ore us, which is the end, not
the means; the thing itself, not somewhat in order to it. But if you can
lay aside that general, confused, undeterminate notion of happiness, as
consisting in such possessions, and fix in your thoughts that it really
can consist in nothing but in a faculty's having its proper object, you
will clearly see that in the coolest way of consideration, without either
the heat of fanciful enthusiasm or the warmth of real devotion, nothing
is more certain than that an infinite Being may Himself be, if He
pleases, the supply to all the capacities of our nature. All the common
enjoyments of life are from the faculties He hath endued us with and the
objects He hath made suitable to them. He may Himself be to us
infinitely more than all these; He may be to us all that we want. As our
understanding can contemplate itself, and our affections be exercised
upon themselves by reflection, so may each be employed in the same manner
upon any other mind; and since the Supreme Mind, the Author and Cause of
all things, is the highest possible object to Himself, He may be an
adequate supply to all the faculties of our souls, a subject to our
understanding, and an object to our affections.

Consider then: when we shall have put off this mortal body, when we shall
be divested of sensual appetites, and those possessions which are now the
means of gratification shall be of no avail, when this restless scene of
business and vain pleasures, which now diverts us from ourselves, shall
be all over, we, our proper self, shall still remain: we shall still
continue the same creatures we are, with wants to be supplied and
capacities of happiness. We must have faculties of perception, though
not sensitive ones; and pleasure or uneasiness from our perceptions, as
now we have.

There are certain ideas which we express by the words order, harmony,
proportion, beauty, the furthest removed from anything sensual. Now what
is there in those intellectual images, forms, or ideas, which begets that
approbation, love, delight, and even rapture, which is seen in some
persons' faces upon having those objects present to their minds?--"Mere
enthusiasm!"--Be it what it will: there are objects, works of nature and
of art, which all mankind have delight from quite distinct from their
affording gratification to sensual appetites, and from quite another view
of them than as being for their interest and further advantage. The
faculties from