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occasion , was alive and active , intent on future schemes , and promising him-. self , no doubt , many future scenes of enjoyment . With many of you he had enjoyed the enlivening hours of social intercourse , and with innocent
cheerfulness partaken of your amusements ; with some of you probably had cultivated a ' friendship , ardent , ' but alas also transient , * as the summer ' s noon / Your minds , my young friends , are deeply impressed ; I sympathize with you in the impression , for I remember once to have felt the
same : I remember the tender and fatherly concern with which my respected tutor Dr . Enfield , ( the ancestor of some of yourselves ) addressed the body of his pupils at that time ;* and I would try to adapt some of his admonitions on that occasion , for your benefit on this .
" I trust you will attend to and obey the lessons of instruction , which such an event is calculated , with such authority and energy , to inculcate . It is , I am aware , no easy task for the youthful mind to admit and pursue such reflections , but yet , my young
friends , since your lives are not the less precarious because you may endeavour to persuade yourselves of their stability , it caunot surely admit of a dispute , that it is your wisdom to prepare for whatever may be in the plan of Providence concerning you . You have
before you an affecting proof , in the death of \ our friend and late associate , that you have no security for the continuance of your own lives to any distant period . For a moment , then , make the supposition , that in a very few years , perhaps months or weeks ,
you may find yourselves sinking under consumption , on a sudden attacked with fever or other violent disease , or by some unforeseen event , to which we improperly give the . name of accident , placed in an instant at the brink
of the grave ! In such a situation , what kind of reflections would you wish to make on your past lives ? Would it be any satisfaction , at such a moment , to look back on scenes of debauchery and profaneness ; to remember that you had disgraced your natures , and - ^ — ¦ - w . r ¦ . i _ . i i ' - ¦ i - i i -
# Funeral Sermon for Mr . John Galway , * student at Warringfton , who died Febt 8 , 1777 .
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perhaps hastened your end , by the indulgence of licentious passions ; to be conscious that the short time you have been permitted to spend in the world has not been improved to any of those valuable purposes for which a
rational being ought to live ; to recollect a series of actions which your righteous Judge has forbidden , and to feel yourselves entering into his presence under the dominion of dispositions which you are well assured he will condemn ? Would the
remembrance of vicious pleasures then afford you any compensation for the consciousness of guilt , and the anguish of a wounded spirit ?—Would it not , on the other hand , afford you the most substantial ground of consolation and
rejoicing to be able to reflect , that you had spent your short life innocently and laudably , that you had laid in a stock of useful knowledge , and established principles and habits ; which you can carry with you into the life to come with an humble hope of your Maker ' s acceptance ? Let me ask you also , ( and I am sure that at least there
are some here present who will not think this a trifling circumstance ) whether , at such a season , you would not much rather that the recollection of your characters should minister consolation to the minds of your afflicted parents , than that it should add to the burden of their grief ? Remember then , that it is a wise and virtuous
son alone that niaketh a glad father , but that a foolish son is a grief and a shame to his mother . " On the supposition , then , that you will shortly receive a summons from your Maker to appear in his presence , you are convinced that it is your
wisdom to spend your days in innocence and virtue . And surely it will be no less your wisdom if your lives be protracted even to old age . If you only regard the present state , a moment ' s reflection must convince you , that you are more likely to find a happiness that will last through life in a
well-Cultivated understanding , in habits of purity and temperance , and in the manly and rational pursuits of virtue and religion , than in the licentious gratification of appetite , or the dull round of dissipation - that the deceitful attractions of vicious pleasure will quickly fade , and be replaced by the pain and loathing of a diseased and
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498 Intelligence . —Manchester . College , York *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1817, page 498, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2467/page/50/
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