cern: We may safely say, if the purpose was grateful, the time would be found; but the truth is, that the race is painful, and the goal not pleasant; the means oppress, and the end does not allure; the labour is great, and the reward not inviting; and forgetful man, who never defrauds his appetites of a single moment, can find no time for his God.

This plea, of want of time, (bad apology as it is for the neglect of public worship) is, as I have said before, rarely, or ever true; the most occupied men have, in general, a considerable share of society, and amusement ; if friends are to meet together, if vanity is to be gratified by display; if interest is to be promoted by the cultivation of the great; if some new gratification is to be offered to the senses; if curiosity is to be excited; if imagination is to be roused; the wings of time are clipped, and the hours no longer fly away. The little intervals set apart for joy, the sabbaths of pleasure, are ever sacred, and inviolable from the business of the world; but when piety asks a moment from these mighty concerns, the merchant hurries to his business, the scholar seizes on his book,

and an impious sedulity seems to pervade all ranks, and description of men;-—one remembers the yoke of oxen that he has purchased; another the wife that he has espoused; then, and then chiefly, we all seem ready to remember this life at the only period when God has commanded us to forget it.

But, admitting this irresistible multiplicity of affairs, and supposing that the calls which society makes upon the industry, and activity of any individual, are as numerous as that individual would wish it to be supposed; it is in every man's power to be a little less rich, a little less powerful, and a little less important; we are not to sacrifice to the Lord our God that which costs us nothing; to give him only the casual refuse of our time, after it has first satisfied every worldly demand; and to offer up the mere relics of existence, susceptible of no higher employment, and worthy of no better use. Consider, I beseech you, what these ceremonies of religion are, to which every little concern of business, pleasure, and profit is preferred; they are the incorporated worship of all who believe alike in Christ;

the union of all who ask from God what they have not, or thank him for what they have; they are the solemn expression of the faith of nations, the overt proof that earth is obedient to heaven; the only public evidence that man is occupied with other things than the brief disquietudes of this perishable globe.

The gospel loves not a luke-warm heart; it is a religion of feeling, and ardour; when it has penetrated into a man's thoughts, as it ought to penetrate, it will produce outward respect, rigid observance, a promptness, and a zeal, in worship; it is better in fact to wash off the stain of baptism, to shake the dust of our feet upon the altar, than to revere that which we desert, and deny, by our lives, the God whom we believe in our hearts.

There are men who, without pretending to be so occupied on the Sabbath, allege that it is their only day of relaxation from business, and that it is reasonable enough they should consider it in that point of view.— Such an open preference of pleasure to religion, or the fatal notion that they are so completely opposed to each other, proceeds from an apathy upon these sacred subjects,

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which hardly admits of any cure.-If every exercise which disposes the mind to the contemplation of an hereafter is burthensome, it is impossible religion can exist at all under such a system of thinking. If it is a privilege to be exempt from the duties of religion, of course no one will resort to the temple of God, who has the slightest worldly inducement to avert him from it.-The ministers of the gospel invite men here, because they consider salvation to be the first and greatest care; they presume, that an occasional recourse to the christian worship, and the improvement consequent upon that worship, will diffuse over the mind a feeling of calmness and content; and, by strengthening the habit of self command, render pleasure itself more productive, by rendering it compatible with innocence, and with religion. But the style of thinking against which I am contending, inverts the whole order of human duties, supposing that the first command of the gospel is to grow rich, or to enjoy the greatest quantity of pleasure which can be procured, and then,

if

any little residue of leisure remain, that it is to be given to religion;-but, tole

rating, for a moment, this fatal, and I must say, this very irreligious style of thinking, and acting; and allowing that a religious institution can, with any colour of reason, be objected to, because it does not furnish its immediate tribute of gratification, it is fair to remind such objectors, of those numbers who, in the pursuit of all common trades, and professions, do submit every day to a much more painful, and more considerable, sacrifice of their time and attention: who rejects the most loathsome disease? who shrinks from the driest forms of law?,who turns away in disgust from the dullest calculations? The mammon of unrighteousness can infuse into us all a meekness, and a patience, which we are so slow to feel in the service of our God. These feelings are not the feelings of a man, who, in his religion, exhibits the marks of health, and life ;—a just and good man, when he quits the church, feels that he has performed a duty which he owes to man, and which he owes to his Creator; he has set an example to those who are inferior to him in age, and situation; instead of talking about religion, he has practically contributed his share of