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SERMON X.

ON FEMALE PIETY.

1 TIM. ii. 10.

-Which becometh women professing Godliness.

PROV. xxxi. 30.

Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, She shall be praised.

DEVOTION, my beloved hearers, is a business of too much importance and dignity to be yet dismissed from our meditation. What has been already offered on this head, is but a small part of that which I would recommend to your attention. From a former hint you will readily conceive, that to present you here with a regular system of piety, is not my design. Such an attempt were superfluous. Of the spiritual kind there are books innumerable, in which you will meet with all that can be said on the subject in general. The Inducements to Religion, which are more immediately derived from your sex and situation, together with those Exercises and those Effects of it, that concern you more particularly, are the points to which my plan properly confines me.

I will begin this discourse by removing a bar, which has been thrown in our way by such as have appeared fond of every opportunity to depreciate

the better half of the human species. The devotion of women has been considered as nothing more than the passion of love directed to a divine object, when in reality they longed for an inferior one, or happened to be disappointed in their wishes: an opinion which has given occasion to some wit and more ridicule.

It seems to have proceeded chiefly from two causes; the amorous style which has by too many female pens been adopted into devotional writings; and the multitudes of young women who, denied originally the opportunity of indulging their natural inclinations, or afterwards crossed in the pursuit of them, have flung themselves headlong into the gloomy retreats of a mistaken piety, where they have been taught to offer at a heavenly shrine those fires which were not suffered to burn freely elsewhere.

But now on the former circumstance I would observe, that the language of love has not, so far as I know, been admitted into books of devotion by female more frequently than by male authors; and that, in this practice, both have probably thought themselves warranted by the example of Solomon in his well known Song; a composition, of which I must needs say, that how naturally soever it came from a monarch of his character, in those earlier days of eastern imagination and eastern ardour, it should by no means be made a model for christian writers. In the New Testament, although produced from the same region, we find very little of this sort, and that little in the chastest and purest strain: at the same time that there we are expressly required and taught, "to worship God, who isa spirit, in spirit and in truth." But when

VOL. II..

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we disapprove of the practice as indiscreet, must we condemn it too as sensual; or because in some it may have been the ebullition of a lascivious fancy, shall we pronounce it to be so in all? Certain it is, that among such as bave used it, there have been not a few eminently distinguished by the purity of their manners.

In the case of those numerous votaries to the church of Rome, who by violence or craft, despondence or superstition, are immured in convents, what can be more natural, more reasonable, or in truth more necessary, than that being deprived of the pleasures of this world, they should ask conso lation from the next? Or if finding it impossible to cultivate one of the strongest propensities of the human heart, by that kind of commerce which Nature intended, can they be justly blamed for turning to an object whose infinite excellence shall furnish endless scope for the best sentiments and noblest affections of the soul, those that are immediately connected with piety? Will not the same way of reasoning be applicable to women living in the world? I apprehend it will.

But, in reality, the opinion we now examine would reflect no dishonour on feminine devotion, did not those who entertain it proceed upon a low idea of the passion referred to. Whatever hold that passion, for purposes apparently wise, may take at first of the animal part of our frame, they are utter strangers to its genuine character, who do not know that it is capable of rising to the utmost refinement. By pleading the cause of Virtuous Love, I shall be able to prove its connexion with that which is Divine to be founded in nature; I mean in cultivated nature, where a sense of the Divinity obtains. As virtuous love operates on

both the sexes pretty nearly alike, what I am going to observe of its effects on the men may, I believe, be justly applied to the impressions produced by it

on the women.

A man sees in some public place a great number of young persons to whom he never spoke. He surveys them all. He is struck with one who is really less beautiful than several others present, and who is so even in his eyes: in her favour he decides at once. It is a common case; how shall we account for it? I conceive thus: Every countenance expresses, or is thought to express, a character peculiar to itself; and that which corresponds most with our particular taste in the way of temper, behaviour, understanding, we necessarily and spontaneously prefer. By this character, therefore, whe ther real or imaginary, we are determined. As was hinted in a former discourse, it is the soul we seek. With mind only can mind unite. That which is presented to our eyes attracts us merely as an image of that which they cannot perceive. Our senses may be said to tie the knot; but, strictly speaking, the knot is formed in the soul. Our senses are properly the vehicles of our affection; but to that affection they still act in subordination. It is supreme. Its power is indeed so great, that were the gratification of the senses, in the passion we are now considering, to interfere with the interest of our nobler part, or with this exalted sentiment which constitutes its joy, they would be sacrificed without hesitation. To virtuous love the spirit of sacrifice is essential. What hazards, hardship, losses,. pains, has not this generous attachment encountered, with pleasure and even with ecstacy; happy in manifesting its zeal by the most arduous proofs! To mention but one instance amongst ten thousand, and

that recorded in Holy Writ, we are told, that " Ja"cob served seven years for Rachel, and that they seemed to him but a few days." Why?" For "the love he had to her."

But now suppose the man we have just imagined, to cherish with fondness the sudden impression made upon him by a certain appearance; to be introduced to the lady, and to admire her more and more for those internal qualities which from that appearance, he presumes her to possess. With her looks too he is every day more deeply smitten, but still as they are the fancied picture of her mind. This ideal form follows him every where. Business, company, amusement, he could not endure but for the thoughts of her, which are for ever intermingling. Her conversation, her smiles, her approbation, even the slightest marks of her regard, are to him happiness unequalled, and such as can only be excelled by the entire possession of the endearing object: He pursues, he obtains it. And now suppose him to discover that the character he used to contemplate with transport was merely imaginary: that she is absolutely destitute of the dispositions, the sentiments, in one word, the soul which he had fondly figured-Need I speak the rest? Ah, what disappointment and inisery! Where now is his love? Where the sacred, fervent, elevated passion, he so lately fostercd as the felicity of his life? Intellectual and mo

ral beauty he chiefly sought. He finds it not: and because he does not find it, what happens? His very senses, though remaining constitutionally the same, revolt, are disgusted, and chilled. The enchanting face enchants no more: and why? Because it no longer reflects the image that inflamed his breast. A fool or a tyrant starts up there, where sense and softness seemed to reside.

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