Dear, inconsiderate Christians, wait not, I beseech you, till then; take a view of your life now. Look back, behold this fair space, capable of such heavenly improvements, all scrawled over and defaced with-I want words to say with what, for I think only of the reflections with which you are to support yourselves in the decline of a life so miserably cast away, should it happen, as it often does, that ye have stood idle unto the eleventh hour, and have all the work of the day to perform when night comes on, and no one can work.

Secondly, As to the evil of the days of the years of our pilgrimage, speculation and fact appear at variance again. We agree with the patriarch that the life of man is miserable; and yet the world looks happy enough, and everything tolerably at its ease. It must be noted, indeed, that the patriarch, in this account, speaks merely his present feelings, and seems rather to be giving a history of his sufferings than a system of them, in contradiction to that of the God of love. Look upon the world he has given us! Observe the riches and plenty which flow in every channel, not only to satisfy the desires of the temperate, but of the fanciful and wanton! Every place is almost a paradise, planted when Nature was in her gayest humour!

Everything has two views. Jacob, and Job, and Solomon, gave one section of the globe; and this representation another. Truth lieth betwixt, or rather, good and evil are mixed up together; which of the two preponderates is beyond our inquiry, but I trust it is the good. First, as it renders the Creator of the world more dear and venerable to us; and, secondly, because I will not suppose that a work intended to exalt his glory should stand in want of apologies.

Whatever is the proportion of misery in this world, it is certain that it can be no duty of religion to increase the complaint, or to affect the praise which the Jesuits' college of Granada gave their Sanchez:-That though he lived where there was a very sweet garden, yet was never seen to touch a flower; and that he would rather die than eat salt or pepper, or aught that might give a relish to his meat.

I pity the men whose natural pleasures are burdens, and who fly from Joy (as these splenetic and morose souls do) as if it was really an evil in itself.

If there is an evil in this world, 'tis sorrow and heaviness of heart. The loss of goods, of health, of coronets and mitres, are only evil as they occasion sorrow; take that out, the rest is fancy, and dwelleth only in the head of man.

likely to continue so to the end of the world, the best we can do in it is to make the same use of this part of our character which wise men do of other bad propensities,-when they find they cannot conquer them, they endeavour at least to divert them into good channels.

If, therefore, we must be a solicitous race of self-tormentors, let us drop the common objects which make us so, and for God's sake be solicitous only to live well.

XXIII. -THE PARABLE OF THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS CONSIDERED.

'And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one should rise from the dead.'-LUKE XVI. 31.

THESE words are the conclusion of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the design of which was to show us the necessity of conducting ourselves by such lights as God had been pleased to give us the sense and meaning of the patriarch's final determination in the text being this, That they who will not be persuaded to answer the great purposes of their being, upon such arguments as are offered to them in Scripture, will never be persuaded to it by any other means, how extraordinary soever. they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one should rise from the dead.'

'If

Rise from the dead! To what purpose? What could such a messenger propose or urge which had not been proposed and urged already? The novelty or surprise of such a visit might awaken the attention of a curious unthinking people, who spent their time in nothing else but to hear and tell some new thing; but ere the wonder was well over, some new wonder would start up in its room, and then the man might return to the dead, whence he came, and not a soul make one inquiry about him.

This, I fear, would be the conclusion of the affair. But, to bring this matter still closer to us, let us imagine, if there is nothing unworthy in it, that God, in compliance with a curious world, or from a better motive, in compassion to a sinful one, should vouchsafe to send one from the dead, to call home our conscience, and make us better Christians, better citizens, better men, and better servants to God than we are.

Now bear with me, I beseech you, in framing such an address as, I imagine, would be most likely to gain our attention, and conciliate the heart to what he had to say. The great channel to it is interest; and there he would set out.

'twas neither houses, nor land, nor possessions; 'twas neither wives, nor children, nor brethren, nor sisters, which we had to forsake; no one rational pleasure to be given up, no natural endearment to be torn from.

In a word, he would tell us we had nothing to part with but what was not for our interests to keep, and that was our vices, which brought death and misery to our doors.

He would go on, and prove it by a thousand arguments, that to be temperate and chaste, and just and peaceable, and charitable and kind to one another, was only doing that for CHRIST'S sake which was most for our own; and that, were we in a capacity of capitulating with God upon what terms we would submit to his government, he would convince us 'twould be impossible for the wit of man to frame any proposals more for our present interests than " 'to lead an uncorrupted life, to do the thing which is lawful and right,' and lay such restraints upon our appetites as are for the honour of human nature and the refinement of human happiness.

When this point was made out, and the alarms from interest got over, the spectre might address himself to the other passions. In doing this, he could but give us the most engaging ideas of the perfections of God; nor could he do more than impress the most awful ones of his majesty and power: he might remind us that we are creatures but of a day, hastening to the place whence we shall not return; that, during our stay, we stood accountable to this Being, who, though rich in mercies, yet was terrible in his judgments; that he took notice of all our actions, that he was about our paths, and about our beds, and spied out all our ways; and was so pure in his nature that he would punish even the wicked imaginations of the heart, and had appointed a day wherein he would enter into this inquiry.

He might add

But what?-with all the eloquence of an inspired tongue, what could he add or say to us which has not been said before? The experiment has been tried a thousand times upon the hopes and fears, the reasons and passions, of men, by all the powers of nature; the applications of which have been so great, and the variety of addresses so unanswerable, that there is not a greater paradox in the world, than that so great a religion should be no better recommended by its professors.

The fact is, mankind are not always in a humour to be convinced; and so long as the preengagement with our passion subsists, it is not argumentation which can do the business. We may amuse ourselves with the ceremony of the operation, but we reason not with the proper faculty when we see everything in the shape and colouring in which the treachery of the senses paints it; and, indeed, were we only to look into the world, and observe how inclinable

men are to defend evil as well as to commit it, one would think, at first sight, they believed that all discourses of religion and virtue were mere matters of speculation for men to entertain some idle hours with; and conclude, very naturally, that we seemed to be agreed in no one thing but speaking well and acting ill. But the truest comment is in the text,- If they hear not Moses and the prophets,' etc.

If they are not brought over to the interest of religion upon such discoveries as God has made, or has enabled them to make, they will stand out against all evidence: in vain shall one rise for their conviction; was the earth to give up her dead, 'twould be the same; every man would return again to his course, and the same bad passions would produce the same bad actions to the end of the world.

This is the principal lesson of the parable; but I must enlarge upon the whole of it, because it has some other useful lessons, and they will best present themselves to us as we go along.

In this parable, which is one of the most remarkable in the Gospel, our Saviour represents a scene in which, by a kind of contrast, two of the most opposite conditions that could be brought together from human life are passel before our imaginations.

The one, a man exalted above the level of mankind, to the highest pinnacle of prosperity, to riches, to happiness. I say happiness, in compliance with the world, and on a supposition that the possession of riches must make us happy, when the very pursuit of them so warms our imaginations that we stake both body and soul upon the event, as if they were things not to be purchased at too dear a rate. They are the wages of wisdom as well as of folly. Whatever was the case here is beyond the purport of the parable; the Scripture is silent, and so should It marks only his outward condition, by the common appendages of it, in the two great articles of Vanity and Appetite: to gratify the one, he was clothed in purple and fine linen; to satisfy the other, fared sumptuously every day, and upon everything, too, we'll suppose, that climates could furnish, that luxury could invent, or the hand of Science could torture.

we.

Close by his gates is represented an object whom Providence might seem to have placed there to cure the pride of man, and show him to what wretchedness his condition might be brought; a creature in all the shipwreck of nature, helpless, undone, in want of friends, in want of health, and in want of everything with them which his distresses called for.

In this state he is described as desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table; and though the case is not expressly put that he was refused, yet, as the contrary is not affirmed in the historical part of the parable, or pleaded after by the other, that he showed mercy to the miserable, we may conclude his

request was unsuccessful; like too many others in the world, either so highly lifted up in it that they cannot look down distinctly enough upon the sufferings of their fellow-creatures, or, by long surfeiting in a continual course of banqueting and good cheer, they forget there is such a distemper as hunger in the catalogue of human infirmities.

Overcharged with this, and perhaps a thousand unpitied wants in a pilgrimage through an inhospitable world, the poor man sinks silently under his burden. But, good God! whence is this? Why dost thou suffer these hardships in a world which thou hast made? Is it for thy honour that one man should eat the bread of fulness, and so many of his own stock and lineage eat the bread of sorrow?-that this man should go clad in purple, and have all his paths strewed with rose-buds of delight, whilst so many mournful passengers go heavily along, and pass by his gates, hanging down their heads? Is it for thy glory, O God, that so large a shade of misery should be spread across thy works? Or is it that we see but a part of them? When the great chain at length is let down, and all that has held the two worlds in harmony is seen; when the dawn of that day approaches in which all the distressful incidents of this drama shall be unravelled; when every man's case shall be reconsidered, then wilt thou be fully justified in all thy ways, and every mouth shall be stopped.

After a long day of mercy, misspent in riot and uncharitableness, the rich man died also: the parable adds, and was buried,-buried, no doubt, in triumph, with all the ill-timed pride of funerals, and empty decorations, which worldly folly is apt to prostitute upon those occasions.

But this was the last vain show; the utter conclusion of all his Epicurean grandeur. The next is a scene of horror, where he is represented by our Saviour in a state of the utmost misery, whence he is supposed to lift up his eyes toward heaven, and cry to the patriarch Abraham for mercy,-' And Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things.'

That he had received his good things-'twas from heaven, and could be no reproach. With what severity soever the Scripture speaks against riches, it does not appear that the living or faring sumptuously every day was the crime objected to the rich man, or that it is a real part of a vicious character: the case might be then, as now, his quality and station in the world might be supposed to be such as not only to have justified his doing this, but, in general, to have required it, without any imputation of doing wrong; for differences of stations there must be in the world,-which must be supported by such marks of distinction as custom imposes. The exceeding great plenty and mag

nificence in which Solomon is described to have lived, who had ten fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the pastures, and a hundred sheep, besides harts and roebucks, and fallow-deer and fatted fowl, with thirty measures of fine flour, and threescore measures of meal, for the daily provision of his table,-all this is not laid to him as a sin, but rather remarked as an instance of God's blessing to him; and whenever these things are otherwise, 'tis from a wasteful and dishonest perversion of them to pernicious ends, and ofttimes to the very opposite ones for which they were granted,-to glad the heart, to open it, and render it more kind.

And this seems to have been the snare the rich man had fallen into; and possibly, had he fared less sumptuously, he might have had more cool hours for reflection, and been better disposed to have conceived an idea of want, and to have felt compassion for it.

'And Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things.' Remember! sad subject of recollection! that a man has passed through this world with all the blessings and advantages of it on his side, favoured by God Almighty with riches, befriended by his fellow-creatures in the means of acquiring them, assisted every hour by the society of which he is a member in the enjoyment of them,-to remember how much he has received-how little he has bestowed!-that he has been no man's friend!-no one's protector !-no one's benefactor!-Blessed God!

Thus begging in vain for himself, he is represented at last as interceding for his brethren, that Lazarus might be sent to them to give them warning, and save them from the ruin which he had fallen into. They have Moses and the prophets,' was the answer of the patriarch; let them hear them.' But the unhappy man is represented as discontented with it, and still persisting in his request, and urging, -Nay, father Abraham, but if one went from the dead they would repent.'

He thought so; but Abraham knew otherwise; and the grounds of the determination I have explained already, so shall proceed to draw some other conclusions and lessons from the parable.

And first, our Saviour might further intend to discover to us by it the dangers to which great riches naturally expose mankind; agreeably to what is elsewhere declared, How hardly shall they who have them enter into the kingdom of heaven!

The truth is, they are often too dangerous a blessing for God to trust us with, or us to manage they surround us at all times with ease, with nonsense, with flattery, and false friends, with which thousands and ten thousands have perished; they are apt to multiply

our faults, and treacherously to conceal them from us; they hourly administer to our temptations, and neither allow us time to examine our faults, nor humility to repent of them. Nay, what is strange, do they not often tempt men even to covetousness? and though, amidst all the ill offices which riches do us, one would least suspect this vice, but rather think the one a cure for the other; yet so it is, that many a man contracts his spirits upon the enlargement of his fortune, and is the more empty for being full. But there is less need to preach against this. We seem all to be hastening to the opposite extreme of luxury and expense; we generally content ourselves with the solution of it; and say, 'Tis a natural consequence of trade and riches; and there it ends.

By the way, I affirm there is a mistake in the account; and that it is not riches which are the cause of luxury,-but the corrupt calculation of the world, in making riches the balance for honour, for virtue, and for everything that is great and good; which goads so many thousands on with an affectation of possessing more than they have, and consequently of engaging in a system of expenses they cannot support.

In one word, 'tis the necessity of appearing to be somebody, in order to be so, which ruins the world.

This leads us to another lesson in the parable, concerning the true use and application of riches. We may be sure, from the treatment of the rich man, that he did not employ those talents as God intended.

How God did intend them, may as well be known from an appeal to your own hearts, and the inscription you shall read there, as from any chapter and verse I might cite upon the subject. Let us then for a moment, my dear auditors, turn our eyes that way, and consider the traces which even the most insensible man may have proof of, from what he may perceive springing up within him from some casual act of generosity; and though this is a pleasure which properly belongs to the good, yet let him try the experiment,-let him comfort the captive, or cover the naked with a garment,-and he will feel what is meant by that moral delight arising in the mind from the conscience of a humane action.

But, to know it right, we must call upon the compassionate. Cruelty gives evidence unwillingly, and feels the pleasure but imperfectly; for this, like all other pleasures, is of a relative nature, and consequently the enjoyment of it requires some qualification in the faculty, as much as the enjoyment of any other good does. There must be something antecedent in the disposition and temper which will render that good a good to that individual; otherwise, though 'tis true it may be possessed, yet it never can be enjoyed.

Consider how difficult you will find it to con

vince a miserable heart that anything is good which is not profitable! or a libertine one that anything is bad which is pleasant!

Preach to a voluptuary who has modelled both mind and body to no other happiness but good eating and drinking-bid him 'taste and see how good God is,'-there is not an invitation in all nature would confound him like it.

In a word, a man's mind must be like your proposition before it can be relished; and 'tis the resemblance between them which brings over his judgment, and makes him an evidence on your side.

'Tis therefore not to the cruel; 'tis to the merciful-to those who rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weep-that we make this appeal. 'Tis to the generous, the kind, the humane, that I am now to tell the sad story of the fatherless, and of him who hath no helper; and bespeak your almsgiving in behalf of those who know not how to ask for it themselves.1

What can I say more? It is a subject on which I cannot inform your judgment; and in such an audience, I would not presume to practise upon your passions. Let it suffice to say that those whom God hath blessed with the means, and for whom he has done more, in blessing them likewise with a disposition, have abundant reason to be thankful to him, as the Author of every good gift, for the measure he hath bestowed to them of both. 'Tis the refuge against the stormy wind and tempest which he has planted in our hearts; and the constant fluctuation of everything in this world forces all the sons and daughters of Adam to seek shelter under it by turns. Guard it by entails and settlements as we will, the most affluent plenty may be stripped, and find all its worldly comforts, like so many withered leaves, dropping from us! The crowns of princes may be shaken; and the greatest that ever awed the world have looked back and moralized upon the turn of the wheel!

That which has happened to one, may happen to every man ; and therefore that excellent rule of our Saviour, in acts of benevolence, as well as everything else, should govern us: "That whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye also unto them.'

Hast thou ever lain upon the bed of languishing, or laboured under a distemper which threatened thy life? Call to mind thy sorrowful and pensive spirit at that time, and say what it was that made the thoughts of death so bitter. If thou hadst children, I affirm it, the bitterness of death lay there! If unbrought up, and unprovided for, what will become of them? where will they find a friend when I am gone? who will stand up for them, and plead their cause against the wicked?

1 Charity sermon, at St. Andrew's, Holborn.

Blessed God! to thee who art a Father to the fatherless, and a Husband to the widow, I entrust them!

Hast thou ever sustained any considerable shock in thy fortune? or has the scantiness of thy condition hurried thee into great straits, and brought thee almost to distraction? Consider, who was it that spread a table in that wilderness of thought? who made thy cup to overflow? Was it not a friend of consolation who stepped in,-saw thee embarrassed with the tender pledges of thy love, and the partner of thy cares, took them under his protection? (Heaven, thou wilt reward him for it!)-and freed thee from all the terrifying apprehensions of a parent's love!

Hast thou?

But how shall I ask a question which must bring tears into so many eyes? Hast thou ever been wounded in a more affecting manner still, by the loss of a most obliging friend? or been torn away from the embraces of a dear and promising child by the stroke of death? Bitter remembrance! Nature droops at it; but Nature is the same in all conditions and lots of life. A child thrust forth in an evil hour, without food, without raiment, bereft of instruction and the means of its salvation, is the subject of more tender heart-aches, and will awaken every power of Nature! As we have felt for ourselves, let us feel, for Christ's sake-let us feel for theirs ; and may the God of all comfort bless you! Amen.

XXIV.-PRIDE.

But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room, that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say to thee, Friend, go up higher; then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them who sit at meat with thee: for whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbeth himself shall be exalted.'-LUKE XIV. 10, 11.

Ir is an exhortation of our Saviour's to Humility, addressed by way of inference from what he had said in the three foregoing verses of the chapter: where, upon entering into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread, and marking how small a portion of this necessary virtue entered in with the several guests, discovering itself from their choosing the chief rooms and most distinguished places of honour, he takes the occasion which such a behaviour offered to caution them against Pride; states the inconvenience of the passion; shows the disappointments which attend it; the disgrace in which it generally ends-in being forced at last to recede from the pretensions to what is more than our due, which, by the way, is the very thing the passion is eternally prompting us to expect. When, therefore, thou art bidden to a wedding, says our Saviour, sit not down in the highest room, lest a more honourable man than thou be

bidden of him; and he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place: and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room.

But thou, when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room: hard lecture! In the lowest room? What, do I owe nothing to myself? Must I forget my station, my character in life? Resign the precedence which my birth, my fortune, my talents, have already placed me in possession of? give all up! and suffer inferiors to take my honours? Yes; for that, says our Saviour, is the road to it :-'For when he that bade thee cometh, he will say to thee, Friend, go up higher; then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee: for whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.'

To make good the truth of which declaration, it is not necessary we should look beyond this life, and say, That in that day of retribution, wherein every high thing shall be brought low, and every irregular passion dealt with as it deserves; that pride, amongst the rest (considered as a vicious character), shall meet with its proper punishment of being abased, and lying down for ever in shame and dishonour. It is not necessary we should look so far forwards for the accomplishment of this: the words seem not so much to imply the threat of a distant punishment, the execution of which was to be respited to that day, as the declaration of a plain truth depending upon the natural course of things, and evidently verified in every hour's commerce of the world; whence, as well as from our reasoning upon the point, it is found that Pride lays us open to so many mortifying encounters, which Humility in its own nature rests secure from, that verily each of them in this world have their reward faithfully dealt out by the natural workings of men's passions; which, though very bad executioners in general, yet are so far just ones in this, that they seldom suffer the exultations of an insolent temper to escape the abasement, or the deportment of a humble one to fail of the honour, which each of their characters do deserve.

In other vicious excesses which a man commits, the world (though it is not much to its credit) seems to stand pretty neuter: if you are extravagant or intemperate, you are looked upon as the greatest enemy to yourself; or if an enemy to the public, at least you are so remote an one to each individual, that no one feels himself immediately concerned in your punishment. But in the instances of Pride the attack is personal; for, as this passion can only take its rise from a secret comparison which the party has been making of himself to my disadvantage, every intimation he gives me of what he thinks of the matter is so far a direct injury, either as it withholds the respect which is my due, or perhaps denies me to have any; or else, which presses equally hard, as it puts me in mind of