have wisdom and virtue and piety for his companions on the road of life. Oh may they accompany and guide us all on our plain or rugged, our obfcure or Shining path! How totally otherwife, how much more justly fhall we then regard riches and poverty, elevation and lowness, health and fickness, life and death; how differently shall we learn to judge of them, to defire or to dread, to feek and to use them! How certainly and fafely attain to the goal of hap piness!

SERMON XLV.

View of the Sources of Human Happiness.

GOD, our moft gracious and affectionate pa

rent, how happy might not we all be even here on earth, did we but fo prize and employ the fources of fatisfaction and pleasure which thou openest to us, as men and as christians, in a manner suitable to their destination and to thy gracious will! How manifold, how rich, how inexhaustible are these fources! How great the preponderance of the agreeable and good over the difagreeable and evil, that fubfifts in the natural and in the moral world, within us and without us! Yes, on all fides we are furrounded by the most diversified, the most glorious demonstrations of thy paternal providence and love. On all fides we behold thee, the All-bountiful, diffufing life and energy and joy of numberless kinds, over all thy creatures. On all fides we find the commodi

ous,

ous, the agreeable, the delightful, intimately connected with the neceffary and indifpenfable. Heaven and earth, mankind and brutes, nature and religion, reflection and experience, all exclaim with an audible voice, that perfection and happiness is the ultimate, the only aim of all that thou ordaineft and doft, that thou doft decrce and permit, that thou commandest and forbiddeft, that thou giveft and takest away. Yes, thou wouldft that we fhould all be happy, that we should be already fo even here on earth, and if we are not fo it is folely by our own fault. Alas, how often do the pureft, the richest fources of fatisfaction and pleasure, invite us to enjoyment in vain, how often do they flow by us unufed and unobferved, or are rendered turbid and taftelefs to us by follies and fins! - Oh might we better understand our riches, and more worthily use them! Might we more plainly perceive, more fenfibly feel the multitude and the value of the benefits with which thou art daily and hourly bleffing us, and honour thee by a chearful and grateful enjoy. ment of them! Blefs then, moft gracious God, blefs the confiderations which we are proceeding to enter upon concerning these objects. Let them call forth our utmost attention to the manifold and abun dant fources of happiness which thou haft prepared for us, and quicken us to a diligent, and faithful ufe of them. We afk it of thee in filial confidence, as the votaries of Jefus, and addrefs thee farther in the form he gave us: Our father, &c.

PSALM XXXiv. 8.

Oh taste and see how gracious the Lord is!

UT too often, my pious hearers, a man reckons

BUT

himself poor, because he is ignorant of his wealth, or has not learnt to prize it, and to calculate it properly. But too often he accounts himfelf not happy, or even unhappy, merely because he does not observe, or does not attend to the various, ever flowing fources of fatisfaction and pleasure that are open to him on all fides, and feeks with great trouble at a distance what lies close beside him, offering itself to his enjoyment. But too often he reckons only particularly fortunate incidents, particularly desirable and fatisfactory events, only exceedingly agreeable ideas, or rapturous, extatic fenfations, as forming what he terms his happiness, without taking into the account a hundred other things, which just as well, though in an inferior degree, procure him fatisfaction and pleasure. If he have furmounted obftacles, or conquered difficulties, which he held to be unfurmountable and unconquerable; if he be freed from certain troubles and afflictions that preffed him long and pained him forely; if he obtain fome particular advantage for which he had been hitherto longing

to

to no purpose; if fome of his peculiar hopes be ful filled, the accomplishment whereof he could not think very probable; if certain events happen, which he wished indeed, but could hardly expect; if he enjoy pleasures and delights that captivate his whole foul, and in the moment of enjoyment leave him nothing to wish for more; yes, then, but only then, he thinks himself happy. All these things, however, cannot frequently happen, can but feldom occur. Not every day, not even every year of our life on earth, can be marked by such fortunate events, by fuch wifhed for occurrences, by fuch ravishing joys, by fuch fignal alterations in our conditions and fortunes. Therefore the man in whofe eyes this alone is happiness, perhaps accounts himself, during the greater part of his life, to be not happy, or even to be unhappy. And all this while there ftand open before him and beside him, always, to-day as yesterday, and to-morrow as to-day, fources of fatisfaction and pleasure, no less pure than copious, courting him to enjoyment. But he esteems them not, overlooks them, paffes by them, or draws from them without clear consciousness, without confideration. we be happy, my dear friends; then let us avoid thefe but too common errors and mistakes. Let us, to this end, take a flight view of the principal fources of our happiness, and calculate the amount of our actual riches omitting all the unusual, the extraordinary and rare, from the account, and only setting down what is constantly in our poffeffion, what is always

Would