SERMON XXXIII.

THIS LIFE A STATE OF FROBATION.

PSALM CXIX. 71.

It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes.

O

F the various views under which human

life has been considered, no one seems so reasonable as that which regards it as a state of probation; meaning, by a state of probation, a state calculated for trying us, and calculated for improving us. A state of complete enjoyment and happiness it certainly is not. The hopes, the spirits, and the inexperience of young men and women are apt, and very willing to see it. in this light. To them life is full of entertainment: their relish is high, their expectations unbounded. For a very few years it is possible, and I think barely

possible, that they may go on without check or interruption; but they will be cured of this delusion. Pain and sorrow, disease and infirmity, accident and disappointment, losses and distress, will soon meet them in their acquaintance, their families, or their persons. The hard-hearted for their own, the tender for other's woe, will always find and feel, enough at least to convince them, that this world was not made for a scene of perpetual gaiety or uninterrupted enjoyment.

Still less can we believe that it was made for a place of misery: so much otherwise, that misery is in no instance the end or object of contrivance. We are surrounded by contrivance and design. A human body is a cluster of contrivances. So is the body of every animal; so is the structure of every plant; so is even the vilest weed that grows upon the road side. Contrivances therefore, infinite in number, infinite also in variety, are all directed to beneficial purposes, and, in a vast plurality of instances, execute their purpose. In our own bodies only reflect how many thousand things must

Yet,

go right for us to be an hour at ease. Yet at all times multitudes are so; and are so without being sensible how great a thing it is. Too much, or too little of sensibility, or of action, in any one of the almost numberless organs, or of any part of the numberless organs, by which life is sustained, may be productive of extreme anguish, or of lasting infirmity. A particle smaller than an atom in a sunbeam, may, in a wrong place, be the occasion of the loss of limbs, of senses, or of life. under all this continual jeopardy, this momentary liability to danger and disorder, we are preserved. It is not possible, therefore, that this state could be designed as a state of misery, because the great tendency of the designs which we see in the universe, is to counteract, to prevent, to guard against it. We know enough of nature to be assured, that misery universal, irremediable, inexhaustible misery, was in the Creator's power, if he had willed it. Forasmuch therefore as the result is so much otherwise, we are certain that no such purpose dwelt in the divine mind.

But since, amidst much happiness, and amidst contrivances for happiness, so far as we can judge (and of many we can judge,) misery, and very considerable portions of it, do exist, it becomes a natural inquiry, to what end this mixture of good and evil is properly adapted. And I think the Scriptures place before us, not only the true (for, if we believe the Scriptures, we must believe it to be that,) but the most rational and satisfactory answer which can be given to the inquiry; namely, that it is intended for a state of trial and probation. For it appears to me capable of proof, both that no state but one, which contained in it an admixture of good and evil, would be suited to this purpose; and also that our present state, as well in its general plan as in its particular properties, serves this purpose with peculiar propriety.

A state, totally incapable of misery could not be a state of probation. It would not be a state in which virtue or vice could even be exercised at all; I mean that large class of virtues and vices, which

we comprehend under the name of social qualities. The existence of these depends upon the existence of misery, as well as of happiness in the world, and of different degrees of both: because their very nature and difference consists in promoting or preventing, in augmenting or diminishing, in causing, aggravating, or relieving the wants, sufferings, and distresses of our fellow-creatures. Compassion, charity, humanity, benevolence, nor even justice, could have any place in the world, if there were not human conditions to excite them; objects and sufferings upon which they might operate; misery, as well as happiness, which might be affected by them.

Nor would, in my opinion, the purposes of trial be sufficiently provided for, by a state in which happiness and misery regularly followed virtue and vice: I mean, in which there was no happiness, but what was merited by virtue, no misery but what was brought on by vice. Such a state would be a state of retribution, not a state of probation. It may be our state hereafter; it may be a better state, but it is