can tell our consciences we make with no other object, than that we may take more pleasure in the thought of God?

nesses.

When we have answered this question, let us next turn our thoughts to the pains and sacrifices which we make every day, without even ever thinking of them, for the sake of getting on in our busiAnd then let us own with shame, how very little indeed the wish to serve God enters into the motives which make us useful and respectablehow little our diligence in business arises from fervency of spirit, or is likely to render us acceptable with God.

We shall have to acknowledge, that did we make one half or one quarter the sacrifices in obedience to our Heavenly Father, which we make without the slightest scruple or hesitation, in the pursuit of ends which we acknowledge to be comparatively of no value at all, we should be very much better people than we are.

To such persons as us then, the warning in the text speaks as loudly and as fearfully as to the disobedient Israelites. "Because the sons of Jonadab the son of Rechab have performed the commandment of their father which he commanded them; but this people hath not hearkened unto Me: therefore thus saith the Lord God of Hosts, the God of Israel, I will bring upon Judah, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, all the evil that I have spoken against them."

Let us then, without withdrawing ourselves from worldly concerns, endeavour with all our minds to convert them into religious duties, and exert ourselves on all occasions with a zeal proportionate to the importance of the object we have in view. And may Almighty God, who alone can order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men, grant unto His people that they may love the thing which He commands, and desire that which He does promise, that so among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

best objects. Thus it comes to pass that since these habits are so useful and desirable, in a worldly point of view, as to render them their own reward, we look on their opposites as their own punishment and as in most cases deserving rather pity than censure. They are thought to be among the things in which a man may judge for himself and stand by the consequences; and that if in such respects he stands in his own light, he is nobody's enemy but his own.

But the conclusion which the wise king came to was very different. He looked on industry in our calling, not as a means towards securing success and prosperity; not as tending to make men more rich, more learned, more powerful; this indeed he saw well enough that it would do, but this he knew by experience to be vanity. "Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour that he taketh under the sun?" On the contrary, he saw, in the active pursuit of such things as these, the fulfilment of one end of our being, the exercising of ourselves in that sore labour, which God has appointed as the task of fallen man.

Industry and patience, though they tend to secure us trifling worldly advantages, and on this account are often cultivated by otherwise bad men, tend also to make us firm, sober, and self-denying, therefore cannot be neglected consistently with our eternal interest.

In order then to set these virtues in their true light, I will now endeavour to point out how very deeply and thoroughly our condition is affected by them, not so much externally as internally,-not so much as to what they will acquire for us, as to what they will make of us. And I shall begin with the commonest and most obvious things.

First then, the course of nature is so regulated, that there is scarcely any one [part] either of our bodies or minds which could have become what it is without some degree of industry and patience, and which might not have been indefinitely improved and elevated, by higher degrees of them than we have used. We are, in a certain sense, our own creation, even in the manifest features of our persons and characters. For consider how it is that from children we have become men what is the process that has effected so great a change in us, and fitted us for taking our part in a sphere of life, totally different from that in which nature first placed us? The process has been a slow and tedious one, occupying a very considerable portion of that short space which is allotted to us in the world; and in that time we have had a great deal to do. Our present attainments, be they what they may, both of body and mind, may most perceptibly be traced by us to their first sources. In the picture of our past lives, the causes of our present peculiarities are painfully discernible. We may recollect the point at which feelings first began to take hold of us, which have

since, either for good or bad, spread their influence over our character: and if we try to do so faithfully we shall readily acknowledge how much we owe to past instances of industry,—how deeply we have to regret our negligence and self-indulgence.

Our strength and activity we may trace to exercise; our knowledge, to industry and experience; our desires, to past indulgence; and our moderation, to past self-denial. All the minutest rules for the direction of our conduct towards others, without which we should every moment be exposing ourselves to ridicule, or even incurring dislike and censure, are a possession which we have gradually accumulated, and which is valuable in proportion to the use we have made of our opportunities.

In fact, all that we are now, which we were not when children, has been the toilsome acquisition of slow experience of the "sore travail which God has given the sons of men to be exercised therewith." And even our own memories will suffice to show us that we have become our present selves, not by a mere vegetative change of mind and body, but by contending with difficulties, enduring privations, suffering for imprudence, and feeling the advantages of right conduct.

This we might learn merely from observation of our own selves, if there were no other persons in the world. But the lesson is brought home to us in a more striking way, if we compare the progress which we have made with that of other men.

Few