to see them prosperous in their condition, and respectable in their characters. Bring them betimes to the worship of God in his Holy Temple: thus will habit in aftertimes prevent their day of rest ever becoming a day of listless inactivity or mischievous riot. Here they will be taught to supplicate God's blessing on their industry, God's grace for their guidance: here they will pray to have their hearts inclined to keep his laws, to hallow his name, to covet nothing that is their neighbour's, and to honor their father and their mother. You would wish to live in peace and harmony with him who is your partner in your trade, your neighbour in your holding, or your kinsman in the inheritance. If you come with him regularly to the duties of that religion which orders to agree with your adversary quickly and to live peaceably with all men, while you jointly seek the powerful defence of him who is the author of peace and lover of concord, your own hearts will keep down all mean and quarrelsome suspicion: they will abhor the petty disagreement, which setting a man against his brother would forfeit the affection of the parent of them both, the common Father of all. The public worship of God is the testimony of the whole community to the all-sufficient power and the abundant kindness of its great protector, and the withdrawing of that protection might be the con

sequence of a nation's neglecting to make the acknowledgment. Those who frequent the houses of Christian Worship at least shew that they are not ashamed of their faith that they are not ungrateful for God's blessings, or indifferent about his judgments. They wish, according to our Lord's precept, to let their light shine before men, that seeing this, their good work, others may be brought to glorify their Father which is in Heaven. They know the force of example leading men to do evil and they wish to oppose it by a public example of what is good. May you, my beloved brethren, long continue the godly and salutary practice, and may you obtain the rich reward in the strengthening of your own piety, and in the approbation of your God: in the happy prospect of children brought up in his fear, and friends won over to righteousness: in the prosperity of your handiwork, and in the tranquillity of your country!:

So fully have these advantages of Public Worship been understood and so properly appreciated, that we find every where the use of it, in some form or other, as universal as the knowledge of the Deity; of which indeed it is the necessary result and the acknowledgment of the relation in which we stand to him. In earlier ages when man's attention was caught by speciousness and shew, when, ill able to turn his thoughts with

in, he knew little but of what was outwardly exhibited before him, the forms and ceremonies of Public Worship were complex and multitudinous. God accommodating his instruction to the imperfection of human nature, and wishing to make out for himself a distinct and peculiar people, in his religious services of the Jews multiplied assemblies and festivals and sacrifices. Our Lord at his coming found that the Jews had mistaken the shadow for the substance, the form for the essence of religion he took away therefore the burden of the Jewish yoke, and taught a worship of the Father in Spirit and in truth. But he did not constitute a religion so wholly spiritual as to have nothing positive in its institutions. He gave a model and form of prayer, he ordained Apostles for the Ministry, he observed the festivals, he appeared at the religious offices in the courts of the Lord's house. Here it was that at the age of twelve years he employed himself about his Father's business: here it was that he took up the book in the sight of the Lord's people to expound the Scripture from the Prophet Isaiah, which on that day was fulfilled in the ears of the Israelites. From the Acts of the Apostles and from several of the Epistles we find, that the early Christians regularly assembled themselves together for their devotional purposes, and that the Sabbath day was peculiarly set

apart for religious services. Since the days of the Apostles the same practice has been every where continued in the Church of Christ, and however various the habits of different countries, and however divided that Church has been into a diversity of disagreeing sects, on the duty, the advantages and indeed the necessity of Public Worship, scarcely any difference of opinion seems at any time to have subsisted.

On one point only has any difference been found, and as this is connected closely with the subject of these discourses, I shall devote to it what remains of this introduction. I mean on the comparative advantages of an established and pre-composed Liturgy or form of Prayer, in preference to addresses to the Deity composed, as at the instant, by a single individual-recited by him and followed by the congregation. I am aware that there may be here present persons who may hold an opinion on this point opposite to mine, but in supporting the opinion of the Established Church, which I do from my heart and from my duty, I trust that no one word shall escape me which can give offence to any sincere believer in Christ Jesus, who may belong to a Church which differs from that Established in this realm. No Christian Church should consider itself as engaged in any other warfare than against Satan and sin: instead of

weakening by disunion and violence the power by which the common enemy is to be resisted, the efforts of all should be exerted in joint confederation to oppose him. Small is the difference between the several sects professing Christ, when compared with the monstrous disproportion which Christian belief and Christian practice bear to infidelity and to vice.

Yet in reality does not the question come to this? Whether will you join in prayers which you have never heard before, or in those which you have had an opportunity of perusing and examining at your leisure? Whether will you join in the prayers composed by a single person whose talents you may not know to be extraordinary-whose time may be occupied in the other duties of a profession-whose education may not have been particularly attended to-whose turn of mind may not have been peculiarly suited and disciplined to the exercise, or whether on the contrary will you prefer joining in prayers composed by the joint labours of the ablest as well as the best men who at their day could be found in the Church, giving most diligent attention to this single subject: men of learning to acquaint them with all that had been composed before-men of talents to select what was most suitable and to supply what was wanting? Speaking of the Minister