back. His breast heaves with a tumult of distress; and his dying hour closes upon him like the gloom of a stormy night. Whereas in the next world only the religious man rests. 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 interest, he knows, lies not here, but there. He sees, like the dying martyr, heaven opened, and Jesus sitting at the right hand of God. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit, is a prayer, which, in spite of bodily pain in spite of all the weaknesses 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`shall just observe further, that as God's great provision of happiness for his rational creatures, is a future world, we should be very careful not to mistake the means for the end. If we conceive this world to be a state of happiness, we invert that divine order, which intends it only as the means of happiness. We should be very cautious therefore, how we suffer the ideas of happiness and the world, to enter our minds together.

In

our

our most joyous hours we should be most on our guard, and never allow ourselves in the happiest moments of this world, to lose sight of the next. -And yet it should be matter of great thankfulness, that God hath made our state of trial so happy as it is and that he hath put it so much in our power to increase its comforts, and lessen its distresses.

Let us then consider this world in the gracious light in which God intends. Let us not in our thankfulness overrate the blessings it holds out; nor be too much depressed by its misfortunes: but let us consider them both as the scale by which we ascend 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 blessings, we may turn it into a state of great unhappiness; and in the end, into the means of future misery. We may take our option of these two ways of possessing the world; and may God Almighty assist us in the direction of our choice!

SERMON

SERMON XIII.

PSALM CXIX. 71.

IT IS GOOD FOR ME, THAT I HAVE BEEN IN TROUBLE.

THIS was David's opinion of trouble; with which he had been exercised in various shapes: and if he thought it good for himself, no doubt, he thought it good for every body else. Let us then consider it as a truth confirmed by the experience of this wise and pious prince, that it is good for us all to be in trouble; and as such let me endeavour to explain it.

The truth of the observation is founded on the nature of our situation in this world; which is intended, we know, as a state of trial, to prepare

pare us for a better state.--Now a state of trial must be conducted by a due mixture of comfortable and uncomfortable circumstances. Both these are the sources of many virtues and many vices, which could not be derived from either alone. However, as David in the text speaks only of the troubled part of a state of trial, we will at present leave out the comfortable part, and see only what good arises from our being in trouble. Indeed the chief good arises, as far as we ourselves are concerned, from the troubled part. Let us then examine in what that good

consists.

IN the first place it tends to open, and explain to us, (what few consider sufficiently,) the nature of our situation in this world. If we are ignorant of that, it is impossible we can act properly. Life is converted into a dream; and fancy presides, instead of reason. If a man living in a cottage, should behave as if he lived in a palace-if he should order his servants about him-command his table to be filled with the most costly foodand call for the richest apparel; what would his neighbours who saw things in their true light, say of him? The least they could say of him would be, that he ran into all those extravagancies from being ignorant of his proper station;

and

piness, which belong not to their station, you every absurdity of the case I have just represe -you see the abundance and superfluities of palace expected in the cottage.

But an acquaintance with the nature of situation here, corrects all this. We find world is by no means meant for a state of ha ness-but that it has its sorrows as well as In our happiest moments, therefore, we sh never lose sight of those evils, which we I will befall us, in some part of our passage thr life. This preserves us from tumultuous joys; makes us temperate in our pleasures: it dra frequently back to the situation in which we st it shews us where we are, and what we are in short, if we have the piety of christians us, it inculcates strongly the ideas of a st trial.

Being possessed practically of this great tr that the world is not to be considered as a of happiness, but as a state of trial, let u see that it is good for us to be in trouble, f