!

to perplex and make his being uneasy How many jostlings and hard struggles do we undergo, in making our way in the world!How barbarously held back! How often and basely overthrown, in aiming only at getting bread! How many of us never attain at least not comfortably, but from various and unknown causes eat it all our

it

lives long in bitterness!

If we shift the scene, and look upwards, towards those whose situation in life seems to place them above the sorrows of this kind, yet where are they exempt from others? Do not all ranks and conditions of men meet with sad accidents and numberless calamities in other respects, which often make them go heavily all their lives long?

How many fall into chronical infirmities, which render both their days and nights restless and insupportable ? How many of the highest rank are torn up with ambition, or soured with disappointments; and how many more, from a thousand secret causes of disquiet, pine away in silence, and owe their deaths to sorrow and dejection of heart? If we cast our eyes upon the lowest class and condition of life, the scene is more melan

choly still. Millions of our fellow-creatures, born to no inheritance but poverty and trouble, forced by the necessity of their lots to drudgery and painful employments, and hard set with that too, to get enough to keep themselves and families alive. So that upon

the whole, when we have examined the true state and condition of human life, and have made some allowances for a few fugacious, deceitful pleasures, there is scarce anything to be found which contradicts Job's description of it.

Whichever way we look abroad, we see some legible characters of what GOD first denounced against us, "That in sorrow we should eat our bread, till we return to the ground from whence we were taken. "*

But some one will say, Why are we thus to be put out of love with human life? To what purpose is it to expose the dark sides of it to us, or enlarge upon the infirmities which are natural, and consequently out of our power to redress?

I answer, that the subject is nevertheless of great importance, since it is necessary every creature should understand his present state

*N. B. Most of these reflections upon the miseries of life are taken from Woollaston,

and condition, to put him in mind of behaving suitably to it. - Does not an impartial survey of man- the holding up of this glass to show him his defects and natural infirmities, naturally tend to cure his pride, and clothe him with humility, which is a dress that best becomes a short-lived and a wretched creature? — Does not the consideration of the shortness of our life convince us of the wisdom of dedicating so small a portion to the great purposes of eternity?

Lastly, When we reflect that this span of life, short as it is, is chequered with so many troubles, that there is nothing in this world springs up, or can be enjoyed without a mixture of sorrow, how insensibly does it incline us to turn our eyes and affections from so gloomy a prospect, and fix them upon that happier country, where afflictions cannot follow us, and where GOD will wipe away all tears from off our faces for ever and ever! Amen.

SERMON XI

EVIL-SPEAKING

If any man among you seemeth to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, that man's religion is vain. JAMES i. 26.

F the many duties owing both to God

OF

and our neighbour, there are scarce any men so bad, as not to acquit themselves of some, and few so good, I fear, as to practise all.

Every man seems willing enough to compound the matter, and adopt so much of the system, as will least interfere with his principal and ruling passion, and for those parts which would occasion a more troublesome opposition, to consider them as hard sayings, and so leave them for those to practise, whose natural tempers are better suited to the struggle. So that a man should be covetous, oppressive, revengeful, neither a lover of truth, nor common honesty, and yet at the same time shall be very