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3. GENUINE piety delights in religious exercises. We can eafily conceive religious fervices performed regularly and frequently that will not avail the worshipper, and that, far from being well pleasing in his fight, are an" abomination" unto GOD. Such are all the fervices in which the heart is not engaged. The truly pious feel, and feek, and expect, much pleasure in their devotions. They are by no means a penance they submit to, a drudgery through which they ftruggle, to avoid what is worse. The Sabbath is not a weariness; they are not "detained before the "LORD." Sweet to them is the return of the hour of devotion; they count it all joy when it is faid unto them, "Go up to the house of "the LORD.”

WHAT feels an affectionate child in converfing with his dear and venerable parent, the highly favoured and honoured in the prefence of his generous and munificent friend, the man of fcience in a fociety of learned, able, and communicative philofophers? Their superior and exquifite pleasures, and if there are any mortal pleasures still higher and more perfect, are far inferior to the delights of devotion. FEELING

FEELING on earth the purer affections, and delightful emotions, and unspeakable joys of devotion, the pious burft, as it were, the li mits of mortality; death is annihilated; heaven is entered; its worship and joys are anticipated with angels and archangels, with cherubim and feraphim, they rejoice in giving "glory to Him that fitteth on the "throne, and to the Lamb."

BUT it is not to be omitted, that the pious carefully attend to the influence and effects of religious exercises on the temper and the life; for by these their genuineness and excellence are demonftrated to the world and to themselves.

THAT the tendency of the offices of devotion is to compose the mind, to purify and invigorate the heart, and to cherish and perfect every virtue, is very obvious, and will be readily allowed. What, like the divine prefence realized, can render us collected, folemn, and ferious? What, like the contemplation and love of fupreme excellence, can infpire the love of excellence, and stimulate in preffing forward to perfection? He that fears,

fears, and trufts, and rejoices in GoD, has no other fear. Who does not fay with the apostle, "If GOD fo loved us, we ought alfo to love "one another?" Who does not perceive that "the love of CHRIST Conftrains" thofe who are under its influence to all duty, and “to "glorify the LORD in our fouls and in our "bodies, which are the LORD's?" Be affured, my friends, if you return from prayer, from praise, from the clofet, from the church, or from the facrament, peevish and fretful, and easily discompofed, vain, proud, felffufficient, felfish, covetous, fenfual, equally defective in duty, equally chargeable with tranfgreffion as before, the spirit of true devotion is not yours; and that formality, and fuperftition, and felf-deceit, are intermingled in your worship.

SUCH are the pious, male or female; and true piety in man or woman is entitled to praife. The text leads us more particularly to confider the claims of a pious woman on. our esteem and commendation.

II. Female piety, more than female beauty, has peculiar attractions. Female piety ren

ders

ders every excellence and good quality more precious. A woman that feareth the LORD is an ornament of fociety, and a blessing in all the relations and conditions of life.

THE text brings in view favour and beauty, not to depreciate them in themselves; for religion and good fenfe, no more than difcernment and good tafte, do not neglect or defpife symmetry of form, delicacy of feature, expreffion of countenance, and all the nameless charms of a beautiful woman. But when, I beseech you, is a beautiful woman moft beautiful? Is it not when the mind appears in the body; when the face is the mirror in which we behold the virtues and graces that adorn the foul; when gentleness, compofure, dignity; when generofity, compaffion, tenderness, and all the varying, affections of good will; above all, when devotion, with its varying, and amiable, and heavenly affections, are fweetly and naturally expreffed, unconscious the while herself of the regard the commands? The homage due to excellence is cheerfully paid in the admiration and praises of a beautiful woman. In our high esteem and forward praise, we are K

led

led to think of a more blessed society, where mildness, and grace, and perfection reign. How naturally we do fo, we perceive, in fancy and the fine arts employing the beauties of the female form and female grace to represent the angels of GOD; the serenity and dignity, the benevolence and devotion of the inhabitants of heaven.

EXTERNAL "beauty" is pronounced by the wife man to be "deceitful and vain." It may be, it has been, as a mere ftatue, and little better than a mask or a picture. Outward form has made fome women vain; to fome it has proved a fnare: It has been furrounded by flattery, and folly, and vice; it has been the feat of frivolity and infignificance: Sobriety of mind has been withdrawn, folly has taken her place. Alas! we have heard of deeper and more deplorable degradations of female beauty, and that all its charms have been incapable of leffening the difguft and horror of virtue. Let us turn from the mere ftatue and picture, from the poor regards of the fuperficial, not to say the cenfure and contempt of honeft indignation, to the woman that feareth the LORD, and her

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