'twould be the fame;every man would return again to his courfe, and the fame bad paffions would produce the fame bad actions to the end of the world.

This is the principal leffon of the parable; but I must enlarge upon the whole of it because it has fome other useful leffons, and they will best prefent themselves to us as we go along.

In this parable, which is one of the most remarkable in the gofpel, our SAVIOUR represents a scene, in which, by a kind of contraft, two of the most opposite conditions that could be brought together from human life, are; pafs'd before our imaginations.

The one, a man exalted above the

level of mankind, to the highest pinnacle of profperity, to riches

to happiness

I fay, happiness,

in compliance with the world, and on a fuppofition, that the poffeffion of riches must make us happy, when the very purfuit of them fo warms our imagination, that we stake both body and foul upon the event, as if they were things not to be purchased at too dear a rate. They are the wages of wisdom,as well as of folly, Whatever was the cafe here, is beyond the purport of the parable--the fcripture is filent, and fo fhould we; it marks only his outward condition, by the common appendages of it, in the two great articles of Vanity and

Appetite: -—to gratify the one, he was clothed in purple and fine linen: to fatisfy the other, fared fumptu oufly every day;--and upon every thing too--we'll fuppofe, that climates could furnish--that luxury could invent, or the hand of fcience could torture. Clofe by his gates is reprefented an object whom Providence might feem to have placed there, to cure the pride of man, and fhew him to what wretchednefs his condition might be brought: a creature in all the fhipwreck of nature,- helpless,

-un

boog bar tu skpo, laun done, in want of friends, in want 1 mol yedi

of health,--and in want of ever

every

thing with them which his diftreffes

called for.

5. In this ftate he is described as defiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table; and

tho' the cafe is not exprefsly put, that

the parable, or pleaded after by

Ched 247 1.199 bigot

the other, that he fhewed mercy to the 310or binon

miferable, we may conclude his requeft was unfuccefsful- -like too

redw.Budo world, either fo

29 vad of

that they cannot

look down diftinctly enough upon

90

the fufferings of their fellow creatures,

or by long furfeiting in a continual courfe of banqueting and good

cheer, they forget there is fuch a di

stemper as hunger, in the catalogue of human infirmities.

Overcharged with this, and perhaps a thousand unpitied wants in a pilgrimage through an inhofpitable world, the poor man finks filently under his burden. But, good God! whence is this? Why dost thou fuffer thefe hardships in a world which thou haft made? Is it for thy honour, that one man should eat the bread of fulness, and fo many of his own ftock and lineage eat the bread of forrow? That this man fhould go clad in purple, and have all his paths ftrewed with rofebuds of delight, whilft so many mournful paffengers go heavily along, and pafs by his gates, hanging down their heads? Is it for thy Glory, GOD! that fo large a fhade

of mifery should be spread across thy