even on that God who is the fource of true happiness, and the inexhauftible fountain of pleafure; that by a steady perfeverance in the paths of religion and virtue, he might render himself worthy to obtain that reward which is referved for him in thofe eternal manfions, where uninterrupted blifs is difpenfed by him, and pleasures flow at his right hand for ever

more.

ON THE CHOICE OF COMPANY.

SERMON

XXXVIII.

PSALM XVIII. 25, 26.

With the holy thou shalt be holy, and with a perfect man thou shalt be perfect. With the clean thou shalt be clean, and with the froward thou shalt learn frowardness.

CON

CONVERSATION hath ever juftly been accounted a powerful inftrument of good or evil; hath always had the ftrongest influence on the conduct of human life, and the vice or virtue of the world hath ever, in a great measure, been owing to it. The regulation, therefore, of this important point, did in all ages demand the utmost prudence, and in none more perhaps than in our own. Now, if ever,

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it is, no doubt, highly expedient for us to exhort all that have any concern for their own fouls, to fhun the way of the finner, and refrain their feet from the path of the wicked; to exhort all that fear the Lord to unite and combine themselves, to defend his honour, check the progrefs of vice, and promote godlinefs in this impious generation; in an age when we have degenerated fo far from the modefty, purity, and dignity of christian converfation, that the leaft air of ferioufnefs or gravity begins to look fingular and unfashionable, fo that whilft the wicked publish their fin as Sodom, and hide it not, religion feems as it were to diftruft its own caufe, to be ashamed of its own divinity.

With the clean, fays the Pfalmift, thou shalt be clean, and with the froward, thou shalt learn frowardness-that is, men are generally fuch as their acquaintance and familiars are. As man was originally formed for fociety, there is implanted in our natures, a kind of fympathetic quality, a mutual attractive power, which infenfibly draws us into an imitation of, and correfpondency with, thofe perfons and manners, which we are moft intimately connected with. Even men of tempers and difpofitions the most oppofite and contradictory, will, by conftant and habitual union, affimilate with, and resemble each other, like those liquors, which, though of contrary qualities, may fo blend and incorporate, as never, or at leaft without the utmoft difficulty, to be dif united;

united; whence it must inevitably happen, that we form our ideas of men, and judge of their characters, their principles, and conduct, from the manners of those with whom they moft frequently affociate, and the judgment founded on this criterion, is for the most part juft and warrantable: fome degree of conformity, with regard to fentiments and inclinations, is indeed fo neceffary towards the happiness of fociety, that without it, no familiarity can be entered into, no friendship contracted, no confidence eftablished.

But, that this truth, which is of the higheft confequence, may be the more deeply imprinted on us, I fhall proceed to confider the influence which fociety must have upon us, either in making us wife and good, or foolish, licentious, and abandoned, which will divide itself into that, which arifeth firft from conversation, and fecondly, from example.

And first then, what light, what ftrength, and what pleasure, might converfation adminifter to a mind fitly difpofed for the reception of it! How might it awaken the confcience, and purify the heart!

From the extraordinary change of manners which has taken place amongst us of late years, I know of scarce any thing which has fuffered fo much as converfation; that refinement and good breeding which we are grown fo fond of, and which is fo univerfally eftablifhed, has fhut up all the avenues of knowledge and wifdom, and placed the unlearned and illiterate,

the

the wife and the foolish, the good and the bad, upon a level. In this age the learned man never attempts to inftruct the ignorant, left he should be deemed pedantic; the wife man never reproves the foolish one, left he should be called ill bred; and the good and religious man never rebukes the profligate and abandoned, left he fhould be ftigmatized as an hypocrite or enthufiaft: we hear nothing even when in company with men of the best fenfe and underftanding, but the common hackneyed topics of converfe, the news or trifles of the day, which afford neither pleafure nor profit; and yet, if a decent freedom, and a more ingenuous intercourfe could, in spite of fashion and folly, be once more establifhed amongst men, what infinite advantages would flow from it in fupport of religion and virtue! The lips of the wife, as Solomon obferves, difperfe knowledge; they minifter grace to the hearers, edify and build us up in our holy faith: when God and our great Mediator, when the most important truths of the gospel difpenfation, are the fubject of our difcourfe; when language flows from the heart, when it has all the advantages which true friendship and known integrity can beftow upon it; fuch difcourfe cannot fail in the moft fenfible man. ner to affect our minds, and to influence our conduct.

But the principal advantage refulting from good company, by which I mean not what is generally fo called, but the honeft, the vir

tuous,

tuous, and the fober, is, fecondly, that power which it imparts by the force of example.

Virtue never appears fo beautiful and lovely as in action, and most indisputable it is, that it is represented with much more life in the practice of a wife and good man, than it can be in rules and precepts. The notions we form of duty from the lives of others, are generally more juft and correct, than thofe which we form even from the fcriptures themfelves, because we are apt to bend and form the written rule a little, and fometimes very much in favour of ourselves, but we never do fo in favour of others; the excellencies and perfections of a friend are the strongest incitements to emulation, and the moft fenfible proofs of our own remiffness; whatever beauty and loveliness. there can be in virtue, receives a new acceffion from his example; as the esteem and affection we have for him begets in us a value for every thing which he approves, and an averfion to every thing which he condemns. Add to this, that while we behold our friends difcharging the parts of good Chriftians, we fee in them not only what we ought to do, but what we may do whatever is poffible to them, is pof fible to us alfo; they are fubject to the fame frailties and paffions, expofed to the fame temptations, and have the same affiftances as ourfelves.

Men for the moft part confidering them: felves as individuals, are too apt to imagine that their private manners and character are of little confequence to fociety; the contrary

of