Page:Sermons preached in the African Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Thomas', Philadelphia.djvu/169

Rh good and perfect gift. But being duly sensible of the transitory and changing nature of all earthly things—knowing that the clearest morning sky may be overcast with clouds long before the noon, he tempers all his earthly joys with godly fear. This is the noble temper with which the apostle designed to inspire his brethren at Corinth—a kind of independence of all temporal things.—Not despising the good things of the world, but putting a due estimate upon them, using them in their proper place—not seeking happiness in them, but in the only living and true God. This is the temper that becomes us as dying men diligently to cultivate. With our hearts thus aloof from earth, our conversation in heaven, when the time of our departure is at hand, we shall be kept in perfect peace, and enabled to pass through the valley and shadow of death, fearing no evil. We may then in the triumphant language of St. Paul, exclaim—"I have