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mighty mind, and perceives all their poffible and actual effects in every event. We may however form a juster estimate of human happiness than is ufually done. We may furvey it on many fides but little noticed, and direct our attention to many collateral circumftances and things which we probably have hitherto overlooked. And this is the defign of my prefent discourse. I would offer you a few suggestions on the proper valuation of human happiness. To this end I fhall do two things: first, lay before you fome confiderations on the nature and magnitude of human happiness in general; and then deliver you a few rules for rightly appretiating it in particular inftances.

There unquestionably is happiness among mankind. Of this our own experience,, of this what we see and observe in regard to others, will not permit us to harbour a doubt. For, how can we refufe to fay, We and other men have various agreeable conceptions and fenfations; we fee, hear, feel, think and perform many things with fatisfaction and delight; we and others frequently enjoy pleasure and mirth; we and others are often contented with our condition, and we are comfortable in the consciousness and contemplation of it? And is not all this collectively happiness?

Indeed human happiness is not unalloyed; it is not perfectly pure. Not one of us all poff ffes purely agreeable conceptions and fenfations; one enjoys pure pleafure and fatisfaction; no one

is perfectly and at all times fatisfied with whatever he is and does, and with whatever befalls him; no one experiences purely defirable occurrences. To every person is diftributed his measure of diflike, of displeasure and pain from adverse events. Every one must taste of the cup of forrow as well as of the goblet of joy. Even the generality of our agreeable ideas and fenfations are dashed and adulterated with a greater or less mixture of ingredients that are diftafteful and bitter. But this is the neceffary and unavoidable confequence of our nature, and the prefent fettlement and condition of things; and fo muft it be, unless it were proper for man to be fascinated with profperity and intoxicated with joy.

As human happiness is not unalloyed, fo neither is it uninterrupted. It does not fill up each day, each hour, each moment of our earthly exiftence, As light and darkness alternately fucceed each other in the natural world, fo likewife in the moral, but much feldomer, bad days fucceed to good, and mifery to happiness. Pleasure and pain, joys and forrows, tread very clofely on each other; often fuddenly interchange, and often arife from each other. Exceffive pleasure becomes pain; immoderate joy turns into forrow; fuper-abundant profperity is frequently overwhelming. Our habitudes and relations with outward objects, their relation to us, and their influences upon us, are not always the fame, may to-morrow be quite different from

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what they yesterday were; and these very objects are all fluctuating, tranfitory, evanefcent. So far as our happiness is built on external objects, fo far muft it be frequently interrupted. And even in ourselves, in our opinions and manners, in our own mutability, are caufes already fufficient to prevent its confifting in a fteady, firm, and linked feries of purely agreeable ideas and fenfations.

Human happiness is thirdly not equally great to all men, and cannot be fo. All cannot inhabit the fame zone, and enjoy the fame natural goods and amenities; all cannot have the fame education, be invested with the fame ftation, carry on the fame business, or attain to the fame degree of politenefs and intelligence. All have not the fame native difpofition and capacity for purfuing, for finding and for enjoying, a certain greater proportion, or certain nobler kinds of happinefs; as all have not the fame attentive, correct understanding, the fame cultivated and refined tafte, the fame fufceptible and participating heart. All finally do not conduct themselves in the fame manner; and but too many think and act in fuch a way as though they were determined by no means to be happy, but ever to become more wretched. As great therefore as is the diversity in all these circumstances and things, fo great must likewife be the diverfity in the allotment of happiness among mankind.

But even the fame perfon is not always equally fenfible to the happinefs allotted him, nor always

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alike fatisfied with it. Time and enjoyment but too often quell the fentiment of the goods we poffefs. Little uneafineffes and vexations not unfrequently deprive all the advantages and comforts we have in our power of their value. And then neither our body nor our mind is conftantly attuned to the fame lively and vigorous fenfations, as to enable us to enjoy, with consciousness to enjoy, the beauti ful and the good within us and without us, at all times alike. In this respect all depends either on the degree of our natural fenfibility, or on the par ticular humour and temper of mind in which we are at the time.

But, my pious hearers, though human happiness be neither unmingled nor uninterrupted nor equally great, for every man, nor even for its poffeffor equally fenfible and fatisfying at all times; yet it is ftill real; it is manifold; it is great, abundantly great; it is capable of a constantly progreffive augmentation. Four particulars that will place its na ture and value in a clear point of view.

It is real. Human happiness is not fancy, not impofture, not self-deceit. It is founded on ideas and fenfations, of which we are as pofitively and intimately conscious as we are of our existence and our life; and if thefe ideas and fenfations are agreeable, if they occafion us fatisfaction and pleafure, then no man will make it a matter of difpute, that it is well with us, that we are more or lefs happy. And where is he that has not had, that

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has not frequently had fuch ideas and fenfations, and has not felt himself happy in the consciousness of them? Human happiness will alfo ftand the test of reflection and confideration. It is not the work of deception, not an agreeable dream, that on our waking vanishes away. It does not fhun ferenity and filence, willingly takes reafon for its companion, and always remains what it was erewhile. Nay, then first does it appear to the man of reflection and feeling, in its full capacity and its real magnitude, Recount, o man, recount, in fome calm and tranquil hour of life, all the benefits thou poffeffeft, and which endow thy mind, thy person, and thy outward station; all the advantages in temporals and fpirituals thou haft, and mayst acquire; all the pleafures and delights thou enjoyeft and art capable of enjoying; all the good that is in thce, and is effectuated through thee; all the prospects into a better futurity that lie open before thee: reckon all thefe together, examine them as ftrictly and impartially as thou wilt; afk thyfelf whether thefe benefits are not real benefits, these advantages not real advantages, these pleasures and delights not real pleasures and delights, this good not actually good, thefe prospects not defirable and confoling; and if thou canft not deny it, then it remains clear, that the happinefs flowing from them is real happiness.

No lefs diverfified is human happiness, my pious hearers, than it is real. It is as diverfified as the neceffities, the capacities, the inclinations, the behaviour,

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