membered during the period of sacred rest and spiritual employments. If guilt attaches to him who, though working with the hand of an otherwise commendable and dutiful industry, yet by doing so, when he should be attending divine worship, "serves the creature more than the Creator," how much more indisputable, and how much more aggravated is the guilt which attaches to those who, by forsaking the house of prayer that they may indulge in the empty delights of sense and of the world, proclaim that they are "lovers of pleasures, more than lovers of God !"

But it is unnecessary to institute, or to be guided by any such comparison as this. The simple question is, are you under obligations to come to the house of the Lord and to worship in his holy temple. If you deny that any such obligations are laid upon you by Him who alone has a right to impose them, then to you we have nothing to say on this subject, and for any argument we can use, you may act as you please. Only you should make yourselves quite sure, that to this sweeping conclusion you have been brought by sound reason and candid inquiry. And it may be well for you to consider whether your coming to church so often as you do, is not a virtual acknowledgment that, in some sense, or in some measure, you feel it to be a duty, and whether it be not corrupt inclination or evil habit that prevents you from

regarding the duty as more sacred, and more peremtory, and more indispensable, than you are at present willing to allow. But if you confess the obligation of attendance on public worship to be clear and peremptory-if it be expressly enjoined by a precept of God's law, as that law is contained in his revealed word-if it is any where or any how recommended and inculcated in the inspired volume-if it naturally arises from the operation of Christian faith and Christian pietyif it is an act of homage and obeisance due from us to him who made and to him who redeemed us -if it is connected with our spiritual consolation, and our progress in holy living-if it contributes to show forth the glory of our heavenly Father -and if it is conducive or essential to the advancement of pure and undefiled religion in the church and throughout the world,-if you confess that these attributes belong to it, and that these effects result from it, then you must likewise confess, in all decency and in all consistency, that the strongest temptations which pleasure can hold out to you, are insufficient to justify one moment's wilful abandonment of the services of the sanctuary. Here your path is plain before you; it cannot be mistaken without wilful blindness; and it cannot be deserted without deliberate impiety and guilt.

If, then, your conscience tells you that the love of pleasure has at any time prevailed upon you to

withhold yourselves from the temple of the Lord, or that this is in any measure a thing of habitual occurrence with you, humble yourselves under a sense of the unworthiness with which you are chargeable; pray to heaven for the forgiveness of it and let it cleave to you no more. Think of the importance of what you have been neglecting, and of the emptiness of what you have been preferring to it-think of the honour and the comfort and the advantage of seeking God in the ordinances which he has graciously appointed, and of the vanity, and deceitfulness, and ruinous tendency of those gratifications, for the sake of which you have so often treated them with indifference or contempt-think on the one hand of what your reflection would be at the trying hour of death, could you look up to God as the God whom you had been regularly serving in his holy tabernacles, and could you look forward to the temple in heaven as that place of exalted communion and divine enjoyment for which you had been preparing by a punctual and devout attendance in the temple upon earth; and think, on the other hand, of what your feelings must be, if your recollections on the brink of eternity went back to Sabbaths profaned and ordinances despised, for the sake of indulgences which pleased you for a little hour, and at last left you " without God and without hope." Think of these things, and let the impression which they are fitted to

make go deep into your conscience, and determine you to retrace all your steps, and to put away from you that evil thing which has so long made you insensible to the duties of religion. Be resolved that you will never again permit the amusements and enjoyments of a gay life to interfere with your temple service, or to appropriate that time, and that attention, and that devotedness, which you owe to the worship of your Maker. Say to these lying vanities, that you renounce them that you will have nothing more to do with them-that they shall in vain solicit your regards, or attempt to wean you away from the place where God is worshipped. And tell the votaries of fashion and the devotees of worldly joy, that you will not come any more into their secrets, or have your honour united with their assembly-that you are prepared to defy their scorn, as well as resolved to resist their seductionsthat you are convinced of the wisdom and the duty of a faithful observance of those means of grace which your divine Master has instituted, and with which you find their attachment and pursuits altogether incompatible, and that whatever selfdenial, whatever loss of friendship, whatever sacrifice of outward comfort it may cost, as for you, it is your settled purpose that every returning Sabbath shall find you seated in the house of prayer, and engaged in the public service of the Lord your God.

I

Nay, but my friends, this is not sufficient. can suppose you thus far advanced, and greatly short of what you ought to do and to be. I can conceive you making a compromise which brings you regularly to church, and yet leaves you enslaved by the pleasures of the world. I can imagine you coming fresh from these to this holy place, and going back to them from this holy place, and thus endeavouring to "serve God and Mammon." If this be all the attainment that you make, I must tell you that you are still" in "the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity," and that being to this extent in pleasure, you are dead to God, and that all your sacrifices here are nothing better than an insult and an abomination to him. "Repent, therefore, and be converted." "Be renewed in the spirit of your minds." Pray for grace to enlighten your minds and to sanctify your hearts. Cast yourselves at the foot of the cross, that you may experience its purifying as well as its pardoning efficacy, and that in your affections and your doings, the "world may be crucified unto you, and you unto the world." Study to have such views of God as that you shall love him with supreme attachment, and such views of Christ as that you shall believe in him with delighted confidence, and such views of the services of religion, as that you shall have recourse to them with unfeigned ardour and heartfelt devotion, and such views of