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for which it was appointed? Do they indeed 'come into the courts of God with gladness?' and how are they employed when not engaged in the public services of the day? Are they busied in studying the word of God, in meditating on his perfections, in tracing his providential dispensations, in admiring his works, in revolving his mercies, (above all, the transcendent mercies of redeeming love,) in singing his praises and speaking good of his name?" their secret retirements witness the earnestness of their prayers and the warmth of their thanksgivings, their diligence and impartiality in the necessary work of self-examination, their mindfulness of the benevolent duty of intercession? Is the kind purpose of the institution of a Sabbath answered by them, in its being made to their servants and dependents a season of rest and comfort? Does the instruction

of their families, or of the more poor and ignorant of their neighbours, possess its due share of their time? If blessed with talents or with affluence, are they sedulously employing a part of this interval of leisure, in relieving the indigent, and visiting the sick, and comforting the sorrowful; in forming plans for the good of their fellow creatures, in considering how they may promote the temporal and spiritual benefits of their friends and acquaintance; or, if theirs be a larger sphere, in devising measures whereby, through the divine blessing, they may become the honoured instruments of the more extended diffusion of religious truth? In the hours of domestic or social intercourse, does their conversation manifest the subject of which their hearts are full? Do their language and demeanour show them to be more than commonly

gentle, and kind, and friendly, free from rough and irritating passions?

"Surely an entire day should not seem long amidst these various employments. It might well be deemed privilege thus to spend it, in the more immediate presence of our heavenly Father, in the exercises of humble admiration and grateful homage; of the benevolent, and domestic, and social feelings, and of all the best affections of our nature, prompted by their true motives, conversant about their proper ob. jects, and directed to their noblest end; all sorrow mitigated, all cares suspended, all fears repressed, every angry emotion softened, every envious or revengeful or malignant passion expelled; and the bosom thus quieted, purified, enlarged, ennobled, partaking almost of a measure of the heavenly happiness, and become for a while the seat of love, and joy, and confidence, and harmony.

"The nature, and uses, and proper employments of a Christian Sabbath, have been pointed out more particularly, not only because the day will be found, when thus employed, eminently conducive, through the divine blessing, to the maintenance of the religious principle in activity and vigour; but also because we must all have had occasion often to remark, that many persons, of the graver and more decent sort, seem not seldom to be nearly destitute of religious resources. The Sunday is with them, to say the best of it, a heavy day; and that larger part of it, which is not claimed by the public offices of the church, dully drawls on in comfortless vacuity; or without improvement is trifled away in vain and unprofitable discourse.-Not to speak of those who, by

their more daring profanation of this sacred season, openly violate the laws and insult the religion of their country, how little do many seem to enter into the spirit of the institution, who are not wholly inattentive to its exterior decorums! How glad are they to qualify the rigour of their religious labours! How hardly do they plead against being compelled to devote the whole of the day to religion, claiming to themselves no small merit for giving up to it a part, and purchasing therefore, as they hope, a right to spend the remainder more agreeably! How dexterously do they avail themselves of any plausible plea for introducing some week-day employment into the Sunday, whilst they have not the same propensity to introduce any of the Sunday's peculiar employment into the rest of the week! How often do

they find excuses for taking journeys, writing letters, balancing accounts, or in short doing something, which by a little management might probably have been anticipated, or which without any material inconvenience, might be postponed ! Even business itself is recreation, compared with Religion, and from the drudgery of this day of Sacred Rest, they fly for relief to their ordinary occupations.

"Others again, who would consider business as a profanation, and who still hold out against the encroachments of the card table, get over much of the day, and gladly seek for an innocent resource in the social circle, or in family visits, where it is not even pretended that the conversation turns on such topics. as might render it in any way conducive to religious instruction or improvement. Their families meanwhile are neglected, their servants robbed of Chris

tian privileges, and their example quoted by others who cannot see that they are themselves less religiously employed, while playing an innocent game at cards, or relaxing in the concert-room.

"But all these several artifices, whatever they may be, to unhallow the Sunday and to change its character, (it might be almost said to relax its horrors,') prove but too plainly, however we may be glad to take refuge in religion, when driven to it by the loss of every other comfort, and to retain, as it were, a reversionary interest in an asylum which may receive us when we are forced from the transitory enjoyments of our present state, that in itself it wears to us a gloomy and forbidding aspect, and not a face of consolation and joy; that the worship of God is with us a constrained, and not a willing service, which we are glad therefore to abridge, though we dare not omit it."

A

TREATISE

ON

GROWTH IN GRACE,

WITH REFERENCE TO

ST. PAUL'S PRAYER FOR THE PHILIPPIANS.

PHILIPPIANS i. 9-11.

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