.

You guess to what I refer: perhaps you have felt it perhaps, Sir, you have loft a virtuous Friend. I fympathize with you fincerely I know too well what you must fuffer from the recollection. But you

« PoprzedniaDalej »