nature of man and our condition in this world, will appear the most
romantic scheme of life that ever entered into thought. And yet how
many are there who go on in this course, without learning better
from the daily, the hourly disappointments, listlessness, and
satiety which accompany this fashionable method of wasting away
their days!

The subject we have been insisting upon would lead us into the same
kind of reflections by a different connection. The miseries of life
brought home to ourselves by compassion, viewed through this
affection considered as the sense by which they are perceived, would
beget in us that moderation, humility, and soberness of mind which
has been now recommended; and which peculiarly belongs to a season
of recollection, the only purpose of which is to bring us to a just
sense of things, to recover us out of that forgetfulness of
ourselves, and our true state, which it is manifest far the greatest
part of men pass their whole life in. Upon this account Solomon
says that IT IS BETTER TO GO TO THE HOUSE OF MOURNING THAN TO GO TO
THE HOUSE OF FEASTING; i.e., it is more to a man's advantage to turn
his eyes towards objects of distress, to recall sometimes to his
remembrance the occasions of sorrow, than to pass all his days in
thoughtless mirth and gaiety. And he represents the wise as
choosing to frequent the former of these places; to be sure not for
his own sake, but because BY THE SADNESS OF THE COUNTENANCE, THE
HEART IS MADE BETTER. Every one observes how temperate and
reasonable men are when humbled and brought low by afflictions in
comparison of what they are in high prosperity. By this voluntary
resort to the house of mourning, which is here recommended, we might
learn all those useful instructions which calamities teach without
undergoing them ourselves; and grow wiser and better at a more easy