and rational study of the Scriptures, unbiased, as we can perceive, by any improper considerations, the, man, who is conscious, I say, of this state of mind, need be under no alarm for the salvation of his soul, as far as belief can affect his salvation. His great anxiety should be to act up to the light he has received, and faithfully to fulfil the extent of his duties; for such, God be thanked! is the intimate connexion of all doctrines and duties, that the man, who religiously fulfils one branch of knowledge or practice, will have gone very far to the observance of the whole.

I will conclude the subject with a simple recapitulation of those conclusions which our text has suggested to us.

We have concluded, then, that a man may be seriously disposed to do the will of God, before he has had knowledge of the Christian revelation; and, of course, there are elements in human nature, on which Christianity may be built. We have seen, also, that the truth of his claims and the nature of his doctrines are submitted by our Savior himself to the judgment of unperverted reason.

We have seen how virtue produces belief, and vice unbelief, in the authority of Christ, or in the Christian revelation; and we know that he, who best practises Christianity, will best understand it; and that all the truth, which is essential, in Christianity, is, that which a mind, disposed to do the will of God, cannot fail to receive by the study of the Scriptures. "God giveth to a man, that is good in his sight, wisdom, and knowledge ;" and may God grant, that, "the eyes of our understanding being enlightened," we may understand what is the excellency of the knowledge of the glory of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

SERMON XXII.

ECCLESIASTES I. 14.

I HAVE SEEN ALL THE WORKS THAT ARE DONE UNDER THE SUN; AND, BEHOLD, ALL IS VANITY AND VEXATION OF SPIRIT.

THERE are some maxims of practical morality, which are so common and so familiar to every man's experience that it seems idle to tell what every one knows, and superfluous to prove what it is impossible to doubt. But the effect of moral maxims is produced rather by placing them in new and striking aspects. Among those truths which all men believe, but which few practically feel, may be mentioned the utter uncertainty of human life and all its expectations and enjoyments. The experiments, which prove this fact, have been making ever since the world was made; and not an individual has entered on the stage of life and passed through the common career of worldly probation, who has not been, sooner or later, willing to confess, with Solomon, " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

There is a spirit of dissatisfaction pervading this whole book of Ecclesiastes, from which our text is taken, which renders the perusal of it painful and melancholy. The royal author, in the course of his luxurious life, had drained every source of pleasure, till satiety had succeeded enjoyHe had decked himself in every flower that grew by the walks of life, and worn them, till their colors had

ment.

faded, and their perfume had been exhaled. He had intoxicated himself with every variety of sensual gratification, till, awaking, at last, from his dream of delight, he found himself sick at heart, and his spirits sunk within him to a stagnant level of discontent.

Solomon, indeed, was now suffering the misery of disappointment. He had been disappointed, not of obtaining the means of enjoyment in any particular instance, but he was blasted with excess of pleasure. He had collected around him all the means and appendages of enjoyment, but the substance had escaped him. The ingenuity and the patience of his servants had been exhausted in contrivances of new pleasures for the monarch. He had tried mirth, and it was mad; wine, and it was folly. "I made me," says he, "great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards; I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits; I made me pools of water; I got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle, above all that were in Jerusalem before me; I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces; I gat me men-singers and women-singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts.Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do, and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."

And this man, who had but to wish, and the means of enjoyment were collected around him, who but stretched out his hand, and pleasures dropped into it, this great monarch found, after all, that, in point of actual happiness,

the difference was but trifling between him who obtained all, and him who obtained nothing, of what he desired on earth.

It may not be unprofitable, to employ a short portion of our time in contemplating the disappointments and uncertainties of our life on earth, that we may learn something more of the great art of contentment, and limit our expectations on this side the grave.

We will consider, first, the disappointment of early hopes and expectations; and, secondly, the uncertainty of life and its actual enjoyments.

First; the disappointment of early expectations.

When the curtain of life is first drawn up, a thousand incompatible objects of pleasure strike the eye of the inexperienced spectator, and he forms, at once, a thousand inconsistent wishes and impatient desires. He takes all the show of happiness, also, for reality; and, as objects of pleasure first present themselves to him, he discovers nothing but their beautiful colors; and, till he has grasped them, he does not suspect that they have a sting.

There are some men who seem born into a world made on purpose to receive them. As they grow up into life, all about them is softness and security. If they fall, they fall upon down; when they stand, they lean upon the arms of affection; they seem to have nothing to do but "to gather the rosebuds before they wither," for all the delights of life are provided to their hands. Send one of these favorites of fortune out into the world to expatiate in the fulness of pleasure. Let him not know miscarriages. Let to-morrow be with him as this day, and even more abundant. Yet all the expectations of this favorite child of luxury are utterly defeated. And how is this? He finds that he has

lived too fast. In a few years he has exhausted the pleasures which might have been economically diffused through threescore years and ten; and he retires, sick of that entertainment of life, which others are just beginning to taste, and cries out, "All is vanity, and vexation of spirit."

If such is the fate of those who seem born to set trouble at defiance, what shall we say of the vast number who struggle to reach those gifts of Providence, from which, by their situation in life, they are placed at a distance? We find some men laboring for comfortable establishments in life, and we see not why their chance of success is not originally as good as that of other competitors for this world's goods. But unforeseen accidents cross their plans. Sometimes their imprudence, sometimes their neglect, sometimes their very honesty defeats them; and, from some strange defect, they toil without profit, and every new attempt to rise only serves to sink them lower.

The competitors for honor are yet more exposed to disappointment; and even the fond hope of useful distinction and mental influence is extremely delusive and uncertain. Opportunities of improvement, which we had anticipated, never present themselves; and the long-expected leisure for study retreats before us, like the horizon. Sometimes our early labors are lost, because misdirected. Sometimes our intellectual treasures, by a total revolution in public sentiment, are rendered useless. Perhaps the faculties of the mind are prematurely worn out by excessive exertion, the mind itself crushed by its own acquisitions, and left, without memory and without judgment, a prey to all the miseries of a wandering imagination. Perhaps—but why should I multiply conjectures to swell the list of disappoint