any other good purpose, to be deterred by the opinion or the derifion of mankind, from doing that which reafon and confcience prompt you to do. And now, my dear friends, fince you know the causes why to fo many of you filence and folitude are a burden, and at the fame time cannot deny the value and utility of them, endeavour to remove those causes, and together with a cheerful, but temperate, enjoyment of the pleasures of fociety, avail yourselves alfo, as occafion offers, of the benefits of a wife, a chriftian ufe of filence and retirement. Confider, that filence is the mother of wisdom, of virtue, and the mind's bleft calm; the fource of true felf-knowledge, and that thou never canst aspire to the knowledge of him whom to know is life eternal, without knowing thyfelf; the fource of the nobleft liberty, of a truly chriftian temper, and of the furest preparation to the fuperior life. Confider, that fooner or later feafons and hours will infallibly come, when all around you will be filent, when you will have nothing to occupy you except God and yourselves, and if ye have then first to learn to familiarife and folace yourselves with this company, you will affuredly find that alteration of your condition an infupportable burden, a perfect martyrdom. Confider in fhort, that you are haftening to the tomb, and that there the profoundeft filence reigns; a filence which to the wicked will be a hell, a heaven to the good! Oh happy he, who during the courfe of his life, in the full enjoyment of his facul ties, has known how to avail himself of filence and folitude in collecting ample treasures of wife, of great and noble, bleffed thoughts and fentiments, which he may take with him into the filence of the grave, with which he may there fuftain his fpirit, and render himself fufceptible of still fuperior felicity in the refurrection of the just! Advent, SERMON XXXVII. Chriftian Sobriety and Vigilance. OD, our creator and our father, thou haft GOD raised us to the rank of rational creatures, and thereby imparted to us fome refemblance with thee, the supreme and absolutely perfect fpirit. We not only are and live, but we know and intimately feel that we are and live. We can reflect on what we are and what we ought to be and to become, and foar in thought even to thee, our creator and father. We can look back on the long fince past and carry our view into the far remote futurity, and connect them both with the prefent. Gracious God, with what powers, with what pre-eminences haft thou endowed us, thy children! And what means, what impulfes to wisdom, to virtue, to happiness haft thou not thus vouchfafed us! Oh that all of us might entirely feel the dignity of our nature, and the value of our privileges, the value of the honour of being formed after thy likeness and constantly make the best the worthieft ufe of that honour and of these privileges! Ah let us never forget what by thy bounty we are and how much more by thy bounty bounty we might be and become! Let us never degrade ourselves by folly and fin, never render ourfelves unworthy of the station and the rank, which thou haft affigned us among thy creatures; never recede but always advance on the path of perfection. Bless to the furtherance of these designs the leffons of truth which we fhall now receive from thy word. Let us not only hear and understand and approve them, but fo admit and inwardly digest them, that they may really correct and improve us. These our petitions we offer up unto thee in the name of thy fon Jefus, and trusting patiently and comfortably in his promifes, thus farther addrefs thee. Our father, &c. I PETER V. 8. Be fober, be vigilant. ATTENTION, my devout audience, continued, not easily wearied attention is one of the principal and fureft means, of proceeding farther in any business, how difficult foever it may be, and at last as far as it is poffible to proceed in it. He that has not his attention under command, he that is not capable of fixing it, of drawing it off from several objects and turning it to one alone, or of fixing it for a proper length of time upon it, will perhaps with much good, intend much good, propose and begin much good, yet will actually do and bring to full effect but little good; he will, in whatever it be, whether in in the sciences or in business, whether in his own improvement or in his endeavours at the improvement of others, one while stand still, at other times retreat, every where meet with infuperable obftacles, unconquerable difficulties. Perhaps he may acquire an extenfive knowledge of feveral things, but few profound, folid perceptions embracing the whole and elucidating the combinations of its various parts; perhaps excite fome good defires and affections in his foul, but obtain few good, virtuous habitudes; perhaps chalk out many good plans, contrive many public-fpirited projects, but contribute little to the execution of them. Wherever courage, strength of mind, refolution, intrepidity, fortitude, are required, these qualities neceffarily include a fuperior degree of attention and a greater power over attention, a use of it more dependent on our will. Without this endowment never any one has fignalized himself either on the career of heroifm, or in the sphere of business and activity, or in the province of arts and sciences, or in what is of greater confequence than all thefe, in the pursuit after fuperior virtue and purer devotion. What prominent and grand attainments then are to be expected from the generality of perfons in the prefent times, when vanity, frivolity, a flighty admiration and forgetfulness of most things, an indolent abhorrence of all exertion and effort, a reftlefs, impatient vagrancy of thought from one object to another, from one occupation to another, from one distracting or stunning amufement 5 |