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occupation, and arrests the attention even of those who are pressing forward in the pursuit of wealth, of pleasure, and of honour. The interruption which this day causes in our ordinary employments, recals our thoughts from our own personal gratifications, and leads them to the contemplation of our present duties, and our future destinies. At such times conscience resumes her empire, and the still small voice of religion, lately drowned in the tumult of the world, is heard and obeyed.

To the Sabbath may be attributed, whatever degree of cleanliness is found in the lower ranks of society. Incessant labour necessarily prevents attention to personal appearance; and were it not for the rest enjoyed on the Sabbath, and for those habits of neatness which are caused by its public assemblies, the most disgusting squalidness would be the inevitable lot of the labouring portion of the community. It is solely owing to this institution that our whole population now appears every seventh day in clean and decent clothes; and this practice contributes not less to propriety of behaviour, than to health and comfort. The self-respect, which the circumstance of being well dressed naturally induces, tends to soften the manners, and to suppress rudeness and indecorum.

This sacred day, by the solemn and affecting duties to which it is appropriated, spreads a calm over the ruffled surface of society, and assuages the angry and selfish passions by which it is agitated. In the house of God, all meet as the children of the same Heavenly Father, and the heirs of the same hopes and promises. They listen to the same instructions, unite in the same petitions, and acknowledge the same standard of faith and practice. A common worship excites mutual sympathy and affection, and leads to an inter

change of kind and benevolent offices.

The Sabbath also frequently unites the family circle which had been broken throughout the week. The husband is restored to his wife, and the children to their parents; and the endearments of domestic intercourse are enjoyed in peace and privacy.

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In Sunday Schools, we behold a mighty engine, whose influence in promoting the virtue and happiness of society no political economist is able to calculate. If the real substantial prosperity of a state is to be estimated only by the comfort, sobriety, and intelligence of its citizens, the religious education of youth is the only perennial spring of national felicity. In our own country alone, more than 100,000 children are taught in these schools the highest and best of all knowledge-their duty to God and man. the Sabbath abolished, Sunday Schools would cease with it: nor could any adequate substitute be provided in their room. Education may, indeed, be furnished at the public expense; but education, unaccompanied by a sense moral obligation, instead of restraining crimes, would afford new facilities for their commission. It would be difficult for any government, and impossible for our own, to provide religious instruction for the young. But in Sunday Schools, this great and desirable object is attained, without the smallest encroachment upon the rights of conscience, or upon the principles of our political institutions. In these schools, and in these alone, is the influence of example constantly added to that of precept; and religion is recommended to the youthful heart and understanding, by the disinterested labours of pious and affectionate teachers. In these alone is the attendance of the children not merely voluntary but cheerful;

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THOUGH few subjects are so much studied, and so much discussed by mankind, as religion; yet it may with justice be affirmed, none is so often misunderstood, and so little felt. Whether the ordinary mode of explaining and enforcing this momentous subject be the best, or whether men really employ the same degree of attention and acuteness in this, as in other purely intellectual pursuits, I shall not now attempt to dispute, though I conceive the question worthy of more than a passing thought; but undeniable is the fact, that a lamentable degree of error prevails upon the primary and essential So principles of religion itself.

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much so, as to convince any man who looks more than superficially into the subject, that scarce tythe of what are called religious people, have really a clear and just conception of what the word imports. With a vast proportion, in all denominations, it is made identical, either with the forms or the opinions, the practices or the feelings of the party. Some place it in duty and others in faith; some in orthodoxy and others in virtue. With one man it is mechanical or ritual observances; with another, it is obedience to the system sanc

and

tioned by civil rulers and human
laws; with multitudes it is custom,
a dream, a play-thing, a charm.
With most men, a hundred diffe-
rent definitions would present
themselves,
pass current,
before they could hit upon the
only true and adequate one; and
even where that is acknowledged,
a thousand influences intervene,
and a thousand impulses assail
the mind to impede the contem-
plation, and prevent the experi-
ence of the only genuine idea upon
this all-interesting subject. It is,
at all events, certain, and every
man may assure himself of the
fact, that true religion is some-
thing to be found, in its living
operation, no where but in the
soul of man. I speak not here
to slight the means of producing
such effects on man, being well
aware that human language has
attributed the name of religion to
that which is strictly either the
sacred means of its production,
the formula of its truths, or the
attendants of its being; that we
may apply the term to the system
of Christian truth, to the observ-
ances of Christian worship, or to
the visible effects and fruits of
good principles. But though I
find no fault with the liberty of
speech, which allows any or all
of them to be termed religion,
I mean to affirm, that there is a
stricter sense, and a more correct
use of the term, which is but little
regarded, even in cases where the
most rigid attention is paid to the
analysis of the word, as signifying
either what is to be learnt or what
is to be done. It is, however, as
expressive of what is to be felt,
that the term is most generally
slighted, and yet that is both the
strictest and most important use
of the word.

Other uses of it refer only to the appendages, the circumstances, the attire of religion-this to its personality. It is essentially the passion of love to God, out of which may germi

nate, and upon which may depend, many other states and dispositions of mind; but this is the simplest element, the nucleus of all the rest. It is defined, and not improperly, to be a principle of new life imparted to the soul, formerly dead in trespasses and sins; for so remarkable a transformation passes upon the soul, when this new life is breathed into it, that we may, indeed, be said to be born again, to become new creatures, and to live a new life.

It is hence a matter of unspeak, able moment to turn the attention of the religious to the seat of religion in their own hearts, and to its essence, as developed in the aspirations of desire and hope towards a being of infinite purity and mercy. The existence of this vigorous principle in the soul will display itself in a thousand different ways, which it is not necessary to specify. Even its characteristics such, I mean, as shall clearly ascertain its distinction from counterfeits-it is scarcely possible to describe; and it is a thing whose existence is rather a matter of consciousness than of knowledge. Most, perhaps all, its visible effects may be acquired, but the principle itself can neither be mistaken nor counterfeited; and hence it is to the state of the religious affections, or, more properly, to their reality in the soul, that the attention ought chiefly to be directed. It is every man's first and chief concern to ascertain their existence; for it is demonstrable that whatever other acquisition we may make of a religious cast, whatever appendages of forms or opinions we may connect with our notion of religion, yet, at last, they will be found but the deckings of a corpse, the studied clothing of a mere frame-work, into which the breath of life has never been infused. Religion, in its abstract principles, is not free from difficulties, nor is it so de

finite and precise in all its parts as some dogmatists would affirm. Certainly, in its external acts, both of charity and devotion, it admits not only of variety, but of something almost bordering on contrariety; and yet the essential principle admits of no variation; it is simple, uniform, and immutable; like its source, like its object, it is immortal and divine. The system of truth which we call Christianity, is incalculably valuable, as originating, under a divine impulse, the principle-the life-the passion of religion; and in this light it may be described as God's accredited system of agency, for the production of true piety. The services of religion are valuable, as both the aliment which feeds the principle, and the element in which it moves; and the fruits of religion are important, as iudica, tions of the vigour and progress of the principle itself, through the several stages of its development, till it is ripened into maturity, and removed into closer contact with its primary and supreme object. But none of these is the principle itself; and he who takes the shadow for the substance, or the dress of a man for himself, commits an error not more palpable, and far less important, than he who substitutes the forms and the circumstantials of religion for religion itself. But he that has the love of God permanently and effectually operating in his soul, needs consult no other register of his election and calling, and can enjoy no better or clearer indication of the divine favour, short of heaven. Indeed, this is a spark of heaven's own fire, a ray of the pure light of the divinity, and a true and genuine record of God's favour. It is to a man's own breast that he must trace the birth-place and the home of true religion. In the soul's delight in God, and converse with his purity and goodness, he may find the safest testimonial of his

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ON THE INSUFFICIENCY OF HUMAN REASON FOR COMPREHENDING THE MYSTERIES OF THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT. As knowledge is absolutely essential to the dignity and happiness of every rational creature, a desire to possess it has been deeply implanted in the mind of man by the hand of his benevolent Creator. Man is, in consequence, naturally inquisitive. This fact is too obvious to be denied, since the workings of his curiosity generally become manifest with the first dawn of his reason. The child is no sooner capable of observing the objects around him, than he longs to know their origin and design. Hence arise the numerous inquiries he proposes, concerning the phenomena of nature and the occurrences of life, as they come successively under his notice. Were parents and teachers always so discreet as to conduct the curiosity thus displayed into a proper channel, it would uniformly prove, in some degree, profitable; and to this they should certainly be stimulated by the consideration, that, if left to itself, it may, and probably will, take a wrong direction, and prove almost, if not altogether, vain.

That there is a vain, as well as a profitable, curiosity, cannot, it is presumed, be justly denied. For although the principle is, in its own nature, always the same, yet, as it usually takes its complexion from that which calls it into exercise, it must, of course, in opposite cases, assume these opposite characters. When directed to wards any interesting subject which it is really possible for man,

even after diligent and persevering study, to understand, it may be safely encouraged; because there is then a rational prospect of its leading to the acquisition of true knowledge, which is always of sufficient worth to afford an ample compensation for all the labour and anxiety with which it is pursued. But when it would dispose any of its possessors to pry into those parts of the providence of God which are, at least to us, confessedly mysterious, and intended by their great and unerring Author so to remain, as long as we continue in our present imperfect state, ought it not rather to be suppressed? To cherish it were useless, as it can lead to no adequate or satisfactory discovery. We do not mean, indeed, to deny that, even when employed in such a way, it might, by severely exercising, considerably expand and strengthen, the mental faculties. But though we admit this, we, at the same time, maintain that it would be possible, and therefore preferable, for the mind to employ all its powers in other inquiries, which, while they would serve quite as effectually to unfold and invigorate them, could not fail to issue in the increase of that substantial information which is always available for practical purposes, and must tend as much to increase the pleasure, as to increase the intellectual character, of those who make it the object of their pursuit.

Never should it be forgotten that the circumstances of man on earth, where he is a fallen, and consequently a weak and degenerate, creature, are such as to render it highly imperative upon him to be quite as modest as he is inquisitive. Were these two principles always united, in just proportions, in the breast, and allowed respectively to exert their proper influence, any idle speculations, which might occasionally spring

up under the excitement of curiosity, would immediately be banished by the frowns of modesty, at whose bidding pious reverence and holy admiration would come and fill their place. But men in general, being under the tyranny of self-love, are much more apt to indulge arrogance than modesty. This is very evident, from the well-known fact that many persons, after having tried for a season, but to no purpose, to understand those incomprehensible doctrines revealed in the Bible, relative to the government of God, instead of resolving the difficulty into their own insufficiency, do not hesitate to pronounce them contrary to reason, and therefore opposed to truth. Such language is indeed to be deprecated, for it certainly does not become the lips of any human being, let his attainments or pretensions be what they may. It betrays, whenever it is uttered, a want of reflection, as much as of modesty.

order? and what peculiar benefit can be expected as the fruit of mental cultivation ? For, were there no truths to be known but what may be understood by men of the weakest capacity, the extraordinary powers of the most extraordinary men; and, indeed, the still greater powers of angels and archangels themselves, can be of no farther use than to form an unimportant distinction between them and creatures of more limited faculties.

Every individual who can affirm, that whatever is superior to the reason of man is contrary to reason, generally considered, must, we are persuaded, be influenced more by feeling than by thought, more by prejudice than by common sense. This is, in effect, to maintain that reason, in the lowest degree in which we know it to exist, is the highest standard of truth. For, if all that is superior to the reason of man is contrary to reason in general, and in consequence untrue, it then follows, of course, thing which exceeds the comprehension of any man, of any description, however contracted his mind may be, so long as the powers of it are not impaired by disease or age, must be unreasonable and erroneous !

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that every

If this, however, were really the case, it might well be asked, what advantage would there be in possessing a mind above the common

But God does nothing in vain. Hence, we conclude that angels must be able to understand what men are not, and therefore that human reason cannot be the highest standard of truth. This will become further evident, when we remember that the decisions which are formed by the application of this test must always vary, in the same proportion as men differ from each other in their powers of discernment and discrimination. For nothing can be a perfect test which does not, in all the circumstances under which it may be applied, lead to a sure and infallible result. It is, however, too evident to be denied, that some men may and do understand many things which to others seem utterly incomprehensible. On the principle we are endeavouring to overturn, the latter might, with perfect consistency, question the truth of those things; but were they to do so, the former would rather pity their weakness and assert their stupidity, than yield to their doubts. May we not fairly imagine that it is with very similar feelings that the higher orders of the intellectual world view all that scepticism which men sometimes indulge, in regard to the ways of God as recorded in his word.

Those glorious spirits who wait continually before the Lord in his heavenly temple, are doubtless frequently occupied in studying his character, his will, and his

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