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God knows, to frail creatures, so much converfant with fenfible objects which are ever spreading their dazzling temptations before our eyes. But frequent recollection in fome questions of the following kind will be the best preservative in so flippery a fituation." Is the prefervas

tion of my virtue and innocence my "first and principal object? Do my worldly cares and business move on, in juft fubordination to my higher inte "refts? Having the neceffaries of life, "am I therewith content? Or, if the

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good things of life flow in upon me as "the natural and eafy fruits of a moderate

industry, or the voluntary gifts of a "propitious Providence; do I fet my "heart upon them, and make them not "the instruments of beneficence? Am I "humble and content, and honest in a "lower fphere; temperate, charitable, "and religious in a higher ftation ?" ONE'S Own confcience must be the refolver of such enquiries. The boun

daries between honeft industry and worldly folicitude are hard to be distinguished in their nearer approaches: so much are they confounded by the exaggeration of cenfure and malevolence on one hand, and the fair pretences of fanctified hypocrify on the other. But amidst all the errors of deluded men, wifdom will be justified of all her children. We cannot ferve both worlds, but by confidering the prefent as introductory to the other.

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In a word, then, the religious man's care for the world will move on in fubordination to the duties of his holy calling, and the nature of the country to which he is travelling. If he is poor, he lives foberly and piously upon the fruits of his honeft diligence, and travels on towards the grave a chearful contented pilgrim, satisfied with the hope of refting from his labours and receiving the rewards of his perfeverance Hereafter. If he is rich, he is neither infolent nor oppreffive, intemperate nor fenfual;

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fual; while he employs his poffeffions to fupport his neceffary rank in life, he preferves a just sense of his real equality with the meanest of mankind; he paffes along, as a traveller indeed of greater diftinction, but with thankfulness to GOD, who made him to differ from his brethren; and with diligence, as one, whose riches cannot diftinguish him from them in an other state.

III. AND why can we not look upor life, in this juft and proper view; why can we not pass through it with this noble indifference? For what is life, that it should stand in competition with the rewards of immortality? The happiness of man no more lieth in abundance, than health does in the mass of It is an overgrown bloated carcafe. peace of mind, the comfort of a good confcience, the moderation of well-regulated defires, that gives the true enjoyment. If then you fee multitudes

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you, bufily employed in fearching for happiness, amidst abundance, if you hear them cry, lo! here it is in honour, or there it is in riches, believe them not thousands have made the trial, and have owned themselves difappointed.

PLEASURE is to be enjoyed only by the channel of natural appetites; and luxury, amidst all its refinements, could never invent one new appetite, or enlarge the capacity of thofe, which nature gives us. We can receive no more than warmth and comfort from cloathing; we must hunger before we eat, and thirst before we drink with pleafure. A fufficiency, (and the more moderate the better,) best answers this purpose; all beyond this is loathing and distaste, fickness and disease.

OR, were earthly things the real materials of happiness, their uncertainty renders the pursuit of them irrational. They are fugitive and mutable; depend

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ing upon chance and accident; liable to infinite viciffitudes and revolutions: "We might (as* one juftly obferves) "with more reason think the winds "and weather certain, than earthly

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goods for the former, though vari"able, have their revolutions, and "turn about to the fame point a

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gain; but an eftate once gone, fel"dom reverts to the right owner."And do we not see this verified by fact and experience? Who is there among us, that hath lived forty years upon the earth, and hath not feen ftrange changes and alterations in the face of things? Let him look back and fee, what a varying and shifting scene it appears upon retrospection! New families arising, and old ones perishing and finking into oblivion! Wealth accumulating, and making itself wings and flying away,

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* Dr. South.

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