On the Conduct to be held with regard to PROVERBS, XXvii. 1. Boast not thyself of SER- XX w SERMON I. On the CAUSES of MEN'S being weary of Life. JOB, X. 1. My soul is weary of my life. OB, in the first part of his days, SERMON was the greatest of all the men of the East. His possessions were large; his family was numerous and flourishing; his own character was fair and blameless. Yet this man it pleased God to visit with extraordinary reverses of fortune. He was robbed of his whole substance. His sons and daughters all perished; and he himself, fallen from his high estate, childless, and reduced to poverty, was smitten VOL. IV. B with 1. SERMON with sore disease. His friends came about I. him, seemingly with the purpose of administering comfort. But from a harsh and ill-founded construction of the intention of Providence in his disasters, they only added to his sorrows by unjust upbraiding. Hence those many pathetic lamentations with which this Book abounds, poured forth in the most beautiful and touching strain of Oriental poetry. In one of those hours of lamentation, the sentiment in the text was uttered; My soul is weary of my life; a sentiment, which surely, if any situation can justify it, was allowable in the case of Job. In situations very different from that of Job, under calamities far less severe, it is not uncommon to find such a sentiment working in the heart, and sometimes breaking forth from the lips of men. Many, very many there are, who, on one occasion or other, have experienced this weariness of life, and been tempted to wish that it would come to a close, Let us now examine in what circumstances this feeling may be deemed excus able; in what it is to be held sinful; and under what restrictions we may, on any occasion, be permitted to say, My soul is weary of my life. I SHALL Consider the words of the text in three lights: as expressing, First, The sentiment of a discontented man: Secondly, The sentiment of an afflicted man; Thirdly, The sentiment of a devout man. I. Let us consider the text as expressing the sentiment of a discontented man ; with whom it is the effusion of spleen, vexation, and dissatisfaction with life, arising from causes neither laudable nor justifiable. There are chiefly three classes of men who are liable to this disease of the mind; the idle; the luxurious; the criminal. First, THIS weariness of life is often found among the idle; persons commonly in easy circumstances of fortune, who are not engaged in any of the laborious occupations of the world, and who are at the same time, without energy of mind to call them forth into any other line of active B 2 SERMON I. |
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