SERMONS BY LAURENCE STERNE, A. M. PREBENDARY OF YORK, AND VICAR OF SUTTON ON THE FOREST, SERMON I. Inquiry after Happiness. PSALM iv. 6. There be many that fay, Who will fhow us any good?—Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us. THE great purfuit of man is after happiness: it is the first and strongest defire of his nature;-in every ftage of his life, he fearches for it as for hid treasure; -courts it under a thousand different shapes,and, though perpetually disappointed, ftill perfifts-runs after and inquires for it afresh-afks every paffenger who comes in his way, Who will show him any good? who will affift him in the attainment of it, or direct him to the difcovery of this great end of all his wishes? He is told by one, to fearch for it among the more gay and youthful pleasures of life, in fcenes of mirth and fprightlinefs, where happiness ever prefides, and is ever to be known by the joy and laughter which he will fee at once painted in her looks. A fecond, with a graver aspect, points out to the coftly dwellings which pride and extravagance have erected tells the inquirer, that the object he is in search of inhabits there-that happiness lives only in company with the great, in the midst of much pomp and outward state. That he will easily find her out by the coat of many colours fhe has on, and the great luxury and expence of equipage and furniture with which fhe always fits furrounded. The mifer bleffes God! -wonders how any one would mislead, and wilfully put him upon fo wrong a fcent-convinces him that happinefs and extravagance never inhabited under the fame roofthat if he would not be disappointed in his fearch, he muft look into the plain and thrifty dwelling of the prudent man, who knows and understands the worth of money, and cautiously lays it up against an evil hour that it is not the prostitution of wealth upon the paffions, or the parting with it at all, that conftitutes happiness-but that it is the keeping it together, and the HAVING and HOLDING it faft to him and his heirs for ever, which are the chief attributes that form this great idol of human worship, to which fo much incenfe is offered up every day. : The epicure, though he eafily rectifies fo grofs a miftake, yet at the fame time he plunges him, if poffible, into a greater; for, hearing the obejet of his purfuit to be happiness, and knowing of no other happiness than what is feated immediately in his fenfes, he fends the inquirer there; tells him 'tis in vain to search elsewhere for it, than where nature herself has placed it in the indulgence and gratification of the appetites, which are given us for that end and, in a word-if he will not take his opinion in the matter he may truft the word of a much wifer man who has affured us—that there is nothing better in this world, than that a man should eat and |