Does he not always bear about with him the faireft difpofitions, the acuteft fenfibility, the richest materials, and can it be very difficult for him to furmount by degrees the obstacles he meets with, and by a mild, affectionate temper, by generous fentiments and actions to conquer whatever may be at variance with the enjoyment of these delights!

In this furvey of the fources of human happiness, how is it poffible for us to pass over one of the purest and most exuberant of them all, I mean the joys of devotion, and the prospect of everlasting continuance and everlasting happiness? What abfence of outward privileges and endowments, what privation of them cannot this supply! What enjoyment of good do they not sweeten and elevate, what apprehenfion of evil, what load of affliction, do they not weaken and alleviate! Yes, when I foar in spirit to the realms above; when I behold all in its dependence on God, in its connection with him; when I contemplate all as the work, as the arrangement, as the difpenfation of his hand, as fubfervient to the greatest poffible perfection; when I meditate on the intimate, the bleffed relation in which I ftand to the Almighty, the Allwife, the Allbountiful; when I think and feel that I am his creature, his fubject, his fon, that I am allied to angels, and of divine defcent; when I pour out my heart before him, as to my father, who is effential love and benignity, commend my fortunes and those of all my brethren to his fupreme difpofal, and refign myfelf

myself to his providence and to his promises; when I rejoice before him in my immortality, when I rejoice in the hope of approaching continually nearer to him, the Infinite, the Supremely Perfect, and of eternally growing in knowledge, in virtue, in happiness: how great indeed, how blissful muft I then feel myself! What pure, what fublime delight then overflows my heart! How great the preponderance then of my agreeable ideas and fenfations over the disagreeable ones! How inconfiderable must the latter be in comparison of the former! And who hinders you, men, chriftians, who hinders you from drawing daily your fill from this fource of fatisfaction and pleasure ?

No, in fources of happiness you are not wanting, my dear friends; the brief furvey we have now been making is a proof of it. They ftand open to you all. No human power can fhut them against you without your confent, they invite you all to enjoyment. They offer you all refreshment, comfort, fatisfaction, pleasure, to the poor as well as to the rich, to the low as well as to the high, to the unlearned as well as to the learned. They are no less beneficial than innoxious, as pure as they are copious. Every one may draw from them in full meafure, without the leaft detriment to another; none can drain them dry; none can find them tastelefs but by his own fault. No, nought but our own inattention and perverseness, nought but follies and fins can fhut them against us, or difturb and atte

nuate them and deprive them of their efficacy. Surely, my dear friends, he that, furrounded by these feveral fources of fatisfaction and pleasure, pants for fatisfaction and pleasure in vain; he that, with all these means of happiness, is yet unhappy: he is fo by his own fault; let him not accufe nature, not the author of nature, not any dire neceffity, but only himself. Prosperity and adversity rarely depend on us but happiness and unhappiness are always in our power; they entirely depend on our mind and manners, on the estimates we form of ourselves and of external objects, and on the use we make of them. Attention and reflection, wifdom and virtue and piety as certainly render us happy, as certainly as we refign ourselves to their influence and direction, Under the conduct therefore of thefe guides, make ufe, my dear friends, of the fources of happiness which your bountiful Father in heaven has opened and allotted to you; use them with dili gence and fidelity; taste and fee in the enjoyment of them, how gracious the Lord is; and glorify him, your fovereign benefactor, by a grateful, contented and cheerful enjoyment of his bounties, which are not lefs various than they are great,

SERMON XLVI.

The Chriftian Doctrine concerning Happiness.

GOD, thou haft defigned us all for happiness, and furnished us with all the capacities and means for becoming actually happy. But how few of us reach this glorious object! How flowly we approach it! How frequently, fafcinated by error and fin, do we mistake the way to it!. In what obliquities and intricate mazes do we often pafs the greater part of our lives! of our lives! And then we complain of a deficiency of happiness; perhaps cenfure thy wife settlements and difpofals, murmur at thy dispenfations, and bewail the melancholy lot of humanity. And yet it is we who load ourselves with the heaviest burdens of life, and the misery under which we so often figh, is mifery of our own seeking, most of the forrows that oppress us are the fruits of our own folly. Ah God, compaffionate Father, have pity upon us; do thou lead us back from our deviations. Yes, thou haft not abandoned thy erroneous, thy guilty children; thou hast

not

not left them to themselves. Thou haft fent us thy fon from heaven, in him thou haft given us an infallible teacher of happiness, a fafe and faithful guide to felicity, a mighty deliverer from all misery! Oh might we justly acknowledge thy parental kindness, and gratefully and worthily ufe it. Might we hearken to the voice of Jefus, who warns us on thy part against every devious and mazy turning, and irvites us back to the path of life; might we entirely fubmit to his guidance, and willingly follow his directions to happiness. We are met in thy prefence, o God, to imbibe his inftruction on this fubject; grant that it may be falutary to us all. Let us learn from it the way to true happiness, and then walk cheerfully and refolutely on it. We implore thefe bleffings of thee in the name of thy fon Jefus ; and, confiding in his promifes, as he condefcended to teach us we further addrefs thee: Our father, &c.