duty, and to the practice of virtue? muft it not occafion thousands and thousands of good fentiments and actions amongst mankind? for Indeed experience allows us as little to doubt of it as the nature of the cafe itfelf. No, all do not depart unimproved from thefe fchools of chriftian wisdom and virtue. Many have to thank them for inducement and excitation to amendment, many their return to the way of duty, many for precautions against fin, for tafte and inclination to goodnefs. How often does fome truth, important to the religion or the morals of a man, dart like a pure ray of light into his benighted foul, touch him to the quick, thoroughly affect him with hope or fear, with trouble or with joy; discover to him the true ftate of his heart, the real frame of his life; beget in him the noblest wishes, the beft refolutions; accompany him home, attend him in all his affairs, pursue him in all the companies he frequents, and let him have no reft till he furrender himself to its influence, and fully experience its improving and bleffing energy! How many a wicked purpose is rendered abortive, because he who conceived and cherished it in his breast, led by the kindness of providence exactly to hear fome certain doctrine or precept of religion, particularly fuited to him, delivered with sentiment and force, is ftruck and alarmed by it, brought to reflection, and moved to an alteration of mind! How many a good and christian deed, how many a reconciliation with adverfaries and foes, how many a refolution refolution to lead a new life, how many a step towards virtue, how many acts of liberality have been occafioned by fuch difcourfes and acts of worship! How many fallies of violent, brutal paffions been thus prevented! And even if thefe effects fall out but rarely, if it be only now and then that a wicked person is induced to forfake the error of his ways; yet who can deny his having been streng. thened by these means in good purposes, that he has been rouzed to zeal and perfeverance in goodnefs, that he has been made happy in the more lively fentiment of his truly christian dispositions, the comfort of an approving conscience, the affurance of divine approbation and favour, has a foretafte of the bleffed reward of his fidelity, and thence feels the acquifition of fresh courage and refolution to complete the work he has begun, to purfue his courfe with confidence, and to allow nothing to deprive him of the prize appointed for him that overcomes? Yes, it is indisputable, that public and focial worship throws the most falutary impediments in the way of wickedness and vice, and prevents numberless disorders and crimes in human fociety; it is not to be denied, that it animates the true christian to more ftrenuous efforts in goodness and virtue, and keeps him from becoming weary and difheartened in integrity and beneficence. And what great advantages are not these! How much tranquillity and comfort does not, thirdly, this worship diffufe over the hearts of men! How How many anxious cares, how many confuming vexations, does it not moderate or remove! How differently do they not there often learn to judge of the world and their own condition! How totally different to think of what are usually termed fuccefs and misfortune! How much more calmly and refignedly to bear their troubles, how much more confidently and chearfully to hope in God in the midst of want and mifery, how much more undifmayed to encounter, every danger and even death, when all these things appear to them in the light of religion and chriftianity, when they have learnt to confider them in their dependency on the will of the all-wife and all-gracious ruler of the world, and in their connection with human perfection and happiness! And when forgiveness of fins is there anounced to the contrite and returning finner, the promises of affistance and fupport held out to the feeble, a better and an eternal life displayed before the wretched, a compenfation and reward beyond the grave affured to the oppreffed and innocent fufferer, what a healing balm, what refreshment and restoration, muft not this fhed into the foul that is thirsting and panting after comfort! I here addrefs myfelf to your own experience, ye who in fincerity of heart and defign frequent the public worship. Say, my chriftian brothers and fif ters, have ye not often come into the affembly of the worshipers of God, with heavy hearts and troubled minds? Has not often a fecret pain, a forrow of foul, foul, attended you thither? Were ye not often languishing in fearch of comfort and repofe? and have ye not there often found this comfort, this repofe? Has not the burden that oppreffed you, there fallen off from your heart? Has not a chearful beam proceeded thence, that has enlightened your gloomy path, and fhewn you an issue from the labyrinth in which you were involved? Have ye not often returned home, comforted, ftrengthened, and revived? -And what well-difpofed chriftian has not there re, joiced in the paternal love of God, in the fraternal affection of Jefus, in his relation towards God and Jefus, in his destination to a blessed immortality, in his approximation to the mark of his high calling; and, in the enjoyment of these delights, has he not learnt to endure, to despise, to forget all the troubles, all the fufferings, all the evils of the prefent life? Oh, who can recount all the comfort and ferenity of mind that mankind have derived from christian wor fhip, all the tears of forrow and pain which there. have ceafed to flow, all the chearful and blefled fenfations which have there been taught to rife: what a diminution of human mifery, what an augmenta tion of human happiness has not arisen on all hands, in cottages and in palaces, among all' claffes and conditions of men; and what an inestimable value must not this confer on public worship in our fight! Public and focial worship acquires, fourthly, a new value, as it kindles and enflames our devotion, and gives more life and dignity to our perfonal worship. What What is not the folemn and public worship capable of producing, and how much does it often actually produce! How often does it inspire even the volatile and giddy with seriousness, the fcoffer with reverence, and the infenfible and careless with fentiment and reflection! How readily does it impart fentiments; how principally the fentiments of piety and devotion! Like an electrical fire they frequently feize on men of the most different tempers and opinions, infufing into their hearts a fpiritual life. And, if I attend a worship where prayer, pfalmody, the discourse of the minister, all combine to impress me` with pious fentiments and reflections; where a profound filence, a general and continued attention prevails around me, drawing off my mind by degrees from all outward things, and fixing it entirely on itself and on God; when I there perceive my friends and acquaintance, or even unknown persons, of every age, either fex, and each condition of life, absorbed in ferious meditation, and impreffed with pious emotions; when I join there a great affembly, a whole congregation, humbly proftrate before the be ing who dwells in heaven, and who fills with his majesty both heaven and earth, imploring grace and mercy and help of him from one mouth; when I fee them, under a lively sense of their weakness and their manifold fpiritual wants, open their hearts and minds to the influence of christianity and religion, and with eagerness of foul imbibe light and confolation and repose and power to goodness; when I hear VOL. 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