works, and build me houses, and plant me vineyards, and make me gardens and pools of water; and I will get me servants and maidens; and whatsoever my eyes desire, I will not keep from them.

In prosecution of this, he drops all gainful pursuits,-withdraws himself from the busy part of the world,-realizes,-pulls down,-builds up again ;buys statues, pictures,-plants-and plucks up by the roots,-levels mountains-and fills up valleys, -turns rivers into dry ground, and dry ground into rivers; says unto this man, Go, and he goeth; and unto another, Do this, and he doeth it;-and whatsoever his soul lusteth after of this kind, he withholds not from it. When every thing is thus planned by himself, and executed according to his wish and direction, surely he is arrived to the accomplishment of his wishes, and has got to the summit of all human happiness!—Let the most fortunate adventurers in this way answer the question for him, and say,—how often it arises higher than a bare and simple amusement, and well, if you can compound for that,-since 'tis often purchased at so high a price, and so soured by a mixture of other incidental vexations, as to become too often a work of repentance, which in the end will extort the same sorrowful confession from him, which it did from Solomon in the like case,-" Lo! I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do,-and behold all was vanity and vexation of spirit,—and there was no profit to me under the sun.

To inflame this account the more,-it would be no miracle, if, upon casting it up, he has gone farther lengths than he first intended, run into expenses which have entangled his fortune, and brought himself into such difficulties as to make way for the last experiment he can try,-and that is to turn miser, with no happiness in view but

what is to rise out of the little designs of a sordid mind, set upon saving and scraping up all he has injudiciously spent.

In this last stage,-behold him a poor trembling wretch, shut up from all mankind,-sinking into utter contempt; spending careful days and sleepless nights in pursuit of what a narrow and contracted heart can never enjoy ;-and let us here leave him to the conviction he will one day find,that there is no end of his labour,-that his eyes will never be satisfied with riches, or will say,For whom do I labour and bereave myself of rest? -This is also a sore travel.

I believe this is no uncommon picture of the disappointments of human life,—and the manner our pleasures and enjoyments slip from under us in every stage of our life. And though I would not be thought by it, as if I was denying the reality of pleasures, or disputing the being of them, any more than one would the reality of pain,-yet I must observe on this head, that there is a plain distinction to be made betwixt pleasure and happiness: for, though there can be no happiness without pleasure, -yet the reverse of the proposition will not hold true. We are so made, that, from the common gratifications of our appetites, and the impressions of a thousand objects, we snatch the one, like a transient gleam, without being suffered to taste the other, and enjoy the perpetual sunshine and fair weather which constantly attend it. This, I contend, is only to be found in religion,-in the consciousness of virtue,--and the sure and certain hopes of a better life, which brightens all our prospects, and leaves no room to dread disappointments, -because the expectation of it is built upon a rock, whose foundations are as deep as those of Heaven and Hell.

And though, in our pilgrimage through this

world,― -some of us may be so fortunate as to meet with some clear fountains by the way, that may cool, for a few moments, the heat of this great thirst of happiness, yet our Saviour, who knew the world, though he enjoyed but little of it, tells us that whosoever drinketh of this water will thirst again; and we all find, by experience, it is so, and, by reason, that it always must be so.

I conclude with a short observation upon Solomon's evidence in this case.

Never did the busy brain of a lean and hectic chemist search for the philosopher's stone with more pains and ardour than this great man did after happiness. He was one of the wisest inquirers into Nature;-had tried all her powers and capacities, and, after a thousand vain speculations and vile experiments, he affirmed, at length, it lay hid in no one thing he had tried. Like the chemist's projections, all had ended in smoke, or, what was worse, in vanity and vexation of spirit.-The conclusion of the whole matter was this,-That he advises every man who would be happy, to fear God and keep his commandments.

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SERMON II.

THE HOUSE OF FEASTING AND THE HOUSE OF MOURNING DESCRIBED.

ECCLES. VII. 2,3.

It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting.

THAT I deny-but let us hear the wise man's reasoning upon it," for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to his heart: sorrow is better than laughter:"—for a crack-brain'd order of Carthusian monks, I grant, but not for men of the

world. For what purpose, do you imagine, has God made us? for the social sweets of the well watered valleys, where he has planted us, or for the dry and dismal desert of a Sierra Morena? Are the sad accidents of life, and the uncheery hours which perpetually overtake us, are they not enough, but we must sally forth in quest of them,-belye our own hearts, and say, as your text would have us, that they are better than those of joy? Did the Best of Beings send us into the world for this end, -to go weeping through it,-to vex and shorten a life short and vexatious enough already? Do you think, my good preacher, that he who is infinitely happy can envy us our enjoyments? or that a Being so infinitely kind would grudge a mournful traveller the short rest and refreshments necessary to support his spirits through the stages of a weary pilgrimage? or that he would call him to a severe reckoning, because in his way he had hastily snatched at some little fugacious pleasures, merely to sweeten this uneasy journey of life, and reconcile him to the ruggedness of the road, and the many hard jostlings he is sure to meet with? Consider, I beseech you, what provision and accommodation the Author of our being has prepared for us, that we might not go on our way sorrowing:-how many caravanseras of rest!-what powers and faculties he has given us for taking it!-what apt objects he has placed in our way to entertain us!-some of which he has made so fair, so exquisitely fitted for this end, that they have power over us, for a time to charm away the sense of pain, to cheer up the dejected heart under poverty and sickness, and make it go and remember its miseries no more.

I will not contend, at present, against this rhetoric; I would choose rather for a moment to go on with the allegory, and say we are travellers, and, in the most affecting sense of that idea, that, like

travellers, though upon business of the last and nearest concern to us, we may surely be allowed to amuse ourselves with the natural or artificial beauties of the country we are passing through, without reproach of forgetting the main errand we are sent upon; and if we can so order it, as not to be led out of the way, by the variety of prospects, edifices, and ruins which solicit us, it would be a nonsensical piece of saint-errantry to shut our eyes.

But let us not lose sight of the argument in pursuit of the simile.

:

Let us remember, various as our excursions are, -that we have still set our faces towards Jerusalem that we have a place of rest and happiness, towards which we hasten; and that the way to get there is not so much to please our hearts, as to improve them in virtue :-that mirth and feasting are usually no friends to atchievements of this kind,but that a season of affliction is, in some sort, a season of piety,-not only because our sufferings are apt to put us in mind of our sins, but that by the check and interruption which they give to our pursuits, they allow us what the hurry and bustle of the world too often deny us;-and that is, a little time for reflection, which is all that most of us want, to make us wiser and better men:-that at certain times it is so necessary a man's mind should be turned towards itself, that rather than want occasions, he had better purchase them at the expense of his present happiness.-He had better, as the text expresses it, go to the house of mourning," where he will meet with something to subdue his passions, than to the house of feasting, where the joy and gaiety of the place is likely to excite them. That whereas the entertainments and caresses of the one place expose his heart and lay it open to temptations, the sorrows of the other defend it, and as naturally shut them from it. So strange and

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