learn to know in what human enjoyment consists ; would they but recollect that a person is not necessarily happy because he is rich or powerful; that what is called a life of pleasure is for the most part any thing rather than a life of gratification; and that the laugh of mirth, however it may conceal, cannot prevent, the inward sickness of the heart; would they, in short, be convinced, that the true constituents of happiness are in every body's power, and that they are a matter rather of internal sensation than of external display; they would then perhaps less frequently make shipwreck of themselves and of their souls. A correct and impartial view of human life may do much to teach them this important truth, in default of which they may rest assured that it will be forced upon them by an agonising experience; but their best, their surest, and their wisest instructor will be the holy book of the Christian revelation. 66 They who would save their lives," says our blessed Saviour, in allusion to the mistaken worldly wisdom of the vicious, "shall lose them; and they who throw away their lives for his sake and the Gospel's, the same shall find them." And again, "Seek ye first," says he, " the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and all these things (that is to say, the good things of this world) shall be added unto you."

Such, then, is the important conclusion which it has been my object to establish; in the hope that the reflections it may excite may induce some at least of my hearers, ere they step into the busy

scene of life, to calculate the cost at which they must purchase its delusions and vanities. And if, in the course of the argument, I have appeared to dwell more than becomes the office of a Christian minister upon the merely temporal advantages of a well regulated life, let it, as I have already observed, be recollected, that, so long as by the misrepresentations of the worldly mind those advantages are made to appear as preponderating in the contrary direction, it cannot surely be otherwise than serviceable to the cause of true religion to detect the fallacy. As an inducement to the performance of our duty, those advantages, when compared with the glory which shall be revealed hereafter, must, it is true, be of little moment; but to creatures so weak, so infirm of purpose, as we all are, every inducement to a good life, however trifling, has its value and its utility. To attempt to represent morality as the whole of Christianity is indeed as dangerous as it is mistaken; but it is surely not less so to cherish the idea that Christianity may exist whilst detached from morality. It is both one and the other, the devotion of the heart, and the subjugation of the body, which constitutes the whole duty of man; the sum and substance of that faith which is one day, we trust, to lead us onward to perfection: and though the mercy after which we all aspire can only, we are assured, be imparted to us through the merits of Christ, yet it is our duty to remember, that our obedience and our good

works, the disciplining of our passions, and the purification of our thoughts, is a sacrifice and a service, which, if there be any truth in the Gospel dispensation, he has peremptorily required as the proof of our submission, and the condition of our redemption.

CHRISTOPHER BENSON, M.A.

From a volume of Sermons entitled "On Scripture Difficulties. Twenty Discourses preached before the University of Cambridge, in the Year 1822, at the Lecture founded by the Rev. John Hulse, M. A."