teousness exalteth a nation"* and will any call himself a lover of his country who will keep at distance from the Congregation met to pay its adoration to the Lord our righteousness, met to entreat that the protection of the Lord of all the kingdoms of the earth be bestowed on the dwellers in the land. The pious Psalmist was glad when they said unto him, "We will go into the house of the Lord." "O Pray," said he, "for the peace of Jerusalem, they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls and plenteousness within thy palaces. For my brethren and companions' sake I will wish thee prosperity: yea because of the house of the Lord, our God, I will seek to do thee good."†

But besides this sentiment of religious patriotism that should direct each member of the

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Community to join the assembly which bears. the testimony of the whole Society to him who gives it his protection, each individually has two objects, more particularly affecting himself, which should engage his attendance at the Public Worship of the Church. should attend for the purpose of keeping alive the spirit of devotion in himself, and for the purpose of exciting it in others. The importance of the first of these will appear on considering the case of those who absent themselves from every religious society, and I * Proverbs xiv. 34. + Psalm cxxii.

would ask if there be any one of these of whom you would say, that you know he entertains a firm belief in a God or a just sense of a Saviour. Those whom you meet, in the public ways as you return from this place, and who are in the known habit of absenting themselves from every other place of Public Worship, who are they but the idle who shun all that is of reflection, the fools who make a mock at sin, the heedless who have not God in their thoughts, the profligate who have no sense of the decencies of a national religion, the worldlings who regret the loss of a Sabbath to their gains, the men of malice and deceit who make this a day for planning out their mischiefs, and the scoffers who collect in dissolute confederacies, to get rid of its seriousness by drunkenness and dissipation. He on the contrary who wishes to have his bosom warmed with the genuine glow of Christian piety, comes here to the Altar of Christ to renew the flame, for he reads in God's own book that "where two or three are gathered together in the name of Christ, there is Christ in the midst of them."* Here he expects the example of a devout congregation to animate his spirit, and perhaps he knows of some who, in the exhortations delivered from the Pulpit, may at some time have caught hold of a suggestion to stimulate their piety, have been wrought

*Matthew xviii. 20.

upon by some powerful enforcement of their duty, have received some useful explanation of Scriptural doctrine, or have been set on their guard against some delusion of their deceitful hearts. Perhaps he remembers that he has himself on former occasions returned from the table of the Lord, strengthened in his resolutions and his hopes, and he determines to frequent the place where the Lord's honor dwelleth, where he may receive an accession of Christian knowledge, or an infusion of zeal to quicken his devotional spirit; where, in the lowest rate of the advantage of public worship, the intrusion of the external world is with all imaginable care prevented, and the service of God is for a time the sole business of a number met to acknowledge and to announce themselves his servants.

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But the Christian worshipper comes to the place of Public Worship to benefit others as well as himself: God wills not that man should be selfish or solitary even in his service. He has appointed him his place in a world full of his fellows: he has made the assistance of others necessary to the supply of his wants; he has made familiar intercourse with them the greatest of his temporal comforts. His instincts force him to rejoice with those who rejoice, and to weep with those that weep his interests lead him to promote the well-being of those on whom his own well-be

ing essentially depends. Now let me ask you, in what possible way can a man better serve his friend or his neighbour-(and such in the Scripture sense-in shewing mercy and loving kindness to him-each is to every other) in what possible way, I ask, can any man better serve a fellow man, than in exciting in him a spirit of true Religion? You would think that man your friend who sought to introduce you to some person of great power and dignity you would think that man your friend who would warn you on your way of some precipice which might else have escaped your notice you would think that man your friend who would put you in possession of some mode of acquiring treasure, of lengthening life, of securing happiness. He who would excite in his brother the feelings of true religion, does him all these kind and useful offices. He brings him to the knowledge of one whose dignity is transcendent and whose power is infinite: he would lead him to seek the favor of the Judge of every heart, of the God of all comforts: he opens the eyes of the sinner to the danger of his ways, to the disgrace which hovers about his footsteps, and the gulph which yawns before his path: he teaches him to obtain a long life, even a life for ever and ever to be filled with heavenly treasure: he teaches him to ensure at the right hand of God, with whom are

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pleasures for evermore, a crown of glory which fadeth not away, and happiness which no words can speak and no conception can equal.

That the solemn offices of Religion be devoutly administered-that the Public Worship of God be regularly frequented are matters in which the people individually and collectively have every where a high concern. Each of you, my brethren, has an important interest in extending to others as well as to himself the influence of Christian faith. The properties and the reputation of many, the lives of some, may depend on the testimony of a single witness, and what is of such efficacy to restrain him from falsehood, as a religious regard to the oath he takes, to the Gospel of Christ on which he has sworn, and to the judgments of God to whose presence he has appealed? What security have you of equal strength, against the fraud of those whom you must trust, and the pilfering which you cannot in its minute measure guard against at every point? Believe me, there is no security so great as the general influential persuasion that there is a God, from whom what is done in secret cannot lie hid, and against whose vengeance no transgressor can find shelter. In your own families you have a more intimate concern you would wish to see your children grow up an ornament, a defence, a support to your grey hairs; you would wish