rest, no retirement, no house of prayer. Or those who live in Pagan lands, in places where no Sabbath is observed, no Christian congregations meet, where the animating influence of Christian society is entirely withdrawn; there, at the recollection of past days of delight and happiness, found in God's house, the soul cries out-"How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts; my soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God!" The exile and the wanderer then envies the very birds of the air; the sparrow and the swallow find nests for themselves, where they may rest; it may be near the altars of Jehovah, from which the pious mourner is secluded. It is the great abundance of Christian ordinances in this land, that makes it so desirable a home to the Christian; and I know that some who are obliged to dwell in foreign lands, away from the assemblies of God's people, regret their absence from home on this account, more than on any other. I know it by experience, and I mention it to you this day, with a desire that all here present may think more highly of the privileges they enjoy, and avail themselves of them more assiduously; or, in cases where that is not required, more gratefully; and that those who may have heretofore frequented the tents of the wicked, places of dissipation or riot, may see the evil of such a preference, and adopt the spirit of the Psalmist's resolution, rather to be a door-keeper, to sustain the lowest office in God's house, although he was possessed of royal dignity, than take up his abode with those who did not fear God. To this thought, the young in this congregation would do well to take heed, for they that go with wise and good men, will learn wisdom and goodness; but the companion of fools will be destroyed. Man is weak and wicked, and himself prone to ill; if he associate only with others, weak and wicked as himself, they all descend lower and lower in the depths of ungodliness or profligacy, onward and onward in that guilty path which leads to the regions of despair and endless woe. Whereas, those that join themselves to the sincere worshippers of Jehovah, and obedient disciples of Messiah, the anointed Saviour of men,

are in the way to receive grace and glory. For God is a Sun and a Shield, he will give grace and glory, and no good thing will he withhold from those that walk uprightly, and who present their prayers to the Lord God of Hosts, with a reference to the person of God's anointed. The world is in moral and spiritual darkness; the surmises of Pagan philosophers, and the theories of antichristianism, cannot clear away the dark gloom that hangs over the head of a guilty creature. But God our Saviour, as he is revealed in the assemblies of his people, is a sun, and dispels, with the bright and glorious rays of his blessed Gospel, the darkness, and the gloom, and the dread which hover round the head of guilty man; and in the face of God's anointed, the light of this sun shines with beams of free, unmerited, unbought mercy, to the soul of the penitent; and life and immortality are brought to light, with a lustre and a soul-reviving glow, of which the natural sun, glorious and delightful as it is, when beaming forth on a world of night, and dispelling the darkness and the gloom, is but a faint resemblance. My brethren, have ye been translated out of darkness into God's marvellous light? or are ye still sitting in the darkness of unbelief, and in the region and gloomy shadow of spiritual death? If ye have seen the light of Jehovah's countenance, as he reveals himself in the sanctuary-the holy place of Christian assemblies and ordinances; ye require no arguments to induce you to love, and to support, and to frequent the services of his house. But if this light has not yet shone into your hearts, it is because ye have closed your eyes against the light. For the sun of the glorious Gospel of the ever blessed God shines upon you, and around you, in his house of prayer, if ye would but lift up your eyes and see:-Oh Lord, open thou the eyes of all such here present, that they may see marvellous things out of thy law; lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon them, that in thy light they may see light;-thou that didst at first cause the light to shine out of darkness, shine into their hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of thyself in the face of Jesus Christ!

And ye Christians, who remember with melancholy

M

regret the days which are past, when the light of the Lord shone upon you, but which are now exchanged for days of darkness and gloom, that divine sun is eternally the same ;your sins of presumption, or of carelessness, or of speculative security, have gathered the clouds which intervene, and cause the darkness of which you complain. The sanctuary, the house of prayer, is not to you an object of desire as it once was; peradventure ye have become wise in your own conceits, and undervalue the truths which have to you become common-place, and which have lost the charm of novelty. Or it may be a fulness of bread, a luxurious, and elegant, and over-abundant exhibition of spiritual delicacies, has made you loathe simple food; or feuds of a secular and personal nature, although connected with religion, have imbittered your spirit; and the agitation of bad passions, or other causes have dimmed the spiritual eye, and caused the Lord to hide his face from you. Sure we may be, that the cause of our obscurity is not in yonder sun, but the cause of obscurity, and gloom, and eclipses, and the darkness of night, is, the changes which take place on our earth, or something that interposes between his beams and us.

This sun has shone and illumined the saints of the Most High in every age, since the beginning of the world; it lighted up the road that led them to Messiah, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; it shines upon the souls of the faithful in afflictions and distresses, in sickness and in death; and in yonder brighter world, this sun shall no more go down, but shall beam forth an unspotted, unobscured orb of light and love for ever and ever.

Not only does he but he is also exNo weapon that

The Lord God is a sun and a shield. supply his people with the light of life; hibited in the sanctuary as a defence. is formed against his church's peace shall prosper. How manifold have been the machinations, and how varied and desperate the forms of assault intended to overthrow and annihilate the Church of God upon earth. Learning, and talent, philosophy, and science, falsely so called, enlisted with zeal on the side of the enemy; and persecu

tion, and fire, and sword, wielded by the rulers of the earth, leagued together to oppose Messiah's reign, and to crush his rising kingdom, have all proved inefficient to the end proposed. For he must reign till he hath put all his enemies under his feet. And they that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be moved. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people, from henceforth, even for ever. He is a defence against all enemies. Our help, my Christian friends, is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Oh what a shield is God to his people; it is a shield wielded by an Almighty arm, and guided by infinite wisdom and skill. Divine foreknowledge secures the church against any sudden or unexpected assault, and the omnipotent power of Jehovah renders that shield, which he throws around his church, impregnable to every foe, either from earth or from hell. Happy the people who resign themselves to his care, who flee to him for refuge, and who renounce all,-the least trust in any inferior power.

Oh, what a consolation are these sublime truths to the humble Christian, however poor, or afflicted, or distressed, or neglected, by man. Oh blessed Gospel, blessed Bible, which givest to the disconsolate such cheering revelations of divine benignity! Truly, O Jehovah, thou givest grace, and thou givest glory. Thou hast laid the foundation in the atoning sacrifice of Emmanuel, and thou hast led us to hope that the Spiritual Temple shall be finished with shouts of grace, grace unto it. The Lord will give grace and glory. All must be resolved into the free gift of God. The gift of God is eternal life. He spared not his own Son, but gave him up to the death for us all, and how shall he not with him also freely give us all things. These are the words of an Apostle, and how striking the similarity of language used by him and by Israel's King-"No good thing," said the pious monarch, "will he withhold from those that walk uprightly. O Jehovah, God of Hosts, happy is the man who trusteth in thee! Here, Christians, every thing is promised that Heaven considers good for upright persons; it is not what we consider good, but what

Infinite Wisdom considers good, and that is not always prosperity. Inspired and Holy Writ has recorded, that sometimes, (perhaps oftener than we imagine,) it is good to be afflicted. Chastisement indicates parental care and an ardent affection, and therefore we should not consider afflictions as positive and unmixed evil-if heavenly glory be at the end of all these graciously afflictive dispensations, how happy the result! Oh, what an exhilirating view of the matter did Paul take, when oppressed and afflicted, persecuted, and scorned, imprisoned and scourged, and hungry and thirsty; and in cold and nakedness, ill-fed and illclothed-in the midst of all these, he said, "Our light afflictions, which are but for a moment, work out for us a far more and exceeding and eternal weight of glory;" these afflictions are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. Truly so! A moment and eternity! earthly suffering and heavenly bliss! Man's wrath and God's love!-Who would ever think of drawing a comparison? Oh thou afflicted, discomforted, poor, and friendless; or aged and destitute Christian, lift up thy head and rejoice in God thy Saviour. And thou, man of God, who art rich and increased in goods, but whose mind is elevated above these things, in themselves perishable and fleeting, bless God who has taught thee not to trust in uncertain riches, but in himself; and who has led thee to adopt the ejaculation of the royal Psalmist, in the closing lines of that ode, which has been the subject of our dis

course

"O Jehovah, God of Hosts,

Happy is the man who trusteth in thee."

He is indeed happy, and happiness is no where else to be found.

Now, my hearers, these views of life and of death, of time and of eternity, and of the gracious character of God, our Creator, Preserver, and Redeemer, are those that are exhibited in the courts of God's house; and do they not justify the exclamation of king David-"How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts?" There are some young persons in this country, exposed to the attacks of a