And although God hath lighted His candle, and the lantern of His word and clearest revelations is held out to us, that we can see hell in its worst colors and most horrid representments; yet we run greedily after baubles, under that precipice which swallows up the greatest part of mankind; and then only we begin to consider, when all consideration is fruitless.

He, therefore, is a huge fool, that heaps up riches, that greedily pursues the world, and at the same time (for so it must be), "heaps up wrath to himself against the day of wrath." When sickness and death arrest him, then they appear unprofitable, and himself ex tremely miserable; and if you would know how great that misery is, you may take account of it by those fearful words and killing rhetoric of Scripture: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God;" and, "Who can dwell with the everlasting burnings?" That is, no patience can abide there one hour, where they dwell forever.

DEAN KIRWAN, as this great Irish pulpit orator is usually called, was born of Roman Catholic parents, at Galway, about the year 1754. He was educated at the college of English Jesuits, at Omers. At the age of seventeen, he embarked for the Danish island of St. Croix, West Indies, where resided a relative of great wealth. After six years be returned to Europe, and repairing to the University of Louvain, received priest's orders, and was soon honored with the chair of Natural and Moral Philosophy. In 1778 he became chaplain to the Neapolitan embassador at the British Court, where he obtained great celebrity as a preacher. With the desire of accomplishing more good than now lay in his power, he determined, in 1787, to leave the Roman Catholic body and unite with the established or Episcopal Church. On the 24th of June, the same year, he preached to his first Protestant congregation, which created an astonishing sensation. He soon gained a wide reputation for his charity sermons; and in 1788 was preferred to the prebend of Howth; and the next year to the parish of St. Nicholas. In 1800 he was raised to the deanery of Killala. In this position he attained to the most unbounded popularity. Men of all professions vied with each other to evince their attachment and admiration, and crowds flocked from all parts of Ireland to listen to his discourses. But in the midst of his success he sank under his labors, and died on the 27th of October, 1805.

Kirwan evidently abstained from polishing his sermons, to allow of extemporaneous effusions. His thirteen discourses, which are very rare, are not finished or elaborated; but still there runs through them a strain of masculine, impassioned exhortation, such as, is not often to be found. As charity sermons, probably they never were excelled. The following was for the schools of St. Peter's parish. Mr. Grattan's says of Kirwan, "He called forth the latent virtues of the human heart, and taught men to discover within themselves a mine of charity, of which the proprietors had been unconscious. He came to interrupt the repose of the pulpit, and shakes one world with the thunder of the other. The preacher's desk becomes the throne of light."

SEEKING ANOTHER'S WEALTH.

"Let no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth."-1 COR. x. 24.

The possession of happiness is the principle and end of all our actions and passions, our pleasures and our pains the common or universal center, to which all animated nature is hurried by rapid and irresistible movement. Men are united in society only to procure it. The arts and sciences have been invented only to perfect it. All states and professions are so many channels in which it is sought. The great and mean, rich and poor, infancy and age, passions and talents, virtues and vices, pleasures and toils, are all engaged in the unremitting pursuit of it. In a word, from the people that inhabit the most civilized cities to the savage that prowls in the bosom of the wilderness; from the throne of the monarch to the hut of the most abject peasant, the world is in labor to bring forth true peace and tranquillity of soul.

My object on the present occasion is not to inquire into the secret of this sublime and inexhaustible science. I am inclined, however, to believe, that if it has any existence upon this earth, it is probably in the soul of a true Christian. Nor is there any description of our brethren, however abject and forlorn, to whom this tender and consoling invitation of our blessed Lord is not oftentimes addressed with effect: "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

The wisdom of the Gospel, my friends, is chiefly addressed to the heart, and therefore is easily understood by all. It is in touching that it enlightens us, in touching that it persuades. Directed by the light of faith, the eye of the true Christian is intensely fixed on the great sphere of eternity. He hears the solemn voice of his religion, which tells him that in man there are two distinct beings, the one material and perishable, the other spiritual and immortal. He knows and contemplates the rapid advance of that futurity which is not measured by the succession of days and nights, or the revolution of years and ages. Before these profound and magnificent impressions all worldly glory fades. No interests can possess or transport his heart, but those to which he is invited from above. No, not a desire in his breast, not a movement in his life; no evil in his apprehension, or happiness in his conception, that refers not to eternity; he is all immensity of views and projects; and hence that true nobility of spirit, that calm, majestic indifference which looks down on the visionary enterprises of men, sees them, unstable and

fleeting as the waves of a torrent, pressed and precipitated by those that pursue, and scarce tell you where they are, when you behold them no more: hence likewise that equality of soul, which is troubled at no reverse or vicissitude of life, which knows not those tormenting successions, those rapid alternations of pleasure and pain, so frequent in the breast of worldlings; to be elevated by the slightest success, depressed by the slightest reverse, intoxicated at a puff of praise, inconsolable at the least appearance of contempt, reani mated at a gleam of respect, tortured by an air of coldness and indifference, unbounded in all wishes, and disgusted after all possession, is a spectacle of human misery that would enhance the peace of a true Christian, did all the influence of a Divine religion not infuse into his heart as much pity for his mistaken brethren, as it does superior dignity and elevation into his sentiments.

But without pursuing this character any further, of which, I would please myself in thinking, there are some living illustrations before me, I beg leave to observe, in nearer conformity with my text, that, as self-love is the most active principle of the human soul, and to seek our own wealth or happiness is to obey an innate and irresistible impulse, neither reason nor religion go to hinder or discourage a just and reasonable attention to our own temporal interests; nor should any of the Gospel precepts be explained in a manner which is inconsistent with that eternal law, which the finger of God hath traced on our hearts. No. Attention to our own concerns can become culpable only when they so far enslave and engross us as to leave us neither leisure or inclination to promote the happiness of our fellow creatures. Then does self-love degenerate into selfishness. This, indeed, is a dark and melancholy transformation of our natural character, and the last term of its abasement.

When the light of benevolence is entirely put out, man is reduced to that state of existence which is disavowed by nature and abhorred by God! Let one suppose him, I say, but once radically divested of all generous feelings, and entirely involved in himself; it will be impossible to say what deeds of horror and shame he will not readily commit: in the balance of his perverted judgment, honor, gratitude, friendship, religion, yea, even natural affection, will all be outweighed by interest. The maxim of the Roman satirist will be his rule of life, "Money at any rate." If the plain and beaten paths of the world, diligence and frugality, will conduct him to that end, it is well; but if not, rather than fail of his object, I will be bold to say, he will plunge, without scruple or remorse, into the most serpentine labyrinths of fraud and iniquity While

his schemes are unaccomplished, fretfulness and discontent will lower on his brow; when favorable, and even most prosperous, his unslaked and unsatisfied soul still thirsts for more. As he is insensible to the calamities of his fellow-creatures, so the greatest torment he can experience is an application to his charity and compassion. Should he stumble, like the Levite, on some spectacle of woe, he will, like the Levite, hasten to the other side of the way, resist the finest movements of nature, and cling to the demon of inhumanity, as the guardian angel of his happiness. Suppose him, however, under the accidental necessity of listening to the petition of misery; he will endeavor to beat down the evidence of the case by the meanest shifts and evasions; or will cry aloud, as the brutal and insatiable Nabal did to the hungry soldiers of David, "Why should I be such a fool as to give my flesh, which I have prepared for my shearers, to men that I know not from whence they be?"

But, admitting that a remnant of shame, for example, in the face of a congregation like this, may goad him for once to an act of beneficence, so mean and inconsiderable, so unworthy of the great concern would it probably be, that the idol of his soul would appear more distinctly in the very relief he administers, than in the barbarous insensibility which habitually withholds it. Merciful and eternal God! what a passion! And how much ought the power and fascination of that object to be dreaded, which can turn the human heart into a pathless and irreclaimable desert. Irreclaimable, I say; for men inflamed with any other passion, even voluptuousness, the most impure and inveterate, are sometimes enlightened and reformed by the ministry of religion, or the sober and deliberate judgment of manhood and experience.

But who will say that such a wretch as I have described, in the extremity of selfishness, was ever corrected by any ordinary resource or expedient? Who will say that he is at any time vulnerable by reproach, or, I had almost added, even converted by grace? No; through every stage and revolution of life, he remains invariably the same; or if any difference, it is only this, that as he advances into the shade of a long evening, he clings closer and closer to the object of his idolatry; and while every other passion lies dead and blasted in his heart, his desire for more pelf increases with renewed eagerness, and he holds by a sinking world with an agonizing grasp, till he drops into the earth with the increased curses of wretchedness on his head, without the tribute of a tear from child or parent, or any inscription on his memory; but that he lived to counteract the dis tributive justice of Providence, and died without hope or title to a