true believers of the gospel when we live up to its rules. On the other hand, whatever creed we profefs, whatever church we adhere to, or with whatever appearances of zeal we may deceive the world, or ourselves; yet, if we live in a violation or neglect of the precepts and duties of religion, our faith is vain; whilst we believe, we must tremble; the faith which fhould fave us, will be our condemnation. That we may all poffefs fuch an influential and effectual faith, as will produce obedience, and infure the falvation of our fouls, may GOD of his infinite mercy grant! SERMON X. Insufficiency of this World to our Happiness, and the confequent COLOSS. iii. 2. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. 100 great an attachment to the world and its enjoyments is the fource of numberless disorders in human life, and leads us often aftray from the paths of wisdom and happiness: the fcripture, therefore, often exhorts us to rectify our opinion of the world, to call off our affections from its pleasures, and to direct them to to objects of a far higher and nobler nature, things celeftial and eternal. To this end, I fhall confider, ift, How little reason we have to place our affections folely or principally on this world and its enjoyments; and, 2dly, Shall obferve, that from the deficiency and imperfection of all worldly enjoyments we may infer our future happier existence in another state. I. The wifeft of men, who tried every project, pursued every plan of pleasure, that defire could fuggeft, and was poffeffed of every advantage that might be supposed to favour his purfuit, finished his course of experiments with this conclufion, that all is vanity and vexation of Spirit. And indeed a wisdom and experience much inferior to that of Solomon might fuffice to fhow, that earthly pleasures are defective, are not commensurate to the defires and capacity of the foul; and that true happiness is not here to be found. On the contrary, the fcripture afferts that man is born to trouble; and nature and experience but too well confirm the affertion. But as it is always with reluctance we admit unwelcome truths, we are always willing to form, therefore, a favourable idea of human life; and in the vifions of hope and fancy, we form plans of happinefs which we can never execute. Though deceived by past pleasures, we give credit to the future, and live in perpetual expectation of what we never obtain. Urged by an inextinguishable thirst of happiness, never fully gratified with what we have, we are always looking forward to fomething we have not; fomething that imagination prefents to us at a distance, and tells us will effect the completion of our wishes, Thither then we direct our fteps. But when, by much toil and labour, perhaps, we have made fome progrefs, and have overcome various obftacles, and almost reached the object of our hopes, fome accident always interposes, fomewhat always fteps in, and ftands in the way between us and happiness, and prevents either the attainment of what we had in view, or the enjoyment we expected in it. Such Such is the lot of human life, either to be debarred from our wishes, or, if we are permitted to fucceed in them, to find, by a comfortless experiment, how little our fuccefs contributes to our happiness; to find, that what we have been pursuing, borrowed its chief value from the mistakes of imagination; that our paffions had over-rated it; that the pleasure of the acquifition gradually diminishes, and wears off with the novelty of it; and that no fooner have we obtained one wish, than we begin to form another. If one defire is gratified, another fucceeds; fomething unattained still engages us in a fresh purfuit; and we run an endless race for a prize we never win. Thus mankind go on, seeking what they cannot find, or finding what they fought, to be but illusion when they approach it. We vary our plan, and wander from project to project; but meet the fame diffatisfaction, and are at laft, perhaps, farther from happiness than at our first setting out. Such is our nature, and the nature of all |