XILL

SERMON cious kind, it is sufficient to blast the most flourishing condition, and to poison all his joys. If to those wounds inflicted by folly, or by passion, you add the wound of guilt, the remorse and fear produced by criminal deeds, you fill up the measure of pain and bitterness of heart. Often have the terrors of conscience occasioned inward paroxysms, or violent agitations of mind. A dark and threatening cloud seems, to the conscious sinner, to be hanging over his head. He who believes himself despised, or hated, by men, and who dreads at the same time an avenging God, can derive little pleasure from the external comforts of life. The bitterness of his heart infuses itself into every draught which pleasure offers to his lips.

The external misfortunes of life, disappointments, poverty, and sickness, are nothing in comparison of those inward distresses of mind, occasioned by folly, by passion, and by guilt. They may indeed prevail in different degrees, according as one or other of those principles of bitterness is predominant. But they are seldom parted far asunder from one another; and when, as it too often happens,

all

all the three are complicated, they complete SERMON the misery of man.

The disorders of the XIII

mind, having then arisen to their height, become of all things the most dreadful. The shame of folly, the violence of passion, and the remorse of guilt, acting in conjunction, have too frequently driven men to the last and abhorred refuge, of seeking relief in death from a life too embittered to be any longer endured. I proceed to consider,

II. OTHER troubles and other joys of the heart, arising from sources different from those that I have now described; founded in the relations or connections which we have with others, and springing from the feelings which these occasion. Such causes of sorrow or joy are of an external nature. Religion does not teach that all the sources of inward pleasure or pain are derived from our temper and moral behaviour. These are indeed the principal springs of bitterness or joy. In one way or other, they affect all the pleasures and pains of life; but they include not, within themselves, the whole of them. Our Creator did not intend, that the happiness

SERMON of each individual should have no depend

XIII.

ence on those who are around him. Hav-
ing connected us in society by many ties, it
is his decree, that these ties should prove,
both during their subsistence, and in their
dissolution, causes of pleasure or pain, im-
mediately, and often deeply, affecting the
human heart. My
My doctrine, therefore, is
not, that the bitterness which the heart know-
eth as its own, and the joy with which a
stranger intermeddleth not, is independent of
every thing external. What I assert is,
that this bitterness and this joy depend
much more on other causes, than on
riches or poverty, on high or low sta-
tions in the world; that equally in the
conditions of elevated fortune and of
private life, the most material circum-
stances of trouble or felicity,
the state of our own mind and temper,
are the sensations and affections which
arise from the connections we have with
others.

next to next

In order to make this appear, let us suppose a man in any rank or condition of life, happy in his family and his friends;

soothed

XIII.

soothed by the cordial intercourse of kind SERMON affections which he partakes with them; enjoying the comfort of doing them good offices, and receiving in return their sincerest gratitude; experiencing no jealousy nor envy, no disquiet or alienation of affection, among those with whom he is connected; how many, and how copious sources of inward joy open to such a man! How smooth is the tenor of a life that proceeds in such a course! What a smiling aspect does the love of parents and children, of brothers and sisters, of friends and relations, give to every surrounding object, and every returning day! With what a lustre does it gild even the small habitation where such placid intercourse dwells; where such scenes of heartfelt satisfaction succeed uninterruptedly to one another!

But let us suppose this joyful intercourse to be broken off, in an untimely hour, by the cruel hand of the last foe; let us imagine the family, once so happy among themselves, to behold the parent, the child, or the spouse, to whom their hearts were attached by the tenderest ties, stretched on the cold bed of death; then what bitter

ness

SERMON ness does the heart know! This, in the

strictest sense, is its own bitterness; from
which it is not in the power of any exter-
nal circumstance whatever to afford it re-
lief. Amidst those piercing griefs of the
heart, all ranks of life are levelled; all dis-
tinctions of fortune are forgotten. Un-
availing are the trophies of splendid woe
with which riches deck the fatal couch, to
give the least comfort to the mourner.
The prince, and the peasant, then equally
feel their own bitterness. Dwelling on the
melancholy remembrance of joys that are
past and
gone, the one forgets his poverty,
the other despises the gilded trappings of
his state; both, in that sad hour, are fully
sensible, that on the favours of fortune it
depends not to make man happy in this
world.

But it is not only the death of friends, which, in the midst of a seemingly prosperous state, is able to bring distress home to the heart. From various failures in their conduct when living, arises much of the inward uneasiness we suffer. It will, in general, be found, that the behaviour of those among whom we live in near con

nection,