will still be new, and still in its beginning; How many
self-congratulations naturally arise in the mind, when it reflects on
this its entrance into eternity, when it takes a view of those
improveable faculties, which in a few years, and even at its first
setting out, have made so considerable a progress, and which will be
still receiving an increase of perfection, and consequently an increase
of happiness?

13. The consciousness of such a being spreads a perpetual diffusion of
joy through the soul of a virtuous man, and makes him look upon himself
every moment as more happy than he knows how to conceive.

The second source of cheerfulness to a good mind is, its consideration
of that Being on whom we have our dependence, and in whom, though we
behold him as yet but in the first faint discoveries of his perfections,
we see every thing that we can imagine as great, glorious, or amiable.
We find ourselves every where upheld by his goodness, and surrounded by
an immensity of love and mercy.

14. In short, we depend upon a Being, whose power qualifies him to make
us happy by an infinity of means, whose goodness and truth engage him to
make those happy who desire it of him, and whose unchangeableness will
secure us in this happiness to all eternity.

Such considerations, which every one should perpetually cherish in his
thoughts, will banish from us all that secret heaviness of heart which
unthinking men are subject to when they lie under no real affliction,
all that anguish which we may feel from any evil that actually oppresses
us, to which I may likewise add those little cracklings of mirth and
folly, that are apter to betray virtue than support it; and establish in