but in our lives. As it is, thousands repeat these words without doing a single deed for the sake of pleasing God, exclusive of other motives, or refraining from a single thing they like to do out of the fear of displeasing him. So again, every time we hear the third service at church, we pray that God would incline our hearts to keep his commandments; yet immediately, perhaps, afterward, allow our hearts and inclinations to wander without control to whatever sinful temptation entices them. This, I say, all proceeds from the want of earnestness in our devotions. Strong devotion is an antidote against sin.

To conclude; a spirit of devotion is one of the greatest blessings; and, by consequence, the want of it one of the greatest misfortunes which a Christian can experience. When it is present, it gives life to every act of worship which we perform; it makes every such act interesting and comfortable to ourselves. It is felt in our most retired moments, in our beds, our closets, our rides, our walks. It is stirred within us, when we are assembled with our children and servants in family prayer. It leads us to church, to the congregation of our fellow Christians there collected; it accompanies us in our joint offices of religion in an especial manner; and it returns us to our homes holier and happier and better; and lastly, what greatly enhances its value to every anxious Christian, it affords to himself a proof that his heart is right towards God: when it is followed up by a good life, by abstinence from sin, and endeavours after virtue, by avoiding evil and doing good, the proof and the satisfaction to be drawn from it are complete.

III.

THE LOVE OF GOD.

1 JOHN, iv. 19.

We love him, because he first loved us.

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RELIGION may, and it can hardly, I think, be questioned but that it sometimes does spring from terror, from grief, from pain, from punishment, from the proach of death: and, provided it be sincere, that is, such as either actually produces, or as would produce a change of life, it is genuine religion, notwithstanding the bitterness, the violence, or, if it must be so called, the baseness and unworthiness of the motive from which it proceeds. We are not to narrow the promises of God; and acceptance is promised to sincere penitence, without specifying the cause from which it originates, or confining it to one origin more than another. There are, however, higher, and worthier, and better motives from which religion may begin in the heart; and on this account especially are they to be deemed better motives, that the religion which issues from them has a greater probability of being sincere. I repeat again, that sincere religion from any motive will be effectual; but there is a great deal of difference in the probability of its being sincere, according to the different cause in the mind from which it sets out.

The purest motive of human action is the love of God. There may be motives stronger and more general, but none so pure. The religion, the virtue,

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which owes its birth in the soul to this motive, is always genuine religion, always true virtue. Indeed, speaking of religion, I should call the love of God not so much the groundwork of religion as religion itself. So far as religion is disposition, it is religion itself. But though of religion it be more than the groundwork, yet, being a disposition of mind like other dispositions, it is the groundwork of action. Well might our blessed Saviour preach up, as he did, the love of God. It is the source of every thing which is good in man. I do not mean that it is the only source, or that goodness can proceed from no other, but that of all principles of conduct it is the safest, the best, the truest, the highest. Perhaps it is peculiar to the Jewish and Christian dispensations (and, if it be, it is a peculiar excellency in them), to have formally and solemnly laid down this principle, as a ground of human action. I shall not deny, that elevated notions were entertained of the Deity by some wise and excellent heathens: but even these did not, that I can find, so inculcate the love of that Deity, or so propose and state it to their followers, as to make it a governing actuating principle of life amongst them. This did Moses, or rather God by the mouth of Moses, expressly, formally, solemnly. This did Christ, adopting, repeating, ratifying what the law had already declared; and not only ratifying, but singling it out from the body of precepts which composed the old institution, and giving it a preeminence to every other.

Now this love, so important to our religious character, and, by its effect upon that to our salvation, which is the end of religion; this love, I say, is to be engen

dered in the soul, not so much by hearing the words of others, or by instruction from others, as by a secret and habitual contemplation of God Almighty's bounty, and by a constant referring of our enjoyments and our hopes to his goodness. This is in a great degree a matter of habit: and, like all good habits, particularly mental habits, is what every person must form in himself and for himself by endeavour and perseverance. In this great article, as well as in others which are less, every man must be the author to himself of his train of thinking, be it good or bad. I shall only observe that, when this habit, or, as some would call it, this turn and course of thought is once happily generated, occasions will continually arise to minister to its exercise and augmentation. A night's rest, or a comfortable meal, will immediately direct our gratitude to God. The use of our limbs, the possession of our senses; every degree of health, every hour of ease, every sort of satisfaction which we enjoy will carry our thoughts to the same object. But if our enjoyments raise our affections, still more will our hopes do the same; and, most of all beyond comparison, those hopes which religion inspires. Think of man, and think of heaven; think what he is, and what it is in his power hereafter to become. Think of this again and again; and it is impossible but that the prospect of being so rewarded for our poor labours, so resting from our past troubles, so forgiven for our repented sins, must fill our hearts with the deepest thankfulness; and thankfulness is love. Towards the author of an obligation which is infinite, thankfulness is the only species of love that can exist.

But, moreover, the love of God is specifically re

presented in Scripture as one of the gifts of the Holy Ghost. The love of God shed abroad in the heart is described as one of the works of the Spirit upon the souls of Christians. Now whatever is represented in Scripture to be the gift of the Spirit is to be sought for by earnest and peculiar prayer. That is the practical use to be made of, and the practical consequence to be drawn from such representations; the very purpose probably for which they were delivered: the mere point of doctrine being seldom that in which Scripture declarations rest. Let us not fail therefore; let us not cease to entreat the Father of mercies, that the love of him may be shed abroad in our hearts continually. It is one of the things in which we are sure that our prayers are right in their object; in which also we may humbly hope that, unless obstructed by ourselves, they will not be in vain.

Nor let it be said that this aid is superfluous, forasmuch as nature herself had provided sufficient means for exciting this sentiment. This is true with respect

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to those who are in the full, full enjoyment of the gifts of nature. With them I do allow that nothing but a criminal stupefaction can hinder the love of God from being felt. But this is not the case with all; nor with any at all times. Afflictions, sickness, poverty, the maladies and misfortunes of life will interrupt and damp this sensation, so far as it depends upon our actual experience of God's bounty. I do not say that the evils of life ought to have this effect: taken in connexion with a future state, they certainly ought not; because, when viewed in that relation, afflictions and calamities become trials, warnings, chastisements; and when sanctified by their