passions; not in the sacrifice of right feeling and right conduct; not in careless, superstitious, or slothful ignorance; but by a mind enlightened with God's truth, and observant of God's ways; a conscience void of offence; a hope pointing heavenwards and making not ashamed; feelings well cultivated and well directed; and love to God and man, showing itself in filial piety and active goodness; may we aim at, and, as far as earth's clouds and changes and our own infirmities will allow, advance towards, a state of conformity with the precept to rejoice evermore,

213

SERMON XIII.

MORAL INCONGRUITIES.

PROVERBS Xxv. 20.

As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to a heavy heart.'

By these two similitudes, the proverb describes that aggravation of the suffering of an individual which is often occasioned by selfishness, or by mere heedlessness, or even by kindness, when tact and judgment are wanting in its manifestations. The first of them needs no explanation; and of the second, it may suffice to say that the substance called nitre was not that which the word designates with us, but an alkali, used in washing;-wash me with nitre and I shall be clean;' the same thing as the Smyrna soap-earth; and pouring vinegar upon it would make it bubble, and effervesce, in a manner affording no unapt comparison for a state of annoyance and irritation. Such is his work who

pours

gay ditties in a sorrowing ear.

It implies a want of thought, of judgment, or of feeling; a deplorable want of thought if, when we are with persons in a state of suffering, we do not advert to the effect which our own behaviour may have upon them; a want of judgment, if we expect to change that state by showing a total absence of sympathy in it, or exhort them, as by an act of volition, to spring abruptly from grief to gladness, while gloom is pressing heavily upon their minds; and a want of feeling, if our own merriment be unrepressed by a sense of the painful contrast it must present to them, of its utter uncongeniality with their condition, and by all the other stirrings within the bosom of that disposition which impels to weep with them that weep, as well as to rejoice with them that rejoice.

When this evil arises from a want of feeling, it is only one symptom of a great moral disease which requires the concentrated and persevering attention of the individual for its correction. The man who is deficient in this, has a most important part of his nature undeveloped. He has to acquire some of the first principles of goodness. He must acquire them before he can ascend in the scale of moral excellence. The descriptions which one sometimes hears of very good people, but with not much feeling, of cold and crabbed Christians, are altogether incongruous and absurd. In religion and morality,

the faculties of the head and the heart are co-ordinate; they should both be diligently cultivated, and their growth and expansion should be proportionate. The men who have done great things in the world; who have raised large classes of their fellow-creatures from suffering and degradation; who have abolished miseries; the moral heroes who have slain the monsters that ravaged cities and made earth a wilderness; while they have been distinguished from others by the clearness of their intellect, and the activity of their lives, have been not less elevated above them by the fervour of their feelings. They were men whose imaginations realized the peculiar kind of suffering which it was their destiny to remove or alleviate, with more than the sculptor's distinctness of form, with more than the painter's vividness of colouring, with more than the poet's abundance of associated recollections and emotions. Such men as Howard and Clarkson had visions of the agonies of slaves and prisoners which haunted their imaginations, which tortured their sympathies, which quickened their minds to almost preternatural acuteness, which drove them forth to the work allotted them by Providence, saying, after their Master, I have a baptism wherewith to be baptized, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished!' And what is true of those distinguished individuals, holds also of circumstances less peculiar, and of characters less conspicuous.

An imagination accustomed strongly to realize the good and evil of others, is as essential to virtue as an intellect stored with sound principles, and active powers in their best state for exertion. There is a physical provision for sympathy in the human constitution, as well as the material apparatus for thought and for motion. Like them, it should be employed, and cultivated, and refined, and exalted. With that, and with them, that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual.' But in all, the one grows out of the other; and the seed intimates what the harvest will be, when man shall attain the full perfection of his nature.

Where the evil mentioned in the text is only the want of thought, of attention, of reflection, it has a speedier remedy. To see the uncongeniality is often to remove it. Joy needs a response as well as grief; and is checked by the absence of sympathy which aggravates the other. Those who are com▾ pelled to say, 'We have piped to you, and ye have not danced-we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept,' will sooner leave off piping than leave off mourning. The song must lighten the heavy heart or become itself a dirge. There would be a way of stilling the acclamations of a multitude; even while shouting over the victory which had driven the enemy from their gates, and saved their city from storm and pillage; the rude, untutored multitude,