son; in vain she attempts, with her tender offices, to prolong a life dearer than her own. He faints in her arms; he bows his head; he sinks in death. Fatal, doubly fatal, that last expiring pang! While it dislodges the unwilling soul, it rends an only child from the yearning embraces of a parent, and tears away the support of her age from a disconsolate widow. While those long for a reprieve, others invite the stroke. Quite weary of the world, with a restless impatience, they sigh for dissolution. Some, pining away under the tedious decays of an incurable consumption; or gasping for breath, and almost suffocated by an inundation of dropsical waters. On some a relentless cancer has fastened its envenomed teeth, and is gnawing them, though in the midst of bodily vigour,, in the midst of pitying friends, gradually to death. Others are on a rack of agonies by convulsive fits of the stone. O! how the pain writhes their limbs! how the sweat bedews their flesh! and their eye-balls wildly roll! Methinks the night condoles with these her distressed children, and sheds dewy tears over their sorrowful abodes.-But, of all mortals, they are the most exquisitely miserable who groan beneath the pressure of a melancholy mind, or smart under the lashes of a resentful conscience. Though robed in ermine, or covered with jewels; the state of a slave chained to the gallies, or of an exile condemned to the mines, is a perfect paradise compared with theirs. O! that the votaries of mirth, whose life is a continued round of merriment and whim, would bestow one serious reflection on this variety of human woes! it might teach them to be less enamoured with the few languid sweets that are thinly scattered through this vale of tears, and environed with such a multitude of ragged thorns: it might teach them, no longer to dance away their years with a giddy rambling impulse; but to as pire, with a determined aim after those happy regions, where delights, abundant and unembittered, flow. Can there be circumstances, which a man of wisdom would more earnestly deprecate, than these several instances of grievous tribulation? There are; and, what is very astonishing, they are frequently the desire and the choice of those who fancy themselves the sole heirs of happiness: those, I mean, who are launching out into the depths of extravagance, and running excessive lengths of riot who are prostituting their reputation and sacrificing their peace to the gratification of their Iusts; sapping the foundation of their health in debaucheries, or shipwrecking the interests of their families in their bowls; and, what is worse, are forfeiting the joys of an eternal heaven for the sordid satisfactions of the beast, for the transitory sensations of an hour!-Ye slaves of appetite! how far am I from envying your gross sensualities and voluptuous revels! Little, ah! little are you sensible, that while indulgence showers her roses, and luxury diffuses her odours, they scatter poisons also, and shed unheeded bane; evils incomparably more malignant than the wormwood and gall of the sharpest affliction.-Since death is in the drunkard's cup, and worse than poniards in the harlot's embrace, may it ever be the privilege of the man whom I love, to go without his share of these pestilent sweets+! Abundance of living sparks glitter in the lanes, and twinkle under the hedges. I suppose they "Yes; in the flowers that wreathe the sparkling bowl, "Fell adders hiss, and pois'nous serpents roll." + Quam suave est suavitatibus istis carere! was St. Augustine's pious exclamation: the substance of which Mr. Pope has expressed with more simplicity, and with no less dignity: Count all th' advantage prosp'rous vice attains, are the glowworms, which have lighted their little lamps, and obtained leave, through the absence of the sun, to play a feeble beam. A 'faint glimmer just serves to render them perceivable, without tending at all to dissipate the shades, or making any amends for the departed day.-Should some weather-beaten traveller, dropping with wet and shivering with cold, hover round this mimicry of fire, in order to dry his garments and warm his benumbed limbs; should some bewildered traveller, groping for his way, in a starless night and trackless desert, take one of these languid tapers, as a light to his feet and a lantern to his paths, how certainly would both the one and the other be frustrated of their expectation!-And are they more likely to succeed, who, neglecting that sove reign balm which distilled from the cross, apply any carnal diversion to heal the anxiety of the mind? Who, deaf to the infallible decisions of revelation, resign themselves over to the erroneous conjectures of reason, in order to find the way that leadeth unto life? Or, lastly, who have recourse to the froth of this vain world for a satisfactory portion and a substantial happiness? Their conduct is in no degree wiser, their disappointment equally sure, and their miscarriage infinitely more disastrous. To speak in the delicate language of a sacred writer, they sow the wind, "and will reap the whirlwind." To speak more plainly; the pleasures of the world, which we are all so prone to doat upon, and the powers of fallen reason, which some are so apt to idolizet, are not only vain but trea Hos. viii. 7. + I hope it will be observed, that I am far from decrying that noble faculty of reason, when exerted in her proper sphere; when acting in a deferential subordination to the revealed will of Heaven. While she exercises her powers within these appointed limits, she is unspeakably serviceable, and cannot be too industriously cultivated. But when she sets up herself in proud contradistinction to cherous: not only a painted flame, like these spark ling animals, but much like those unctuous exhalations which arise from the marshy ground, and often dance before the eyes of the benighted way. faring man. Kindled into a sort of fire they personate a guide, and seem to offer their service; but, blazing with delusive light, mislead their follower into hidden pits, headlong precipices, and unfathomable gulfs; where, far from his beloved friends; far from all hopes of succour, the unhappy wanderer is swallowed up and lost. Not long ago we observed a very surprising appearance in the western sky. A prodigious star took its flaming route through those coasts, and trailed as it passed a tremendous length of fire almost over half the heavens. Some, I imagine, viewed the portentous stranger with much the same anxious amazement as Belshazzar beheld the hand-writing upon the wall. Some looked upon it as a bloody flag, hung out by Divine-resentment over a guilty world. Some read in its glaring visage the fate of nations and the fall of kingdomst. To others, it shook, or seemed to shake, the sacred oracles; when, all arrogant and self-sufficient, she says to the word of scripture, I have no need of thee: she is then, I must be bold to maintain, not only a glowworm, but an ignis fatuus; not only a bubble, but a snare. May not this remark, with the strictest propriety, and without the least limitation, be applied to the generality of our modern romances, novels, and theatrical entertainments? These are commonly calculated to inflame a wanton fancy; or, if conducted with so much modesty, as not to debauch the affections; they pervert the judgment, and bewilder the taste. By their incredible adventures; their extravagant parade of gallantry; and their cha racters, widely different from truth and nature; they inspire foolish conceits; beget idle expectations; introduce a disgust of genuine history; and indispose their admirers to acquiesce in the decent civilities, or to relish the sober satisfactions, of common life. pestilence and war from its horrid hair.-For my part, I am not so superstitious as to regard what every astrologer has to prognosticate upon the ac cession of a comet, or the projection of its huge vapoury train. Nothing can be more precarious and unjustifiable than to draw such conclusions from such events; since they neither are preternatural effects, nor do they throw the frame of things into any disorder. I would rather adore that omnipotent Being who rolled those stupendous orbs from his creating hand, and leads them by his providential eye through unmeasurable tracts of æther: who bids them now approach the sun, and glow with unsufferable ardours*, now retreat to the utmost bounds of our planetary system, and make their entry among other worlds. They are harmless visitants: I acquit them from the charge of causing or being accessary to desolating plagues. Would to God there were no other more formidable indications of approaching judg ments or impending ruin! But, alas! when vice becomes predominant, and irreligion almost epidemical; when the sabbaths of a jealous God are notoriously profaned; and that "name, which is great, wonderful, and holy," is prostituted to the meanest, or abused to the most execrable pur. poses; when the worship of our great Creator and Preserver is banished from many of the most conspicuous families, and it is deemed a piece of rude impertinence so much as to mention the gracious Redeemer in our genteel interviews; when it passes for an elegant freedom of behaviour to ridicule the mysteries of Christianity, and a species of refined conversation to taint the air with lasci "The comet in the year 1680, according to Sir Isaac "Newton's computation, was, in its nearest approach, "above 166 times nearer the sun than the earth is: con"sequently, its heat was then 28,000 times greater than "that of summer: so that a ball of iron as big as the "earth, heated by it, would hardly become cool in 50,000 years." Derh. dstr. Theol. p. 257. |