to part with them, nor less than a means of happiness to receive them.

Thus reasons the understanding, prejudiced by a selfish and narrow heart, which ranks all, that avarice or luxury can grasp at, among the necessaries and comforts of life; because it cannot be happy, nor even easy, without a treasure to gaze at, or wanton in. What comes to the happiness arising from such a turn of mind, when extravagance, accidents, losses, law-suits, wars, or death, disperses all its riches? The answer to this question will shew, that the happiness of a rational, not to say a religious creature, ought to be founded on somewhat else, than the possession of wealth. It is not self that says, receive and keep. Self only bids me consult my happiness. It is gross ignorance, and bad habits, that persuade me receiving or keeping can make me happy.

But can the giving away make a man happy? I answer, either wealth is no way concerned in our happiness, or, so far as it is, happiness must arise from a judicious manner of parting with it. He is worse than an idiot, who heaps up riches with no other view than to increase and keep them. The man who reasons at all on the subject, desires them only that he may use them. The question is, how they are to be used? I say, they cannot be used at all, unless they are parted with. But some men part with them for one purpose, and some for another. Our Saviour, who knew best how they ought to be expended, extols the wisdom of giving them away. But the world cannot see wherein the happiness of such a disposal consists; and the truth is, our Saviour does not mean we should part with them for nothing, but only that we should traffick with them for better things than this world can exchange for them. It were better indeed for many a man to throw his riches into the sea, than either to keep or abuse them as he does. But our master, who trusts us with any share of his treasures, proposes to us a wiser and more profitable application of them, than this, or even than laying them out on sensual pleasures, or worldly grandeur. This he expresses, by the blessedness or happiness of giving, as superior to that of receiving. The text acknowledges an happiness in the one, as well as in the other, but gives the preference to the first. Let us see what

each consists in, that we may the better apprehend his reasons for a preference, so little likely to be seconded by the world.

As a man may be presented, either with what is barely necessary to his natural wants, or with what the acquired wants of avarice, ambition, or luxurious appetites, may crave; so his happiness must bear proportion to the greatness of those wants, so revealed, and to the degree of relief afforded.

Now, in relieving the distresses of the poor, or such as are naturally in want, the pleasure of comfort of the receiver, being proportioned to the degree of relief, is seldom perfect; because the relief is usually too much stinted to remove his wants intirely. And as he is not at present fully supplied, so he cannot help apprehending the danger of being soon again in as great want as ever. Besides, if the borrower is servant to the lender,' the receiver, in this case, must be still more inferior to, and dependent on the giver. If he hath any pride or spirit (and who hath not?) this will give him proportionable uneasiness, which, together with his fears as to future supplies, will considerably lessen the satisfaction he finds in the present. From hence it may appear, that a poor man, thus relieved, is far enough from being in a very blessed or happy condition; although it is some degree of happiness to him, that he feels his present necessity less sensibly than he did.

On the other hand, the unnatural wants, proceeding from a covetous, an ambitious, or a luxurious turn of mind, are always insatiable, and therefore can never be fully relieved. If one plain dish will not satisfy a man, neither will two, nor ten, unless they are of the most sumptuous and delicious kinds. If a coarse coat will not content him, neither will a fine one, unless it is laced. If an estate of fifty pounds a year is not sufficient for him, it is in vain to give him one of a hundred, or a thousand; it is in vain to present him with a lordship, or a kingdom. The whole world would be too little to make him happy. It is found, by universal experience, that, in all men of this kind, every additional gratification is but an incentive to new and greater desires. All the happiness then, of such a receiver, consists in a short fit of pleasure, immediately devoured by wants, ten times greater than the former.

The happiness of the giver must be very moderate indeed, not to outweigh that of the receiver in either of these instances. But what his happiness is we shall now proceed to shew, by opening those better treasures, which our Saviour invites him to purchase with the superfluities of his worldly wealth.

To make a man a giver, in our Saviour's meaning, he must have a lively sense of humanity and religion. Without either or both of these, he is not likely to be a considerable giver, at least to the poor; to the relief of whom I shall confine myself in what I intend to say farther on this subject.

Of all men in this world, there is none who bids so fair for happiness here, as he who is blessed both with wealth and true humanity. But when I said blessed with wealth, I needed not to have added, with humanity; because wealth without it is a curse of the severest kind. Every man enjoys his riches according to his sense of those satisfactions, that may be purchased with them. The man of pleasure lays out his wealth on wine and women; but shame, guilt, and diseases, prove him in the end a losing purchaser. The man of grandeur lays out his on figure; but finds in the conclusion, he hath been all his life only treating the mob of gapers, at an immense expence, with a vain and senseless pageant. The covetous lays out his to bring in more; but finds, when he is a dying, that he never had any; that he was always a beggar; and that wise and selfish as he thought himself, he nevertheless spent his miserable days in labouring for another, who hovers over him in his last moments with no other sentiments those of a hungry vulture, watching for the carcase of a dying beast.

The man of humanity plans his happiness on a nobler principle, which can neither deceive him in the progress, nor disappoint him in the end; a principle, which, continually exerted, gives him an high, an exquisite, and continual delight, and, at the last, entertains his departing soul with reflections as sweet as the music of angels.

This man, not content with doing justice in his dealings, to the rest of mankind, considers them, through a more elevated sense than that of honesty, as connected with him by the tender ties of one common nature. They are bone

of his bone, and flesh of his flesh,' and therefore he feels what they feel, almost as sensibly, and much more delicately, than he does that which immediately affects his own body. With such sentiments, we are not to wonder at his doing all a kind heart can do, to prevent the distresses of all who live under him; nor, hard as our own hearts may be, are we to be surprised, when we see him administering speedy and plentiful relief, so far as his fortune enables him, to the wants of all within his knowledge. The man is in pain till he does it; and in raptures when it is done; and why? but because the poor man and he are fellow-creatures, are both of the same species, and he owns it, he owns it in his fellow feeling; while the narrow-hearted miser, and the proud oppressor, confess it in words, which cost them nothing, but deny it in every action of their lives.

But does not his sense of humanity, which lays his heart open to so many scenes of affliction, make him miserable? No: the good God, who formed this beneficent heart by the lovely model of his own, while he blessed him with such a heart, blessed him at the same time with the power of turning his tenderness into an happy inlet for joys like those of his Maker, when infinite mercy and pity shower relief on the miserable.

If, however, the numbness of your own heart will not suffer you, at a speculative distance, to conceive the happiness this man tastes in relieving the poor, be present with him (in case you do not care to make the experiment on yourself) when he goes to the house of his poor neighbour with the means of relief in his hands, and you will then see, whether it is folly in him to lay out what he can spare on his singular sort of pleasure. You see him going to the gloomy abode, where want and misery have taken up their residence, to prevent the application, and relieve the anxiety, of his afflicted neighbour, before he hath time to blush for the nakedness of his family; you see him supplying the present necessities of the family; and, if the head of it is an honest man, comforting him with the hope of farther help, giving courage to his dejected heart, and promising to befriend him in all his difficulties for the future. Then you see the poor man raising his drooping head, and, with eyes and hands lifted to heaven, you hear him beseeching God to

pour his richest blessings on his deliverer. Grief, fear, despair, present themselves as the good man enters; but, as if he were the angel of God, he leaves in their place, when he goes out, hope, comfort, and joy. Tell me, for I speak to to thine heart, if thou hast a heart of flesh, do you not think this a happy man? Do you understand that dew on his cheek? Can you enter into the spirit from whence it springs? Do you think his tears proceed from sorrow, or from a conscious tenderness, which makes him partaker in the relief of his neighbour? Is it in the power of music, think you, to salute your ears with a sound so ravishing, as the prayers of his poor neighbour are to his? Could the splendor of a throne, or of the highest earthly magnificence, all your own, greet your eyes with a sight so pleasing, so glorious, as the change wrought by charity in the heart and countenance of his fellow-creature, appears in the eyes of this friend to mankind? Can a French cook dress up such a morsel as this? Can the wines of Greece or Hungary give such a transport to the spirits? Can beauty, fallacious beauty! afford a pleasure, so high, so pure, so lasting as this? I hope you are a human creature, and do not think they can. No: this instance will be found to verify the words of our Saviour. The receiver, who, with all his family, were saved from perishing for want of bread, is not so blessed, is not so happy, as the giver, who brought the seasonable means of relief. The joy of the receiver was not higher in its first transport, than that of the giver. The joy of the receiver was but for a time, and cannot go with him beyond the grave; but the joy of the giver will accompany him through every period of life, will sooth his soul in the pangs of death, and set an additional jewel in his eternal crown.

Did the wealthy, instead of bestowing their alms in churches, and at a distance from the objects to be relieved, make it their business personally to visit the prisons, and the wretched cottages of the poor, to view the miserable beds they languish life away on, to examine the scanty quantity, and the disagreeable or unwholesome qualities of the food wherewith they endeavour to protract an unhappy life, there would be no need of dunning discourses like this; their charity would flow in more unstinted streams of relief