"Arise and call upon your God," and "give him glory, before he cause darkness, and your feet stumble on the dark mountains." Obey his. voice, ere his compassions are shut up against you, and his "mercy is clean gone for ever." "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that you may never perish, but have everlasting life."

299

SERMON XIII.

FORSAKING PUBLIC WORSHIP.

HEBREWS X. 25.

Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is.

In discoursing on these words, we are to take for granted the duty of attending public worship, as a duty of real obligation-prescribed by the authority of God, rising naturally out of the views and feelings of a pious mind, and fraught with important advantages to those by whom it is rightly performed. And we shall endeavour to expose the folly and the sinfulness of those excuses by which many attempt to justify themselves for neglecting it—a practice which the text denotes to have been not uncommon in the days of the Apostle, and which unhappily prevails in our own times, and among ourselves, to such an extent, as warrants us in noticing and animadverting upon it with some degree of particularity. It is not to be supposed, indeed, that many of those at whose benefit we more imme

diately aim, will be present to hear what we have to say for their reproof and their instruction,their absence from the sanctuary being the very evil which we reprehend. But still, though there be but a few, or if there be but one within the reach of our counsels, it may not be useless and unavailing to dwell upon the subject. And then,

for

you who hear me, it may be expedient that you have your minds duly impressed with the futility of those reasons which induce men to "forsake the assembling of themselves together," so that you may be prepared to advise and remonstrate with such persons when they come within the sphere of your influence, and that you yourselves may be warned and fortified against the temptations that you will be ever meeting with, to adopt their maxims or to imitate their example.

1. In the first place, of those who desert the house of God, there are some who offer the plea of secular business.

They are engaged in worldly concerns too important to be neglected, or too urgent to be delayed; and to these they must attend if they would not throw away opportunities of aggrandisement which they cannot well afford to lose, and which others would be too ready to embrace and to improve. Accordingly, the time which, as professing Christians, they might be expected to spend in church, they employ in looking after the secularities of their calling or their condition.

The farm, the merchandise, the professional avo cation, the earthly pursuit whatever it may be, is substituted by them, without reluctance and without ceremony, in place of the duties of public worship. And their absence from these duties may generally be accounted for by their having some temporal affair to manage, which it would be injurious to disregard and inconvenient to defer.

Now to those, whose frequent or whose occasional non-attendance is owing to this cause, I would take the liberty of speaking in the lan guage of remonstrance.

"Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy," is one of God's express commandments: and it is implied in the original and necessary import of this commandment, that on the Sabbath-day you shall not engage in ordinary labour. Nor does it make any difference in the case, whether your labour be that of the field, or of the workshop, or of the counting-room, or of literary and scientific pursuits. All worldly occupation is distinctly forbidden; and by applying to it, you plainly refuse obedience to God's authority, and profane what he has made sacred.

But the offence is doubled when your secular business is carried on, not only on the Lord's day, but during the season of public worship; for, in this case, to the violation of the Sabbath, you add the wilful neglect of that service which you are required to give to your Maker and Re

deemer, in the sanctuary. You not merely des vote to earthly employments the time which He enjoins you to devote to holy rest; but, moreover, as if to show your contempt of his sovereignty, and your recklessness of disobeying him, you seize upon that portion of this conseerated time which should be spent in the exercises of his house of prayer, and make it subservient to purposes from the prosecution of which it is withdrawn by his authoritative appointment.

And while you thus fail in the duty which you owe to God, who at once demands from you the sanctification of the Sabbath, and the assembling of yourselves together, you are also chargeable with despising a privilege which the divine mercy has conferred upon you, and which is fitted to be essentially useful to all who embrace and use it aright. Here is a means instituted here is an opportunity offered, by which your piety may be invigorated, your spiritual comfort promoted, your religious and moral edification advanced. It is a token of God's distinguishing goodness, and it concerns your highest welfare ; so that when you come not to the house of the Lord, you demonstrate your ingratitude for the one, and your indifference to the other. And when instead of worshipping in his temple, you

go after your covetousness," your covetousness," you say, that what, in his wisdom, he meant for an advantage, you consider a restraint upon your industry, and