1 only harmless, but every way profitable to you. Sa will it fit you for entering hereafter, in a higher state of existence, into a clofer and more blifsful connection with the wifest and best of men, in fociety with the difencumbered fpirits of the virtuous and the juft, and from your intercourfe with them derive ftill more copious portions of perfection and hap pinefs, SERMON XXX. The Value of a Bufy Life. GOD, thou haft appointed us to an active, busy life. To this end thou haft granted us all the neceffary capacities and endowments and the most powerful impulfes. To this end haft thou fubjected us to fo many wants, and rendered their demands fo urgent. To this end haft thou connected us all fo closely together, and placed us in fuch state of dependence on each other. It is thy gracious appointment that as rational and free agents we fhould enjoy the honour and the pleasure, of being, under thy inspection and by thy affiftance, the stay and patrons of our brethren, and that by doing good we fhould refemble thee, who from everlasting to everlasting art always doing good and conftantly the beft. Far be it then from us to misapprehend these advantages or to leave them unemployed! Far be it from us to addict ourselves to a flothful, inactive, lazy life! Far be it from us to be ever weary in well-doing! No, to use the capacities and energies which thou haft implanted in us, and to use them in the best, the worthiest manner, to perform the business thou haft given us to do, and to perform it with diligence and fidelity; to be always effecting and promoting more good and utility amongst mankind: be that our delight and our glory, be that the way by which we feek and find perfection and happinefs! Confirm us thyfelf, o merciful God, in these good difpofitions, and grant that they may be brought into action in deed and in truth. Let us even now be fo 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. Blefs 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 further address thee, faying, as he taught us: Our father, &c. ROM. xii. 11. Not flothful in bufinefs. BUT too many people figh after reft as their supreme felicity, complain of the multiplicity of affairs and concerns that prefs upon them; wifh they were discharged from them; long to be freed from all neceffity of employment in any ftated way; that they they might apply their time and their faculties to fome agreeable purfuit, and make fuch a ufe of them as might be moft agreeable to their tafte and inclination. Such men feldom know rightly what it is they would have; they commonly wish to exchange a few small, very tolerable incumbrances and evils for a far greater burden. Reft, my pious hearers, is indeed a very defirable object; but it confists not in idleness, in flothful inaction. It is founded on moderation, on regularity, on inward contentment. It is compatible with the bufieft life; and no man understands and enjoys it lefs 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 fpent without occupation. It procures him infinitely more fatisfactions and pleasures, and conduces far more to his perfection and happinefs. The facred writings therefore, which know our real wants, and beft understand what tends to render us good and happy, everywhere incite us to induftry, to diligence, to the exertion of our abili ties. "Be not flothful in bufinefs," fays the apostle Paul in our text. Perform the business of your of fice, of your calling, not from compulfion, not with reluctance, not in an indolent, negligent way; but execute it with care and application. Let us, my pious hearers, in order to awaken in us a more ready compliance with this apoftolical precept, confider the great value of a bufy life; and to that end first inquire, how fuch a life fhould be conftituted for having a great value; and then, what confers that 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, our connections with other perfons, we have to manage and execute fo many and fuch diverfe affairs and functions, mostly stated, as our time and abilities will allow us to manage and execute. In order that fuch a life may poffefs a real, a fignal value, in the first place, these works, these bufineffes must be proportionate to our powers of mind and body. We should know and understand what we have to do and to manage; we fhould poffefs the requifite capacity, dexterity, fkill; we fhould, at least generally speaking, be able to proceed with facility and a certain confidence in ourfelves; we should therefore have been long and early trained to them, so as to have acquired a certain aptitude in them. If we are plagued and perplexed and checked 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 beft method of beginning or of profecuting them, or from a consciousness of our inability to complete them: fuch a life can indeed be of no great value to us; it is a burden, an oppreffive burden, under which we may eafily fink. In order farther that a life of business should be really, highly valuable to us; the business we carry on |