being accountable to any one for the application of them. There is One, most affuredly, who may, and who has declared that he will, call you to an account, for the use of that leifure and those riches, which he bestowed up

on you for far other purpofes than that mean ignoble one of mere felfish gratification. There are duties of the laft importance owing to your families, your friends, your country, your fellow-creatures, your Creator, which you are bound under the moft facred ties to perform; and whatever calls off your attention from these, does from that moment cease to be innocent. Here then is the precise point at which you ought to ftop. You may be LOVERS OF PLEASURE; it is natural, it is reasonable, for you to be fo; but must not be LOVERS OF PLEASURE, MORE THAN LOVERS OF GOD. This is the true line that feparates harmless gayety from criminal diffipation. It is a line drawn by the hand of God himfelf, and he will never fuffer it to be paffed with impunity. HE claims, on the justest grounds, the first place in your hearts. His laws and precepts are to be the first object of your regard. And be affured, that by suffer

you

ing them to be fo, you will be no lofers even in present felicity. It is a truth demonftrable by reason, and confirmed by invariable experience, that a perpetual round of fashionable gayety, is not the road to real fubftantial happiness. Ask those who have tried it, and they will all (if they are honeft) with one voice declare, that it is not. It is indeed in the very nature of things impoffible that it should be

fo.

This world is not calculated to afford, the human mind is not formed to bear, a conftant fucceffion of new and exquifite delights. To aim therefore at uninterrupted, unbounded gayety, to make pleasure so neceffary to your exiftence, that you cannot fubfift one moment without it, is to convert every thing that is not abfolute pleasure into abfolute pain, and to lay the foundation of certain mifery. Diverfions are of too thin and unfubftantial a nature to fill the whole capacity of a rational mind, or to fatisfy the cravings of a foul formed for immortality. They muft, they do, tire and difguft; you fee it every day; you see men flying from one amusement to another; affecting to be happy, yet feeling themselves miferable; fa

tigued with pursuing their pleasures, yet uneafy without them; growing fick at last of them all, of themselves, and every thing around them; and compelled perhaps at laft to have recourse to folitude, without the least provifion made for it; without any fund of entertainment within, to render it supportable. From this wretched ftate it is that religion would preferve you; and the very worft you have to fear from it, is nothing more than fuch gentle reftraints on your gayety, as tend to promote the very end you have in view, the true enjoyment even of the prefent life. Suffer it then to do you this kind office; and do not look on Christianity in that gloomy light, in which it sometimes perhaps appears to you. Far from being an enemy to chearfulness, it is the trueft friend to it. That fober and temperate use of diverfions, which it allows and recommends, is the fureft way to preserve their power to please, and your capacity to enjoy them. At the fame time, though it forbids excess in our pleafures, yet it multiplies the number of them; and difpofes the mind to receive entertainment from a variety of objects and pursuits, which

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which to the gay part of mankind are abfolutely flat and infipid. To a body in perfect. health the plainest food is relishing, and to a foul rightly harmonized by religion every thing affords delight. Rural retirement, domestic tranquillity, friendly conversation, literary pursuits, philofophical enquiries, works of genius and imagination; nay even the filent beauties of unadorned nature, a. bright day, a still evening, a starry hemisphere, are sources of unadulterated pleasure to those whose taste is not vitiated by criminal indulgences, or debafed by trifling ones.. And when from these you rife to the still more rational and manly delights of virtue; to that felf-congratulation which springs up, in the foul from the consciousness of having ufed your best endeavours to act up to the precepts of the Gospel; of having done your utmost, with the help of Divine Grace, to correct your infirmities, to fubdue your pasfions, to improve your understandings, to exalt and purify your affections, to promote the welfare of all within your reach, to love and obey your Maker and your Redeemer; then is human happiness wound up to its utmost pitch;

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pitch; and this world has no higher gratifications to give.

Try then, you, who are in search of pleafures, try these among the reft; try, above all others, the pleasures of devotion. Think not that they are nothing more than the vifions of a heated imagination. They are real, they are exquifite. They are what thousands have experienced, what thousands ftill experience, what you yourselves may experience if you please. Acquire only a tafle for devotion, (as you often do for other things of far lefs value) in the beginning of life, and it will be your support and comfort through the whole extent of it. It will raife you above all low cares, and little gratifications; it will give dignity and sublimity to your fentiments, infpire you with fortitude in danger, with patience in adversity, with moderation in profperity, with alacrity in all your undertakings, with watchfulness over your own conduct, with benevolence to all mankind. It will be fo far from throwing a damp on your other pleasures, that it will give new life and spirit to them, and make all nature look gay around you. It will be a fresh