d takes them all in. It is, as I may say, an
ocean, into which all the little rivulets of sensation, both
external and internal, discharge themselves. Now this is that part
of man to which the exercises of religion properly belong. The
pleasures of the understanding, in the contemplation of truth, have
been sometimes so great, so intense, so engrossing of all the powers
of the soul, that there has been no room left for any other kind of
pleasure. How short of this are the delights of the epicure! How
vastly disproportionate are the pleasures of the eating, and of the
thinking man! Indeed, says Dr. South, as different as the silence of
an Archimides in the study of a problem, and the stillness of a
swine at her wash. Nothing is comparable to the pleasures of mind;
these are enjoyed by the spirits above, by Jesus Christ, and the
great and blessed God.

"Think what objects religion brings before the mind, as the sources
of its pleasure: no less than the great God himself, and that both
in his nature and in his works. For the eye of religion, like that
of the eagle, directs itself chiefly to the sun, to a glory that
neither admits of a superior nor an equal. The mind is conversant,
in the exercises of piety, with all the most stupendous events that
have ever occurred in the history of the universe, or that ever will
transpire till the close of time. The creation of the world; its
government by a universal Providence; its redemption by the death
of Christ; its conversion by the power of the Holy Ghost; the
immortality of the soul; the resurrection of the body; the certainty
of an eternal existence; the secrets of the unseen state; subjects,
all of them of the loftiest and sublimest kind, which have engaged
the inquiries of the profoundest intellects, are the matter of
contemplation to real piety. What topics are these for our reason,
under the guidance of religion, to study: what an ocean to swim in,
what a heaven to soar in: what heights to measure, what depths to
fathom. Here are subjects, which, from their infinite vastness, must
be ever new, and ever-fresh; which can be never laid aside as dry or
empty. If novelty is the parent of pleasure, here it may be found;
for although the subject itself is the same, some new view of it,
some fresh discovery of its wonders, is ever bursting upon the mind
of the devout and attentive inquirer after truth.

"How then can religion be otherwise than pleasant, when it is the
exercise