fay For whom do I labour and bereave myself of rest? This is also a fore travel: I believe this is no uncommon picture of the disappointments of human life and the manner our pleasures and enjoyments flip from under us in every stage of our life. And though I would not be thought by it, as if I was denying the reality of pleasures, difputing the being of them, any more, than one would, the reality of pain-Yet I must obferve on this head, that there is a plain diftinction to be made betwixt pleasure and happiness. For tho' there can be no happiness without pleasure yet the converse of the propofition will not hold true. We are fo-made, that from the common gratifications of our appetites, and the impreffions of a thousand objects, we fnatch the one, like a tranfient gleam, without being fuffered to tafte the other, C 3 and and enjoy that perpetual fun-fhine and fair weather which conftantly attend it. This, I contend, is only to be found in religion in the confcioufnefs of virtue and the fure and certain hopes of a better life, which brightens all our profpects, and leaves no room to dread difappointments because the expectation of it is built upon a rock, whose foundations are as deep as thofe of heaven and hell. And tho' in our pilgrimage through this world fome of us may be fo fortunate as to meet with fome clear fountains by the way, that may cool for a few moments, the heat of this great thirft of happiness - yet our Saviour, who knew the world, tho' he enjoyed but little of it, tells us, that whosoever drinketh of this water will thirst again : --and and we all find by experience it is fo, and by reason that it always must be so. I conclude with a fhort obfervation upon Solomon's evidence in this cafe. Never did the bufy brain of a lean and hectick chymift fearch for the philofopher's stone with more pains and ardour than this great man did after happiness. He was one of the wifeft enquirers into nature had tried all her powers and capacities, and after a thoufand vain fpeculations and vile experiments, he affirmed at length, it lay hid in no one thing he had tried like the chymick's projections, all had ended in fmoak, or what was worse, in vanity and vexation of spirit: the conclufion of the whole matter was this - that he advifes every man who would be happy, to fear God and keep his commandments. |