SERMON X.

183

MATTHEW V. 4.

Bleffed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.

X.

S the bleffed Saviour and Redeemer SERM. of mankind, came down upon earth to confute the wifdom of the wife, and to put to filence the ignorance of foolish men, we shall find many of his doctrines, and more especially those which he delivered in his fermon on the mount, in direct oppofition to those opinions which were generally received and established; and amongst these, there is not perhaps one more apparently paradoxical and uncommon than that which is expreffed

X.

SERM. in the words of my text: Blessed, says he, are they that mourn. It feemeth indeed to contradict the voice of nature, to oppose our reason, and to give the lye to our fenfe and feeling. It is impoffible, one would imagine, that pain and forrow, which render us miferable, can ever make us bleffed; or that what we have fo long confidered as the object of fear and averfion, can ever become pleasing and defirable. But he who made and conftituted all things, can change the nature, effence, and difpofition of them. There is nothing fo bitter and calamitous which the power and goodness of God cannot render productive of joy and happinefs. Our Saviour therefore doth with great truth affert, (which the more we confider the more we fhall be convinced of) that the forrows, pains, and afflictions of this world, which we too often fo grievously complain of, are attended

by

X.

by confequences which we do not foresee, SERM, and followed by advantages which we never hoped for, or expected,

In a former difcourfe on the advantages of affliction, I obferved to you, that a mixture of good and evil in this life is (abstracted from all other confiderations) abfolutely and indifpenfibly neceffary, Sorrow is to joy what vice is to virtue, the best foil to its beauties; the comelinefs of the one, is set off and recommended by the deformity of the other: the heart which hath never groaned under calamity, will not fo truly enjoy the transports of felicity; past slavery gives a double zest to present freedom. Thus a fine taste of happiness can only be acquired by affliction, and he alone is to be pitied, who hath never known what it is to be miferable. But for the truth of this we have, in the words of my text, the

testimony

X.

SERM. teftimony of divine wifdom, and the fanc, tion of divine authority. Our Saviour

hath here expressly declared, that those who mourn, so far from being unhappy, are truly bleffed.

We are not to understand by the words before us, that all thofe who mourn, generally and indifcriminately confidered, must therefore be happy; that because they have been oppreffed by grievous sufferings, they are entituled to reward ; that because they have been miferable, they must be bleffed; that would be to confound good and evil, merit and demerit; to fet the wife, virtuous, and religious, on a level with the foolish, the vicious, and the irreligious, He who mourns for the lofs of what he neither wants nor deferves, who weeps when he fhould rejoice, and complains when he

fhould be thankful; he who mourns

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