Permit me therefore, in the following dif courfe, to lay before you a few of thofe arguments which will moft ftrongly recommend to you the serious confideration of this neceffary and important duty.

Ift, By pointing out to you the many benefits and advantages refulting from it to our fellow-creatures ; and

2dly, The manifest tendency which it hath to promote our own intereft and happinefs, both here and hereafter.

And firft, therefore, I fhall take this oppor tunity to confider the benefits and advantages which will accrue to others, the relief and comfort which we bestow on our fellow-creatures.

Whether it be owing to the falfe philofophy of fome pernicious writers, who have rifen up of late years to confound virtue and vice, and put religion out of countenance, or to the natural depravity of mankind, heightened and enflamed by bad example, or both together, is hard to determine; but certain it is, that we are at present fo loft in the idle amusements, or corrupted by the follies of the age, that almost all the ties of nature are broken through and contemned, and focial love and affection banished from the breasts of men. We are fo deeply engaged in the vanities and impertinencies of life, that we have no time left for the duties of it; fo conftantly employed in vifiting those who neither want nor defire it, that we totally neglect those who do; we partake, in fhort, of every table but the table of

love, and go to every houfe but the houfe of mourning; men are but too well acquainted with the pleasures, the vices, and faults, of their neighbours, and are only ftrangers to their forrows and misfortunes.

The loofe and unthinking manner in which fo many fpend their irrevocable hours is not only the cause of half the cruel diforders which fall upon them, but tends alfo, in a great meafure, to make the burthen heavier and more intolerable; the more habituated we are to pleasure, the more impatient fhall we be under the difcipline of pain or fickness; and the greater the change is, the more intense must be our fenfation of it. How unhappy then muft those be who fall from the fummit of health and plenty into the melancholy ftate of ficknefs or adverfity, and who at the fame time that they are depreffed are generally defertei alfo for thoufands who are glad to partake of the joys and happiness of others, will refufe to bear a part in their fufferings and affliction.

The good and virtuous alone are capable of true friendship.

Obferve the connections which arife between the gay and diffolute; connections which fpring from cafual fcenes of mirth, luxury, and intemperance; mark how foon the knot is loofed, and how quickly the union is dif folved. It fpringeth up in the morning, and in the evening is cut down, dried up, and withered; the fame change which produced, frequently deftroys and puts an end to it; as

the

the holy Pfalmift beautifully expreffeth it, It is like the grafs which groweth on the huje top, wherewith the mower filleth not his hand, neither he that bindeth the fheaves his bofom.

Whilft on the other hand,

No ties are fo ftrong and binding as those produced by fympathy and compaffion: forrow hath an attractive quality, which infenfibly' draws together the minds of the tender and humane; and when friendship thus calls in virtue to her aid, the union which they form is lafting, the bands which they knit are indiffoluble.

The duty of vifiting the fick, therefore, is always attended with this defirable confequence, that it confers obligations which never can be cancelled, and beftows benefits that never are forgotten, cements friendships already made, and creates new ones that are lafting and permanent.

The duty notwithitanding now before us is too often neglected as ufelefs and unneceffary : a crowd, fays the unfeeling man, at fuch times, is disagreeable, and company fuperfluous; converse then is loathing, and cheerfulness impertinent but this is furely rather the weak excufe of languid indifference, or the cold fuggeftion of unfeeling philofophy. Hath not the wife man affured us, that even the moving of the lips can affuage grief? Experience must convince us, that in the bitterness of pain and fickness no balm is fo efficacious as the balm of tenderness, no draught fo invigorating as the cordial of friendfhip. The health of the

patient

patient may depend as much on the hand that adminifters, as on the phyfician who prescribes the remedy; and I appeal to the hearts of all who have languifhed under any of thofe cruel diftempers our weak frames are liable to, if ever the fight of thofe they valued and efteemed was fo pleafing to their eyes, or the voice of thofe they loved fo grateful to their ears, as when they came in that melancholy hour to vifit and relieve them.

But fecondly, Though we might even fuppofe it poffible (dreadful as the fuppofition is) to lay afide our humanity, and utterly to forget and neglect our duty towards our neighbour, let us at leaft confider what I propofed to point out to you as a moft powerful inducement to the practice of this virtue, namely, the manifeft tendency which it hath to promote our own intereft, welfare, and happiness both here and hereafter.

And the first great benefit and advantage refulting from this humane and charitable employment is, that it may, in a great measure, ferve to wean our affections from the things of this world; to humanife and foften our dif pofitions, difpofe our thoughts towards fuch objects as might otherwife feldom enter into them, call off our attention from fcenes of gaiety and diffipation, and fix them on that heaven where, and where only, true joys are to be found.

Experience doth fufficiently convince us that there is no fchool like the fchool of affliction, that fickness is the beft of mafters, and no inftructors

inftructors fo well qualified to teach morality, as pain and forrow.

Let then the diffolute and abandoned man quit the chambers of riot and debauchery for a bed of fickness; convey him from the palaces of joy to the regions of forrow and affiction; let him look upon his difconfolate brother, labouring under fome fore difeafes, and lamenting perhaps the guilty caufe of all his fufferings: and then let him return, if he can, to the fons of Belial, and go on in the fatal pursuit of his deftructive pleasures.

To this fcene let us fend the man of vaunted learning and knowledge, who boasts his fuperior wifdom, and looks down with contempt on the ignorant and illiterate: fhew him one, perhaps but a few hours ago much wiser and more learned than himself, now languishing in a ftate of weakness and insensibility. Behold that mind which was once fo rich deprived of all its treasures, all its ideas obliterated and effaced, all its knowledge vanifhed away. Bid the scholar turn over this inftructive page; bid him look over this moral treatise, and be wife; bid him read this important leffon, and be humble.

Go to this school, attend this duty, thou that are fwollen with ambition, or enflamed by avarice; afk the fick man, where are the riches that can purchase ease, or where is the power that can conquer pain? Then turn into thy own bofom and ask thyself, whether the things thou art fo warmly in pursuit of, are worth

thy