“It does not, it is true, prevent sickness, poverty, or misfortune:  it does not fence off from the wilderness of this world, a mystic enclosure, within which the ills of life never intrude.  No; these things happen to all alike; but how small a portion of human wretchedness flows from these sources, compared with that which arises from the dispositions of the heart.  ’The mind is its own place, can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.’  Men carry the springs of their happiness or misery in their own bosom.  Hence it is said of the wicked, ’that they are like the troubled sea which cannot rest, which is never at peace, but continually casting up mire and dirt.’  In contrast with which, it is affirmed that ’the work of righteousness is peace; and that the good man shall be satisfied from himself.’  Would you behold the misery entailed by pride, look at Haman; by covetousness, look at Ahab; by malice, look at Cain; by profaneness and sensuality, united with the forebodings of a guilty conscience, look at Belshazzar; by envy, and a consciousness of being rejected of God, look at Saul; by revenge, look at Herodias writhing beneath the accusations of John, and thirsting for his blood; by apostasy, look at Judas.  Religion would have prevented all this, and it will prevent similar misery in you.  Hearken to the confessions of the outcast in the land of his banishment; of the felon in his irons, and in his dungeon; of the prostitute expiring upon her bed of straw; of the malefactor at the gallows—­’Wretched creature that I am, abhorred of men, accursed of God!  To what have my crimes brought me!’ Religion prevents all this:  all that wretchedness which is the result of crime, is cut off by the influence of genuine piety.  Misery prevented is happiness gained.

“4.  Consider the consolations it imparts.

“Our world has been called, in the language of poetry, a vale of tears, and human life a bubble, raised from those tears, and inflated by sighs, which, after floating a little while, decked with a few gaudy colors, is touched by the hand of death, and dissolves.  Poverty, disease, misfortune, unkindness, inconstancy, death, all assail the travellers as they journey onward to eternity through this gloomy valley; and what is to comfort them but religion?

“The consolations of religion are neither few nor small; they arise in part from those things which we have already mentioned in this chapter; i.e. from the exercise of the understanding on the revealed truths of God’s word, from the impulses of the spiritual life within us, and from a reflection upon our spiritual privileges; but there are some others, which, though partially implied in these things, deserve a special enumeration and distinct consideration.