III.

ON PUBLIC WORSHIP.

PSALM xliii. 3, 4.

"O send out Thy light and Thy truth; let them lead me; let them bring me unto Thy holy hill, and to Thy tabernacles. Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy. Yea, upon the harp will I praise Thee, O God, my God."

THERE is not, amongst all the nations of the earth, any religion without some public worship of the Deity, and some solemn usages connected with it.

No one-either the king, or the poorest of his people-refuses to take a share in religious service of some description. How is it then? Amongst Christians, among those who glory in being the most enlightened of mankind, can neglect and contempt of divine worship meet with approbation? Amongst Christians alone can there be individuals who seek to acquire influence and distinction by not doing as millions of their brothers and sisters do? How! is our religion less holy, less replete with blessings, than that of barbarians? Are our

churches less capable of awakening devotional affections?

Examine your own heart,-you who absent yourself from Public Service, or despise it; and inquire whether your reasons are really as good and as wise as you suppose. Is it not from a deficiency of religious feeling, that whatever is sublime, holy, and becoming, appears to you as a lifeless, superfluous matter of custom? Is it not vanity which influences you-a desire that you may pass current with certain persons, as more refined and more intelligent than others? Is it not an unseasonable shame which keeps you back from the performance of your duty, when you would be thought something above the common rank among those who themselves neglect the public worship of God, and to whom you attribute superior intellect? Is it not, after all, your levity of mind and propensity to self-indulgence, that you wish to excuse by arguments against the utility of public worship?

You say: 'The sermon is not always edifying or instructive to me. Whatever I can hear in the Church, I know already: Be it so-but still an indifferent orator often says useful things; and how many a truth, salutary in your case, of which you would not for years have thought, may unex

pectedly be placed before you, in a serious mo

ment.

You say: 'I can worship God even as well in my own house and in my chamber, as in the Church.' Perhaps you may;-but is it done? Are you

always attuned to devotion? Will not a hundred other domestic occupations draw you off from this? Will not your mind be more easily warmed with charitable feelings, when you adore the Most High, the Father of all, in company with your fellow

creatures?

You say: People would smile if I were again to go to Church; and would take me for a hypocrite.' So, it is only your vanity, then, which prevents your fulfilment of a becoming duty. A duty, I say, which you are bound to perform even towards your fellow-citizens towards those with whom you live. You are, I admit, more learned, better educated than they; so that you have little, which is new, to learn at Church. Why, if you fancy that the people see and regard you, do you set the illiterate and uncultivated the bad example of neglecting what is frequently to them the only opportunity they have of improving their hearts? Do not you yourself blame any one who attempts to weaken the authority of government, and the restraints of law-without which, you are aware, there would

be no security or peace? Why, then, do you not blame yourself, who weaken the influence of that public worship of God, without which the people would relapse into licentious barbarism?

The Sunday is to all a holy day. A thousand people in a thousand different tongues worship God, and pray before His throne. You stand alone, as if you did not belong to the great holy family of your heavenly Father. Cut off from the community of your brethren, no man associates with you in your solitary conduct, but the wild Indian, who yet knows not God, and follows his own appetites and pleasures-whilst in the same hour millions of rational beings prostrate themselves before the Eternal and Infinite Divinity.

When the solemn notes of the bells resound from the church tower, do they not seem to strive, with all the force of their brazen tongues, to bring you to your recollection? And do they not appear to call to you and say: 'Wherefore do you exclude yourself from the community of Christians?'

When your accidental glance wandered down the gloom of the sacred aisle, and discovered in the distance the very font where you, when an infant, received the consecration of Christianity; when you saw the place beside the altar, where with pious emotions you were, for the first time, admitted to the communion of Christ, and partook

D

of the commemorative supper of your divine Instructor and Redeemer; when you saw the holy place, where once you stood, for an important moment, while invocation was made to heaven, and a wife was espoused to you for the companion of your days-did not all these things render this Church more sacred to you?

Unhappy man! if you had there no feeling, my words are urged in vain upon you. Your illumination has cost you a tender heart-the best possession of man. Under your enlightening, your more noble faculties have perished.

The solemnization of Sunday is a venerable institution, even like Christianity itself. The Turk keeps the Friday holy-the Jew hallows the Saturday-the Christian celebrates on every Sunday the joyful event on which the superiority of his religion was triumphantly established-the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Sunday is the LORD'S DAY-a day of rest, to all people, from earthly labour and secular occupations in order that the soul may be raised from the low cares of this transitory life, to reflection on the Divine Fountain of its existence, and to contemplation of its eternal destiny. The plough of the farmer rests the workshops are still-the children's schools of industry are shut-every rank, every age shakes off the dust of the week-day, and