more noble and exhilarating; and the peace, the comfort, the delight, you will experience in a retirement such as this, can only be exceeded by those pure celestial joys hereafter, to which they will be a prelude and an introduction. SERMON XVII. PROVERBS iii. 27. WITHHOLD NOT GOOD FROM THEM TO WHOM IT IS DUE, WHEN IT IS IN THE HEN we reflect on that general turn WHEN to acts of charity and humanity which is so observable in this country, it may perhaps appear perfectly needless to recommend to our hearers the injunction contained in the text. If they are so well disposed, as it should seem they are, to do good, to what purpose are they exhorted not to withhold it from them to whom it is due? And, indeed, if there was no other way of doing good but that of relieving the indigent, there would not often, it must be owned, be much occasion to urge the practice of this duty. But we must not flatter A A 4 flatter ourselves, that when we have distributed to the necessitous all the wealth we can spare, we have done every thing that the love of our neighbour requires at our hands. At the best, we have only performed one part, and that a small part, of the great, the ROYAL LAW* (as it is called) of CHRISTIAN CHARITY, which involves a great variety of most important and useful acts of kindness to our fellow-creatures. Several of these, though extremely easy and obvious, are, for that very reason, perhaps, apt to be overlooked. Some of them, therefore, I shall beg leave, at present, to suggest to your thoughts, from whence the two following good consequences, among others, may arise. The great and the wealthy will see, that to be truly benevolent, something more is necessary than liberality to the poor. And they who are in an humbler station of life, and who on that account are apt to lament their inability to do good, will find that there are many roads to beneficence still open to them; and that scarce any one, however low or indigent, can want opportunities of doing good, if he will but honestly make use of them. * James ii. 8. I. First, I. First, then, there is a negative kind of benevolence, which it is most certainly in every man's power to exercise if he pleases; and that is, ABSTINENCE FROM MISCHIEF. As the first step towards wisdom is to avoid error, and towards happiness to feel no pain, so the first advance towards benevolence is to do no harm. It may seem, perhaps, a great impropriety of expression to dignify this with the name of benevolence. But if benevolence consists, as it certainly does, in contributing to the comfort and happiness of our fellow-creatures, there is not any one act of humanity, that will operate so effectually and extensively to this end, as refraining from every thing that can offend, distress, or injure others. By far the greatest part of the misery we see in the world, arises not so much from omitting acts of kindness, as from committing acts of unkindness and cruelty; and were all these to cease at once, the effect on the general happiness of mankind would be somewhat similar to that inexpressible comfort we experience in ourselves on the removal of some violent pain. Think only what infinite mischief arises from peevishness, ill-nature, and pride; from de traction, |