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part of your audience, that, do what else they may, their case is daily waxing worse and worse! If they profess to pray, and do frequent the house of God, there is in this, to God, while they so remain, nothing acceptable, and yet to absent themselves will make matters worse. Whether they eat or drink, wax rich or poor, plough the soil or the deep, gather in the harvest, or better their condition in this world, all is iniquity! "Incense is an abomination: it is iniquity even the solemn meeting." To die, you have to say, is to be plunged in endless wo; yet to live, if in enmity or indifference, is much worse: since this is, alas! only heaping up wrath against the day of wrath.

"But what," it will be said, under such preaching, "what can mankind do? If they go forward, it seems destruction awaits them; if on this hand or on that it is still the same." And was it otherwise with the hearers of a Peter or a Paul, who excited such cries as these "What must I do to be saved? Men and brethren, what shall we do?" All the answers, then, which you can give, and which you need to give, are contained, in great variety, in the Sacred Volume.

With regard to repentance towards God:-" I came," said Jesus, "to call sinners to repentance. I came to heal the broken-hearted." "Him," said Peter," hath God exalted to his right hand, a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance to Israel and the remission of sins." Jesus therefore preached, "Repent ye, and believe the Gospel." His apostles "went out and preached that men should repent." Repent ye, therefore," said Peter," and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out." "For God," said Paul, now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.". "I shewed," said he, "first to

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them of Damascus and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coast of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance. "Ye know-how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have shewed you, and have taught you, publicly and from house to house, testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.

As to faith, hear our blessed Redeemer himself how he addressed his hearers :-" While ye have the light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light." "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me, shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” "This is the will of him that sent me, that every one that seeth the Son, and believeth on him, should have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day. Verily, verily, I

say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life." "The Father," said John the Baptist, "loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." "These things," said John the Evangelist, "are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that believing ye might have life through his name." "The word is nigh thee," said Paul, "in thy mouth and in thy heart; that is the word of faith which we preach-that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be

saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness (that is, justification), and with the mouth confession is made to salvation; for the Scripture saith, Whosoever believeth in him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Gentile; for the same Lord over all is rich unto all who call upon him; for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."

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In conclusion, however, on this subject, that such abuses should exist, not only in reference to Family Worship, but worship in any form, will not be matter of surprise to any Christian, who well remembers where it is said,—" This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.”

III. The best Seasons for Family Devotion.-Obliged as I am to worship Jehovah in my Family, and possessing the only spirit which he will or can accept in every service-a willing mind-and therefore inclined, nay, bent upon this delightful service,-then will I find some time for it, and my Family must find time to come together. The ordinances of day and night, and the regularity of their succession, alike admonish me to regulate my affairs accordingly. As

*For several of the sentiments contained in this division, see Fuller's Works, vol. iv.

there is one above who maketh the outgoings of the morning to rejoice, and the evenings to descend in peace over me, at these seasons especially should I acknowledge him: at these seasons should I seek him who, not only, in the beginning, made the seven stars and Orion, the greater light also to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, but who now also, with so much mercy and long-suffering, and with such regularity, "maketh the day dark, and it is night, and then turneth the shadow of death into the morning."

Have these daily alternations no voice? Do they carry with them no signification whatever? How was it then that the morning and evening were so generally regarded even by heathen nations, as the appropriate period for some acknowledgment of God? And if Paul could refer to nature's teaching, about a matter comparatively so insignificant as the hair of the head, shall we not here appeal to the plain and unerring dictates of nature? That we should be compassed about daily with the vast and merciful vicissitudes of day and night, without any disposition to daily adoration, must argue great stupidity and ingratitude of mind indeed. The Christian who contemplates even the material universe only, with the persuasion that it is at once the workmanship and the property of the Almighty, cannot possibly so proceed. "It is a good thing," he says,

"It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord,
And to sing praises unto thy name, O most High:
To shew forth thy loving-kindness in the morning,
And thy faithfulness every night ;—

For thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy work:
I will triumph in the works of thy hands."

The mind of the sacred writer seems so fully made up on such principles as these, that he immediately signifies it to be only "a brutish man" who knoweth not; nay, even a fool, or foolish man, who doth not understand this.*

With regard to the seasons for devotion, however, we are not left to be regulated only by the signs of heaven or the voice of nature. There have been ordinances of divine service intended to enforce the same subject, and at these seasons. Has the reader never marked one condition, on which Jehovah condescended to meet with the children of Israel at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and there speak to them?-the condition, on which he would dwell, or, as Lewis, in his Hebrew Antiquities, has said somewhat quaintly, "keep house" among them, and be their God?-the condition, on which they were from generation to generation to be confirmed in the persuasion, that he was the Lord their God who brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, that he might dwell amongst them? All these favours he suspended, upon condition of their offering, without intermission, the morning and evening sacrifice. Now, if the primary design of these sacrifices was to remind the people of God at that period, of the sacrifice of Christ, by which alone at last they were taken away, shall we not remember Him, at these seasons, who was the substance and fulfilment of them all? And even then, when these were offered, how are we to suppose the inmates were employed, at such seasons, in those "dwellings of Jacob" which Jehovah is represented

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