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Letters, Sermons and Miscellaneous Writings
Letters Sermons and Miscellaneous Writings Author:Laurence Sterne General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1894 Original Publisher: Dent Subjects: Literary Criticism / General Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the... more » General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: SERMONS. i. [u.] THE HOUSE OF FEASTING AND THE HOUSE OF MOURNING DESCRIBED. " It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting." -- Ecclesi Astes vii. 2, 3. THAT I deny -- but let us hear the wise man's reasoning upon it -- -for that is the end of all men, and the Irving will lay it to his heart: sorrow is tetter than laughter -- for a crack-brain'd order of Carthusian monks, I grant, but not for men of the world : For what purpose, do you imagine, has God made us ? for the social sweets of the well-water'd vallies, where he has planted us, or for the dry and dismal desert of a Sierra Morena ? are the sad accidents of life, and the uncheery hours which perpetually overtake us, are they not enough, but we must sally forth in quest of them, -- belye our own hearts, and say as your text would have us, that they are better than those of joy ? did the Best of Beings send us into the world for this end -- to go weeping through it, -- to vex and shorten a life short and vexatious enough The numbers in brackets at the head of the Sermons are those of the original Edition. already ? do you think, my good preacher, that he who is infinitely happy, can envy us our enjoyments ? or that a Being so infinitely kind would grudge a mournful traveller the short rest and refreshments necessary to support his spirits through the stages of a weary pilgrimage ? or that he would call him to a severe reckoning, because in his way he had hastily snatched at some lit...« less