to condemn in those who are as regular in attending church, as you are ingenious in contriving excuses for deserting it? Or at least, if we are to suppose that there is no real dissimulation, but that you have wrought yourselves into a belief that it is not safe for you to come to the house of God, though that belief has no good grounds to support it, have not you just reason to conclude that there must be something grievously and fundamentally wrong in your heart, when that which so easily keeps you away from the house of the Lord, has little or no effect in keeping you away from places which have no alliance with the Gospel, and in which that which you are so anxious to preserve is far more endangered? You have a soul to care for as well as a body. The health of the body is important. But far more important is the health of the soul. The body must ere long decay, and die, and moulder into dust. But if the soul has been committed to the great Physician, and healed by him of its spiritual maladies, even the body shall be raised again to life and immortality. If, however, the soul has been neglected and left to "perish for lack of knowledge" and of care, the body shall be raised to "everlasting shame and contempt," and "both soul and body cast into hell fire for ever." This is an express declaration of holy writ. And such being the case, is it not folly in the extreme to be so tremblingly alive to all that

can affect the health of the body, and so little solicitous, or rather so perfectly indifferent, about that which concerns the health of the soul? If you had just and vivid impressions of the relative importance of these things, would not your treatment of them be precisely the reverse of what it is? Would not you be disappointed when any thing occurred to prevent you from employing the means of spiritual improvement; and would not you be jealous of any inclination you might feel to take advantage of it, without first ascertaining whether it might not be safely disregarded? Would not you consider that indisposition which was no bar to secular pursuits and pleasures, as still less a bar to the exercises of God's worship? And if any hazard was to be incurred, would not you decidedly prefer the hazard which was connected with the performance of a sacred duty to that which was connected with mere worldly gain or worldly gratification? Unquestionably this would be the case; and therefore, as it is not the case, we are entitled to conclude that you are not sincere in assigning a regard for bodily health as the true reason for your absenting yourselves from the house of the Lord, and that it is to be accounted for by your being strangers to the spirit of devotion and to the power the Gospel. Why, my friends, if you were labouring under corporeal frailty or distress, and had Christian principle and Christian affection

of

reigning in your your minds, you would be desirous to go to the sanctuary that you might at once receive consolation from its services, and be taught the practical and sanctifying use of your afflictions. And this desire you would be hindered from fulfilling by no imaginary or exaggerated dread of personal injury, and still less by any affected inability, but solely by a rational and reluctant conviction that the fulfilment of it would be to tempt Providence, and to be in the true sense of the expression, "righteous overmuch."

I need not, however, enlarge on this topic. It is too obvious to be denied or doubted, that were you really the people of God, did you really love him, and had his service that place in your esteem to which it is entitled, and which it must have if you would enjoy his favour, you would deem it impiety as well as simulation to pretend want of health as the reason of your absence from his sanctuary, when conscious either that the alleged fact did not exist at all, or that it did not exist in such a degree as to involve you in any hazard, or that in whatever degree it existed, it would have left in you both the willingness and the ability to engage in the serious occupations or in the fashionable entertainments of the world. And surely this should lead you to anxious thought and fearful anticipation. You must give an account of the fidelity and strictness with which you have ap

plied your faculties, bodily as well as mental, to the work of religion. And without adding another sentence, let me just beseech just beseech you to think of what your account must be, and of what it must lead to, if you have absented yourselves from public worship, and have no better excuse than this to offer, that, under the cloak of bodily indisposition, you were actuated by moral indisposition, or that you were suffering from the effects of having served the world, during the preceding week, in scenes of dissipation or amusement, or that by special and anxious care of yourselves, you were preparing for the sordid toils or the favourite gaieties and entertainments of the week that was before you.

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SERMON XIV.

FORSAKING PUBLIC WORSHIP.

HEB. X. 25.

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

In discoursing on this text, we proposed to consider some of the various reasons by which those who neglect the public worship of God attempt to extenuate their sin, or justify their conduct. We have already considered the pleas of business, of pleasure, and of health, shewing, as we went along, how inconsistent they are with the principles of genuine piety, and how devoid of solidity and force, and how injurious to the spiritual interests of every one who yields to their influence.

4. We have now to say something respecting those who in this particular are under the government of what is called fashion.

The number to be ranked in this class of absentees from church is unquestionably not so great as it formerly was. At one period, and that not very remote, a punctual attendance in