perpetually haunting you, and ftepping in betwixt you and your contentment.Unhappy creature! to think of enjoying that bleffing without moderation !-or imagine that fo facred a temple can be raised upon the foundation of wealth or power!-If the ground-work is not laid within your own mind, they will as foon add a cubit to your ftature, as to your happiness. To be convinced it is fo,pray look up to those who have got as high as their warmeft wishes could carry them in this afcent,-do you obferve they live the better, the longer, the merrier, or that they fleep the founder in their beds, for having twice as much as they wanted, or well know how to difpofe of? Of all rules for calculating happiness, this is the most deceitful, and which few but weak minds, and those unpractifed in the world too, ever think of of applying as the measure in fuch an eftimation.Great, and inexpreffible may be the happiness, which a moderate fortune and moderate defires with a consciousness of virtue will fecure. Many are the filent pleasures of the honest peafant, who rifes chearful to his labour;why should they not?-Look into his house, the feat of each man's happiness; has he not the fame domeftic endearments,--the fame joy and comfort in his children, and as flattering hopes of their doing well, to enliven his hours and glad his heart, as you could conceive in the highest station?--And I make no doubt in general, but if the true state of his joy and fufferings, could be fairly balanced with those of his betters, whether any thing would appear at the foot of the account, but what would recommend the moral of this discourse. L 3 -This, -This, I own, is not to be attained to, by the cynical stale trick of haranguing against the goods of fortune-they were never intended to be talked out of the world. But as virtue and true wisdom lie in the middle of extremes,-on one hand, not to neglect and despise riches, fo as to forget ourselves, and on the other, not to pursue and love them so as to forget God;--to have them fometimes in our heads-but always, fomething more important in our hearts. SER |