tercourse with God. Every prayer he fends up, unburdens, his foul, and lightens his affliction. Before God therefore he pours out his complaints, cafting all his care upon him, knowing that he careth for him.His Almighty Father, he knows, has the power to relieve him in the most desperate circumstances-and always the will to do it, when relief is proper.

-But the wicked

Loft to all hope

man hath no fuch confolation. of comfort from the world in his diftreffes, he has no room to expect it from God. With what face can he cry, Lord have mercy upon me, when he perhaps never acknowledged the mercy of God in his life?

The last confolation I fhall mention of the religious man, arifes at the clofe of life, from the expectation of a future state. In the merits of that bleffed Redeemer he trufts, whose laws he has endeavoured to keep, and whose merciful atonement, he humbly hopes, will graciously fupply his deficiencies.- -But the wicked man meets a death-bed without any confolation. His crimes, like evil fpirits, hover over him. He wishes to fhun danger, but how? He looks round him, but the world he worshipped, affords him not a fingle hope. He looks within, -his terrified imagination drives him presently back.

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back. His breast heaves with a tumult of diftress; and his dying hour closes upon him like the gloom of a stormy night. Whereas in the next world only the religious man refts. His faith and hope carry him into regions of happinefs. 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 fees, like the dying martyr, heaven opened, and Jefus fitting at the right hand of God. Lord Jefus receive my fpirit, is a prayer, which, in spite of bodily pain-in fpite 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 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 fuffer 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 lofe fight of the next. -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 so much in our power to increase its comforts, and leffen its diftreffes.

Let us then confider this world in the graci ous 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 possessing the world; and may God Almighty affift us in the direction of our choice!

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 fhapes: and if he thought it good for himself, no doubt, he thought it good for every body else. 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 ftate of trial, to pre

pare

pare us for a better ftate.Now a state of trial must be conducted by a due mixture of comfortable and uncomfortable circumftances. Both these are the fources 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 fee 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 confifts.

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 properly. Life is converted into a dream; and fancy prefides, instead of reason. If a man living in a cottage, should behave as if he lived in a palace-if he fhould order his fervants 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, fay of him? The leaft they could say of him would be, that he ran into all thofe extravagancies from being ignorant of his proper station;

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and