jection without investigation. Till our principles are made your's by inquiry, by meditation, and by a serious application of them to the conduct of life, we shall always be accused of looseness in our reasonings, of inconsequence in our reflections, of presumption in our language, of abstruseness or excessive refinement in our speculations, of ignorance of human nature, and of want of adaptation to the circumstances of society. The scriptures will continue to be regarded rather as furnishing us with a text, than as the very ground and matter of instruction; and men will revolt at a thousand incongruities, absurdities, and strange modes of speech in our discourses from these holy records, which, if they were properly studied and understood, would appear to be far beyond the burlesque of the witling, and the ignorant derision of the man of pleasure.

In the last place, as the inefficacy of doctrinal in、 struction results from want of reflection on what we hear, so the effect of practical discourses is lost, unless every hearer makes a personal application of them to the correction of his own heart, and the regulation of his own conduct. The spirit of God will not force persuasion or conviction on the mind, which shuts itself up against the truth. There is no miraculous efficacy accompanying the words of any preacher, which will convert an auditor against his choice. Without the exercise of our own thoughts, we may hear discourses innumerable, and advance not a step nearer heaven. The sick man is not to be healed by the perpetual visits of the physician, or by the encouragements and recommendations of friends. may lie for ever on his bed, and waste his life in fruitless wishes and ineffectual prayers. Till he applies the prescriptions, which are left, and exercises himself in the regimen and habits, which are enjoined him, he may doze away a sickly existence, without recovery or strength.

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It would be amusing, if it were not so humiliating, to hear the observations of some men, when they have just listened to a discourse full of pointed applications. They complacently imagine, that one man must have felt this passage, and another have been struck by so direct a reference. Many retire expressing the conviction, that such exhortations, as those they have been hearing, cannot fail of doing good, and wonder at the insensibility of mankind, or at the courage of the preacher. But let us only imagine, that every one of our hearers were employed in making applications for the rest, and what a curious scene of absurdity would be presented; and what a strange contrivance to be unprofitable would be the art of preaching! Every one would be employed in showing how another ought to be affected, and yet no one could be improved; for, with all this grave concern for the good of others, each would neglect the only being, whom he has it always in his power to correct.

Though the addresses from the pulpit are necessarily general, yet they ought not to be heard without personal application. The faithful hearer never comes up to the sanctuary to please himself with general declamation against the ungodly. He is not employed in seeking to evade reproof, nor does he take care always to allow as much as possible to the license of the speaker, and the authorized tone of the profession. Every description, which gives him an image of himself, is a signal to him for reflection. Every exhibition of christian perfection is to him an incitement and a reproach; every picture of human depravity is to him a suggestion of gratitude for his own past preservation, and an admonition to take heed, lest he fall for the future.

This list of causes might easily be enlarged; but I prefer to conclude with some application of this precept: take heed how ye hear.

1. Would you derive the greatest improvement from public religious instruction, divest yourselves of unfavourable prejudices against those, who impart it. Who, then, is he that addresses you, that you should come prepared to defeat his purpose? Is it a self-complacent herald of his own fame; a vain propagator of his own opinions; a conceited exhibiter of his own talents; a man, who lives only on your breath, and who, if you withdraw your favour, must be content to shrink into insignificance and silence? No; it is, or it ought to be, a messenger of Jesus Christ, who maintains nothing on his own authority; who comes not to bind you to his interpretation as infallible, but to invite your feet into the way of peace, and to repeat to you only what God has already uttered. If he had no other authority, than that which his talents give him, and then asked you to rest on his decisions alone, you might, indeed, come prepared to refute him, or turn away with contempt. But, if he does not wander beyond his instructions, but refers to the same common standard of the scriptures, he does not deserve your prejudices. But, say you, he perverts and corrupts the word of God, and preaches not Christ, but his own imaginations. My friends, I cannot believe, that any man can stand up before you in the name of Jesus Christ, and, without any other inducements than those, which are commonly offered by this profession, deliberately prevaricate in this solemn employment, or disguise what he seriously believes to be the truth of the gospel. He can have no purpose, which is to be answered by the destruction of evangelical truth. All his interests on earth are centred in the success of christianity, and connected with the growth of true piety and virtue in the world. But, you say, he is miserably deficient in his statement of truth; and his hearers are perishing from his incapacity, or defects. What then! Does he not refer to the authority of Christ and his

scriptures as supreme? Does he not inculcate a temper and a practice, which, if it were followed, you will acknowledge, would make this world the abode of peace, and people heaven with blessed spirits? Yes; but he neglects to produce the only adequate motives; he does not give that representation of the doctrines of christianity, by which alone it can be rendered effectual. But let us not imagine, that God enlightens, and effects his great purpose of restoring mankind to himself, only by the partial views, which happen to be familiar to ourselves. If you find, that the preacher aims at the same object with yourself, and coincides with you in the great moral purpose of Christ's appearance, do not compel him to arrive at his conclusions and effect his object in the path, in which you have travelled; but rather thank God, that there are men of real sincerity and virtue, who can receive christianity in a form better suited to their ideas of God, and better adapted to their religious improvement, than your own.

Again, would you derive the greatest improvement from the public institutions of worship and instruction, endeavour always to enter these walls under a thorough impression of the nature of the duty, in which you are now engaging. For, my friends, in whose presence are we assembled? Of a few friends only, who have chosen this mode of passing an easy hour; of a preacher, a poor mortal like yourselves, who is placed here to furnish something for your curiosity? Are these the only beings, that belong to this place? O no; here we stand before the Majesty of heaven and earth, whose presence fills immensity; we come to pay our homage to him, who liveth for ever and ever, the support of all nature. We stand before a God of purity inexpressible, and of mercy everlasting. We come to learn the will of him, on whom our poor life every moment depends; we come to throw ourselves on his compassion, to con

fess our sins, to devote ourselves to his service through Jesus Christ, and to learn what he has revealed to us of Himself, of ourselves, and of our destination. This is the threshold of a more glorious temple in the heavens; this is an entrance to the world, in which God discovers himself to the eye of man. In

a few years, these privileges will have passed away; your prayers will ascend here no more; no more will the word of God reach your ears from this place; the follies of your attendance cannot be retrieved; lost opportunities cannot be recalled, and all that ingratitude and neglect, to which these walls have been a witness, will rise up before you, and reproach you with unutterable sorrow.

Lastly, would you derive a substantial advantage from the instructions of preachers, bring your own studies and reading in aid of them. Do you find yourselves unfurnished with religious ideas? Consider, I beseech you, is there any knowledge so interesting to you, as a moral and an immortal creature? What! is it of no consequence to you, that God, the supreme disposer of your fate through an eternity to come, has made you a revelation of his will? Can any thing be imagined more serious than such information, on which depends the salvation of your souls? Let me entreat you, then, to make yourselves and your children familiar with these scriptures, not by a blind and inconsiderate perusal of an occasional passage, but by a diligent study of them, as the records of God's will, and of human duty. Repose not implicit reliance on our representations, on the one hand; nor accuse us, on the other, of departing from the word of God, when we give you an illustration of a passage, which may not coincide with your previous opinions, or even with the first impressions, which the words suggest. For it is not always true in the scriptures, any more than many other works written in a foreign language, and in a mode of thinking so differ