advantages which probity has on its side, let us not forget that greatest of all happiness, which the text refers to, in the expression of all its paths being peace,-peace and content of mind, arising from the consciousness of virtue, which is the true and only foundation of all earthly satisfaction; and where that is wanting, whatever other enjoyments you bestow upon a wicked man, they will as soon add a cubit to his stature as to his happiness. In the midst of the highest entertainments, this, like the hand-writing upon the wall, will be enough to spoil and disrelish the feast; but much more so when the tumult and hurry of delight is over, when all is still and silent, when the sinner has nothing to do but attend its lashes and remorses: and this, in spite of all the common arts of diversion, will be often the case of every wicked man; for we cannot live always upon the stretch; our faculties will not bear constant pleasure any more than constant pain; there will be some vacancies, and, when there are, they will be sure to be filled with uncomfortable thoughts and black reflections. So that, setting aside the great afterreckoning, the pleasures of the wicked are overbought, even in this world.

I conclude with one observation upon the whole of this argument, which is this:

Notwithstanding the great force with which it has been often urged by good writers, there are many cases which it may not reach, wherein vicious men may seem to enjoy their portion of this life, and live as happy, and fall into as few troubles, as other men; and therefore it is prudent not to lay more stress upon this argument than it will bear; but always remember to call in to our aid that great and more unanswerable argument which will answer the most doubtful cases which can be stated, and that is the certainty of a future life, which Christianity has brought to light. However men may differ in their opinions of the usefulness of virtue for our present purposes, no one was ever so absurd as to deny it served our best and our last interest, when the little interests of this life were at an end upon which consideration we should always lay the great weight which it is fittest to bear, as the strongest appeal and most unchangeable motive that can govern our actions at all times. However, as every good argument on the side of religion should in proper times be made use of, it is fit sometimes to examine this, by proving virtue is not even destitute of a present reward, but carries in her hand a sufficient recompense for all the self-denials she may occasion: she is pleasant in the way, as well as in the end; her ways being ways of pleasantness, and all her paths peace. But it is her greatest and most distinguished glory that she befriends us hereafter, and brings us peace at the last; and this is a portion she can never be disinherited of,-which may God of his mercy grant us all, for the sake of Jesus Christ.

XXIX.-OUR CONVERSATION IN

HEAVEN.

For our conversation is in heaven.'-PnIL. III. 20, first part.

THESE words are the conclusion of the account which St. Paul renders of himself, to justify that particular part of his conduct and proceeding-his leaving so strangely and deserting his Jewish rites and ceremonies, to which he was known to have been formerly so much attached, and in defence of which he had been so warmly and so remarkably engaged. This, as it had been matter of provocation against him amongst his own countrymen the Jews, so was it no less an occasion of surprise to the Gentiles, that a person of his great character, interest, and reputation,- -one who was descended from a tribe of Israel deeply skilled in the professions, and zealous in the 'observances of the straitest sect of that religion,'-who had their tenets instilled into him from his tender years, under the institution of the ablest masters,-a Pharisee himself, the son of a Pharisee, and brought up at the feet of Gamaliel,- -one that was so deeply interested, and an accessory in the persecution of another religion, just then newly come up,--a religion to which his whole sect, as well as himself, had been always the bitterest and most inveterate enemies, and were constantly upbraided as such by the first founder of it ;-that a person so beset and hemmed in with interests and prejudices on all sides, should, after all, turn proselyte to the very religion he had hated! -a religion, too, under the most universal contempt of any then in the world,-the chiefs and leaders of it men of the lowest birth and education, without any advantages of parts or learning, or other endowments to recommend them;-that he should quit and abandon all his former privileges, to become merely a fellow-labourer with these,-that he should give up the reputation he had acquired amongst his brethren by the study and labours of a whole life,-that he should give up his friends, his relations and family, from whom he estranged and banished himself for life,--this was an event so very extraordinary, so odd and unaccountable, that it might well confound the minds of men to answer for it. It was not to be accounted for upon the common rules and measures of proceeding in human life.

The Apostle, therefore, since no one else could do it so well for him, comes in this chapter to give an explanation why he had thus forsaken so many worldly advantages, which was owing to a greater and more unconquerable affection to a better and more valuable interest; that in the poor persecuted faith, which he had once reproached and destroyed, he had now found such a fulness of divine grace, such un

fathomable depths of God's infinite mercy and love towards mankind, that he could think nothing too much to part with in order to his embracing Christianity; nay, he accounted all things but loss-that is, less than nothing-for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

The Apostle, after this apology for himself, proceeds, in the second verse before the text, to give a very different representation of the worldly views and sensual principles of other pretending teachers, who had set themselves up as an example for men to walk by, against whom he renews this caution: For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies to the cross of Christ whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things-egovouvres relish them, making them the only object of their wishes, taking aim at nothing better and nothing higher.-But our conversation, says he in the text, is in heaven. We Christians, who have embraced a persecuted faith, are governed by other considerations, have greater and nobler views. Here we consider ourselves only as pilgrims and strangers. Our home is in another country, where we are continually tending: there our hearts and affections are placed; and, when the few days of our pilgrimage shall be over, there shall we return, where a quiet habitation and a perpetual rest is designed and prepared for us for ever. Our conversation is in heaven, from whence, says he, we also look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto him. It is observable that St. Peter represents the state of Christians under the same image, of strangers on earth, whose city and proper home is heaven: he makes use of that relation of citizens of heaven as a strong argument for a pure and holy life; beseeching them as pilgrims and strangers here, as men whose interests and connections are of so short a date and so trifling a nature, to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul, that is, unfit it for its heavenly country, and give it a disrelish to the enjoyment of that pure and spiritualized happiness of which that region must consist, wherein there shall in no wise enter anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination. The Apostle tells us that without holiness no man shall see God; by which no doubt he means that a virtuous life is the sole medium of happiness and terms of salvation, which can only give us admission into heaven. But some of our divines carry the assertion further, that without holiness,-without some previous similitude, wrought in the faculties of the mind, corresponding with the nature of the purest of beings, who is to be the object of our fruition

hereafter,-that it is not morally only, but physically, impossible for it to be happy; and that an impure and polluted soul is not only unworthy of so pure a presence as the Spirit of God, but even incapable of enjoying it, could it be admitted.

And here, not to feign a long hypothesis, as some have done, of a sinner's being admitted into heaven, with a particular description of his condition and behaviour there, we need only consider that the supreme good, like any other good, is of a relative nature, and consequently the enjoyment of it must require some qualification in the faculty, as well as the enjoy ment 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 (it is true) it may be possessed, yet it never can be enjoyed.

Preach to a voluptuous epicure, who knows of no other happiness in this world but what rises from good eating and drinking,—such a one, in the Apostle's language, whose god is his belly,-preach to him of the abstractions of the soul; tell of its flights and brisker motion in the pure regions of immensity; represent to him that saints and angels eat not, but that the spirit of a man lives for ever upon wisdom and holiness, and heavenly contemplations ;-why, the only effect would be that the fat glutton would stare awhile upon the preacher, and in a few minutes fall fast asleep. No; if you would catch his attention, and make him take in your discourse greedily, you must preach to him out of the Alcoran-talk of the raptures of sensual enjoyments, and of the pleasures of the perpetual feasting, which Mahomet has described; there you touch upon a note which awakens and sinks into the inmost recesses of his soul; without which, discourse as wisely and abstractedly as you will of heaven, your representations of it, however glorious and exalted, will pass like the songs of melody over an ear incapable of discerning the distinction of sounds. We see, even in the common intercourses of society, how tedious it is to be in the company of a person whose humour is disagreeable to our own, though perhaps, in all other respects, of the greatest worth and excellency. How then can we imagine that an ill-disposed soul, whose conversation never reached to heaven, but whose appetites and desires, to the last hour, have grovelled upon this unclean spot of earth;-how can we imagine it should hereafter take pleasure in God, or be able to taste joy or satisfaction from his presence, who is so infinitely pure that he even putteth no trust in his saints-nor are the heavens themselves (as Job says) clean in his sight? The consideration of this has led some writers so far as to say, with some degree of irreverence in the expression, that it was not in the power of God to make a wicked man happy, if the soul was separated from the body,

with all its vicious habits and inclinations unreformed; which thought a very able divine in our church has pursued so far as to declare his belief, that could the happiest mansion in heaven be supposed to be allotted to a gross and polluted spirit, it would be so far from being happy in it, that it would do penance there to all eternity: by which he meant it would carry appetites along with it, for which there could be found no suitable objects. A sufficient cause for constant torment; for those that it found there would be so disproportioned, that they would rather vex and upbraid it than satisfy its wants. This, it is true, is mere speculation, and what concerns us not to know;-it being enough for our purpose that such an experiment is never likely to be tried; that we stand upon different terms with God; that a virtuous life is the foundation of all our happiness; that as God has no pleasure in wickedness, neither shall any evil dwell with him; and that, if we expect our happiness to be in heaven, we must have our conversation in heaven, whilst upon earth-make it the frequent subject of our thoughts and meditations--let every step we take tend that way, every action of our lives be conducted by that great mark of the prize of our high calling, forgetting those things which are behind-forgetting this worlddisengaging our thoughts and affections from it, and thereby transforming them to the likeness of what we hope to be hereafter. How can we expect the inheritance of the saints in light upon other terms than what they themselves obtained?

Can that body expect to rise and shine in glory that is a slave to lust, or dies in the fiery pursuit of an impure desire? Can that heart ever become the lightsome seat of peace and joy that burns hot as an oven with anger, rage, envy, lust, and strife, full of wicked imaginations, set only to devise and entertain evil?

Can that flesh appear in the last day, and inherit the kingdom of heaven in the glorified strength of perpetual youth, that is now clearly consumed in intemperance, sinks in the surfeit of continual drunkenness and gluttony, and then tumbles into the grave, and almost pollutes the ground that is under it? Can we reasonably suppose that head shall ever wear or become the crown of righteousness and peace in which dwells nothing but craft and avarice, deceit, and fraud, and treachery-which is always plodding upon worldly designs, racked with ambition, rent asunder with discord, ever delighting in mischief to others and unjust advantages to itself? Shall that tongue, which is the glory of a man when rightly directed, be ever set to God's heavenly praises, and warble forth the harmonies of the blessed, that is now full of cursing and bitterness, backbiting and slander, under which is ungodliness and vanity, and the poison of asps?

Can it enter into our hearts even to hope that those hands can ever receive the reward of righteousness that are full of blood, laden with the wages of iniquity, of theft, rapine, violence, extortion, or other unlawful gain? or that those feet shall ever be beautiful upon the mountains of light and joy that were never shod for the preparation of the gospel, that have run quite out of the way of God's word, and made haste only to do evil? No, surely. In this sense, he that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still.

So inconsistent is the whole body of sin with the glories of the celestial body that shall be revealed hereafter, that, in proportion as we fix the representation of these glories upon our minds, and in the more numerous particulars we do it, the stronger the necessity as well as persuasion to deny ourselves all ungodliness and worldly lusts, to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, as the only way to entitle us to that blessedness spoken of in the Revelations, of those who do his commandments, and have a right to the tree of life, and shall enter into the gates of the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, that are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

May God give us grace to live under the perpetual influence of this expectation, that, by the habitual impression of these glories upon our imaginations, and the frequent sending forth our thoughts and employing them on the other world, we may disentangle them from this, and, by so having our conversation in heaven whilst we are here, we may be thought fit inhabitants for it hereafter; that, when God at the last day shall come with thousands and ten thousands of his saints to judge the world, we may enter with them into happiness, and with angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven, we may praise and magnify his glorious name, and enjoy his presence for ever.

XXX.-DESCRIPTION OF THE WORLD.

'Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness? looking and hastening unto the coming of God.'-2 PETER III. 11.

THE subject upon which St. Peter is discoursing in this chapter is the certainty of Christ's coming to judge the world; and the words of the text are the moral application he draws from the representation he gives of it, in which, in answer to the cavils of the scoffers in the latter days concerning the delay of his coming,

he tells them that God is not slack concerning his promises, as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering to us-ward; 'that the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burnt up.' Seeing, then, says he, all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness? The inference is unavoidable,—at least in theory, however it fails in practice. How widely these two differ I intend to make the subject of this discourse; and, though it is a melancholy comparison, to consider what manner of persons we really are,' with 'what manner of persons we ought to be;' yet, as the knowledge of the one is at least one step towards the improvement in the other, the parallel will not be thought to want its use. Give me leave, therefore, in the first place, to recall to your observations what kind of world it is we live in, and what manner of persons we really are.

Secondly, and in opposition to this, I shall make use of the Apostle's argument, and from a brief representation of the Christian religion, and the obligations it lays upon us, show what manner of persons we ought to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hastening unto the coming of the day of God.

Whoever takes a view of the world will, I fear, be able to discern but very faint marks of this character, either upon the looks or actions of its inhabitants. Of all the ends and pursuits we are looking for and hastening unto, this would be the least suspected; for, without running into that old declamatory cant upon the wickedness of the age, we may say, within the bounds of truth, that there is as little influence from this principle which the Apostle lays stress on, and as little sense of religion-as small a share of virtue (at least as little of the appearance of it) as can be supposed to exist at all in a country where it is countenanced by the state. The degeneracy of the times has been the common complaint of many ages. How much we exceed our forefathers in this, is known alone to that God who trieth the hearts. But this we may be allowed to urge in their favour, they studied at least to preserve the appearance of virtue. Public vice was branded with public infamy, and obliged to hide its head in privacy and retirement. The service of God was regularly attended, and religion not exposed to the reproaches of the scorner.

How the case stands with us at present in cach of these particulars it is grievous to report, and perhaps unacceptable to religion herself. Yet as this is a season wherein it is fit we should be told of our faults, let us for a moment impartially consider the articles of this charge.

And first, concerning the great article of religion, and the influence it has at present upon the lives and behaviour of the present times,concerning which I have said that, if we are to trust appearances, there is as little as can well be supposed to exist at all in a Christian country. Here I shall spare exclamations, and, avoiding all commonplace railing upon the subject, confine myself to facts, such as every one who looks into the world, and makes any observations at all, will vouch for me.

Now, whatever are the degrees of real religion amongst us-whatever they are, the appearances are strong against the charitable side of the question.

If religion is anywhere to be found, one would think it would be amongst those of the higher rank in life, whose education and opportunities of knowing its great importance should have brought them over to its interest, and rendered them as firm in the defence of it as eminent in its example. But if you examine the fact, you will almost find it a test of a politer education, and mark of more shining parts, to know nothing, and indeed care nothing, at all about it; or, if the subject happens to engage the attention of a few of the more sprightly wits, that it serves no other purpose but that of being made merry at, and of being reserved as a standing jest to enliven discourse when conversation sickens upon their hands.

This is too sore an evil not to be observed amongst persons of all ages in what is called higher life; and so early does the contempt of this great concern begin to show itself, that it is no uncommon thing to hear persons disputing against religion, and raising cavils against the Bible, at an age when some of them would be hard set to read a chapter in it. And I may add, of those whose stock in knowledge is somewhat larger, that for the most part it has scarce any other foundation to rest on but the sinking credit of traditional and second-hand objections against revelation, which, had they leisure to read, they would find answered and confuted a thousand times over. But this by the way.

If we take a view of the public worship of Almighty God, and observe in what manner it is reverenced by persons in this rank of life, whose duty it is to set an example to the poor and ignorant, we shall find concurring evidence upon this melancholy argument, of a general want of all outward demonstration of a sense of our duty towards God, as if religion was a business fit only to employ tradesmen and mechanics, and the salvation of our souls a concern utterly below the consideration of a person of figure and consequence.

I shall say nothing at present of the lower ranks of mankind: though they have not yet got into the fashion of laughing at religion, and treating it with scorn and contempt, and I believe are too serious a set of creatures ever to