SERMON XVIII.

THE RIGHTEOUS RECOMPENSED ON EARTH.

PROVERBS, Xi. 31.

Behold the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth.

THE loose and indefinite notion which men form of religion is, that it is something intended to check our present happiness; that it extends to us magnificent rewards as the price of obedience; but that obedience implies a sacrifice of gratification in this scene of existence, and leaves us with less enjoyment than would fall to our share, if there were no rule at all. Now this opinion is untrue, and it is mischievous; and for these reasons, I shall endeavour to refute it. I shall endeavour to show, that if our Almighty Creator had held out to us no system of rewards and punishments, it would still have been our interest to have followed after righteousness; that with mere reference to this world it would have been our proper conduct to pursue. It is certainly unfriendly to the interests of religion, to suppose that it imposes upon us any peculiar burthen of its own; it necessarily renders all our duties much more difficult, if we suppose that the reward of them is so remote, and that our whole system of being must be changed, before one particle of enjoyment can be derived from all the laborious exertions we are making in this world. But all these opinions lay a burthen upon religion, which it is not bound to bear. You tax religion with being painful and burdensome; it imposes on you no new

pain; it lays upon you no fresh burthen; it debars you from no one pleasure which prudence will permit ; it cuts you off from no gratification which justice will allow; it leaves you with every original bias and propensity of your nature, just so far as you can indulge them without injuring yourselves and others; it is the rule of wisdom and prudence, which God has protected with eternal punishments and rewards :—therefore, when we say, Do this, because God will reward, - Do this, because God will punish, - we do not give you the only motives for righteous action, but the highest motives; we might say with equal justice, Do this to avoid the ravages of disease, - Do this to avoid the curses of your fellow-creatures; the same rule that leads to eternal happiness, leads to mortal happiness: the righteous not only have their reward in heaven, but, behold, as the text says, they have their reward even upon earth.

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Many a man, I fear, envies vice while he practises virtue. A secret opinion exists, that the greater portion of worldly recompence falls to the share of bad men; it is not declared openly, that would be too shocking; but it is thought, and a man says to himself, “ Surely there is a burthen in righteousness; men of pleasure have, at least, this world for themselves; if there were no other world but this, their existence would be more spirited and their condition far superior to mine." an antidote to these feelings, I would propose three considerations:-in comparing a righteous and unrighteous life, we must be careful to form a just notion of those rules, to which a righteous man is subjected by religion: secondly, in observing the lives of bad men, we must observe them, so that we detach from their lives all their accidental advantages and good fortune, and look merely at the effect of their vices: and, thirdly, we must carry on our view from the beginning to the end of their lives. With these limitations or cautions, I think, we shall find, that it is not the wicked who are

recompensed even in this world. First, I would ask, what pleasure a religious or righteous man (for I use the terms synonymously) needs, to relinquish, which is consistent with his own happiness and the happiness of others? There is not one single gratification within these limits which he may not enjoy, nor a single pleasure which he is called upon to sacrifice. If any man pretend that religion asks more than this; that God hates the enjoyment of his creatures; that we are to retire from the commerce of men and offer up a daily sacrifice of wretchedness to Heaven, he comes to us with the foolish and ignorant tales of old times, which the common sense of mankind has driven away from the earth; he substitutes his own acerbity of disposition and his own limited views, for the simple and extended goodness of religious rules. If any useless prohibition can be shown in religion; if there be any thing like a disposition to vex and tease; if all its commandments do not plainly and clearly bear upon the worldly happiness of him who is commanded, then must the mere worldly advantage of a life of righteousness be given up; but, if a religious man only abstains from doing that which would injure his health or destroy his reputation, which would expose him to the punishment of law, or goad him with the stings of conscience, then, even in this limited scene of things, is he the wisest of us all; and the very fool, who says in his heart there is no God, may still promote his worldly happiness by following the rules which God has given him. There is nothing, in fact, more prejudicial to the interest of religion, than to suppose it opposed to worldly pleasure; there is not the slightest necessity for any such supposition; it stops, if you please, the enjoyments of to-day; but why does it do so?-to increase the joy of to-morrow; to teach that there is a to-morrow a manhood - an old age- and a future; to correct the blind, gross, stupid calculations of voluptuousness, that

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can look no further than the wine in the cup, and forgets the burning fever and the reproaching heart. Of course, too, in drawing the parallels between righte ousness and sin, we must look to the whole life of a bad man. We must not only see him at the moment of joy, but at the season of remorse; we must look at him in his age, in his sorrows, and at his death; we must call for him at that season, when a mouldering body lives only upon hope in God. "The triumphing of the wicked," says Job, "is short, it is but for a moment; though his excellence mount up unto the heavens, and his head reach to the clouds, yet he shall perish for ever; and they which have seen him shall say, Where is he?"

We must not only look through the whole of life to judge whether it has been happily or unhappily spent, but we must detach from bad men the accidental circumstances of good fortune by which they are surrounded, the riches, the talents, the rank, and steadily look at the mere effect of sinful indulgence upon human happiness. We shall find it regularly producing misery to the vicious; its course may be turned aside by other circumstances, but of itself, and divested of these circumstances, unhappiness springs from vice as regularly as each fruit grows from its proper seed; so far, for those sources of deception which may prevent us from forming a fair judgment upon the different plans of human life-we will now see why a righteous man is recompensed upon earth. First, a righteous man is recompensed because he is prudent; and he is prudent because he attends to the laws of nature and the laws of society. God has set pain and disease as the limits of bodily pleasure; within these limits a righteous man always remains, while he who considers himself as better instructed in what life can afford, thinks it spirited pleasure and true wisdom to set them at defiance; but then, as sure as the thunder after the flash, though not so quick, comes a racked and tormented body; an old age

in the midst of youth; death in the flower of manhood; a temper soured with disease; the wretchedness and despair of knowing that it is all right; that it is a debt incurred willingly and wantonly; that it must be paid off ache by ache, and pain by pain, till nature can endure no more, and the grave extends to us its mercy; and to know that we are entailing upon ourselves pain and disease is not a sufficient preventive. The chains that are to bind a man on earth must be forged in heaven. The fear of mere earthly evil will not do: "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," says the voluptuary; "the life that is short should be pleasant;" and so men spirit each other up to the ruin of wickedness, and become living monuments of violated nature, and of God's vengeance. It will not do when present pleasure is at hand, when men see it with their eyes, and are close upon it, they are so far from being able to look forward from youth to manhood, that they cannot carry their thoughts from to-day till to-morrow. The fear of mere worldly consequences seldom or ever bears a man harmless, but a righteous man restrains himself, not because he fears a pained and vexed body, but because he fears a polluted soul. He does not say, "I will abstain, because I fear the temporal consequences of not abstaining," but, "I will abstain, because God bids me; because I am seen by him-because I shall be judged by him- because it is my firm purpose to be the lord and master of my own passions:" his motive is distant, but his reward immediate: he looks forward to the splendid promises of God, and he will gain them; but in his high search he finds that, of which he never dreamt, peace, health, quiet calm old age, and every blessing which the worldly moralist promises to his short-sighted school. But let us pass this over; a follower of pleasure shall be a better calculator than in practice we find him to be; he shall just drink as much of this portion as is good for him and no more; his love