IV.

DISC. what is paffing therein. Under a smiling deceitful furface, both conceal dangerous rocks and quickfands, on which the unfkilful mariner will ftrike and be loft. Both abound with creatures pursuing and devouring each other, the fmall and weak becoming a prey to the great and powerful; while in both there is a grand destroyer, a Leviathan, taking his pastime, and seeking the perdition of all. In the voyage of life, we may fet out with a ftill fea, and a fair sky; but ere long, cares and forrows, troubles and afflictions overtake us. At God's word, either to punish us, or to prove us, from fome quarter or other, whence perhaps we least expected it, the stormy wind arifeth, and lifteth up the waves. We are carried sometimes up to heaven with hope, fometimes down to the deep with defpair, and our foul melteth because of trouble. Then it is, that our heavenly Father fhews us, what poor helpless creatures we are without him; and tribulation becomes the parent of devotion. If we cry unto the Lord in our trouble, he will deli

IV.

ver us out of our diftrefs. If, with the dif- DISC. ciples in the Gospel, we go to our Master, faying, Lord, fave us, we perish, he will, as he did then, arife, and rebuke the winds and the fea; there will be a calm; and we shall arrive in safety at the defired haven. Let us, therefore, conclude, by befeeching Almighty God, in the words of our most excellent church, that we, who by baptifm were "received into the ark of Chrift's "Church, being stedfast in faith, joyful

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through hope, and rooted in charity, may "fo pass the waves of this troublesome "world, that finally we may come to the "land of everlasting life," where all the toffings and agitations of human affairs shall cease, or, as St. John expreffes it, where there fhall be "no more SEA."

DISCOURSE V.

THE BLESSING OF A CHEERFUL HEART.

PROV. XVII. Part of the 22d Verfe.

A merry heart doth good like a medicine.

A

V.

MONG the golden maxims delivered DISC. out, for the direction of our moral conduct, by him, on whom it pleased God to bestow "largeness of heart as the fand 66 upon the sea shore," we meet with feveral, in different parts of the book of Proverbs, to the fame effect with that which hath been just now read." Heaviness in “ the heart of a man maketh it stoop; but "a good word maketh it glad. A merry "heart maketh a cheerful countenance; but

by forrow of the heart the spirit is bro"ken. All the days of the afflicted are

VOL. III.

G

evil;

DISC. "evil; but he that is of a merry heart

V. "hath a continual feast. A

A merry heart "doth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit drieth the bones." To these pasfages may be fubjoined a very fine one from the book of Ecclefiafticus, written in the spirit and ftyle of Solomon-" Give not "over thy mind to heaviness, and afflict not

thyself in thine own counsel. The glad"nefs of the heart is the life of man, and "the joyfulness of a man prolongeth his

days. Love thine own foul, and comfort "thine heart, remove forrow far from thee: "for forrow hath killed many, and there is "no profit therein. Envy and wrath short"en the life, and carefulness bringeth age "before the time *.”

a

It is evidently intended, in these sentences, to discountenance a gloomy, difcontented cast of mind, and to recommend, in it's ftead, that habit of being pleafed ourselves, and of pleafing others, which is best expreffed, in English, by the word cheerfulness: I fay

a Ecclus. xxx. 21.