declared by revelation, and these, united with the benevolent exertion recommended under the former head, will go far towards securing you all the happiness which is to be enjoyed in this narrow sphere of the existence of an intellectual being.

3. If, in the third place, we consider the influence of the imagination upon our habitual tranquillity, we shall feel the importance of ascertaining the means of regulating its influence in a manner the most favorable to human happiness. There are many, I know, who derive little either of pleasure or of pain from their imaginations; but there are others to whom it is a source of exquisite distress, giving them the most dreary prospects of futurity, harrassing them with the terrors of superstition, or depressing them with the dark uncertainty of scepticism.

We have unintentionally anticipated, under the last head, some observations which belong more properly to this.

When the imagination is extremely lively, either from original constitution or from early cultivation, if it is not made a sweet fountain of felicity, it is usually converted into one of the most distressing sources of misery. Here, too, as before, the religion of Jesus enters, and offers the imagination an inexhaustible store of higher objects. The scenes which he discloses beyond the grave, are sublime and consolatory on the one hand, and fearful and mortally oppressive on the other. Can you, then, whose minds are formed to derive much

happiness from remote anticipations, hesitate a moment to secure the favorable influence of the christian prospects of felicity? My peace, says our Saviour to his disciples, I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you. This is most true, my christian friends, and all the imaginable happiness which a mere philosopher can derive from the tranquillity with which he may be able to look forward to the events of tomorrow, or even the remainder of his days, is less than nothing in the estimate of human happiness, compared to the joys of a Christian's hope.

But in the wise ordination of Providence, the overpowering nature of these high anticipations is relieved by their remoteness, and the effect upon the Christian's happiness is not to raise him to perpetual ecstasy, but to keep up in his mind the glow of perpetual hope.

4. The last circumstance which we mentioned as exercising a powerful influence on human happiness, is the temper. We hear truly good men often lamenting, as the bane of their happiness, an instinctive irascibility. It is often, indeed, united with strong affection and benevolence, and often, alas! destroys the happiness which might be expected from a life of active exertion, not so much from the ill effect it produces on the mind, as from the misfortunes to which it leads, and these we are not always able to alleviate by the conciousness that they are entirely undeserved.

Ill humor is still more unfavorable to happiness than this irascible temper. It commonly originates in self-dissatisfaction, and leads him who feels it to refer the causes of his discontent to the imaginary faults of others, and keeps him in a state of perpetual peevishness. I need not, my hearers, tell you that to enjoy this life, it is necessary to possess a temper candid to the faults and mistakes of others, disposed to mutual accommodation, not easily provoked, and willing to see everything that occurs, in the most favorable light. Every one knows that he whose disposition is most favorable to his own happiness, is most agreeable to others, and that these common qualities of pleasing and being pleased mutually react upon and generate each other.

But, my friends, the christian doctrine carries this subject of the temper much further, and represents those dispositions as essential to happiness which we, in our worldly meditations, are too apt to despise, as if they exposed a man to insult or ridicule. If we read the beatitudes in our Saviour's sermon on the mount, we shall find the utmost meekness under injuries, the most unbounded forgiveness represented as the disposition which leads to happiness. We shall find a blessing pronounced upon that compassionate temper which sympathizes with all the miseries of human life, which shares in all the pains it meets, weeps with the weeping, and mourns with the bereaved. Still further does our Saviour bless the patient and

resigned disposition which bears without a murmur the severest afflictions of life, while we are disposed to envy the hardness of the man who can avoid or repulse them..

Ye proud spirits who cannot endure the humble genius of the religion of Jesus, weigh well this subject of happiness before you reject this selfdenying system. Experience will decide against you, and vindicate the beatitudes of the sermon of the mount. For us Christians it is enough that Jesus has pronounced such tempers happy.

My friends, I have attempted to lay open to you the true sources of happiness. Follow the stream, and it will bear you away to the full ocean of eternal bliss. Do you now ask, who will show you any good? Jesus, my friends, calls to you from heaven; Whosoever drinketh of the water of life shall never thirst again.

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SERMON XIV.

THE TEMPTATIONS OF THE YOUNG.

MATTHEW, VI. 13.

LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL.

THE life of every man of established religious principles has been a series of struggles. He has found it far more easy to form than to keep his best resolutions, and he has discovered also with alarm, that any course of conduct is far more easily depraved, than it is amended. Every moral observer knows also, that mankind do not agree to approve a character, which is today wicked and tomorrow good, which is habitually scrupulous in one duty and remiss in another; but we give the title of virtuous to that man only, the sum total of whose habits are uniformly on the side of virtue. This is one of the difficulties which make virtue laborious.

Upon further inquiry we find, that no man's goodness is innate and instinctive, but it is to be acquired by labor, and it is also corruptible by cir