hovah has promised to meet with the assembly of his saints, you might experience the "blessedness of those whom he chooses, and causes to approach unto him, that they may dwell in his courts, and be satisfied with the goodness of his house, even of his holy temple."

I have just one consideration more to notice under this head. You should not lose sight of the influence of your example. Whatever be the amount of your acquirements-even though it were true that you were too wise to need instruction, and that you were so perfect as to derive no benefit from the services of the sanctuarythough all this were as indisputably the fact as it is indisputably the reverse-still it becomes you to ponder the effect which your desertion of public ordinances may have on those around you. No man liveth to himself: whether he be high or humble, rich or poor, learned or illiterate, his conduct will, in some measure, affect the sentiments and behaviour of others; and the more that any one is governed by the spirit of Christianity, the more anxious will he be that nothing which he says or does, may weaken the faith or impair the virtue of his fellow-men.

Now, granting that you were as intelligent in the things of God as you pretend, or as you conceive yourselves to be, you cannot have the same opinion respecting the multitude among whom you live. You cannot but be satisfied that they

require in general all the tuition that can possibly be given them; that it is a most important thing for them to have access to the public ordinances of religion; and that without taking advantage of this privilege, they must grow ignorant, and profane, and wicked. And can you imagine that none of them will be tempted to walk in your footsteps, and to imitate your frequent desertion or irregular observance of the institutions of the gospel? Have they discernment enough to perceive that superiority on which you arrogate an exemption for yourselves, or rather have they simplicity enough to believe that any such superiority exists, or that any such exemption can be given? Will they not claim and exercise the same indulgence which they see you so unceremoniously taking in a case where, if there be obligation at all, the obligation must be common to Christians of every degree? Will not every symptom of distinguished knowledge which you exhibit, and every consequent feeling of respect for you which they cherish, just secure the more unhesitatingly their abandonment of what they should have been industriously taught to hold most sacred? Having led the way, and continuing to hold out to them such a pattern, is there any one consideration which you can employ to check them in their career, or to prevent them from reaching that close resemblance to it at which they naturally aim?

Can you lay any effectual restraint on their passions, so that they shall not yield to every new temptation, and go beyond all that they have ever witnessed in you, and under your authority despise the ordinances of religion as much perhaps as they once valued them? And though the sphere of your influence should be ever so limited and narrow, yet may not all this happen to those whom you are most strongly bound to guide in the ways of godliness-to the friend who has confided in your affection-to the servants who look up to you for counsel and kindness to the children whom God has given you, that by devoting them to his service here, you train them for his glory hereafter? And is not this a big and fearful responsibility which you take upon you? And viewing it in all its aspects-considering on the one hand the mischief which in all probability you will inflict, and considering, on the other hand, the good that you have it in your power to accomplish and to diffuse, can we protest too strenuously against your giving the slightest countenance to a neglect of public worship, even though to yourselves such a practice were declared by a voice from heaven to be equally harmless and lawful?

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We do not say that in your attendance on public worship you should be actuated by a mere regard to the effect which your example may produce on others. There are various motives, in

dependent of this, which should determine you to give such attendance, whatever may be its influence on those by whom it is witnessed. But still this is a motive which is entitled on Christian principles to much weight, and of the force of which every good and benevolent mind will be fully conscious. There are many things which should persuade you to wait upon God in the ordinances of his appointment; and among these it is consistent with all that the gospel teaches, to rank the desire which its true votaries must ever feel to make these ordinances precious in the esteem of their fellow-men,-a result to which your example, if not absolutely essential, must at least be highly conducive. And at all events, if, consulting your own humour, or wise in your own conceits, and instead of making any sacrifice for the benefit of others, refusing even to profit them by engaging in the exercises of piety, you are instrumental in prejudicing them against the duties of public worship, and allure them into a forfeiture of that spiritual and eternal advantage, which the faithful performance of these duties would have certainly obtained for them, then your evil example has involved you in guilt, and exposed you to condemnation, which all your boasted knowledge of the will of God can only serve to aggravate and secure.

6. In the sixth and last place, there are some who plead as an excuse for their absence from

public worship, that church-going people are no better than their neighbours, and thus give proof of the uselessness of that practice.

This is a branch of the old argument against Christianity-which has been so often refuted that nothing can account for its being still repeated, but the feeling that something must be urged as an apology for unbelief, and that this is one of the readiest, and most intelligible, and most plausible, that can be offered. Christianity, we are told, is not true, or at least not much to be regarded, because many of those who profess it are not holier than many of those who reject it; as if it were not perfectly obvious that a mere outward profession of attachment to any system, cannot possibly determine the real merits of that system, on any acknowledged principle of common sense or common experience, since men may profess what they do not believe, and since that which men do not believe, or which so far from believing, they most probably hate, cannot possibly exercise any direct influence on their temper and deportment. To decide upon the truth or importance of Christianity by such a test, is just as absurd as to determine that a particular fountain is certainly bad, because a stream which flows near it and which apparently flows from it, is scanty and impure,-whereas, if disregarding localities and appearances we were to trace the stream to its source, we might find that the foun