ful and endless duties attached to your station, you believe that you serve God, accomplish your measure of righteousness, and labour toward your salvation. I grant it; but we must fulfil these duties according to the views of the Lord, from motives of faith, and in the true spirit of religion and piety. God reckons only what we do for him; of all our pains, fatigues, submissions, and sacrifices, he accepts only those which are offered to his glory, and not to our own; and our days are only full in his sight when they are full for eternity. All actions, which have nothing for their object but the world; a fame limited to this earth; a perishable fortune; some praises they may attract to us from men, or some degree of grandeur and reputation to which they may raise us here below, are nothing in his presence, or, at least, are only puerile amusements, unworthy of the majesty of his regards.
Thus, my brethren, how different are the judgments of God from those of the world! In the world we call beautiful that splendid life in which great actions are numbered, victories gained, difficult negotiations concluded, undertakings successfully conducted, illustrious employments supported with reputation, eminent dignities acquired by important services, and exercised with glory; a life which passes into history, fills the public monuments, and of which the remembrance shall be preserved to the latest posterity. Such, according to the world, is a beautiful life. But if, in all this, they have sought more their own than the glory of God; if they have had nothing more in view than to erect to themselves a perishable edifice of grandeur on the earth; in vain shall they have furnished a splendid career to the eyes of men; in the sight of God, it is a life lost: in vain shall history record us; we shall be effaced from the book of life, and from the eternal histories: in vain shall our actions be the admiration of ages to come; they shall not be written on the immortal columns of the heavenly temple: in vain shall we have acted a dignified part upon the stage of all earthly ages; in the eternal ages we shall be as those who never were: in vain shall our titles and dignities be preserved upon the marble and brass; as the fingers of men have written them, they shall perish with them, and what the finger of God shall have written will alone endure as long as himself: in vain shall our life be proposed as a model to the ambition of our descendants; its reality, existing only in the passions of men, from the moment they shall cease to have passions and the objects which inflame them, shall be annihilated; this life shall be nothing, and shall be replunged into nonentity, with the world which admire it.
For, candidly, my brethren, can you really wish that in that awful and terrible day, when righteousness itself shall be judged, the Almighty should give you credit for all the pains, cares, and disgusts you have experiened and devoured, in order to raise yourselves in the world? That he should regard, as well employed, the time you have sacrificed to the world, fortune, glory, and the elevation of your name and race, as if you were upon the earth only for yourselves? That he should place, among the number of your works of
