SERMON II. The FOURTH PSALM, Verfe 4. Commune with your own Heart. WHAT paffeth in a man's own breast, is, of all the scenes of human observation, the most interesting, though generally the leaft attended to. It is our common practice to seek both for inftruction and entertainment from the various objects that furround us, and we give credit to the hafty report of our senses, without attending to the still small voice of reason, or the more distinct admonitions of conscience. Reafon Reason is, nevertheless, the pride of man, the boasted diftinction of his excellence. It has pleased the all-wife author of our being, to implant it in the human breast, as the test whereby we may examine, and approve or condemn, whatever our fenfes or imagination represent as defirable. What reason is with respect to good and evil, confcience, in the common acceptation of the term, is with refpect to right and wrong; both are, in fome degree, active qualities of the mind, which are capable of being heightened and improved by exercife; both will fuffer and be impaired by neglect. "Commune with your own heart," is, therefore a precept which I mean to recommend to you as conducive to your moral and religious improvement. Inconfiderateness is, at prefent, among the principal causes of irreligion. Some few there may be, who, against the light of reason and revelation, and in open defiance of God, fin, as it were, with a high hand ; yet yet characters of such decided guilt are certainly not common. Ours is an age of levity and diffipation, and I am perfuaded, it may as truly, as charitably be fuppofed, that far the greater number of finners of fend rather through inattention, than pre sumption.to.. I The bulk of mankind are engaged in the pursuits of ambition, interest, or pleasure, little regarding the nature of their actions in any other view than as they appear conducive to the attainment of their object. In the hurry of public life, the mind finds as little inclination, as leifure to attend to what is not immediately in view the cares or the pleasures of the world ftrike in with every thought, while the numerous examples of folly which prefent themselves on all occafions, give a kind of fanction to it, and are made an apology even for vice itself. otti andatit of Should thoughts of a ferious tendency accidentally obtrude themselves upon the worldly, gay, and luxurious man, they ever appear unfeasonable, impertinent, and irkfome; prepoffeffed with a perfuafion, that the indulgence of them would lead to melancholy, he inftantly treats them as Felix did St. Paul, when his confcience took the alarm, Go thy way for this time, and when I have a convenient feafon I will call for thee; but leaft fuch a feafon fhould come, recourfe is had again to diffipation, and fhould folly be found infufficient to drive away reflection, it is too frequently effected by intemperance.! It is no eafy task, therefore, to perfuade a man in the vigour of health, and the cheerful flow of youthful spirits, while his paffions urge him on to the gratification of fenfe, while the world promifes fair, and his imagination heightens the delufion, it is, I fay, no eafy matter to perfuade him, that it is as neceflary for man to think, as it is, to act. The young and inexperienced rush eagerly on in the beaten track of fol ly and extravagance, without, fo much as as knowing or inquiring where it will lead to. It rarely, indeed, happens, but that in the viciffitude of human affairs, they meet with fome circumftance or other of difficulty or difappointment, which checks their career, and brings them back, for a moment, to the right use of their understanding; in fuch an interval of reflection, there is hardly any man who does not acknowledge, on the whole, the vanity of earthly purfuits, and think it highly proper that he should, fome time or other, ftate a just account between his hopes and his fears on the fubject of eternity; but what ufually prevents the good effect of these accidental difpofitions, is the irksomeness of inquiring particularly into an account, which fhews, at first fight, a ballance not in his favour, but above all, an unwillingness to correct the errors which occafion it. Hence it is, that fo many prefume on life, as a fpendthrift does on his fortune, if there is but enough for the prefent B 2 occa |