obedient to forms;-nay more, by an inverted hypocrisy, they would seem less religious than they really are;-and avoid the character of being devout, while they are enjoying the internal consolations of devotion; whereas the duty of a sincere christian is not only to abhor that fame for intellectual vigor, and spirit, which is evin ced by irreligion, but, manfully, to set at nought the scoffings of impiety; to confess Christ boldly before men; and to come sedulously, and purposely, and constantly, to gain all that discredit, and to incur all that disgrace, which sinners glory in lavishing upon the disciples of Christ. Not making long prayers in the corners of the streets, as the Scribes, and Pharisees did, for the praise of men; but coming openly to the temple to pray, that you may shew the scoffer how little you heed him; and that you are not that fool whom every profligate wretch can sneer out of his salvation. This negligence of public worship never remains long within the limits to which those who are guilty of it wish to confine it. With what decency, with what hope of success, can the mother pour the blessings of religious instruction into the minds of her children, when they are all contradicted by the example of him whom they are bound, and instructed most reverently, to love? While we talk of bad books, and bad principles, we overlook these lessons of impiety, which masters and parents are perpetually reading to those who are influenced by their example; and then we make scape-goats of a few popular, and infidel writers, and lay the profaneness of the age to their charge. The preservation of Public Worship every man owes to his own immediate happiness; he owes it to the vigor, and purity, of his religious character, and to his progress in the true knowledge of the gospel; but if blind to these, he must, at least, see that he owes to it the preservation of social order, and that it is his interest to cling to it as the strongest barrier of industry, and of peace. See what dreadful pictures are drawn in the scriptures, of the state of a people among whom religion is universally neglected. When a people are turned away from the worship of the Lord their God, Peace fleeth away from the midst of that people, and they are given up to famine, and the sword;-there are no joyful harvests in the land,—no bleating of the flocks, -no cheerful noise of the artificer. -The right hand forgets its cunning,—the brow is not moistened with labor;-they speak not of the furrows of the field, nor glory in the goad;—but dreadful lusts rise up in those times, and God turneth men over to the devices of their own hearts.-These are the days in which the needy are forsaken; -and the fatherless oppressed :-then it goeth hard with just men,-then the widow is spoiled, then the blood of innocents is shed:-Come, then, under the roof of the Almighty, and gather yourselves under the shadow of his wings. The public worship of God is the antient, and the sure guardian of human happiness;-do not trifle with it as if it were of no avail; justice, and faith, and mercy, and kindness, flow from the altars of God,—it is here, that men learn to pity; it is here, that they are taught to forgive;-it is here, that they learn punctu ality in contracts, obedience to magistrates, submission to superiors, respect for laws, loyalty to kings:-and here, above all, it is, that they catch that true spirit of the gospel, which, meliorating all things, makes submission to superiors voluntary, by rendering superiors gracious,-respect for laws natural, by making laws just,-and loyalty to kings pleasant, by making kings good. |