Page images
PDF
EPUB

evils may befall us there-and what provifion we should make against them here, whilft we have time and opportunity.

If these leffons are fo infeparable from the houfe of Mourning here fuppofed-we fhall find it a ftill more inftructive school of wisdom when we take a view of the place in that more affecting light to which the wife man seems to confine it in the text; in which by the house of Mourning, I believe, he means that particular scene of forrow where there is lamentation and mourning for the dead.

Turn in hither, I beseech you, for a moment. Behold a dead man ready to be carried out, the only son of his mother, and she a widow. Perhaps a more affecting spectaclea kind and indulgent father of a numerous family, lyes breathlefs. -fnatched away in the ftrength of his age-torn in an evil hour from his children and the bofom of a disconsolate wife.

Behold much people of the city gathered together to mix their tears, with fettled forrow in their looks, going heavily along to the houfe

houfe of Mourning, to perform that last melancholy office, which, when the debt of nature is paid, we are called upon to pay each other.

If this fad occafion which leads him there, has not done it already, take notice, to what a ferious and devout frame of mind every man is reduced, the moment he enters this gate of affliction. The bufy and fluttering fpirits, which in the house of Mirth were wont to transport him from one diverting object to another-see how they are fallen! how peaceably they are laid! in this gloomy mansion, full of fhades and uncomfortable damps, to feize the foul-fee, the light and easy heart, which never knew what it was to think before, how penfive it is now, how foft, how fusceptible, how full of religious impreffions, how deeply it is smitten with a sense, and with a love of virtue. Could we, in this crifis, whilst this empire of reason and religion lasts, and the heart is thus exercised with wisdom, and bufied with heavenly contemplations—could we see it naked as it is—stripped of all its paffions, unspotted by the world, and regardless of its pleasures—we might then safely rest

our

[ocr errors]

our cause upon this fingle evidence, and appeal to the most fenfual, whether Solomon has not made a juft determination here, in favour of the house of Mourning? -not for its own fake, but as it is fruitful in virtue, and becomes the occafion of fo much good. Without this end, forrow, I own, has no use, but to fhorten a man's days-nor can gravity, with all its ftudied folemnity of look and carriage, ferve any end but to make one half of the world merry, and impose upon the other.

Confider what has been faid, and mercy blefs

of his

you. Amen.

may GOD

SERMON

SERMON III.

PHILANTROPY

Recommended.

« PreviousContinue »