Secondly, By a diligent attention to your master's business, you put it into his power to indulge you in every wished for privilege; as his affairs suffer no loss by your devotion to Christ in his ordinances; and a man must be his own enemy who would deny a faithful diligent servant any reasonable privileges, as such a one must be a blessing to his family, and to all his affairs; to his store and to his basket. But if a servant is slothful, and neglects his daily concerns, he puts it absolutely out of his master's power to give those indulgences, as in the case abovementioned. His business, which obliges him to keep servants, must be done; and therefore if neglected through the day, it must be dispatched at night; and so it falls out, that the slothful servant can have no time to himself, either for religious or other purposes. I am afraid it will be found, that the confinement of many servants ariseth from their own slothfulness, rather than the avarice of their masters. Although I am far from denying, that this avarice may sometimes be the cause of just complaint.

Yet it is my opinion in general, that where servants are really conscientious in their discharge of duty, God will so overrule their masters' hearts, be they avaricious or benevolent, that their re ligious privileges shall be no way abridged. Let every professor, who stands in the relation of a servant, hear and regard Paul's injunction, Ephes. vi. 5, 6, 7, 8. Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart as unto Christ: not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, 'doing the will of God from the heart; with good will doing 'service, as to the Lord, and not unto men: knowing that 'whatsoever good thing any man doth, the same shall he receive ' of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.' From whence it is observable, that Christian servants are called to act in all things towards their masters, as if it were to Christ himself, and that not with a view to please men, so much as to do the will of God, from the heart, from a single aim to glorify their Redeemer. Or, as this apostle elsewhere expresseth it, That ye may adorn 'the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things,' 1 Tim. vi. 4. Without an observance of such rules, it is plain, that you cannot be an honour nor a blessing to the church of Jesus.

II. I would address myself to those who stand in the relation of husbands and fathers, and in whose conduct slothfulness, in respect to the things either of the civil or religious life, is of the most malignant influence. In this case it is certainly true, that, through much slothfulness the building decayeth, and through 'idleness of the hands the house droppeth through. There is not a character among professors more disagreeable; none upon whom the scriptures pour more abundant contempt, 1 Tim. v. 8., 'But if any provide not for his own, especially for those of his

"own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an 'infidel.' There is indeed something shocking and detestable in the character of an idle parent, and the more abominable still, if he is a professor, and pretends to the knowledge of things spiritual. I have known some of this gossipping class, who understood every thing but their own proper duty; and who were ready and active enough in every department, besides that in which Divine Providence had placed them. Wretched must that woman be who is yoked with such an husband. Deplorable the state of those children who are under the tuition of such a parent. Burdened and grieved must that church be, who are unhappy enough to suffer such a one to creep into their fellowship; but a church hath the means of relief in its own hands, as pointed out by the scriptures; and excommunication of the party removes the incumbrance from them.

That this is their immediate duty; that a person who provides not for his own family, without some visible impediment which shall make his incapacity manifest, shall not abide in gospel fellowship, is very evident from the apostle's description of such a one; "He hath denied the faith by his deeds (however good his verbal confession may be) and is worse than an infidel." Now if he hath denied the faith, he is ro fit companion for believers, the saints of Jesus. If he were but or a level with infidels, we should not tolerate him in our communion. And can it be, that being worse than an infidel, he snal! continue to enjoy the privileges of God's children, and be suffered to continue a dishonour to the name of Jesus, and a stair to the Christian profession?

But, alas! the influence of his impious idleness in his other connections, seem to be irremediable, without some wonderful and amazing interposition of Divine Providence. What penury must attend his table? What wretched circumstances must his spouse, however virtuous, experience? But the greatest evil attends his unhappy offspring, in a case more pitiable than that of orphans, yet deprived of that assistance, with which the circumstances of orphans are in some measure relieved. His unhappy children are not only exposed to penury and pinching hunger, but are denied the means of instruction; perhaps so far neglected, as to be incapable of reading their Bibles. It is but a few days since, I conversed with two men, sons of such a parent, who lamented to me the conduct of their father, in totally neglecting their education; the want of which exposed them to such difficulties in life, as they might otherwise, in all probability, have avoided. And he also, by the way, has been a flaming professor; and a zealous stickler for the more curious distinctions, with which some high-fliers delight to amuse themselves.

But their entire want of education is not the whole of the

evil that arises from the unmanly, and impious indolence of parents of this character. Their example is baneful, and destructive of the morals of their children, and they prove, if if grace prevent not, the instrument of their entire ruin. If they follow the example of such fathers, they also will take to the ways of idleness; and when they come to reason upon its effects, must of course be led to think very indifferently of their parent's religion, and perhaps throw off all religious restraints whatever. And who knows where the end may be?

I descend into a description of this part of low life, not with so much as a hope of being read by the parties concerned; but with a view to stir up Christian societies to guard against characters so pernicious, and to excite those who may happen to be conversant with such people, to treat them as enemies to the cross of Christ, that they may be ashamed, and study a reformation of manners. He that is attentive to the duties of his station, in the church, in the family, and in the world, will find no time at all to devote to idleness and dissipation. May God grant, that a sense of the value of precious time may rest upon my heart, and that of my reader; that we both may walk circumspectly, redeeming every moment to the important purposes of our soul concerns.

THE

CHANGES OF EPHRAIM;

OR, THE

BACKSLIDER'S WARNING.

PROV. xiv. 14.

The backslider in heart shali be filled with his own ways.

Of all the threatenings denounced in scripture against backsliding, I know of none more terrible than this; this, which shews us, that the Amighty has ways and means sufficient in his own hand, awfully to correct and punish the backslidings of his people, consistently with his own indissoluble relation to them as their Father who is in heaven. The many ways in which he manifesteth his paternal displeasure are all to be dreaded; but none so much as his leaving us to choose our own way, till we are glutted with our choice. If sin is visited with a rod, and our transgressions with the stripes of the children of men, it will undoubtedly bring poignant grief and heart-wringing anguish upon us; yet exceedingly inferior to that most awful punishment of heart-backslidings denounced in the text.

Backsliding in heart necessarily supposeth an antecedent rectitude of principle, and a cleaving to the Lord, with sincerity and ardour; therefore is inapplicable to those who had put on only an outward profession, and for a time followed the form of religion, either with some sinister view, or from an heated imagination. None can be said to backslide in heart, but those whose hearts have followed after Jesus; but those swine and dogs that returned to their mire and vomit, never adhered to the Lord with their hearts, notwithstanding for a season they associated with his people. The words can therefore be applied only to the subjects of faith, who, being bewitched with the idols of earth, draw back from their simplicity; by a deceived heart being turned aside from the corn of Paradise, to feed upon sordid ashes; forsaking the pure streams of the river of God, drink of the polluted waters of Abana and Parphar; flee down to Egypt for help and refuge, and trust not in the Lord in the day of their trouble.

A man may be a backslider in heart, even when he cannot be charged with any open notorious sin; for it is possible that a thousand things may draw away the heart and affections from God, when there is nothing in the natural constitution that violently inclines unto any evil usually deemed enormous. This backsliding of heart is at least equally dangerous with that where the constitutional propensities to the greatest evils are strong, and overcome the feeble efforts of the mind in resistance; as it is more difficult to fasten conviction of heart-backsliding upon the sober man, than upon the notorious offender. Besides, it renders a person equally useless, although not quite so burthensome to a church; for the service of which he has neither hand nor inclination; so that at best he is but a barren fig tree in the garden of our God. What listlessness to, what deadness in, duty, what formality, what hypocrisy may be discovered, where there is in reality nothing chargeable upon the moral conduct! And consequently, how little of the spirit and power of religion may in such a case be experienced.

Á man may through the violence of temptation, the strength of corruption, or unhappy opportunity serving to the occasion, be precipitated into the most loathsome and notorious evils, without commencing backsliding in heart. This, I think, is apparent from the case of Noah, who, on a day of festivity, drank himself drunk, and yet of his heart-backsliding, we have nothing upon record. This was also the case of righteous Lot; he was ensnared by the subtilty of his daughters, and though chargeable with both drunkenness and incest, is not reproved as a backslider in heart. And surely Peter was no backslider in heart, even when he denied his Master, as is clear from his professed regard to him on all other occasions. Heart-backsliding is less rapid in its progress, invades the misled believer by slow de grees, and is long before it arrives at its state. That covetous disposition, which drew Demas away from Paul the apostle, was in all probability rankling in his bosom, and as a gangrene eating up the vitals of religion in his soul, long before it separated him from the way of truth. Nothing can be more natural, than for the person openly to backslide from God and his ways, whose heart and affections have been so long departed into the world.

Sacred history does not, that I know of, furnish any instance so suitable for the illustration of the awful proposition recorded in the text, as its account of Ephraim. In him we may trace the believer in the warmth of espousal love; in all the stages of heart-backsliding, till even surfeited with his own ways; as well as in the humbled state of restoration to his God and Saviour. I shall therefore illustrate the point from the generai history of that character, as recorded by the pen of infallibility. 1. Ephraim is a fit type of the believer in the warmth of his