teaching, yet the scholar will find it hard to forget it when it comes to feeling. What must we do then? Muft we give ourselves up to despair, and as a prey to the calamities of life? No: one remedy there ftill is, unknown to the wifdom of Greece, unfought for by the men of this world, capable of adminiftering pleasure and delight to our minds, amidst all the uncertainties and vexations that furround us. What this is, you may learn from the words of the text, Thy comforts have refreshed my foul.

The plain meaning of this is, that religion, or a just sense of our relation to God, is the only real and folid fupport against the many evils of life: this is our sheet-anchor; with this, no ftate of life is infupportable; without it, no condition is tolerable.

Give me leave to examine before you the truth of this affertion.

Some evils there are which are natural, which are born with us, and from which no circumstances or condition of life can ever deliver us. Such is the fear of death: it is a fear common to young and old, to mafter and fervant, king and subject: it arifes with the firft dawnings of reafon, and continues with us to its laft decay: it lives with us when we are poor, and forfakes us not when we are rich: it embitters the misery of the oppreffed, and corrupts the pleasures of the mighty. We bring with us into the world fuch an averfion to the going out of it, that, to speak in the language of Scripture, through fear of death we are all our life-time fubject to bondage.

Now take religion out of the case, and divest a man of all hopes and confidence in God, and what has he to mitigate or leffen this evil? You will ask perhaps, What has he to fear from death, if God be out of the question, and there be no expectation of a judgment to come? Is it then fo easy a thing to reconcile ourselves to the profpect of being nothing? Is it an adequate cure for the fear of death, to be certain that we shall die without hope, and be no more for ever? Nature, we are fure, abhors this prospect; and if there be in it any pleasure, it must arife from fome very unnatural caufe; and fo it always does. It is fin that makes men afraid of judgment, and the fear of judgment makes them willing to compound to be nothing. But this is not curing the fear of death, but it is choofing death out of dread of a much greater evil: it is flying for protection to death to avoid the terrors of judgment, as men leap out of window when the house is on fire; which is not defpifing the fall, but dreading the flame. It is not a remedy which reason would choose, but which it cannot tell how to avoid. When we prefer a lefs evil to a greater, the nature of things is not altered by our choice; the evil we choose continues to be an evil, not eligible in itself, but only in respect of a greater evil to be avoided. The man who submits to have a leg cut off to fave his life, does not think the lofing of a limb to be a defirable thing, though he may be willing to part with a limb to fave his life. By the fame reason, death does not cease to be a natural evil, nor does the natural fear of it vanish, when men hope to die for ever, rather than come to judgment. It fhews,

indeed, that they fear damnation more than death; but it never can fhew, that they have not the fame natural averfion to death which others have. This comfort, therefore, this only comfort, which irreligion affords, is indeed no fupport at all against the natural fear of death: if any thing, it is a support against the fear of guilt, but no fupport against the fear of death. For, fuppofe the man who believes nothing of the being of God, to be however a man of moral virtue, and clear of all guilt which may create a fear of future judgment, what comfort have you to give such an one against the natural averfion to death? Death will deliver him from nothing, and therefore he can have no hope in it: it will rob him of himfelf, of every thing; and unlefs he be fo unnatural as to have no regard for himself, or any thing else, the profpect of it must be a conftant uneafiness to him. Will you bid him steel his mind against these apprehenfions, and refolutely caft all thoughts of death behind him? What is this but exhorting him not to exercise his reafon upon a fubject which, of all others, moft nearly concerns him? And is this a proper inftruction to a reasonable creature? It is bidding men not fee what is before them; as if blindness were a fecurity against danger, and want of thought a cure for the natural evils of human life: which, if it be indeed the cafe, plainly fhews, that we must cease to be men, and to exercise the faculties of men, before we can lose the sense of these evils. Such, therefore, as reafon in this manner, confefs themselves unable to cure the evils of life; fince they are forced to deftroy the man to get rid of the diftemper; a practice which must prove

either the phyfician to be a fool, or the evil to be incurable. Which of the two is the true cafe, will appear when we confider whether religion affords a proper remedy against this evil or no.

Since death is inevitable, this world can afford no cure for the apprehenfions of it; nothing on this fide the grave can calm these fears of nature: riches and honours are not worth mentioning in this question; even the wifdom of the world, and all the folemn lectures of philofophy against the fear of death, are but like cordials given to criminals before execution, which leffen their fears only in proportion as they weaken their fenfe and underftanding. Since then we muft neceffarily die, the fear of death can be allayed by nothing but the hope of living again: if we can have any good grounds upon which we may entertain this hope, it is evident what an alteration it makes in the cafe : death is no longer the fame thing; it is a fleep, from which we expect to wake to immortality: it is a ftep from a life of mifery to a life of peace and pleasure, attended with no fears but what are swallowed up in the bleffed expectation of eternity. This is the very hope which religion affords. The man who believes in God, and has a truft and confidence in his power, wisdom and goodness, fees manifold reason to believe that God made him for better purposes, than to live a few years upon this ftage in mifery and affliction: he cannot fuppose that a Being of fuch excellency of wisdom and goodness fent him into the world merely to live in perpetual fears of going out of it again. All the visible works of nature are liable to decay and dif

folution; and in that we are mortal, we are akin to all things round us: but then, of all the works of God, man alone lives in continual apprehenfions of his diffolution: the material world is void of fense, and therefore void of fear; the brutes have so much fear of present danger, as is neceffary to their prefervation; but remove from them immediate danger, and they fhew no figns of the fear of death. This fear therefore, which is peculiar to man, if it serves no purpose beyond this world, is an additional mifery, which makes the condition of man to be worse than that of the brute which perishes. What fhall we say then? that God has made all things perfect in their kind, and fuited to their natural enjoyments; and created man only for misery and affliction? God forbid. The truth is, that the creatures, made for this world, have fuch fears only as are neceffary for their prefervation in this world: but man, ordained to eternal life, has fuch defires of life, fuch fears of death implanted in him, as are neceffary to preferve to him that immortality to which he is created: these fears of death are perpetual calls to him, to fecure to himself that life which fhall never fail; they are conftant intimations to him to wean himself from this world, which will fo foon fail, and to look out for a more certain abiding place. This is the language of God, fpeaking to us by the fears and the hopes of nature; these are the comforts which refresh the foul in the multitude of thoughts which diftract it.

But does not this hope, you will fay, bring with it a great increase of fear? The man who lives with