by his vices, shrinks from his body with terrour, and finds that he has anticipated the vengeance of Heaven. To religion, then, we must hold, in every circumstance of life, for our truest comfort; for, if already we are happy, it is a pleasure to think that we can make that happiness unending; and, if we are miserable, it is very consoling to think that there is a place of rest. Thus, to the fortunate, religion holds out a continuance of bliss; to the wretched, a change from pain. But, though religion is very kind to all men, it has promised peculiar rewards to the unhappy. The sick, the naked, the houseless, the heavyladen, and the prisoner, have ever most frequent promises in our sacred law. The author of our religion every where professes himself the wretch's friend; and, unlike the false ones of this world, bestows all his caresses upon the forlorn. The unthinking have censured this as partiality, as a preference, without merit to deserve it. But they never reflect, that it is not in the power, even of Heaven itself, to make the offer of unceasing felicity as great a gift to the happy as to the miserable. To the first, eternity is but a single blessing; since, at most, it but increases what they already possess. To the latter it is a double ad vantage; for it diminishes their pain here, and rewards them with heavenly bliss hereafter. But Providence is, in another respect, kinder to the poor than the rich; for, as it thus makes the life after death more desirable, so it smooths the passage there. The wretched have had a long familiarity with every face of terrour. The man of sorrows lays himself quietly down, without possessions to regret, and but few ties to stop his departure. He feels only nature's pang in the final separation; and this is no way greater than he has often fainted under before: for, after a certain degree of pain, every new breach that death opens in the constitution, nature kindly covers with insensibility. Thus, Providence has given the wretched two advantages over the happy in this life; greater felicity in dying; and in heaven, all that superiority of pleasure which arises from contrasted enjoyment. And this superiority, my friends, is no small advantage, and seems to be one of the plea sures of the poor man in the parable; for though he was already in heaven, and felt all the raptures it could give, yet it was mentioned, as an addition to his happiness, that he had once been wretched, and now was comforted; that he had known. z2 what it was to be miserable, and now felt what it was to be happy. Thus, my friends, you see religion does what philosophy could never do. It shows the equal dealings of Heaven to the happy and the unhappy; and levels all human enjoyments to nearly the same standard. It gives to both rich and poor the same happiness hereafter, and equal hopes to aspire after it. But, if the rich have the advantage of enjoying pleasure here, the poor have the endless satisfaction of knowing what it was once to be miserable, when crowned with endless felicity hereafter; and even though this should be called a small advantage, yet being an eternal one, it must make up by duration what the temporal happiness of the great may have exceeded by in tenseness. { These are, therefore, the consolations which the wretched have peculiar to themselves, and in which they are above the rest of mankind. In other respects they are below them. They who would know the miseries of the poor, must see life and endure it. To declaim on the temporal advantages they enjoy, is only repeating what none either believe or practise. The men who have the necessaries of living are not poor; and they who want them must be miserable. Yes, my friends, we must be miserable. No vain efforts of a refined imagination can sooth the wants of nature, can give elastick sweetness to the dank vapour of a dungeon, or ease to the throbbings of a broken heart. Let the philosopher, from his couch of softness, tell us that we can resist all these. Alas! the effort by which we resist them is still the greatest pain! Death is slight, and any man may sustain it: but torments are dreadful, and these no man can endure. To us then, my friends, the promises of hap piness in heaven should be peculiarly dear; for, if our reward be in this life alone, we are then, indeed, of all men the most miserable. When I look round these gloomy walls, made to terrify as well as to confine us; this light, that only serves to show the horrours of the place; those shackles, that tyranny has imposed, or crime made necessary; when I survey these emaciated looks, and hear those groans; O my friends! what a glorious exchange would heaven be for these. To fly through regions unconfined as air; to bask in the sunshine of eternal bliss; to carol over endless hymns of praise; to have no master to threaten or insult us; but the form of Goodness himself forever in our eyes. When I think of these things, death becomes the messenger of very glad tidings. When I think of these things, his sharpest arrow becomes the staff of my support. When I think of these things, what is there in life worth having? When I think of these things, what is there that should not be spurned away? Kings in their palaces should groan for such advantages; but we, humbled as we are, should yearn for them.. And shall these things be ours? Ours they will certainly be, if we but try for them; and, what is a comfort, we are shut out from many temptations that would retard our pursuit. Only let us try for them, and they will certainly be ours, and, what is still a comfort, shortly too: for if we look back on past life, it appears but a very short span, and whatever we may think of the rest of life, it will yet be found of less duration. As we grow older, the days seem to grow shorter, and our intimacy with time ever lessens the perception of his stay. Then let us take comfort now; for we shall soon be at our journey's end; we shall soon lay down the heavy burthen laid by Heaven upon us: and though death, the only friend of the wretched, for a little while mocks the weary traveller with the view, and, like his horizon, still flies before him; yet the time will certainly and shortly come, when we shall cease from our toil; when the luxurious great ones of the world shall no more tread us to the earth; when we shall think with pleasure on |