Exercise fear in prosperity, and think with thyself, when thy heart is most affected -with it, that whilst the boast is in thy lips, the scene may alter, and thy happiness be turned into sorrow. Whilst that proud boast was in the mouth of Nebuchadnezzar, the voice from heaven told him, " His kingdom was departed from him, Dan. iv. 30, 31. Pride shews, that prosperity, which feeds it, to be at its vertical point.
3. Irifirence. If success in business be from the Lord, then certain- ly the true way to prosperity is to commend our affairs to God by praver. He takes the true way to thrive, that engages God's bles- sing upon his endeavours. *' Commit thy way unto the Lord ; trust " also in him, and he shall bring it to pass," Psal. xxxvii. 4. It is a vile thing for any man to grudge that time that is spent in prayer, as so much time lost in his business. But having pressed this point before, I shall add no more here.
4. Inference. Doth all success and prosperity depend upon, and come from God ? Then let it be faithfully employed to his glory. " If it be of him, and through him," then there is all the reason in the world it should '' be to him," Rom. xi. 36. You do but give him of his own, as David speaks ; " All this store cometh of thine hand, "and is thine own," 1 Chron. xxix. 16. He never intended your estates for the gratifying of your lusts, but to give you a larger capa- city thereby of honouring him in the use of them. O consider, when God hath prospered your estates abroad, and you return successfully home, how you have an opportunity of honouring God, and evi- dencing your sense of his goodness to you, by relieving the poor with a liberal and cheerful charity ; by encouraging the gospel, and making them partakers of your good things, who labour for your souls, and dispense better things to you than you can return to them. I would not here be mis-interpreted, as though I pleaded my own interest, under a pretence of pleading God's ; no ! God forbid ; I am well satisfied with a capacity of doing any good, hov/ little soever I receive ; nor can many of you reap the fruit of my labours: but I would not leave you ignorant, or regardless of so great and plain a duty as this is : you are bound to this retribution, by a plain and po- sitive precept, Gal. vi. 6. " Let him that is taught in the word, coni- " raunicatc to him that teacheth, in all good things." You are ob- liged to do it, proportion ably to the success God gives you in your trade, 1 Cor. xvi. 2. And when you have so done, not to think it
The disappointed seaman. 395
any great matter, 1 Cor. ix. 11. but the discharge of a plain and necessary duty.
5. Inference. Let not your hearts be satisfied with all the success and increase of the world, except your souls thrive as well as your bodies, and your eternal concerns prosper as well as your temporal. It was a pious wish of St. John for Gains his host, " That he might " prosper, and be in health, even as his soul prospered," 3 Epist. John, ver. 2. But it were to be wished, that your souls did but prosper as your bodies and estates do. It is a poor comfort to have an increasing festate, and a dead and declining soul. When a con- siderable present was sent to Luther, he earnestly protested, God should not put him off with these things. O friends ! I beseech you take not up in these enjoyments !
6. Inference. Lastly^ If God be the author of all your success, how prodigious an evil is it to make your prosperity an instrument of dishonouring him that gave it ; to abuse the estates providence gives you, to rioting and drunkenness .? Do you thus requite the Lord ! is this the thanks you give him for all his care over you ! and kindness to 3'ou ! you would never be able to bear that from another, which God bears from you. If God do you good, O do liot return him evil for it !
Luke v. 5. Master, zve have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing.
A HESE words are the reply made by Peter unto Christ, who, in the former verse, had commanded him to " launch out into the " deep, and let down the nets for a draught." Peter is discouraged as to any farther attempt at that time, having already taken so much pains to so little purpose : " We have (saith he) toiled all the night, " and have taken nothing.^' In which reply we note these two thin^js :
1. The great pains he and his company had taken in then* honest calling and employment to get a livelihood ; " We have toiled all the " night."^ No calling more lawful, no diligence in an honest employ- ment could be greater ; not only to spend the night, when other la-
596 THE DISAPPOINTED SEAMAN.
bourers take their rest, in watching, but in toiling. The * word xo'TiugavTsg comes from a verb that signifies wasting, tiring, spend- ing, labour. Here was great dihgence, even to the wearying and wasting of their spirits : " They toiled, and that all the night.""
2. The unsuccessfulness and fruitlessness of their labours, they caught nothing. Though their design was honest, and their industry great, yet it succeeded not according to their desire and expectations : it proved but lost labour and pains to no purpose. Hence the note will be,
Doct. That God sometimes frustrates and blasts the most dili^ gent labours of men, in their just and lawful callings.
AVhat employment more honest, or laborious, than that of the husbandman, who eats his bread in the sweat of his brow, and sus- tains all that spending toil and labour, by an expectation of fruit in the season.? And yet sometimes it so falls out, that after all his la- bours and hopes, he reaps nothing but shame and disappointment. Joel i. 11. " Be astonished, O ye husbandmen : Howl, O ye vine- '' dressers, for the wheat, and for the barley, because the harvest of ** the field is perished."
The employment of the mariner is as lawful as it is beneficial ; what he gets, is gotten with imminent hazard of hfe and liberty, as well as watchings and labours; and yet it so falls out, sometimes, that they labour but for the wind, and spend their strength for very vanity : God cuts off their expectations and lives together. There is a time when they return rich and prosperous, and a time when they either return empty, or return no more. So it was with Tyre, that renowned mart, and famous empory ; the flourishing and fall of whose trade you have in Ezek. xxvii. 33, 34. *' When thy wares *' went forth out of the seas, thou filledst many people; thou didst " enrich the kings of the earth with the multitude of thy riches, " and of thy merchandise." Here was their prosperity and success ; but will this day always last ? Shall the sun of their prosperity never set ? No ; the change was at hand ; for in the next verse the scene alters. " In the day when thou shalt be broken by the seas, in the " depths of the waters, thy merchandise, and all thy company in « the midst of thee, shall fall."