hill is hard and tedious, but the serenity and fair prospect at the top, is sufficient to incite the labour of undertaking it, and to reward it being undertook.*

PLEASURE OF GREAT PLACE.

BUT to look upon those pleasures also, that have a higher object than the body; as those that spring from honour and grandeur of condition; yet we shall find, that even these are not so fresh and constant but the mind can nauseate them, and

of sense, and have but little residence among intellectual essences. And because the needs of nature first employ the sensual appetites, these being first in possession would also fain retain it, and therefore for ever continue the title, and perpetually fight for it; but because the inferior faculty fighting against the superior is no better than a rebel, and that it takes reason for its enemy, it shews such actions which please the sense and do not please the reason to be unnatural, monstrous, and unreasonable. And it is a great disreputation to the understanding of a man, to be so cozened and deceived, as to choose money before a moral virtue; to please that which is common to him and beasts, rather than that part which is a communication of the divine nature; to see him run after a bubble which himself hath made, and the sun hath particoloured.

Against this folly christian religion opposes contempt of things below, and setting our affections on things above.

TAYLOR'S Life of Christ.

* I shall detain you now no longer in the demonstration of what we should not do, but straight conduct you to a hill side, where I will point you out the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming.-MILTON.

quickly feel the thinness of a popular breath. Those that are so fond of applause while they pursue it, how little do they taste it when they have it! like lightning, it only flashes upon the face and is gone, and it is well if it does not hurt the man. But for greatness of place, though it is fit and necessary that some persons in the world should be in love with a splendid servitude, yet certainly they must be much beholding to their own fancy, that they can be pleased at it.*

THE PLEASURE OF AMUSEMENT COMPARED WITH THE PLEASURE FROM INDUSTRY IN OUR CALLINGS.

NOR is that man less deceived, that thinks to maintain a constant tenure of pleasure, by a continual pursuit of sports and recreations. The most

*Men in great place are thrice servants; servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business; so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others and to lose power over a man's self. Certainly great persons had need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves happy; for if they judge by their own feeling they cannot find it; but if they think with themselves what other men think of them, and that other men would fain be as they are, then they are happy as it were by report, when, perhaps, they find the contrary within; for they are the first that find their own griefs, though they be the last that find their own faults. Certainly men in great fortunes are strangers to themselves, and while they are in the puzzle of business they have no time to tend their health either of body or mind: "Illi mors gravis incubat, qui notus nimis omnibus, ignotus moritur sibi."-BACON.

voluptuous and loose person breathing, were he but tied to follow his hawks and his hounds, his dice and his courtships every day, would find it the greatest torment and calamity that could befall him; he would fly to the mines and galleys for his recreation, and to the spade and the mattock for a diversion from the misery of a continual unintermitted pleasure. But, on the contrary, the providence of God has so ordered the course of things, that there is no action, the usefulness of which has made it the matter of duty and of a profession, but a man may bear the continual pursuit of it, without loathing and satiety. The same shop and trade, that employs a man in his youth, employs him also in his age. Every morning he rises fresh to his hammer and anvil;* he passes the day singing; custom has naturalized his labour to him; his shop is his element, and he cannot with any enjoyment of himself live out of it.+

* See ante, 142.

+ With what hard toil, with what uneasy cares,
The woodpecker his scanty meal prepares :
Tho' small the feast that must reward his pains,
Sweet is that meal which honest labour gains.

Johnson thought the happiest life was that of a man of business, with some literary pursuits for his amusement: and that in general no one could be virtuous or happy, that was not completely employed. "Be not solitary; be not idle," is the conclusion of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. See Search's Light of Nature, vol. x. where there is a chapter on employment of Time.

THE PLEASURE OF MEDITATION

HAS been sometimes so great, so intense, so ingrossing all the powers of the soul, that there has been no room left for any other pleasure. Contemplation feels no hunger, nor is sensible of any thirst, but of that after knowledge. How frequent and exalted a pleasure did David find from his meditation in the divine law? all the day long it was the theme of his thoughts. The affairs of state, the government of his kingdom, might indeed employ, but it was this only that refreshed his mind.

How short of this are the delights of the epicure? how vastly disproportionate are the pleasures of the eating and of the thinking man? indeed as different as the silence of an Archimedes in the study of a problem, and the stillness of a sow at her wash.

PLEASURE OF RELIGION.

For

Its object is no less than the great God himself, and that both in his nature and his works. the eye of reason, like that of the eagle, directs itself chiefly to the sun, to a glory that neither admits of a superior, nor an equal. Religion carries the soul to the study of every divine attribute. ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.†

† Serm. i. vol. 1.

Her

It was now the middle of May, and the morning was remarkably serene, when Mr. Allworthy walked forth on the terrace, where the dawn opened every minute that lovely prospect we have before described to his eye. And now, having sent forth streams of light, which ascended the blue firmament

HUMAN PERFECTION:

OR ADAM IN PARADISE.

So God created man in his own image, in the image
of God created he him.

ANALYSIS OF THE SERMON.

1. The mind.

The Understanding.

The Will.

The Passions.

2. The Body.

PERFECTION IN GENERAL.

THE image of God in man is that universal rectitude of all the faculties of the soul, by which they stand apt and disposed to their respective offices and operations.

PERFECTION OF UNDERSTANDING.

AND first for its noblest faculty the understanding: it was then sublime, clear, and aspiring, and, as it were, the soul's upper region, lofty and serene, free from the vapours and disturbances of the inferior affections. It was the leading, con

before him as harbingers preceding his pomp, in the full blaze of his majesty, up rose the sun than which one object alone in this lower creation could be more glorious, and that Mr. Allworthy himself presented-a human being replete with benevolence, meditating in what manner he might render himself most acceptable to his Creator, by doing most good to his

creatures.-FIELDING.