To inflame this account the more 'twill be no miracle, if upon cafting up, he has gone further lengths than he first intended, run into expences which have entangled his fortune, and brought himfelf into fuch difficulties as to make way for the last experiment he can try to turn mifer with no happiness in view but what is to rife out of the little defigns of a fordid mind, fet upon. faving and fcraping up all he has injudiciously fpent. In this laft ftage behold him a poor trembling wretch, fhut up from all mankind finking into utter contempt, spending careful days and fleepless nights in pursuit of what a narrow and contracted heart can never enjoy :-And here let us leave him to the conviction he will one day find-That there is no end of his labour-That his eyes will never be fatisfied with riches, or will fay-For whom do I labour and bereave myfelf of reft?This is also a fore travel.

I believe this is no uncommon picture of the disappointments of human lifeand the manner our pleasures and enjoyVOL. I. B

ments

ments flip from under us in every stage of our life. And though I would not, be thought by it, as if I was denying the reality of pleasures, difputing the being of them, any more, than one would, the reality of pain Yet I must

observe on this head, that there is a plain distinction to be made betwixt pleasure and happiness. For tho' there can be no happiness without pleasure. yet the converse of the propofition will not hold true, We are so made, that from the common gratifications of our appetites, and the impreffions of a thousand objects, we fnatch the one, like a tranfient gleam, without being fuffered to tafte the other, and enjoy that perpetual fun-fhine and fair weather which conftantly attend it. This, I contend, is only to be found in religion in the consciousness of virtue

and the fure and certain hopes of a better life, which brightens all our profpects, and leaves no room to dread difappointments- because the expectation of it is built upon a rock, whose foundations are as deep as thofe of heaven and hell.

And

And tho' in our pilgrimage through this world fome of us may be fo for

tunate as to meet with fome clear fountains by the way, that may cool for a few moments, the heat of this great thirst of happiness yet our Saviour, who knew the world, tho' he enjoyed but little of it, tells us, that whosoever drinketh of this water will thirst again:

and we all find by experience it is fo, and by reason that it always must be so.

I conclude with a short observation upon Solomon's evidence in this cafe.

Never did the bufy brain of a lean and hectick chymift search for the philofopher's stone with more pains ́ and ardour than this great man did after happiness. He was one of the wifeft enquirers into nature - had tried all her powers and capacities, and after a thoufand vain fpeculations and vile experiments, he affirmed at length, it lay hid in no one thing he had tried like the chymift's projections, all had ended in B 2 fmoak,

fmoak, or what was worse, in vanity and vexation of fpirit: - the conclufion of the whole matter was this that he ad

vifes every man who would be happy, to fear GoD and keep his commandments.

SERMON

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SERMON II.

The House of Feafting and the House of Mourning Described.

ECCLESIASTES VII. 2, 3.

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

TH

HATI 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 beart: forrow is better than laughter - for a crack'd-brain'd order of Carthufian monks, I grant, but not for men of the world: For what purpofe 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 uncheary hours which perpetually overtake us, are they not enough, but we must fally forth in queft of them, belie our

B 3

OWN