SERMON XXVIII. The Value of Social Life. GOD, who art the father of us all, how closely How haft thou connected us with each other! intimately, how infeparably intermingled our concerns, our wants, our forrows and joys! No one can difpenfe with others; no one be accomplished and happy for himself alone; every one may be useful to others in numerous ways. How were it poffible for us here, most merciful Father, to mifapprehend thy call to be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love, and our defignment for focial life? No, it is thy determination that we fhould confort together along the path of life, mutually bear one another's burdens and facilitate the journey to each other, that we should commute thy various gifts and bleffings with one another, impart to others of our fubftance and mutually rejoice in the commutation of benefits and kind offices. By implanting strong focial difpofitions in our hearts, what fources of generally useful activity and of ge VOL. II. B nerous nerous pleasure haft thou made them! Oh that no felfish aims, no mifanthropic paffions might weaken or disturb these fources of fatisfaction and delight! Might they still flow more clear and pure, still iffue more copioufly, and diffufe around abundance of true happiness and joy! Do thou then grant us the understanding, the wisdom, the integrity and virtue which in this respect we want. Do thou penetrate and replenish our hearts with those gentle, generous, humane fentiments and difpofitions, with that zeal to ferve and benefit others, with that warm participation, in the profperity and adversity of all, which alone can confer a real value on focial life. Let us more and more plainly perceive and properly refpect that worth, and behave in regard to it as is agreeable to thy will and to our appointment. By conftantly obeying the laws of juftice and humanity, and steadily adhering to truth and integrity; by the mutual exercise of honour and equity, kindness and gentlenefs, candour and forbearance; may we and all our fellow-creatures, enjoy the bleffings of fociety in this life, and be trained up for the participation of endless felicity in the life to come! Blefs to this end the reflections we are now about to begin on that fubject. Let us thoroughly comprehend the leffons of wisdom that are to be delivered to us, impartially apply them to ourselves, and make a faithful use of them in our future conduct. For thefe bleffings we implore thee, fully trusting in the promises given us by Jefus, and, as his followers, thus further in his name and words with filial confi dence address thee: Our father, &c. EPHES. V. 15, 16. See then that ye walk circumfpectly, not as fools, but as wife, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. SOME comforts of life there are, universally known, efteemed, admired, and used, and in the ufe whereof every one finds pleasure and profit, to the use whereof therefore none need to be stimulated or encouraged, and yet which require a certain recommendation if we would perceive their entire value, use them in the best manner, and obtain as much pleasure and profit from them as they are calculated to afford. Of this kind undoubtedly is fo cial life. Who does not know and feel that man is formed for intercourse with his brethren, for com municating to them of what he is and has, for the exchange of his thoughts and fentiments with theirs? Who has not tafted the pleasures and joys of focial life, and been charmed with the fweets of them? Who does not prefer it to abfolute and conftant folitude? Who then does not find in himself fuffi. cient impulse to the use and enjoyment of it? How feldom is it neceffary comparatively speaking to caution people against too vehement a propensity to retirement, or to exhort them to go into company, in the ordinary sense of the word! How much more eafily, and how much more frequently, upon the whole, do we run into the extreme on this fide than on the other! But whether this fociableness is and procures to us all that it might be and procure? Whether we prize and affect it, not merely from blind impulfe, not merely to fly from ourselves, not merely for following the prevailing fashion, but on plain and acknowledged principles? Whether we understand and feel what it is that gives it its really great value? And whether it is of that value to us, or affords us all thofe fatisfactions and advantages, which we may feek in it and expect from it? These are matters whereon, notwithstanding the universally strong propenfity to focial life, perhaps but few people ever reflect, and in regard to which probably but few are able to give themselves a fatisfactory account. Man is a focial being, fince he naturally poffeffes difpofitions and capacities for fociety, and finds pleafure in it; fince he hears fociableness praised, and readily complies with the fashion that is most prevalent at certain times and among particular people. But, whether he be social in the best and most honourable manner to the wife and virtuous man, to the christian, and reap from his fociable turn the greateft utility poffible, the most harmless and r oft noble pleasures, about this he too feldom concerns himfelf; and hence it is that this very focialness is fo often irksome, even to its admirers and encomiasts, and and fo feldom comes up to their expectations. My defign at present is to give you a few directions in reflecting on fociableness, towards a founder judgment and a better use of it. Accordingly, we will inveftigate together the value of focial life. For more accurately ascertaining it, we shall have two questions to answer. The firft is: How muft focial life be managed in order to render it of a certain value? The other: What gives it this value, or, wherein confifts the value of it? These investigations will teach us how we are to walk circumspectly, according to the apoftolical exhortation in our text, and not to behave as fools in regard of focial life, but as wife, adapting ourselves to times or circumstances, and making the best use of both, Sociableness, my pious hearers, is always better than unfociableness; a defective use of this natural impulfe, or this propenfity founded in education and improved by intercourse, is better than the total dif ufe of it. But all fociableness is not rational and christian, every kind of focial life is not of great value. Neither all fociablenefs nor every kind of focial life is able to procure us lafting advantage and real pleasure. Principally, by the abfence and avoidance of feveral defects and imperfections; principally by the presence and the united activity of feveral good properties and virtues, does focial life become and afford what it may and ought to be and afford; by this means does it principally acquire that value B 3 |