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I close this discourse, brethren, by urging a serious attention to the subject now laid before you.

"Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear than to`give the sacrifice of fools," is the voice of Jehovah himself, directing his worshippers. Shall we regard it as such? Shall we set a double watch over our hearts and over our whole conduct when we come into the house of God? Yes; let us say, “God is to be feared in the assembly of his saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are round about him." While we would not be hasty to utter any thing in his presence, let us not trifle with any thing uttered in his name. God is in heaven and we upon earth: let us hear him with submission; let us adore him with reverence; let all our services be begun, continued and ended in him.

We urge this not only because it is God's command, but because it is in itself reasonable. Such a service is due to the great God, who gave us our being and all our powers. Any thing short of this, is a reproach to his character, and infinitely unworthy of the relations we bear to him. The worship of his people on earth should bear a resemblance to that which is paid him in heaven.

It should be a joyful anticipation of that exalted service, in which our enlarged and sanctified powers shall be employed through the ages of eternity. O! what preaching, what hearing, what praying, should we have, could our eyes be fixed on the temple above, and our devotions kindled from the fire of those altars which burn with increasing brightness before the throne of God forever!

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But I ask, what will it profit us, to appear in the house of God, and attend upon its services, unless we do it in the manner which God has prescribed? Shall we enjoy the Lord in his ordinances? Shall we find his temple a Bethel? Shall we be made to say, with Jacob, surely this is none other than the house of God, and the very gate of heaven?" No! all will be darkness and insensibility; the light of divine truth will not shine into our hearts. We shall not be humbled for our sins, nor consoled with the hopes of pardon-we shall not be animated to run in the way of God's commandments, nor made meet for the service and bliss of the heavenly world. Unless we keep our foot when we go to the house of God, our services, instead of preparing us for the upper sanctuary, may set us farther and farther from God's kingdom. Privileges abused, while they harden the heart and blind the mind, often provoke God to give men up as incorrigible and to leave them to remediless destruction. If we are not brought to wait upon God, in this world, in the spirit of true worshippers, we shall never be admitted into his presence in the world of glory. All the advantages we have enjoyed on earth will augment our guilt and aggravate our doom. The sermons we have heard, and the prayers and thanksgivings in which we have joined, will be remembered only to sting with keener anguish and to overwhelm with deeper despair. Every man who shall not learn to keep his foot when he goes to the house of God, will eventually curse the place of his birth-he will wish that he had been born among the savage tribes of the wildernesswhere no temple of God is to be seen-no voice of mercy to be heard, rather than at the doors of the sanctuary, where, from his infancy, the public worship of God

has been celebrated and the oracles of divine truth ex

plained.

May God pour his spirit upon us, and prepare us for his service in his earthly courts. In due time, may he call us to the general assembly and church of the first born, to worship in that glorious temple, where his face shall shine with unclouded beams forever.-AMEN.

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SERMON VI.

THE SINNER BLINDED TO TRUTH, AND
HARDENED AGAINST CONVICTION,
BY HIS OWN SINS, AND THE
RIGHTEOUS JUDGMENT
OF GOD.

John xii. 39, 40.

Therefore they could not believe, because that Esaias said again, he hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.

BY SAMUEL S. SMITH, D.D. L.L.D.

VOL. I.

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