1 (24) SERMON II. ECCLESIASTES VII. 2, 3. It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to the house of feasting. TH HAT I deny but let us hear the wife man's reasoning upon it - for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to his heart: forrow is better than laughter - for a crack'dbrain'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 vallies where he has planted us, or for the dry and dismal deferts of a Sierra Morena? are the fad accidents of life, and the uncheery hours 3 which ! which perpetually overtake us, are they not enough, but we must sally forth in quest of them, - belie 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 fupport 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 snatch'd at fome little fugacious pleasures, merely to sweeten this uneasy journey of life, and reconcile him to the ruggedness of the the road, and the many hard juftlings he is fure to meet with? Confider, I beseech you, what provision and accommodation, the Author of our being has prepared for us, that we might not go on our way forrowing - how many caravansera's 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; - fome of which he has made fo fair, so exquifitely 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 againft this rhetorick; I would choose rather for a moment to go on with the allegory, and say we are travellers, and, in the most affecting 1 affecting sense of that idea, that like ⚫ travellers, though upon business of the last and nearest concern to us, may furely 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 follicit us, it would be a nonfenfical piece of faint errantry to shut our eyes. But let us not lose sight of the argument in pursuit of the fimile. Let us remember various as our excurfions are, - that we have still fet our faces towards Jerufalem-that we have a place of reft and happiness, towards which we 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 fome fort a season of piety - not only because our fufferings are apt to put us in mind of our fins, but that by the check and interruption which they give to our purfuits, 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 occafions, he had better purchase them at the expence of his present happiness. - He had better, as the text expresses it, go to the house of mourning, where he will meet with some3. thing |