care to be employed on them, and moderates our affections toward them: it frees us from anxious desire of them; from being transported with excessive joy in the acquisition of them from being overwhelmed with disconsolate sorrow at the missing of them, or parting with them; from repining and envying at those who have better success than ourselves in the procuring them: from immoderate toil in getting, and care in preserving them: and so delivering us from all these unquiet anxieties of thought, tumultuous perturbations of passion, and tedious vexations of body, it maintains our minds in a cheerful calm, quiet indifferency, and comfortable liberty. On the other side, things of real worth and high concernment, that produce great satisfaction to the mind, and are mainly conducible to our happiness, such as are a right understanding and strong sense of our obligations to Almighty God, and relations to men, a sound temper and complexion of mind, a virtuous disposition, a capacity to discharge the duties of our places, a due qualification to enjoy the happiness of the other world; these and such like things, by discovering their nature, and the effects resulting from them, it engages us highly to esteem, ardently to affect, and industriously to pursue; so preventing the inconveniences that follow the want of them, and conveying the benefits arising from the possession of them.-Barrow. FOOLISH JESTING. PLAISANCE, and joy, and a lively spirit, and a pleasant conversation, and the innocent caresses of a charitable humanity, is not forbidden; plenum tamen suavitatis et gratiæ sermonem non esse indecorum, Saint Ambrose affirmed and here in my text our conversation is commanded to be such, iva da xágiv, that it may minister grace, that is, favour, complacence, cheerfulness; and be acceptable and pleasant to the hearer: and so must be our conversation; it must be as far from sullenness as it ought to be from lightness, and a cheerful spirit is the best convoy for religion; and, though sadness does in some cases become a Christian, as being an index of a pious mind, of compassion, and a wise proper resentment of things, yet it serves but one end, being useful in the only instance of repentance; and hath done its greatest works, not when it weeps and sighs, but when it hates and grows careful against sin. But cheerfulness and a festival spirit fills the soul full of harmony-it composes music for Churches and hearts-it makes and publishes glorifications of God-it produces thankfulness and serves the end of charity; and, when the oil of gladness runs over, it makes bright and tall emissions of light and holy fires, reaching up to a cloud, and making joy round about; and, therefore, since it is so innocent, and may be so pious and full of holy advantage, whatsoever can innocently minister to this holy joy does set forward the work of religion and charity. And, indeed, charity itself, which is the vertical top of all religion, is nothing else but a union of joys concentrated in the heart, and reflected from all the angles of our life and intercourse. It is a rejoicing in God, a gladness in our neighbour's good, a pleasure in doing good, a rejoicing with him; and without love we cannot have any joy at all. It is this that makes children to be a pleasure, and friendship to be so noble and divine a thing: and upon this account it is certain that all that which innocently makes a man cheerful, does also make him charitable; for grief, and age, and sickness, and weariness, these are peevish and troublesome; but mirth and cheerfulness is content, and civil, and compliant, and communicative, and loves to do good, and swells up to felicity only upon the wings of charity. Upon this account here is pleasure enough for a Christian at present; and, if a facete discourse, and an amicable friendly mirth can refresh the spirit, and take it off from the vile temptation of peevish, despairing, uncomplying melancholy, it must needs be innocent and commendable. And we may as well be refreshed by a clean and a brisk discourse, as by the air of Campanian wines; and our faces and our heads may as well be anointed and look pleasant with wit and friendly intercourse, as with the fat of the balsam-tree; and such a conversation no wise man ever did or ought to reprove. But when the jest hath teeth and nails, biting or scratching our brother, when it is loose and wanton, when it is unseasonable, and, much or many, when it serves ill purposes, or spends better time, then it is the drunkenness of the soul, and makes the spirit fly away, seeking for a temple where the mirth and the music is solemn and religious.-Bishop Taylor. LUKEWARMNESS AND ZEAL. He that is warm to-day and cold to-morrow, zealous in his resolution, and weary in his practices, fierce in the beginning, and slack and easy in his progress, hath not yet well chosen what side he will be of. For religion cannot change, though we do; and, if we do, we have left God; and whither he can go that goes from God, his own sorrows will soon enough instruct him. This fire must never go out; but it must be like the fire of heaven; it must shine like the stars, though sometimes covered with a cloud, or obscured by a greater light; yet they dwell for ever in their orbs, and walk in their circles, and observe their circumstances; but go not out by day nor night, and set not when kings die, nor are extinguished when nations change their government. So must the zeal of a Christian be, a constant incentive of his duty; and though sometimes his hand is drawn back by violence or need, and his prayers shortened by the importunity of business, and some parts omitted by necessities and just compliances; yet still the fire is kept alive, it burns within when the light breaks not forth, and is eternal as the orb of fire, or the embers of the altar of incense. In every action of religion God expects such a warmth, and a holy fire to go along, that it may be able to enkindle the wood upon the altar, and consume the sacrifice; but God hates an indifferent spirit. Earnestness and vivacity; quickness and delight, perfect choice of the service, and a delight in the prosecution, is all that the spirit of a man can yield towards his religion: the outward work is the effect of the body; but if a man does it heartily and with all his mind, then religion hath wings, and moves upon wheels of fire. However it be very easy to have our thoughts wander, yet it is our indifferency and lukewarmness that makes it so natural; and you may observe it, that so long as the light shines bright, and the fires of devotion and desires flame out, so long the mind of a man stands close to the altar and waits upon the sacrifice; but as the fires die and desires decay, so the mind steals away and walks abroad, to see the little images of beauty and pleasure which it beholds in the falling stars and little glowworms of the world. The river that runs slow and creeps by the banks, and begs leave of every turf to let it pass, is drawn into little hollowness, and spends itself into smaller portions, and dies with diversion: but when it runs with vigorousness and a full stream, and breaks down every obstacle, making it even as its own brow, it stays not to be tempted with little avocations, and to creep into holes, but runs into the sea through full and useful channels. So is a man's prayer: if it moves upon the feet of an abated appetite, it wanders into the society of every trifling accident, and stays at the corners of the fancy, and talks with every object it meets, and cannot arrive at heaven; but when it is carried upon the wings of passion and strong desires, a swift motion and a hungry appetite, it passes on through all the intermedial regions of clouds, and stays not till it dwells at the foot of the throne, where Mercy sits, and thence sends holy showers of refreshments.Bishop Taylor. : : CHRISTIAN CHARITY. IN this lies the difference between the Christian and the moral virtue the same object appears not in the same light to both. Nature melts at the sight of misery, and by a secret sympathy feels what it sees, and relieves itself, by administering comfort and support to the afflicted but grace looks on the sufferings of Christ in all His members, and gives that assistance to the miserable for His sake, which nature gives only for its own. For this reason we find Christ charging Himself with all the kindnesses and acts of mercy shown to His brethren and disciples. "I was an hungered," says He, "and ye gave Me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me in; naked, and ye clothed Me; I was sick, and ye visited Me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me." This regard to Christ is the very life and soul of Christian Charity, and that only which can entitle our good works to reward at the last day; for our good works themselves have neither merit nor righteousness, but as they begin and end in Christ: the love of Christ is the fountain of Christian Charity, and Christ in His members is the object of it.—Sherlock. RELIGIOUS RETIREMENT. A DISSIPATION of thought is the natural and unavoidable effect of our conversing much in the world, where we cannot help squandering away a great deal of our time upon useless objects, of no true worth in themselves, and of no real concern to us. We roll on in a circle of vain empty pleasures, and are delivered over continually from one slight amusement to another; ever seemingly very busy, and ever really very idle; applying ourselves without respite to that which it becomes us most to neglect, and utterly neglectful of that one thing necessary, which it becomes and behoves us most to pursue. This gives us by degrees such a levity and wantonness of spirit, as refuses admittance to all serious thoughts, and renders us incapable of reflection, makes our closet a terrible place to us, and solitude a burthen. To retrieve ourselves from this vain, uncertain, roving, distracted way of thinking and living, it is requisite to retire frequently, and to converse much with (what we above all things love, and yet above all things hate to converse with) ourselves; to inure our minds to recollection, to fix them on the greatest and most concerning objects, those which religion suggests, and which will, by their importance, deserve, and engage, and command our attention; till the busy swarm of vain images that beset us be thoroughly dispersed, and the several scattered rays of thought, by being thus collected together, do by little and little warm our frozen hearts, and at last produce an holy flame. The expedience of retirement is yet greater, as it removes us out of the way of the most pressing and powerful temptations that are incident to human nature. He all know by experience, that these meet us most frequently, and affect us most strongly in society, where our senses, the great inlets of temptation, are most awakened, and tempting objects, by their number and nearness, make the most vivid and lasting impressions upon us. |