4 dulgence as its rank demands, and fuch as is confiftent with allowing proper regard to every other; he must gratify his appetite and his paffions in fuch manner and degree, as nct to debafe his affections in difregard of his reafon and his confcience. But a very little acquaintance with human nature, too plainly convinces us that this harmony which fhould arife from the due regulation of the various parts of our internal frame, is in all perfons confiderably difturbed, and in the generality of mankind to fuch a degree, that instead of acting with an eye to every part of their nature, and principally to the fuperior part, they follow thoughtlefly the impulfe of the lowest, as circumstances accidently determine. FROM hence fprings continual difquiet, fimilar to that which is experienced in any civil government when due order and fubordination are deftroyed, aud the inferior members R 4 members of fociety ufurp the place of the highest. And befides this internal difguft which springs naturally from the deftruction' of order in our minds, there is a source of uneafinefs upon the whole ftill more dif treffing which arrives from a sense of guilt, and which must by some means or other be allayed, or our happinefs is utterly destroyed. Every one that reflects upon his nature and his condition, and confiders them (what they really are) as the appointments of a superior power, must know that he is refponfible to that power for not having acted according to that nature, and the motives which he may by any means have received of his maker's will; nay, whether he reflects or not, of this truth, the superior part of his frame, his conscience, will at times render him fufficiently fenfible. WHEN from the nature of man we turn to the contemplation of his external con dition in the present world, the first thing likely to strike us, is the mixture of good and evil in the various fituations of human life: that as there is no ftate of fuffering (fuch is the goodnefs of our heavenly Father) which excludes every fource of satisfaction, fo there is no state of enjoyment unattended by fome difagreeable circumftances. In the early morning of life when all things appear gay and captivating to our imaginations, dreffed in the charms of novelty, we arc apt to entertain more flattering notions; and if our domeftic fituation be upon the whole comfortable, as we feel not, from the merciful provifions of providence for the tender years of childhood, the inconveniences of our fituation, or at least those only which are fhort lived, we are led to think that human life may be rendered one continued courfe of enjoyment; but this delufion gradually retires as we proceed, vanishing altogether, long before our fun has has attained its meridian height: and, as extremes ever beget one another, this unreasonable expectation of enjoyment too often ends in exceffive fears of the evils of life, and inattention to its real good. ANOTHER thing, which no great experience of human affairs is fufficient to teach a reflecting perfon, is—the natural unfatisfactoriness of every earthly enjoyment. Things appear to our minds extremely defirable and capable of affording the highest degree of continued happinefs, which are found after a while to lofe in poffeffion all power of delighting, and to be unable to exclude from our lives infipidity and dif guft. Of this all perfons are fenfible as far as their experience has hitherto extended; but most perfons, looking for the cause of it not where it really exifts, in the general nature of fublunary objects, but fuppofing it to be in the particular nature of the ob jects jects which have engaged their attention with fresh hopes, divert their purfuit to other objects, which are fure to produce fresh disappointment, till at length they too often grow difcontented with the world, and repine at the wife and gracious dispenfations of providence, and drag out the remainder of their days in peevish diffatisfaction with themfelves, and every thing around them. A THIRD circumftance in our prefent condition, will unavoidably ftrike us whether we confider it or not. The most extended age of man, taken in one point of view, is but a leffon of the shortness of human life, and almost every day affords fome inftance of its uncertainty. This point requires no enlargement; the bare mention of it brings a cloud over the brighteft face, and the thoughts of it, which will fometimes pccur, can arreft for a time the most eager purfuit |