nerous and noble as it is to do good, (the most laudable of pursuits and exquifite of pleasures!) we meet here with vexations to embitter our fatisfactions. How often are we traduced in our bestmeant actions, mifinterpreted in our best motives, and oppofed in our best defigns? Be our sphere ever so large, we can benefit but a few: in that few how often do we find ingratitude; and in others, whom we cannot benefit, reproach, envy, and oppofition?

OR if, laftly, we place our happiness in virtue and the fervice of God (delightful as the exercise is, comfortable as a fenfe of the Divine approbation must be to a dependent creature!) yet how often do clouds arife to interrupt the comforts and ferenity of conscience? Doubts often obfcure our clearest views, paffions diforder our tempers, temptations affail our virtue, and wanderings clog our devotions, and deaden our afpirations.

SUCH

SUCH evils, then, fuch inconveniences do we encounter with, in the various conditions of life. In many of them they are fo wearifome and infupportable, that, were it not for the instinct of preservation, fo clofely interwoven with our frame, and the strong bar, which the Almighty has fixed against felf-destruction, fuch numbers would not groan and sweat under a weary life, amidft the many ready methods of procuring themselves repofe. But God has forbidden this, as the highest of offences; has commanded patience as our duty, and provided heaven for our reward. This brings me to the second propofition, the greatnefs of our future reward.

II. As we know nothing of spiritual things but by comparisons drawn from fenfible objects, as we fee but as it were through a glass darkly in our present imperfect ftate; it is impoffible to have

any

any pofitive knowledge, in what the happiness of heaven confifts: but we know and see enough to make us purfue it as our ultimate and highest happiness. It breaks in upon us in the difcoveries of the gospel with fuperior light earthly things disappear before it: they lose their importance and luftre. Glittering as they appeared to the darkened eye of sense, yet, before the glories of eternity, like the ftars before the fun, they fade and hide their diminished beads. And if we made these views familiar to us by frequent reflexion (for, without this, faith is but a dead principle;) the meanest chriftian might acquire a greatness of mind fuperior to all the allurements and terrors of the world.

3

THE fpirit of GOD, as I mentioned before, being not able, without altering our natures, to render our fu

ture

ture reward intelligible to us but by comparisons taken from what we know and experience here, has given us to understand and this is fufficient for that we shall at

every moral purpose leaft be freed from all present inconveniences. Such miferies, as our minds and bodies have felt here, fhall moleft no more corruption and mifery shall be carried no farther than the grave: we fhall arife new creatures from thence, into perfect and unchangeable happiness. The righteous then shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the fun light on them, nor any heat: GOD fball wipe away all tears from their eyes; there fhall be no more death, neither forrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are paffed away. The lamb, which is in the midst of the throne, fhall feed them, and fhall lead them unto living fountains of waters; be fhall make them drink of the river of his

pleafures.

pleafures. Rev. vii. 16, 17. xxi. 4.

Pía. xxxvi. 8.

DOES the shipwrecked mariner look back with triumph upon the devouring fea, from which he has just escaped, where he suffered fo much, and dreaded more? And what must it be to the righteous to look back upon the follies, miferies and dangers, from which he has escaped into fo much happiness! Let the waves of affliction rage and fwell; they cannot pass their bounds; they belong only to this tempeftuous world: his happiness is seated far beyond their reach. The weary reft from their labours, the prisoner no longer bears the voice of bis oppreffor.

Now let us endeavour to form fome idea, inadequate as it must be, of the happiness of fouls and bodies united in a ftate of perfection.

THERE is a delight in knowledge: the defire of it is congenial to the mind: it is painful to be toffed with doubts, per

plexities