was writing against riches, he was enjoying a great estate, and using every means to make that estate still greater!

With infinite pleasure might a preacher enrich his discourse in this place, by weaving into it all the smart things which ancient or modern wits have said upon the love of money: he might inform you,

would reflect dishonour upon God; as if he had made and sent men into the world on purpose to play the fool. His all-bountiful hand made man's judgment, like his heart, upright; and the instances of his sagacity in other things abundantly confirm it: we are led therefore, in course, to a supposition, that in all inconsistent instances there is a secret bias, somehow or

'That a miser can only be said to have riches as a sick man has a fever, which holds and tyrannizes over the man,-not he over it!'

'That covetousness is the shirt of the soul, the last vice it parts with!'

What this is, if we do not care to search for it in ourselves, we shall find it registered in this translation of Felix ; and we may depend, that in all wrong judgments whatever, in such plain cases as this, the same explanation must be

The reflection of our Saviour, 'That the life of man consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth,'-speaks more to the heart; and the single hint of the Camel, and what a very narrow passage he has to go through, has more coercion in it than all the see-saws of philosophy.

I shall endeavour, therefore, to draw such other reflections from this piece of sacred history as are applicable to human life, and more likely to be of use.

There is nothing generally in which our happiness and honour are more nearly concerned than in forming true notions both of men and things; for, in proportion as we think rightly of them, we approve ourselves to the world; and as we govern ourselves by such judgments, so we secure our peace and wellbeing in passing through it: the false steps and miscarriages in life, issuing from a defect in this capital point, are so many and fatal, that there can be nothing more instructive than an inquiry into the causes of this perversion, which often appears so very gross in us, that were you to take a view of the world,-see what notions it entertains, and by what considerations it is governed, you would say of the mistakes of human judgment, what the prophet does of the folly of human actions,-'That we were wise to do evil; but to judge rightly had no understanding.'

That in many dark and abstracted questions of mere speculation we should err, is not strange; we live among mysteries and riddles; and almost everything which comes in our way, in one light or other, may be said to baffle our understandings, yet seldom so as to mistake in extremities, and take one contrary for another. 'Tis very rare, for instance, that we take the virtue of a plant to be hot when it is extremely cold, or that we try the experiment of opium to keep us waking; yet this we are continually attempting in the conduct of life, as well as in the great ends and measures of it. That such wrong determinations in us do arise from any defect of judgment inevitably misleading us,

that it is some selfish consideration, some secret dirty engagement with some little appetite, which does us so much dishonour.

The judgments of the more disinterested and impartial of us receive no small tincture from our affections: we generally consult them in all doubtful points; and it happens well if the matter in question is not almost settled before the arbitrator is called into the debate. But in the more flagrant instances, where the passions govern the whole man, 'tis melancholy to see the office to which Reason, the great prerogative of his nature, is reduced; serving the lower appetites in the dishonest drudgery of finding out arguments to justify the present pursuit.

To judge rightly of our own worth, we should retire a little from the world, to see all its pleasures, and pains too, in their proper size and dimensions. This, no doubt, was the reason St. Paul, when he intended to convert Felix, began his discourse upon the day of judgment, on purpose to take the heart off from this world and its pleasures, which dishonour the understanding, so as to turn the wisest of men into fools and children.

If you enlarge your observations upon this plan, you will find where the evil lies which has supported those desperate opinions which have so long divided the Christian world, and are likely to divide it for ever.

Consider Popery well; you will be convinced that the truest definition which can be given of it is, that it is a pecuniary system, well contrived to operate upon men's passions and weakness, whilst their pockets are o'picking! Run through all the points of difference between us; and when you see that, in every one of them, they serve the same end which Felix had in view, either of money or of power, there is little room left to doubt whence the cloud arises which is spread over the understanding.

If this reasoning is conclusive with regard to those who merely differ from us in religion, let us try if it will not hold good with regard to those who have none at all; or rather, who affect to treat all persuasions of it with ridicule alike. Thanks to good sense, good manners,

and a more enlarged knowledge, this humour is going down, and seems to be settling at present chiefly amongst the inferior classes of people, where it is likely to rest. As for the lowest ranks, though they are apt enough to follow the modes of their betters, yet are they not likely to be struck with this one, of making merry with that which is their consolation; they are too serious a set of poor people ever heartily to enter into it.

There is enough, however, of it in the world, to say that this all-sacred system, which holds the world in harmony and peace, is too often the first object that the giddy and inconsiderate make choice of to try the temper of their wits upon. Now, of the numbers who make this experiment, do you believe that one in a thousand does it from conviction, or from arguments which a course of study, much cool reasoning, and a sober inquiry into antiquity, and the true merits of the question, have furnished him with? The years and way of life of the most forward of these lead us to a different explanation.

Religion, which lays so many restraints upon us, is a troublesome companion to those who will lay no restraints upon themselves; and, for this reason, there is nothing more common to be observed, than that the little arguments and cavils which such men have gathered up against it in the early part of their lives, how considerable soever they may have appeared when viewed through their passions and prejudices, which give an unnatural turn to all objects, yet, when the edge of appetite has been worn down, and the heat of the pursuit pretty well over, and reason and judgment have got possession of their empire,

'A certain man,' says our Saviour, had two sons, and the younger of them said to his father, Give me the portion of goods that falls to me; and he divided unto them his substance. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.'

The account is short; the interesting and pathetic passages, with which such a transaction would be necessarily connected, are left to be supplied by the heart: the story is silent, but nature is not: much kind advice and many a tender expostulation would fall from the father's lips, no doubt, upon this occasion.

He would dissuade his son from the folly of so rash an enterprise, by showing him the dangers of the journey, the inexperience of his age, the hazards his life, his fortune, his virtue would run, without a guide, without a friend : he would tell him of the many snares and temptations which he had to avoid or encounter at every step,-the pleasures which would solicit him in every luxurious court, -the little knowledge he could gain, except that of evil; he would speak of the seductions of women, their charms, their poisons; what hapless indulgences he might give way to when far from restraint, and the check of giving his father pain.

The dissuasive would but inflame his desires. He gathers all together.

I see the picture of his departure; the camels and asses loaded with his substance, detached, on one side of the piece, and already on their way; the prodigal son standing on the foreground, with a forced sedateness, struggling against the fluttering movement of joy upon his

May God bring us all there. Amen.

XX. THE PRODIGAL SON.

And not many days after, the younger son gathered all he had together, and took his journey into a far country.'-LUKE XV. 13.

I KNOW not whether the remark is to our honour or otherwise, that lessons of wisdom have never such power over us as when they are wrought into the heart through the groundwork of a story which engages the passions. Is it that we are like iron, and must first be heated before we can be wrought upon? or, Is the heart so in love with deceit, that, where a true report will not reach it, we must cheat it with a fable, in order to come at truth?

Whether this parable of the Prodigal (for so it is usually called) is really such, or built upon some story known at that time in Jerusalem, is not much to the purpose; it is given us to enlarge upon, and turn to the best moral account

we can.

holding his hand, as if unwilling to let it go; the father, sad moment! with a firm look, covering a prophetic sentiment, that all would not go well with his child,'-approaching to embrace him and bid him adieu. Poor inconsiderate youth! From whose arms art thou flying? From what a shelter art thou going forth into the storm! Art thou weary of a father's affection, of a father's care? or hopest thou to find a warmer interest, a truer counsellor, or a kinder friend, in a land of strangers, where youth is made a prey, and so many thousands are confederated to deceive them, and live by their spoils ?

We will seek no further than this idea for the extravagance by which the prodigal son added one unhappy example to the number; his fortune wasted, the followers of it fled, in course, -the wants of nature remain; the hand of God gone forth against him,- for when he had spent all, a mighty famine arose in that country.' Heaven have pity upon the youth, for he is in hunger and distress ;- strayed out of the reach of a parent, who counts every hour of his ab

sence with anguish; cut off from all his tender offices by his folly, and from relief and charity from others by the calamity of the times.

Nothing so powerfully calls home the mind as distress! the tense fibre then relaxes, the soul retires to itself,-sits pensive, and susceptible of right impressions: if we have a friend, it is then we think of him; if a benefactor, at that moment all his kindnesses press on our mind. Gracious and bountiful God! Is it not for this that they who in their prosperity forget thee, do yet remember and return to thee in the hour of their sorrow? When our heart is in heaviness, upon whom can we think but thee, who knowest our necessities afar off,puttest all our tears into thy bottle,-seest every careful thought,-hearest every sigh and melancholy groan we utter !

Strange! that we should only begin to think of God with comfort, when with joy and comfort we can think of nothing else.

Man surely is a compound of riddles and contradictions: by the law of his nature he avoids pain; and yet, unless he suffers in the flesh, he will not cease from sin,' though it is sure to bring pain and misery upon his head for ever.

Whilst all went pleasurably on with the prodigal, we hear not one word concerning his father; no pang of remorse for the sufferings in which he had left him, or resolution of returning, to make up the account of his folly: his first hour of distress seemed to be his first hour of wisdom. When he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father have bread enough and to spare, whilst I perish!'

Of all the terrors of nature, that of one day or other dying by hunger is the greatest; and it is wisely wove into our frame to awaken man to industry, and call forth his talents; and though we seem to go on carelessly sporting with it, as we do with other terrors, yet he that sees this enemy fairly, and in his most frightful shape, will need no long remonstrance to make him turn out of the way to avoid him.

It was the case of the prodigal; he arose to go to his father.

Alas! How should he tell his story? Ye who have trod this round, tell me in what words he shall give in to his father the sad items of his extravagance.

The feasts and banquets which he gave to whole cities in the East; the costs of Asiatic rarities, and of Asiatic cooks to dress them; the expenses of singing men and singing women -the flute, the harp, the sackbut, and of all kinds of music; the dress of the Persian courts, how magnificent! their slaves, how numerous! their chariots, their horses, their palaces, their furniture-what immense sums they had devoured! what expectations from strangers of condition! what exactions!

How shall the youth make his father compre

hend that he was cheated at Damascus by one of the best men in the world; that he had lent a part of his substance to a friend at Nineveh, who had fled off with it to the Ganges; that a whore of Babylon had swallowed his best pearl, and anointed the whole city with his balm of Gilead; that he had been sold by a man of honour for twenty shekels of silver to a worker in graven images; that the images he had purchased had profited him nothing; that they could not be transported across the wilderness, and had been burned with fire at Shusan; that the apes and peacocks, which he had sent for from Tarsis, lay dead upon his hands; and that the mummies had not been dead long enough which had been brought him out of Egypt: that all had gone wrong since the day he forsook his father's house?

Leave the story: it will be told more concisely. 'When he was yet afar off, his father saw him.' Compassion told it in three words: 'He fell upon his neck and kissed him.'

Great is the power of eloquence; but never is it so great as when it pleads along with Nature, and the culprit is a child strayed from his duty and returned to it again with tears. Casuists may settle the point as they will; but what could a parent see more in the account than the natural one of an ingenuous heart too open for the world-smitten with strong sensations of pleasures, and suffered to sally forth unarmed into the midst of enemies stronger than himself?

Generosity sorrows as much for the overmatched as Pity herself.

The idea of a son so ruined would double the father's caresses: every effusion of his tenderness would add bitterness to his son's remorse'Gracious heaven! what a father have I rendered miserable!'

And he said, 'I have sinned against Heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.'

'But the father said, Bring forth the best robe.'

O ye affections! how fondly do ye play at cross purposes with each other! "Tis the natural dialogue of true transport: joy is not methodical; and where an offender, beloved, overcharges itself in the offence, words are too cold, and a conciliated heart replies by tokens of

esteem.

'And he said unto his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, and bring hither the fatted calf, and let us eat and drink, and be merry.'

When the affections so kindly break loose, Joy is another name for Religion.

We look up as we taste it: the cold Stoic without, when he hears the dancing and the music, may ask sullenly (with the elder brother)

1 Vide 2 Chron. x:1

what it means, and refuse to enter; but the humane and compassionate all fly impetuously to the banquet given for a son who was dead and is alive again, who was lost and is found.' Gentle spirits light up the pavilion with a sacred fire; and parental love and filial piety lead in the mask with riot and wild festivity! Was it not for this that God gave man music to strike upon the kindly passions; that Nature taught the feet to dance to its movements, and, as chief governess of the feast, poured forth wine into the goblet to crown it with gladness?

The intention of this parable is so clear from the occasion of it, that it will not be necessary to perplex it with any tedious explanation. It was designed by way of indirect remonstrance to the scribes and Pharisees, who animadverted upon our Saviour's conduct for entering so freely into conferences with sinners in order to reclaim them. To that end he proposes the parable of the shepherd, who left his ninety-and-nine sheep that were safe in the fold to go and seek for one sheep that was gone astray-telling them, in other places, that they who were whole wanted not a physician, but they who were sick; and here, to carry on the same lesson, and to prove how acceptable such a recovery was to God, he relates this account of the prodigal son and his welcome reception.

I know not whether it would be a subject of much edification to convince you here that our Saviour, by the prodigal son, particularly pointed at those who are sinners of the Gentiles, and were recovered by divine grace to repentance; and that by the elder brother he intended as manifestly the more froward of the Jews, who envied their conversion, and thought it a kind of wrong to their primogeniture in being made fellow-heirs with them of the promises of God. These uses have been so ably set forth in so many good sermons upon the Prodigal Son, that I shall turn aside from them at present, and content myself with some reflections upon that fatal passion which led him-and so many thousands after the example-'to gather all he had together, and take his journey into a far country.'

The love of variety, or curiosity of seeing new things, which is the same, or at least a sister passion to it, seems woven into the frame of every son and daughter of Adam. We usually speak of it as one of Nature's levities, though planted within us for the solid purposes of carrying forward the mind to fresh inquiry and knowledge. Strip us of it, the mind (I fear) would doze for ever over the present page; and we should all of us rest at ease with such objects as presented themselves in the parish or province where we first drew breath.

It is to this spur, which is ever in our sides, that we owe the impatience of this desire for travelling. The passion is no way bad, but, as others are, in its mismanagement or excess.

Order it rightly, the advantages are worth the pursuit: the chief of which are to learn the languages, the laws and customs, and understand the government and interest of other nations; to acquire an urbanity and confidence of behaviour, and fit the mind more easily for conversation and discourse; to take us out of the company of our aunts and grandmothers, and from the track of nursery mistakes: and, by showing us new objects, or old ones in new lights, to reform our judgments; by tasting perpetually the varieties of Nature, to know what is good; by observing the address and arts of man, to conceive what is sincere; and, by seeing the difference of so many various humours and manners, to look into ourselves and form

our own.

This is some part of the cargo we might return with; but the impulse of seeing new sights, augmented with that of getting clear from all lessons both of wisdom and reproof at home, carries our youth too early out to turn this venture to much account; on the contrary, if the scene painted of the prodigal in his travels looks more like a copy than an original, will it not be well if such an adventurer, with so unpromising a setting out-without cartewithout compass,-be not cast away for ever? and may he not be said to escape well, if he return to his country only as naked as he first left it?

But you will send an able pilot with your son-a scholar.

If wisdom can speak in no other language but Greek or Latin, you do well; or, if mathematics will make a man a gentleman, or natural philosophy but teach him to make a bow, he may be of some service in introducing your son into good societies, and supporting him in them when he has done; but the upshot will be generally this, that in the most pressing occasions of address, if he is a mere man of reading, the unhappy youth will have the tutor to carry, and not the tutor to carry him.

But you will avoid this extreme: he shall be escorted by one who knows the world not merely from books, but from his own experience; a man who has been employed on such services, and thrice made the tour of Europe with suc

-That is, without breaking his own or his pupil's neck; for, if he is such as my eyes have scen! some broken Swiss valet de chambre,— some general undertaker, who will perform the journey in so many months, if God permit, much knowledge will not accrue ;-some profit at least; he will learn the amount, to a halfJenny, of every stage from Calais to Rome; he will be carried to the best inns, instructed where there is the best wine, and sup a livre cheaper than if the youth had been left to make the tour and the bargain himself.-Look at

our governor, I beseech you! see, he is an inch taller, as he relates the advantages !

manner, each man to his son, yet one cannot suppose that the directions should be neces

But when your son gets abroad, he will be taken out of his hand by his society with men of rank and letters, with whom he will pass the greatest part of his time.

Let me observe, in the first place, that company which is really good is very rare, and very shy; but you have surmounted this difficulty, and procured him the best letters of recommendation to the most eminent and respectable in every capital.

And I answer, that he will obtain all by them which courtesy strictly stands obliged to pay on such occasions-but no more.

There is nothing in which we are so much de- | ceived as in the advantages proposed from our connections and discourse with the literati, etc., in foreign parts; especially if the experiment is made before we are matured by years or study.

Conversation is a traffic; and if you enter into it without some stock of knowledge to balance the account perpetually betwixt you, the trade drops at once: and this is the reason, however it may be boasted to the contrary, why travellers have so little (especially good) conversation with natives, owing to their suspicion, or perhaps conviction, that there is nothing to be extracted from the conversation of young itinerants worth the trouble of their bad language or the interruption of their visits.

The pain on these occasions is usually reciprocal; the consequence of which is that the disappointed youth seeks an easier society; and as bad company is always ready, and ever lying in wait, the career is soon finished; and the poor prodigal returns the same object of pity with the prodigal in the Gospel.

XXI-NATIONAL MERCIES

CONSIDERED.1

And when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments which the Lord our God hath commanded you? Then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh's bondsmen in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.'—DEUT. VI. 20, 21. THESE are the words which Moses left as a standing answer for the children of Israel to give their posterity, who, in time to come, might become ignorant or unmindful of the many and great mercies which God had vouchsafed to their forefathers: all which had terminated in that one of their deliverance out of bondage.

Though they were directed to speak in this

1 On the inauguration of his present Majesty.

of those who had been eye-witnesses of God's providence; it does not seem likely that any of them should arrive to that age of reasoning which would put them upon asking the supposed question, and not be long beforehand instructed in the answer. Every parent would tell his child the hardships of his captivity, and the amazing particulars of his deliverance; the story was so uncommon, so full of wonder, and withal the recital of it would ever be a matter of such transport, it could not possibly be kept a secret; the piety and gratitude of one generation would anticipate the curiosity of another; their sons would learn the story with their language.

This probably might be the case with the first or second race of people, but in process of time things might take different turn; a long and undisturbed possession of their liberties might blunt the sense of those providences of God which had procured them, and set the remembrance of all his mercies at too great a distance from their hearts. After they had for some years been eased of every real burden, an excess of freedom might make them restless under every imaginary one, and, amongst others, that of their religion; whence they might seek occasion to inquire into the foundation and fitness of its ceremonies, its statutes, and its judgments.

They might ask, What meant so many commands, in matters which to them appeared indifferent in their own natures? What policy in ordaining them? And what obligation could there lie upon reasonable creatures to comply with a multitude of such unaccountable injunctions so unworthy the wisdom of God?

Hereafter, possibly, they might go further lengths; and though their natural bent was generally towards superstition, yet some adventurers, as is ever the case, might steer for the opposite coast, and, as they advanced, might discover that all religions, of what denominations or complexions soever, were alike: that the religion of their own country, in particular, was a contrivance of the priests and Levites, a phantom dressed out in a terrifying garb of their own making, to keep weak minds in fear; that its rites and ceremonies, and numberless injunctions, were so many different wheels in the same political engine, put in, no doubt, to amuse the ignorant, and keep them in such a state of darkness as clerical juggling requires.

That as for the moral part of it, though it was unexceptionable in itself, yet it was a piece of intelligence they did not stand in want of: men had natural reason always to have found it out, and wisdom to have practised it, without Moses' assistance.