one is a mere manufacture wrought by the bending and polishing of parental influence; the other, a growth from living seed implanted in the heart. The one is the religion of Israel when the temple had been erected, and the services established, and generations had grown up into the habit of devout attention. "They seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God." Had no circumstances of temptation arisen to lay bare the moral deficiency, who would not have pronounced these religious habits to have been eminently satisfactory? But the prophet unveils the inner parts, Isa. xxix. 13; also lviii. 1-7. He shows us that all their delight in the music and sacred song of the house of the Lord-all their reverence for the venerable scrolls in which the law was inscribed-all their returning fasts in which they exhibited every outward sign of penitence, left their hearts far from God, and steeped in the selfishness of the world. Even so, under the christian economy, habit may make the sabbath grateful, and the sanctuary a delight; it may make the Bible a glory, and prayer necessary to a quiet conscience; and these religious habits, accompanied by the ordinary morality of a christianized society, may pass current in the world for true religion, while the heart is still in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity.

The religion of principle is that of David, delighting not in the externals and accessories of divine worship, but in God himself; longing after him, like the hart at noon-day pants after the water-brook; desiring to behold his beauty, and to be satisfied by awaking up in his likeness; mourning with deepest sorrow over every transgression that hid from him the light of God's countenance; loving the divine law with all his soul, and mind, and strength; still struggling with the strong master-passions of his own nature, and doing battle with all the changes of life, till he arrived at the full stature of a man of God. It is the religion of the spirit, while the other is only an emotion of the flesh. The one is of the earth, earthy; the other has its birthright from heaven.

They differ in depth of feeling. The religion of habit is necessarily superficial. It plays upon the surface of the mind. Its repentance is not sorrow, though there may be a passing tinge of sombreness about it. Its faith has no grasp of eternal realities—no vision of things not seen; it is a dull acquiescence in accustomed statements. Its love is no ardent flame, and scarcely, indeed, a cold reflection. Its hope awakens no rapture

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of delight nor earnestness of desire. But the religion of principle is deeply seated in the inward parts. However cold the native temperament may be, when the Spirit moves, every passion of the soul is stirred. God, instead of being afar off, hidden behind the materialities of the universe, seems to have rent the heavens and come down. At his presence there is a sorrow and a fear like that which threw the rapt Isaiah to the earth, and compelled him to exclaim, "Woe is me! for I am a man of unclean lips." And when the present God, smiling with compassion, whispers to the mourner, "Peace, be still," there is a calm spread over the spirit which prepares the way for the development of love and hope. Henceforth He is the joy, the portion, the exceeding great reward of the soul. And though such glowing emotions cannot long be sustained while we groan in this body, yet to the close of our earthly existence, the religion of principle must ever be accompanied with appropriate feelings, whether in the retrospect of the past, the possession of the present, or the hope of the future.

They differ in extent of action. The first is brought to bear only upon those things which habit prescribes, the last influences every inward purpose and every outward pursuit. Habit would seem to have determined that there shall be no difference between the child of God whose hope is fixed on high, and the child of sense whose possessions are all below, in respect to the furniture and decorations of our dwellings. There is the same ostentatious display in the one case as in the other. The lust of the eye and the pride of life find as much gratification in the house of the religious professor as of the profane sceptic. Habit must retain gentility of appearance, whatever interest may suffer. Again, as respects amusements, habit will not inquire what is consistent with a life of faith, what may be proper to a renewed nature, what may have no tendency to draw the affections downwards, but simply, what does custom demand and what does it forbid? Habit will restrain a member of one community from the innocent and elevating delights of music, and will permit the communicant of another to tread the ball-room or the opera. Again, as to business, habit eschews the laws of religion, therein to follow the artifices of trade. Hence one man will not hesitate to overreach a customer, who would shudder at opening his warehouse on the Lord's day; another will give his accustomed contribution to a collection, who will take advantage of every device connected with competition, to secure labour at a price which he knows cannot remunerate; another will be found in attendance at the prayer-meeting to-day, who to-morrow will

be wasting the time and lavishing the property of his master; another will take the cup of blessing, and raise it to lips which are even yet defiled with equivocation and deceit. Again, as to religious observances, habit will never ask what is true, or what is scriptural, or what is according to the will of Christ, but only what is customary, what is established, and what is respectable. Oh, what a contrast to all this does the religion of principle present! It reigns in domestic life, restraining all luxuries and decorations within the means, and considering only what is lovely and of good report. It casts its hallowed influence over the festive board, and stands sentinel at the door to admit no pleasures and no companions but those that tend to the cultivation of the holy and divine. It reigns in social life. It envies not the oppressor, and chooses none of his ways. It abominates lying lips and a false balance. It despises the wisdom that is earthly, sensual, devilish. It chooses an honourable poverty before disreputable gain. It learns in whatsoever state it is therewith to be content. "It knows how to be abased and how to abound: everywhere and in all things it is instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.' In religion it recognises no law but Christ's "whatsoever is not of faith is sin." No consideration of principle will move habit from its ordinary track, even where the mind is convinced of error. And no consideration of habit will prevent principle from carrying out its convictions, whatever the sacrifices it may be called upon to make.

How widely, then, do these opposites differ in freedom and valour ! Habit is a tyrant which enslaves its victims— Principle a generous lord who rules by reason and by love. Habit fears to move from the beaten path of the compeer for the noblest interests. "What will the world say? What will people think?" are the shadowy terrors of which it is ever afraid. At any departure from the conventionalisms of society it stands aghast. A breach of the orderly and decorous it considers more horrible than the death-sleep of immortal souls. But principle makes its possessor fearless. It adds to faith, valour. It converts a cringing courtier of custom into a daring soldier of the cross. It will give to the cause of missions, to the widow, and to the suffering, an amount of wealth at which worldly prudence is shocked. It will do violence to customary modes of speech, to break through the customary torpor of congregations. It will pass by the Pharisee and Scribe, to plead with the Publican and Sinner. It will leave the cathedral and the church, to go into the highways

and hedges, and compel the poor and maimed and blind to come in. Oh! that even the ministry itself would suffer principle to triumph more over habit.

They differ in stability. The religion of habit is the creature of circumstances, and therefore is exposed to change and ruin, with every alteration of circumstances unfavourable to its retention. How constantly does the removal of persons from one position to another, and from one rank of society to another, make shipwreck of all their pretensions! They were doubtless wholly unconscious of insincerity. They wished to be, and believed themselves to be, all that pious parents and friends desired. How many a youth, who has given early promise of sobriety, and integrity, and purity, and piety, when removed from the happy influences of a christian home, has given himself to work all uncleanness with greediness! How many a mechanic, while comparatively poor seemed all that a Christian ought to be, but on tasting the sweets of wealth has made haste to be rich, and pierced himself through with many sorrows! How many who, while fortune seemed to smile upon them, were well content to serve God in the great congregation, and observe the forms of worship at home, when tried by adversity have utterly forgotten God, and abandoned themselves to discontent, and unbelief, and despair! And even where such great and striking changes do not occur, how perceptibly does a change of circumstances alter the tone and aspect of the religion of habit. But the religion of principle is superior to circumstances, which it makes but servants to brighten its excellences. The religion of Saul came and went with the fluctuation of his fortunes but that of David was the same in the desert and in the city-a wanderer in Gath or a monarch in Jerusalem. He fell indeed, and because of the height of his elevation and the grandeur of his character, his fall resounds in its sadness even to this day; but that fall itself was the means of evoking the reality and strength of the principle within him. For while the religion of habit would have proceeded from bad to worse, when once it had cast off his bands, the religion of principle overwhelmed him with confusion. We still mark his tears, and listen to his heart-breaking sighs. His words become the chosen expression of our own penitence. The religion of habit suffered his brothers, when removed from a father's eye, to sell the tender Joseph into slavery: but the religion of principle enabled Joseph to resist temptation, and put into his mouth the awful question, "How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" The religion of habit permitted Demas to forsake the aged apostle, and to return to

this present world which he loved: but the religion of Paul, which was the religion of principle, sustained him in all his afflictions, and enabled him to write in the very face of death, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.”

But they differ most widely in their relative value. The religion of habit is not without its value. In relation to time its rewards are neither few nor small. It secures an association favourable to virtue, and it therefore preserves from much evil, saves from much remorse, and imparts all the blessings connected with temperance and industry. But if we regard it in the light of the judgment to come, what is its worth? Does it essentially differ from the religion of the heathen, the Saracen, or the Jew? These all are trained in the way their fathers think they should go, and they walk therein with scrupulous exactness. Wherein does the religion of habit in a christian country differ from theirs, except in the accident of its being of a purer character? Does it unite the spirit in bonds of love to the Father of spirits? Does it elevate us above sense, and make eternal joys familiar to us? Does it strengthen us against every breach of the divine law of love, the only source of true morality? Does it stamp us such as God and man can trust under all the revolutions of time, for carrying on the kingdom of Christ? If not, it cannot endure the searching eye of Him who desires truth in the inward parts; it cannot be a preparative for the inheritance of the saints in light; but will leave us at last to the "rude current of a stream that must for ever hide us." When Christ declared of us, "Ye must be born again-born of the Spiritmade new creatures in Christ Jesus-quickened from a death in trespasses and sins-made temples of the Holy Ghost," he no doubt intended to teach us that no religion of mere habit could fit us for the kingdom of heaven, but that for this purpose, a new principle, all purifying, all vivifying, must be implanted by the Spirit of God in the soul. The religion of such heaven-wrought principle alone will be the burning lamp well supplied with oil at the bridegroom's coming.

Go, gentle reader, to thy closet; and on thy bended knees before the Searcher of hearts, inquire whether thy religion be the religion of habit or the religion of principle?

J. F. SHAW, BOOKSELLER, SOUTHAMPTON ROW, AND
PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON;

AND W. INNES, BOOKSELLER, SOUTH HANOVER STREET, EDINBURGH.

J. & W. Rider, Printers, 14, Bartholomew Close, London.