DISCOURSE II. ECCLESIASTES, CHAP. iii. VER. 1. SEASON, AND A TIME TO EVERY W AS this celebrated maxim of the sagacious Preacher properly understood and observed by the fons of men, it would doubtless have a confiderable tendency to render them more attentive and vigilant, as well as more calm and tranquil, than they generally are, amid the variegated fluctuating scenes of human life. It would lead them to make the 1 It the best use and improvement of that rapid fucceffion of events and, occurrences, with which the present period of their existence is diversified. would teach them, that betwixt the cradle and the grave, betwixt the birth and death of man, is the grand and awful interval, in which his best interests and highest happiness are to be secured or lost for ever; and that his All depends upon a faithful improvement of those " times and feafons," in which the several purposes of Heaven, with respect to his true felicity, are to be executed. Though it should feem from the text, as well as from the enumeration of particulars in the succeeding verses, that these "times and seasons," as well as the purposes to which they are adapted, were unalterably fixed, and that nothing could be done on the part of man, to hasten or retard, to profper or defeat them; yet, if we consider the whole drift of the argument in this book, the connection of this chapter with the preceding and following ones, and particularly what is said at the close of the enumeration, we must be convinced, that all these " purposes, times, " and seasons," are placed before the will of man, and that he hath it in his power to improve or neglect them, to draw forth good or evil from them, and thus to establish his own happiness, or his own misery, for ever. defeat "What profit," says the Preacher, "hath he that worketh in that wherein "he laboureth?" If all things are fixed by an unalterable decree, if this fucceffion of events will certainly come to pass, independent of any will of mine; what part is left for me to perform? " I know," replies the experienced Sage, " I know that there is no good in them, " but for a man to rejoice and to do "good good in his life." I know that all these occurrences, whether they be in the natural or the moral world, are intended to administer, to the wife and good man, fo many opportunities of calling forth a delightful train of virtuous joys in his own breast, and of enabling him communicate them to his to brethren. Was a mere natural philosopher to take up the premises of the Preacher, what conclufion do you imagine he would draw from them? Why truly he would tell you, that there was no real distinction betwixt moral and natural good and evil, that one happened' by the fame inevitable neceffity as the other, that we must take things just as they come, and that with refpect both to good and evil, "whatever is, " is beft." Confidering |