SERMON XXX. The Value of a Bufy Life. GOD, thou haft ordained us all to an active, bufy life. To this end thou haft granted us all the neceffary capacities and powers and the strongest incentives. To this end haft thou fubjected us to fo many wants, and rendered their demands fo urgent in us. To this end haft thou connected us all so closely together, and placed us in such a state of dependence on each other. It is thy gracious appointment that we, as rational and free agents, fhould enjoy the honour and the pleasure, of being, under thy inspection and by thy affiftance, the stay and benefactors of our brethren, and that by doing good we should resemble thee, who from eternity to eternity art always doing good and constantly the best. Far be it then from us to mifemploy these advantages or to leave them unemployed!` Far be it from us to addict ourselves to a flothful, inactive, idle life! Far be it from us to be ever weary in well-doing! No, to use the capacities and energies which thou haft imparted to us, and ever to use them in the best and worthieft manner, to perform the business thou haft given us to do, and to perform it with diligence and fidelity; ever to effect and to promote more good among mankind: that should be our pleasure and our boast, as the way on which we should strive after perfection and happiness! Strengthen us thyfelf, o merciful God, in these good difpofitions, and grant that they may be brought into action in deed and in truth. us even now be convinced of the advantage of a conduct fo confiftent with fuch difpofitions, that we may be awakened and powerfully excited to it, or confirmed in it. Bless in this view our reflections on the doctrines that are now to be delivered to us, and hearken to our fupplications, through Jefus Chrift, our bleffed Lord, in whofe name we farther address thee, faying, as he taught us: Our father, &c. Let ROM. xii. II. Not flothful in business. BUT any UT too many people figh after rest as their fupreme felicity, complain of the multiplicity of affairs and concerns that prefs upon them; wish they were discharged from them; long to be freed from all neceffity of employment in stated way; that they might apply their time and their faculties to fome agreeable purfuit, and make fuch a use of them as might be most conformable to their taste and difpofition. Such men feldom know rightly what it is they would have; they commonly wish to exchange a few light and very tolerable incumbrances and evils for a far greater burden. Reft is indeed a very desirable object; but it confifts not in indolence, in slothful inaction. It is founded on moderation, on regularity, on inward contentment. It is confiftent with the bufieft life; and no man understands and enjoys it less than the idle and unemployed. No, to a man that is in poffeffion of his health and faculties, a life of business is far preferable to one spent without occupation. It procures him infinitely more fatisfactions and pleasures, our text. and tends more to his perfection and happiness. The facred writings therefore, which know our real wants, and beft understand what can make us good and happy, every where incite us to induftry, to diligence, to the exertion of our abilities. "Be not flothful in business," fays the apostle Paul in Perform the bufinefs of your office, of your calling, not from compulfion, not with reluctance, not in an indolent, negligent way; but execute it with care and zeal. Let us, my pious hearers, in order to awaken in us a more ready obedience to this apoftolical precept, confider the great value of a bufy life; and to that end, first, inquire how fuch a life fhould be conducted for having a great value; and then, what confers this value on it, or wherein it confists. By a bufy life we are to understand a life wherein, by our station, our office, our calling, and our connection with other perfons, we have to manage and execute fuch works and bufineffes, mostly ftated, as our time and abilities will allow us to manage and execute. In order that fuch a life may be really and highly valuable to us, in the first place, these works and bufineffes must be proportionate to our powers of mind and body. We fhould know and understand what we have to do and to manage; we fhould poffefs the capacities, the abilities and the fkill, that are requifite; we fhould, at least generally speaking, be able to proceed with facility and a certain certain confidence in ourselves; we should therefore have been long and early exercised in them, fo as to have acquired a certain dexterity in them. If we are plagued and perplexed and obliged to ftop every moment, as it were, in our work and affairs, either through ignorance of what they demand of us, or from hesitations and doubt concerning the best method of beginning or of profecuting a matter, or from the fentiment of our inability to complete it: fuch a life can indeed be of no great value to us; it is a burden, an oppreffive burden, under which we may easily sink. In order, farther, that a life of business fhould be highly valuable to us; the bufinefs we carry on must be lawful, and we must be fully convinced of the lawfulness of it. We must be able to tranfa&t it without inward uneafiness, without any reproaches of confcience, without any fervile apprehenfion of God. Neither muft it give us caufe to be afhamed before men; and we have no occafion to be fo, whenever our work or employment is neither at variance with integrity nor with the love of our neighbour, neither in oppofition to divine nor human laws, let it be in all other refpects as mean and infignificant as it may. On the contrary, if we are entangled in affairs which our own confcience difapproves, or which we cannot in direct terms pronounce to be right; in affairs on which we dare not befpeak the approbation and bleffing of the fupreme being, and while employed in them |