of happiness and glory.  All these delightful things have been poured into your lap, and have come, unbidden, to solicit your acceptance.  If these blessings awaken not gratitude, it can not be awakened by the blessings in the present world.  If they are not thankfully felt by you, it is because you know not how to be thankful.  Think what you are, and where you are; and what and where you just as easily might have been.  Remember that, instead of cherishing tender affections, imbibing refined sentiments, exploring the field of science, and assuming the name and character of the sons of God, you might as easily have been dozing in the smoke of a wigwam, brandishing a tomahawk, or dancing round an emboweled captive; or that you might yourself have been emboweled by the hand of superstition, and burnt on the altars of Moloch.  If you remember these things, you can not but call to mind, also, who made you to differ from the miserable beings who have thus lived and died.

Secondly.  This doctrine forcibly demands of you to moderate desires and expectations.

There are two modes in which men seek happiness in the enjoyments of the present world.  “Most persons freely indulge their wishes, and intend to find objects sufficient in number and value to satisfy them.”  A few “aim at satisfaction by proportioning their desires to the number and measure of their probable gratifications.”  By the doctrine of the text, the latter method is stamped with the name of wisdom, and on the former is inscribed the name of folly.  Desires indulged grow faster and farther than gratifications extend.  Ungratified desire is misery.  Expectations eagerly indulged and terminated by disappointment are often exquisite misery.  But how frequently are expectations raised only to be disappointed, and desires let loose only to terminate in distress!  The child pines for a toy:  the moment he possesses it, he throws it by and cries for another.  When they are piled up in heaps around him, he looks at them without pleasure, and leaves them without regret.  He knew not that all the good which they could yield lay in expectation; nor that his wishes for more would increase faster than toys could be multiplied, and is unhappy at last for the same reason as at first:  his wishes are ungratified.  Still indulging them, and still believing that the gratification of them will furnish the enjoyment for which he pines, he goes on, only to be unhappy.

Men are merely taller children.  Honor, wealth and splendor are the toys for which grown children pine; but which, however accumulated, leave them still disappointed and unhappy.  God never designed that intelligent beings should be satisfied with these enjoyments.  By his wisdom and goodness they were formed to derive their happiness and virtue.

Moderated desires constitute a character fitted to acquire all the good which this world can yield.  He who is prepared, in whatever situation he is, therewith to be content, has learned effectually the science of being happy, and possesses the alchemic stone which will change every metal into gold.  Such a man will smile upon a stool, while Alexander at his side sits weeping on the throne of the world.