Section IIT. DR. SOUTH. Who can tell all the windings and turnings, all the depths, all the hollownesses and dark corners of the mind of man? 'He who enters upon this scrutiny, enters into a labyrinth or a wilderness, where he has no guide but chance or industry to direct his enquiries or to put an end to his search. It is a wilderness, in which a man may wander more than forty years; a wilderness through which few have passed to the promised land. Sermon on Prov. xxviii, 26. SELECTIONS. 1. In general. 2. In particular. PLEASURE. 1. Sensual compared with intellectual pleasure. 2. Pleasure of great place. 3. Pleasure of amusement compared with the pleasure of industry. 4. Pleasure of meditation. 5. Pleasure of religion. PLEASURE IN GENERAL. Pleasure in general, is the apprehension of a suitable object, sutably applied to a rightly disposed faculty; and so must be conversant both about the faculties of the body and of the soul respectively.* * Does not happiness consist in a due exercise of all our faculties? The harp in tune and properly played. Strange that a harp with many strings Should keep in tune so long. SENSUAL COMPARED WITH INTELLECTUAL PLEASURE. The difference of which two estates consists in this; that in the former the sensitive appetites rule and domineer; in the latter the supreme faculty of the soul, called reason, sways the sceptre and acts the whole man above the irregular demands of appetite and affection. There is no doubt, but a man while he resigns himself up to the brutish guidance of sense and appetite, has no relish at all for the spiritual rerefined delights of a soul clarified by grace and virtue. The pleasures of an angel can never be the pleasures of a hog. But this is the thing that we contend for, that a man having once advanced himself to a state of superiority over the control of his inferior appetites finds an infinitely more solid and sublime pleasure in the delights proper to his reason, than the same person had ever conveyed to him by the bare ministry of his senses. * *The pleasure and delight of knowledge and learning far surpasseth all other in nature: for, shall the pleasures of the affections so exceed the senses, as much as the obtaining of desire or victory, exceedeth a song or a dinner; and must not, of consequence, the pleasures of the intellect or understanding exceed the pleasures of the affections? We see in all other pleasures there is satiety, and after they be used, their The change and passage from a state of nature, to a state of virtue, is laborious. The ascent up verdure departeth; which sheweth well they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasure; and that it was the novelty which pleased, and not the quality and therefore we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious princes turn melancholy. But of knowledge there is no satiety, but satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable. The poet that beautified the sect, that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below; so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth. Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, With quietness and beauty, and so feed The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb |