are wholly unavoidable; some arise from dissipation; some from downright wickedness of disposition; but, a considerable part of all the want and misery that we witness in the world, arises from sluggishness; from that hateful laziness, that everlasting hankering after rest, which is so well described and so strongly reprobated in the words of my text.

It is surprizing, but not more surprizing than true, that a vice, and, indeed, a great sin, so hateful in itself, so injurious to the parties committing it as well as to the community of which they form a part, and so directly in defiance of the word of God, should, in this and in many other countries, have found a sort of apology in the precepts as well as in the example of those who affect a particular regard for religion.

The Hermits, the Monks, the Nuns, and all the endless tribes of impostors of ancient times, who indulged in laziness at the expence of the industrious, affected peculiar devotion to God, dedicated, as they termed it, their bodies to the Lord. As if the body of man can, in any way, be so truly dedicated to its Maker as by its being made to perform those functions for which it was manifestly intended! As if God, who has fashioned man for activity, who has made labour necessary to his health and even to his sustenance, should be pleased with, and should bestow his choicest

rewards on, that part of human beings, who have made the least use of their limbs, and who have contrived to exist on the labour of others by assuming the garb of superior piety!

The fanatics of our day are, only in another form, the successors of the Hermits, the Monks and the Nuns; and, they are still more mischievous inasmuch as their teaching tends to produce sluggishness in others as well as to maintain it in themselves. To teach people to rely on God, without, at the same time, teaching them that they are to use their own exertions, is to delude them to their ruin. God has given the earth and all the elements; but, he has given nothing for our use unaccompanied with the positive and indispensible condition, that we shall, in every case, perform labour, of some sort or other, in a greater or less degree.

Yet, by a misinterpretation, a torturing, an exaggeration, or at least, a misconception of the meaning, of those parts of the Bible, which speak of the vanity and worthlessness of human exertions and worldly cares, a persuasion has been implanted in many minds, that laziness, with its natural consequences, rags and hunger, are not only not displeasing to God, but are amongst the surest outward marks of his especial grace. Why, human exertions and worldly cares are, when

pushed beyond certain bounds, vain and worthless, cen surable and sinful. But, because, when a man's whole soul is bent on accumulating wealth, for instance; when he labours beyond his strength, grudges himself necessary sustenance, and worries his mind with anxieties as to gain; because this is sinful, is there to be no labour, no care, at all? Are we to make no exertions, and to make no provision? "God feedeth the Ra"vens," says Jesus Christ. In that illustration of his

T

meaning the whole of his doctrine as to worldly cares and exertions is explained. God feedeth the Ravens: that is to say, God hath given the Ravens wings and claws and beaks, wherewith to go in search of, to obtain, and to carry home, their food. He feeds man in precisely the same way; that is to say, by giving legs, arms and hands.

Yet is there prevailing the delusive idea, that, some how or other, food and raiment are to come by the favour of God, without bodily exertion. Plainly and in so many words, this is not, indeed, avowed. But, the doctrine implies as much. And, the consequences are, that, where this species of fanaticism takes hold of the mind, chearful exertion ceases, laziness and slovenliness and carelessness succeed, and are hallowed with the name of trust in God. All vanities are carefully to be avoided; but, of all human vanities, what is at once so mischievous and so despicable as for the Sluggard to

conceit himself a Saint, and to deem the outward and visible marks of his sluggishness, as amongst the proofs of his inward and spiritual grace!

When once this conceit gets into a dwelling the

family is ruined; and, one of its first effects is to produce that sort of sluggishness which produces the habit of lolling late in bed, the evil effects of which, more particularly, it is my intention now to speak; a habit hostile to nature, injurious to health, productive of want and of crimes, disgraceful to parents and ruinous to children.

To lag in bed is against nature. The whole of the animals of the creation rise when they have had a sufficiency of rest. None of them live in bed. And, except in cases where their security or the obtaining of their food absolutely requires them to retire to rest in the day time, they rise, at all times of the year, with the sun, or before him. We cannot see in the dark. Few things can be done in darkness. time for us to be awake and to be

The day is the active, and for

us to take air.. The body and the mind stand in need of repose during the twenty four hours; and nature as well as reason point out to us, that the night is the time for that repose.

As to health, it is, in the true sense of the word, wholly unknown to the Sluggard. He may exist in an absence of acute pain; a naturally good constitution may even give him long life; but still he cannot enjoy

that which is worthy of the name of health. The morning air is the great envigorator of the body and sustainer of the animal spirit. Whether in towns or in the country, the morning, the three first hours after the dawn of day, is the time to breathe the air freely. What life, what animation, activity and gaiety do we perceive, in all living creatures, early in the morning, compared with their state at the setting of the sun! What a difference do we ourselves feel in the air of the morning, if we then rise, compared with that which we meet if we rise when the sun is three hours high!

But, if our general health be greatly injured by sluggishness in the morning, how much does our sight suffer from the evening consequences! So notoriously injurious is artificial light to the eyes, that, when they are, from whatever cause, become feeble, the first step towards a cure is to shun such light. It is, in commendation of learned men, said, that they have "wasted "much of midnight oil;" that, is to say, that they have studied until late in the night. A poor compliment, the place of which would be honourably to them supplied by that of their having daily seen the morning dawn. It is against all reason and all experience to believe, that the mind can be as clear and as strong at midnight as at the hour of rising; and, perhaps, no small portion of the confusedness, feebleness and folly of the matter which we find in things going under the name of books, is to be ascribed to the circumstance of its having been of