SERMON II.

PROVERBS XVI. 9.

A MAN'S HEART DEVISETH HIS WAY; BUT THE LORD DIRECTETH HIS STEPS.

THAT the providence of God extends to the minutest concerns in the life of every man, and that, how often soever we may be disappointed or lost in the uncertainties which appear to surround us, God's designs proceed steadily to their accomplishment, and that these designs are invariably benevolent in their progress, though sometimes their tendency is not immediately seen, are truths which have impressed themselves so strongly on my own conviction that I cannot avoid wishing they may be felt with equal force by you, my Christian friends. No man, I think, can have passed half the term of human existence, without discovering, that, more than once, his projects have been frustrated, his courses altered, his buds of hope blasted, and the lofty fabric of his expectations overthrown, he knows not how, nor whence, nor wherefore. No man, I think, would venture deliberately to offend the almighty Disposer of his lot, could he but realize the completeness of his dependence upon him. In the bustle of human exertion, it is almost impossible to keep this sentiment in active and uninterrupted exercise. With a view, then, of making a pious impression on our hearts, I shall attempt,—

First, To show how little our external situation in life has depended on ourselves; and,—

Secondly, To prove, that, if our circumstances were more at our own disposal, and our wishes more frequently accomplished, we should, probably, be less happy than we are at present.

.To show you how little our lot in the world has been in our own hands, it is not necessary to carry you back to those hours when you were waiting for life, or the little spark of existence, just kindled, was trembling under every passing breath of casualty. It is not necessary to dwell upon the days of your infancy, when it was, every minute, doubtful, whether the being, that had been introduced into life, would live long enough to understand that he had a life to preserve. We will pass over those days of boyhood, when the understanding is not ripe enough to form plans, and when the forethought, just appearing, extends no further than to the pleasures, hardly to the evils, of the morrow. We will pass over, too, the remaining years of minority, when the imagination just begins to know its own alacrity, and, fertile in youthful projects, leaps forward from one year to another of a life long in prospect, touching every object it meets with the tints of hope. The whole of this early period, though it often gives a lasting color to the remainder of life, is so little within our own power, and is so seldom influenced by any plans which we are then capable of forming, that it would be superfluous to insist longer upon the conclusion we would draw from it.

There is a time, however, when every man begins to feel something of his own self-sufficiency, when we choose the pursuits we mean to follow, mark out what we imagine to be the road to happiness, and, thus prepared, enter on

the wide and busy scene of active life. From this period, then, when you think you have taken the thread of your fortunes into your own hands, allow me to follow you a few steps.

The first fact, which shows us how little our present situation is the result of our own arrangements, is the innumerable defeats every man's plans encounter. I appeal to any one who has lived long in the world, whether, at any period of his life, he has found himself in the precise circumstances he expected. This certainty of disappointment results from more than one source. In the first place, so various and complicated are human interests, so inordinate are many of our desires, and so unreasonable are others, that two individuals can hardly form extensive plans of conduct, which shall not interfere, if not by direct collision, at least in some subordinate parts, so as to affect the issue of the whole. What a range of disappointment does this single fact open! The success of one half the human race is the partial disappointment of the other. From this single source of disappointment, however real or imaginary, -the contrariety of human interests, you see how much of your destiny on earth is placed, at once, out of your control.

It would be impossible to enumerate all the causes of the failure of our plans. One, however, which, more, perhaps, than any other, shows the folly of far extended projects, is the uncertainty of health, a blessing which is attended with no perceptible sensation of pleasure, but which is indispensable to the full enjoyment of every other pleasure. And is this a good which is within the reach of human foresight? I ask you, young man, who have been forming extensive plans of future eminence, you, who are so busy,

while the worm of disease is secretly feeding at the seat of life, and sucking the bloom of health from your cheek; I ask you, laborious man of business, whose plans have attained all the excellence which maturity of mind, long experience, and increasing confidence can give them, have you never felt pains which warn you of your mortality? Have you never laid your head upon the pillow with a foreboding, that to-morrow might sweep you and your projects into oblivion?

What then! Is man the arbiter of his own fate, when the least mite, that floats in God's air, may derange the whole system of the human constitution? Is man the being to forget that his lot is not within his own disposal, when the first breeze may waft pestilence to his heart, and the first exhalation, which rises up under his nostrils, may poison the source of his being; and, if he partially recover, leave him a life of debility, of inactivity, perhaps of pain and misery? Go to the tombstones, and read there the records of human disappointments. The heads, which are now mouldering in those narrow cells, once teemed with plans as probable as yours.

A second remark, which should satisfy us that our present situation is not the result of our own foresight, is this: that most of the pleasures, we have met with in life, were entirely unexpected; and, of our successes also, how few have been the direct consequences of our plans! The very phrase, "good fortune," intimates this. It implies a happiness which was not premeditated, which was not the object of our calculations, not the fair result of any of the plans we have been laboriously forming. How many have vaulted into seats of power, lifted, by the agitation of the times, into places to which they once dared not raise a

thought! What has raised the men who fill up such a space in history, but who make such blanks in creation, but the combinations of circumstances, which they never foresaw, and tides in human affairs, upon which they never calculated?

But it is not necessary to mount so high for examples. Enumerate, I beseech you, the pleasant circumstances of a single day, and tell me, How many of them came within your anticipations? What are the pleasures which constitute the ordinary, therefore, I may say, the principal, happiness of human life, and attach us so strongly to existence? Are they not the little, domestic, unsought comforts, which one man enjoys almost as well as another? And was it for these common pleasures of life, that you have been all along spreading your nets? No, my friends, acknowledge it was not. It was for the glittering, the envied, the distinguished blessings. You thought you should be miserable, if you did not obtain these; and so you would have been, had not the all-wise Disposer of human affairs ordered better the sources of human happiness. If he had left us to look out for all the little circumstances that make life agreeable, the whole of human felicity would be lost in the toil and weariness of providing for it. No, my friends, the prodigious variety of little circumstances, which make up the daily comfort of life, is not what we seek, but what meets us every hour. Happiness is like the invisible, elastic fluid which we breathe. If we were compelled to seek the pure air which supports respiration, our breath would be soon exhausted in the pursuit.

A third remark only will I make, to add to the weight of proof, that our actual situations in life have been much less in our power than the show of human activity would