137 SERMON XXIV. PSALM. XC. 12. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. TH XXIV. HERE is not any thing which SERM. morality can inculcate, or religion enjoin, that will more eafily perfuade men to a confideration of their latter end, and a necessary preparation for it, than the serious contemplation on the shortness and vanity of human life. This is an argument which requires no depth of wisdom to conceive, no fuperior faculties to discuss, but appeals to the fenfes, and speaks to the hearts of all men; and yet SERM, yet the fenfes of all men deceive, the XXIV. hearts of all men betray them, and those things which fhould be for their learning, are unto them an occafion of falling. The certainty of death is perhaps among those truths, which, merely because they are obvious, we do not think sufficiently worthy of our attention; it is almost the only thing we know, and we treat it as if it were the only thing we were ignorant of. In the midst of life we are in death; but, like hardy and fearless foldiers, though we are in the heat of the battle, though thousands fall befide us, and ten thousand on our right hand, yet, whilft we have fociety to animate, whilft we have hope to encourage, and all the noife and buftle of the war to divert our thoughts, we are ftrangers to fear, and infenfible of our danger. The goodness of the Almighty is alike vifible in what it fhews, and in what it conceals from us: God, of his mercy, has thought fit SERM. to hide from our knowledge the fatal XXIV. hour of our diffolution, because, were the profpect of death continually before our eyes, the affairs of this world could never be carried on with that chearfulness and alacrity which are so highly requifite to the performance of them. It would damp all the faculties, and put a stop to all the efforts and defigns of the human mind, and leave a gloom and horror upon it, too great for reason and reflection to remove: in short, were the sword perpetually hanging over our heads, the feast of life would afford us but little comfort in the enjoyment of it. An eminent heathen writer, in an elegant difcourfe on the idle purfuits and enjoyments of men in this uncertain state, among many other fenfible reflections, put into the mouth of one of his imagi nary XXIV. SERM. nary deities, thus ridicules the folly of mankind. "Look, fays he, on that "builder there, and think, what would " he not rather do, though he now fo induftriously preffes on the labourer to "finish his coftly manfion, did he know it fhould be no fooner built but that " he must die, and leave the poffeffion of "it to his heir, ere he, poor wretch, "fhall have had even once the pleasure * of fupping in it. Or look on him "who hugs himself on his becoming a "c father, entertains his friends at a feast "of joy, and calls the boy by his own name. If he knew this darling child "should never outlive his feventh year, "would he, think you, be fo wanton "at his birth? But he fondly imagines "himself happy in a child who shall "hereafter be crowned in the olympic કંડ games, and obferves not, at the fame * time, |