back upon your domestic sphere, and see none within its holy precincts, for whose comfort you are interested, for whose prosperity you are careful, and for whose sake you are bound to labour and exertion? You may probably reply, that all this is already effected, that industry is the tax of poverty, and that your riches and independence release you from the obligation. I rejoin that such a plea, be it supported by the wealth of Croesus, is altogether inadmissible. The world, of which you still continue an integral member, points out to you a hundred channels of employment, through which you may be serviceable to your fellow-creatures; that that service is a debt and not a boon; and that, if nothing more could be objected to your indolence than the danger of your example, that sole objection would be enough to constitute you, before the tribunal of your Maker, an unjust and guilty man.

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II. In the next place, idleness is irreligion. It is a sin against which the Gospel of your Lord has lifted an imperious voice, warning you that it is at enmity with God, and accordingly destructive to your hopes of heaven. Why stand ye here all the day idle?" is the emphatic remonstrance of the Lord of the vineyard, to its indolent occupants; and the same question may be asked of you, My Brethren, whatever be the pretensions to ease, and carelessness, which

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you may suppose your situation to confer. We know that it has been contended by some, that our Saviour directed this reproach only against spiritual idleness, and that no other sort of idleness comes under his reprobation. But you, trust, my hearers, "have not so learned Christ,” and will readily detect the fallacy of an argument, the premises and influence of which are indeed equally erroneous. The malignant effects of these false conclusions have been fatally shewn in instances too numerous to be recited, but too important to be overlooked. They have driven men from their earthly heritage and earthly duties, into caves and monasteries, where there was only this difference between their conduct and that of the unreasonable creation, that the one knew a God whom they did not serve, and the other, by fulfilling their lowly destiny, served a God whom they did not know. They have caused a dissolution of the most endearing ties which nature suggests, and which the God of nature approves. They have perverted, and often annihilated, talents the most splendid, and faculties the most useful, by withdrawing the possessor of those talents and faculties, from the sphere in which they could have been rationally, benevolently, and religiously employed.

III. Lastly, I have to observe that the idle man is unhappy. Perhaps the consciousness which he must have of his injustice and irreligion

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would sufficiently warrant me in this conclusion; but, even admitting him to be ignorant of his guilt in these respects, and consequently to suffer nothing from the pricks of conscience, there is yet enough in idleness to ensure his misery. Notwithstanding all that has been said by epicures concerning the prevalence of sensual pleasure; notwithstanding all the attempts of weak and wicked voluptuaries to resolve all happiness into the enjoyments of sense, nothing has yet come under my observation to shake my firm conviction, that the only seat of happiness is in the mind. It were stoicism and madness to aver, that we derive no pleasure from the senses; but it is reason and religion to assert, that it is only under the restraint of mind, that they can confer permanent and solid satisfaction. And without energy, without exercise, without activity, in what state, My Brethren, will the human mind be found? To be improved, it must be exercised, and without improvement, it will have the imbecility, but want the innocence, of infancy. It will become like an "unweeded garden," while things rank and gross in nature possess it merely." Its memory, its hope, its energy, will be no more; and in place of that lustrous and vital spirit which God enthroned there, will nothing remain but a polluted and dejected soul, incapacitated for the affairs of life, and yet anticipating, with dreadful horror, the hour of its

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manumission into eternity.

That life languishes

in the hands of the idle man, that he feels in indolence an oppression and pain less tolerable than any thing which his former fatigues have imposed upon him, let him, who has retired from. business, to what he fondly hoped would be a life of ease and pleasantness, bear me witness. With such a man, the criminal task of killing time is infinitely more difficult, than was the discharge of the most arduous duty: he lays him down, on what he supposed a couch of roses, and finds it but a bed of thorns. As you wish then, My Brethren, for such tranquillity and happiness as life can afford, seek it in the exercise of your mind and your affections. Let there be some secondary pursuit which you follow occasionally, as subsidiary to the grand business of your profession. This the pleasures of literature, the education of your children, social and rational conversation, and even the cultivation of the earth, may supply. Above all, let the perusal of the Holy Scriptures, and meditation upon them, occupy a stated portion of your daily time. Be always industrious, and assiduous, to do well whatever is worth doing at all. Carry a sense of religion with you into all your pursuits; so shall you transform the thorny roads of life into ways of pleasantness, and all her paths to peace.

SERMON VIII.

ON A TRUST IN THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD.

DANIEL III. 28.

Then Nebuchadnezzar spake, and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the King's word, and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God.

WHETHER the Almighty Disposer of human lives and human actions proceeds in his government by miracles, or by simple means; whether he leaves his will to be done by the ordinary course of natural events, or is pleased to put forth some signal interference to effect his purposes, the considerative Christian will find equal reason to acknowledge the Omnipotence and superintending Providence of his God. To convince him of this essential truth, the walls of his enemy need not fall down before the trumpet of a second Joshua, nor the sun go back upon the dial of another repentant Ahaz. He knows that a mightier dispensation has been