tion. He approves himself thereby to the virtuous, the wise, and discerning, and, by a temperate and unexceptionable conduct, escapes those dangers which persons of an opposite description are perpetually ready to incur,

III. Be moderate in your expectations. When your state is flourishing, and the course of events proceeds according to your wish, suffer not your minds to be vainly lifted up. Flatter not yourselves with high prospects of the increasing favours of the world, and the continuing applause of men. Say not within your hearts, My mountain slands strong, and shall never be moved, I shall never see adversity. To-morrow shall be as this day, and more abundantly. You are betraying yourselves; you are laying a sure foundation of disappointment and misery, when you allow your fancy to soar to such lofty pinnacles of confident hope. By building your house in this airy region, you are preparing for yourselves a great and cruel fall. Your trust is the spider's web. You may lean on your house; but it shall not stand. You may hold it fast; but it shall not endure. For, to man on earth it was never granted, to gratify all his hopes; or to persevere in one track of uninterrupted prosperity. Unpleasing vicissitudes never fail to succeed those that were

grateful. The fashion of the world, how gay or smiling soever, passeth, and often passeth suddenly, away.

By want of moderation in our hopes, we not only increase dejection when disappointment comes, but we accelerate disappointment; we bring forward, with greater speed, disagreeable changes in our state. For the natural consequence of presumptuous expectation, is rashness in conduct. He who indulges confident security, of course neglects due precautions against the dangers that threaten him ; and his fall will be foreseen and predicted. He not only exposes himself unguarded to dangers, but he multiplies them against himself. By presumption and vanity, he either provokes enmity or incurs contempt.

The arrogant mind, and the proud hope, are equally contrary to religion, and to prudence. The world cannot bear such a spirit; and Providence seldom fails to check it. The Almighty beholds with displeasure those who, intoxicated with prosperity, forget their dependence on that supreme Power which raised them up. His awful government of the world has been in nothing more conspicuous than in bringing low the lofty looks of man, and seattering the proud in the imaginations of their minds. Is not this the great Babylon which I

have built by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?* Thus exclaimed the presumptuous monarch in the pride of his heart. But lo! when the word was yet in his mouth, the visitation from Heaven came, and the voice was heard; 0 Nebuchadnezzar! to thee it is spoken; thy kingdom is departed from thee. He that exalteth himself, shall be humbled; and he that humbleth himself, shall be exalted. A temperate spirit, and moderate expectations, are the best safeguard of the mind in this uncertain and changing state. They enable us to pass through life with most comfort. When we rise in the world, they contribute to our elevation; and if we must fall, they render our fall the lighter.

IV. Moderation in our pleasures is an important exercise of the virtue which we are now considering. It is an invariable law of our present condition, that every pleasure which is pursued to excess, converts itself into poison. What was intended for the cordial and refreshment of human life, through want of moderation, we turn to its bane. In all the pleasures of sense, it is apparent, that, only when indulged within certain limits, they + Luke xiv. 11, .

* Daniel, iv. 30, 31.

confer satisfaction. No sooner do we pass the line which temperance has drawn, than pernicious effects come forward and shew themselves. Could I lay open to your view the monuments of death, they would read a lecture in favour of moderation, much more powerful than any that the most eloquent preacher can give. You would behold the graves peopled with the victims of intemperance. You would behold those chambers of darkness hung round, on every side, with the trophies of luxury, drunkenness, and sensuality. So numerous would you find those martyrs of iniquity, that it may safely be asserted, where war or pestilence have slain their thousands, intemperate pleasure has slain its ten thousands.

While the want of moderation in pleasure brings men to an untimely grave, at the same time, until they arrive there, it pursues and afflicts them with evils innumerable. To what cause so much as to this, are owing faded youth, and premature old age; an enervated body, and an enfeebled mind, together with all that long train of diseases which the indulgence of appetite and sense have introduced into the world? Health, cheerfulness, and vigour, are known to be the offspring of temperance. The man of moderation brings to

all the natural and innocent pleasures of life that sound, uncorrupted relish, which gives him a much fuller enjoyment of them, than the palled and vitiated appetite of the voluptuary allows him to know. He culls the flower of every allowable gratification, without dwelling upon it until the flavour be lost. He tastes the sweet of every pleasure, without pursuing it till the bitter dregs rise. Whereas the man of opposite character dips so deep, that he never fails to stir an impure and noxious sediment, which lies at the bottom of the cup. In the pleasures, besides, which are regulated by moderation, there is always that dignity which goes along with innocence. No man needs to be ashamed of them. They are consistent with honour; with the favour of God, and of man. But the sensualist, who disdains all restraint in his pleasures, is odious in the public eye. His vices become gross; his character contemptible; and he ends in being a burden both to himself and to society. Let me exhort you once more,

V. To moderation in all your passions. This exercise of the virtue is the more requisite, because there is no passion in human nature but what has, of itself, a tendency to run into excess. For all passion implies a violent