This will sweeten every earthly pursuit, make every burden light, afford solid enjoyment in life and divine consolation in the hour of death.  Flatter not yourself that there is any happiness beneath the sun aside from this.  “There is no peace saith my God to the wicked,” and, he who says there is, contradicts Jehovah, and is yet “in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.”  A speculative faith is of but little consequence, so long as it does not influence our life and conversation for the better.  We must believe to the saving of the soul from the evil of the world.  “Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy righteousness shall go before thee, and the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward.”

SERMON XII

“A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold.”  Prov. xxii:1.

A good name involves all that can render man exalted and amiable, or life desirable.  The good opinion of mankind has, in all ages, been considered as a blessing of the first magnitude, and has, in various ways, been sought for by all.  There is no man so dishonest, but what labors to impress upon others the conviction of his honesty; no man so deceptive, but what wishes to be considered sincere; nor cowardly, but desires to be reputed brave; and no man is so abandonedly vicious, but what desires to be considered virtuous by his fellow creatures.  All choose a good name in preference to a bad one.  This being a fact the appearance of virtue is kept up where the reality is wanting, and the shadow is often mistaken for the substance.

There are many, that are, at heart, insincere and false, who pass in society generally for persons of sincerity, candor and virtue, while their real principles are known only in their own families and among their confidential friends.  They desire a good name and outwardly maintain it, while they in reality but little deserve it.  In order to know what a man really is, we must be acquainted, not only with his public, but his private character.  In his own family, every man appears what he really is.  There the heart, word and action art in unison.  They embrace each other.  In public, they too often separate; and the word, or action, speaks what its divorced companion, the heart does not feel.

Such not only literally choose, but often bear a good name.  But this is not the choice suggested by the text.  All men, even the most vicious, in some sense or other, choose a good name.  But the passage under consideration has a higher, a nobler aim, than a mere choice unconnected with virtuous principle and action.  It has a higher aim, than to encourage men to be rotten at heart, and by an outward, hypocritical maneuver, maintain a good name among their fellow creatures.  By the text, we are to understand, that a man should early cultivate, in his heart, a virtuous principle, as the pure source from which