ld almost is run
into the extremes of insensibility towards the distresses of their fellow-
creatures: so that general rules and exhortations must always be on the
other side.

And now to go on to the uses we should make of the foregoing reflections,
the further ones they lead to, and the general temper they have a
tendency to beget in us. There being that distinct affection implanted
in the nature of man, tending to lessen the miseries of life, that
particular provision made for abating its sorrows, more than for
increasing its positive happiness, as before explained; this may suggest
to us what should be our general aim respecting ourselves, in our passage
through this world: namely, to endeavour chiefly to escape misery, keep
free from uneasiness, pain, and sorrow, or to get relief and mitigation
of them; to propose to ourselves peace and tranquillity of mind, rather
than pursue after high enjoyments. This is what the constitution of
nature before explained marks out as the course we should follow, and the
end we should aim at. To make pleasure and mirth and jollity our
business, and be constantly hurrying about after some gay amusement, some
new gratification of sense or appetite, to those who will consider the
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 th