us with the wish of the Psalmist : "Let my soul live, O God, and it shall praise thee!" that it may here be expert in thy praise, and be able more worthily to praise thee hereafter!

Yes, my pious hearers, human life is incontestibly of great and real value: The desire of its preservation and continuance is not unworthy either of the philosopher or the christian. It is the school of wisdom, the school of virtue, the first step to our perfection, a source of numberless pleasures and joys, the preparatory station to a more exalted, to an everlasting life. Rejoice then it, rejoice in your life; thank God daily for this gift of his bounty; acknowledge and feel its value and its destination; support, preserve it carefully; use it worthily; pursue its affairs with pleasure and fidelity; enjoy its satisfactions and delights with a grateful and cheerful heart; bear its hardships and afflictions without murmuring; exercise your gifts and powers; strive constantly to learn more useful knowledge, constantly to do more good, to enjoy more pure and more generous satisfactions, constantly to become wiser and better and more generally useful; be never weary in well doing, and in promoting the happiness of your fellow creatures, since you may expect to reap in due time without ceasing; work, like our great leader and precursor Jesus, while it is day, that the night may not come upon you before your task be finished; carefully redeem the time, and mark as much as possible every day of your lives with some good action; regard and treat all things according to their reference to the future, and let the sublime, the joyful sentiment of a better and an everlasting life be constantly present to your mind.

The Value of Health.

GOD! Who, among the innumerable multitudes of creatures which thy almighty goodness called to be, hast also given us existence, praised be thy sovereign bounty for all the gifts and powers thou hast bestowed upon us, for all the pleasures and joys of which thou hast made us capable, for all the connexions in which thou hast placed us towards visible and invisible objects, towards the material and the spiritual world! Though we have much in common with the beasts of the field, yet are we also related to the angels; we are thine offspring. Yes; our body as well as our soul plainly testify of thine infinite intelligence, and the more than fatherly kindness with which thou dost embrace and bless thy creatures. And the place that thou hast assigned us in thy dominion, how adequate to our nature and destination! How adapted to unfold and to exercise our ca. pacities and powers, to form us into intelligent, wise, and virtuous men, and thereby to prepare us for a superior life! Lord, we humbly adore thee, as our creator and father, rejoicing that we are, and that we are what thy wise goodness commanded us to be. Let us then, O gracious God, continually rejoice in our existence and our nature, and grant that we may constantly seek our perfection and happiness in the way wherein creatures as we are should seek and attain them. Teach us to use our body and our mind, which are both thy property, according to thy will; to treat them both as a possession committed to our trust by thee, and so

to nurture both, as becomes men, whom thou hast indeed placed far above the irrational animals, yet not elevated to the rank of pure spirits independent on terrestrial wants. To the furtherance of these views, bless our reflections on the doctrines about to be delivered. Let us clearly perceive the value of the benefits which thou vouchsafest to us by the preservation of our health and our abilities, and thus be incited to the best employment of them. We implore it of thee as the votaries of thy son Jesus, and address thee farther in his holy name: Our Father, &c.

EPHESIANS v. 29.

No man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, &c.

IT seems superfluous to admonish mankind of the great value of health, and to incite them by many arguments to fulfil the duties incumbent upon them in this respect. Who does not readily shun every thing that is called sorrow and pain? Who does not hold his health in high estimation? Who is not desirous of maintaining and preserving it unimpaired even to extreme old age? Who is apt purposely to do any thing that he is certain will be prejudicial to him in this regard? "No man," says the apostle, "ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it." All this, my pious hearers, generally speaking, is very true. But probably we do not consider the matter sufficiently as a duty. Perhaps we set not a sufficient value upon health, or not upon right principles. Perhaps we do not plainly perceive

how serviceable christianity may be likewise in this respect to its true confessors. And from all these causes we certainly fall into many errors, which, if we had a plainer and juster conception of the matter, we should certainly avoid. Well then, permit me now to submit a few suggestions to your consideration hereupon. And to this end, let us first examine into the value of health; then consider the duties we have to fulfil in that respect; and, lastly, inquire how much adapted the christian doctrine is to assist us in the performance of these duties, and to promote our felicity even in that respect.

Health is, doubtless, of great value to us. It is the first and principal of all the outward blessings we possess; the ground and means of the cheerful enjoyment and best use of all the rest. It far excels riches, authority and honor, and every splendid preeminence; which, by the loss or decay of this, lose almost the whole of their value. This is a matter which neither our own experience, nor that of others, will allow us to doubt of. Would you sensibly feel this truth? You have only to recollect the hours, the days, you have probably past in sickness and pain; the hours and the days in which you have been dispirited, enervated, and utterly unfit for all useful occupations, for all arbitrary motion, for the enjoyment of the pleasures and satisfactions of life; sighing on a gloomy couch, and with every returning day, with every restless and anxious night, saw nothing before you but fresh pains and sufferings, or the total dissolution of your body: And then compare with them that activity and cheerfulness that animate you now that you are in health; the delightful sentiment you have of your powers; the case and agility with which you move and use your body and all its members; the vivacity with which you undertake and transact your business; the relish

with which you can enjoy the pleasures of life; the careless tranquillity with which at night you throw yourself into the arms of sleep, and the cheerful serenity with which you behold the rising day.—Or, if you have been so happy as to have had no personal experience of pain and sickness, then visit your friends and acquaintance, who groan under the burden of such afflictions, or lead a life of infirmity and languor, and for a moment put yourself in their place, and set their condition against yours: And, unless you are totally void of sensibility, a genial consciousness of the high worth of health will flow through your heart, accompanied by the sincerest gratitude towards God; you will look upon it as the richest blessing of life, and acknowledge it to be the comfort, without which all others have hardly any value.

And indeed, without health, what are all the beauties, all the bounties, all the delights, and all the joys of nature and society? While all nature appears in festal splendor to the man in health; while the unclouded sky, and the variegated earth, enamelled by a thousand flowers, expand his soul; while he, with a merry heart unites in the jubilations of all living creatures rejoicing in existence; the man laboring under sickness and infirmity, disregards all this as nothing, or prizes it at a slender rate. Every thing appears to him in a mournful garb; all nature seems clad in sorrow, and the world about him empty and dead; the earth without form, and void, and darkness upon the face of creation: And though he cannot hearken to the sweet sounds of joy, yet he hears them but too often with inward sadness, and feels the irksomeness of his life and his own deficiency of joy but so much the deeper. While the man in health is exerting his faculties and powers to the pleasure and advantage of society, and bringing his