rise above one another in our progress through life, and yet remain unseduced by the scenes which court our enjoyment, and unmoved by temptations that entice us away, requires such an alienation of heart from the things of life; that, one would think, nothing less than an extinction of our faculties is requisite for the world to lose its attractions, and pleasures to tempt us in vain.

We are placed in a world we must not love, pleasures attract which we are forbidden to enjoy, and riches allure which we must never covet. None of us are so peculiarly constituted, but something suited to our dispositions steals into our bosoms, and wraps itself into the very folds of our hearts.

The world, Proteus like, is ever assuming new shapes, and presents itself to our notice with various garbs and declarations; in the days of our youth appearing, as in the tablet of Cebes, in the character of a female, with flushed cheeks and disordered hair, holding to our lips the cup of pleasure, of which she exhorts us to drink largely, in order that, having drank of the chalice of her fornication, we may taste the wrath of God. As we advance in life and grow old by experience, she tries her more secret artifices, and veils the impudence of the harlot under the attire of virgin modesty; and while assuring us of the innocency of domestic enjoyments and social life, and of the fair

reputation which we honestly have acquired, she binds us to herself with cords so strong, yet so invisible, that the thread of life shall first be broken, ere we can break her stronger ties. And when the decrepitude of age arrests us, and the fantastic vision, which in our youthful days appeared only to mock us and vanish into air, shall fade upon the mind's once brightened pupil, reflecting images like the polished mirror of the eye, both of which are now dark and dim; then as the spirit of gold she reminds us of the treasures she has given us, and the riches we are unwilling to leave. In whatever situation we may be placed, we can never be exempt from her allurements, which she ever adapts according to our dispositions; so that, without the grace of God preventing, we can never throw off the snares she lays for us, and from her thraldom we can never be free.

However dazzling may be the decorations of the vast theatre of the world in which we are placed, we are to consider ourselves only as actors in a scene that will soon pass away; in which we must not regard the plaudits of the spectators, nor consider the part that Providence has allotted us to act, whether that of a prince or a peasant; but only see to the propriety of our representation, that when the drama of life is closed, we may not be ushered into a more awful scene.

Though every thing around us may be most at

tracting and alluring; yet we must consider all things as unsubstantial realities, more as visions of the night season, which if we aim to grasp, we shall embrace shadows. We are to consider life as a season of probation, not enjoyment; which is given us to see whether we will prefer the uncertainty of present to the reality of future happiness; whether we will suffer the encroachments of pleasures, and visible things, so to steal upon our senses as to shut out things invisible; whether we will seek the pleasures of sin for a season, which less frequently cause the eye to sparkle with gladness, than suffuse the same with tears.

To preserve the vitality of those holy graces which are implanted by the spirit, requires such care and diligence; that the labour, we bestow upon our earthly employments, should, with an increase proportioned to the importance of future to present enjoyment, be laid out with cheerfulness for the apprehension of what intrinsically is so superior to all sublunary good.

In human life we often find, that by suffering the mind to wander upon things remote, and by ruminating on that which may never occur, and which often has no connection with the present; by this dissipation of our thoughts and inattention to our immediate business, we often ruin our projects, and destroy our schemes. The mind is thus drawn away from the immediate concerns of life,

and we often do not awake from our dreams and delusion, till we find ourselves upon the verge of a precipice and brink of ruin. By thus diving into futurity, and fixing our thoughts upon things remote, we see not the difficulties that lie immediately in our way in the path of life, but are like the traveller, who by regarding the most beautiful but distant scenery, is unapprised of the yawning gulf beneath his feet.

But what is thus blameable in the business of human life, is essentially requisite for the apprehension of our eternal good. For it is by not suffering present things to engage our attention, but by fixing the telescope of mental perfection to bring distant objects at once to our view, excluding from the sight as much as possible things immediately before us, and thus extending the sphere of vision, that our knowledge of an unseen world is gained. Those present objects which crowd upon the senses must be removed to a distance. The nature of things must be changed; the mind's eye must be inverted, and regard less things present than things to come. As the objects of the visible and invisible world are remote and separate, the mode of gaining either, (except the diligence necessary for the apprehension of perishable or imperishable good), is equally distinct. The well known maxim of ancient wisdom of regarding only the present, despising at the same time the past, and neglecting the future,

however admirably adapted for the furtherance of worldly schemes, must be so far from being adopted into the policy of a candidate for immortality, that the very reverse alone is calculated for the promotion of those interests, compared with which, things temporal assume their proper insignificance.

Instead of superinducing forgetfulness of the past, and suffering present things only to agitate us with hopes and fears, we must close our eyes upon the present scenes of enchantment, recal to our memory the days that are gone by, and clothe the images which have faded in our memory, however once vividly impressed, with all the freshness of present realities. The invisible and future world, with all its awful solemnities, vested with a glory unknown to the brightest orb of this lower sphere, must be the first to rise, and last to set upon the mind. We must never suffer any thing to eclipse or veil it in obscurity, but if one bright beam has but enlightened our understandings, we must see to it, that its light may shine full upon the soul; till the glory of the present world, to our view, appears tarnished, and the diadems of kings emit a feeble ray.

It is only, be it remembered, by examining the detail of our past lives, that we can come at just conclusions respecting futurity, as we shall carry into the eternal world nothing but the soul defecated of every material, and impressed with the