Having thus spoken without equivocation, and we hope without offence, to the contractedness and pre-occupation with which Christians and worldly men are apt to come to the perusal of the word of God, we shall now set forth the two master feelings under which we should address ourselves to the sacred occupation.

It is a good custom inherited from the hallowed days of Scottish piety, and in our cottages still preserved, though in our cities generally given up, to preface the morning and evening worship of the family with a short invocation of blessing from the Lord. This is in unison with the practice and recommendation of pious men, never to open the divine Word without a silent invocation of the divine Spirit. But no ejaculation to Heaven. is of any virtue, save as it is the expression of certain pious sentiments with which the mind is full and overflowing. And, therefore, instead of setting forth any forms of intercession for a divine understanding to accompany the reading of the divine Word, it seemeth better that I impress upon your minds those sentiments, which will of their own accord prompt the heart to feel the proper frame, and the tongue to utter the suitable request.

Of those sentiments which befit the mind that cometh into conference with its Maker, the first and most prevailing should be gratitude for his having ever condescended to hold commerce with such wretched and fallen creatures. Gratitude not only expressing itself in proper terms, but possessing the mind with an abiding and over-mastering mood, under which it shall sit impressed

the whole duration of the interview. Such an emotion as cannot utter itself in language-though by language it indicate its presence-but preserves us in a devout and adoring frame, while the Lord is uttering his voice. Go, visit a desolate widow with consolation and help and fatherhood of her orphan children-do it again and again— and your presence, the sound of your approaching footstep, the soft utterance of your voice, the very mention of your name-will come to dilate her heart with a fulness which defies her tongue to utter, but speaks by the tokens of a swimming eye, and clasped hands, and fervent ejaculations to heaven upon your head! No less copious acknowledgment to God, the author of our wellbeing and the father of our better hopes, ought we to feel when his word discloseth to us the excesses of his love. Though a veil be now cast over the Majesty which speaks, it is the voice of the Eternal which we hear, coming in soft cadences to win our favour, yet omnipotent as the voice of the thunder, and overpowering as the rushing of many waters. And though the veil of the future intervene between our hand and the promised goods, still are they from His lips who speaks and it is done, who commandeth and all things stand fast. With no less emotion, therefore, should this book be opened than if, like him in the Apocalypse, you saw the voice which spake; or like him in the trance, you were, into the third heavens translated, companying and communing with the realities of glory, which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived.

Far and foreign from such an opened and awakened bosom is that cold and formal hand which is generally laid upon the sacred volume; that unfeeling and unimpressive tone with which its accents are pronounced; and that listless and incurious ear into which its blessed sounds are received. How can you, thus unimpassioned, hold communion with themes in which every thing awful, vital, and endearing, do meet together! Why is not curiosity, curiosity ever hungry, on edge to know the doings and intentions of Jehovah the King of kings? Why is not interest, interest ever awake, on tiptoe to hear the future destiny of yourselves? Why is not the heart that panteth over the world after love and friendship, overpowered with the full tide of the divine acts and expressions of love? Where is Nature gone when she is not moved with the tender mercy of Christ? Methinks the affections of men are fallen into the yellow leaf. Of our poets which charm the world's ear, who is he that inditeth a song unto his God? Some will tune their harps to sensual pleasures, and by the enchantment of their genius well nigh commend their unholy themes to the imagination of saints. Others, to the high and noble sentiments of the heart, will sing of domestic joys and happy unions, casting around sorrow the radiancy of virtue, and bodying forth, in undying forms, the short-lived visions of joy! Others have enrolled themselves the high priests of mute Nature's charms, enchanting her echoes with their minstrelsy, and peopling her solitudes with the bright

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creatures of their fancy. But when, since the days of the blind master of English song, hath any 'poured forth a lay worthy of the Christian theme? Nor in philosophy, the palace of the soul," have men been more mindful of their Maker. The flowers of the garden and the herbs of the field have their unwearied devotees, crossing the ocean, wayfaring in the desert, and making devout pilgrimages to every region of Nature, for offerings to their patron muse. The rocks, from their residences among the clouds to their deep rests in the dark bowels of the earth, have a most bold and venturous priesthood; who see in their rough and flinty faces a more delectable image to adore than in the revealed countenance of God. And the political welfare of the world is a very Moloch, who can at any time command his hecatomb of human victims. But the revealed sapience of God, to which the harp of David and the prophetic lyre of Isaiah were strung, the Prudence of God which the wisest of men coveted after, preferring it to every gift which Heaven could confer -and the eternal Intelligence himself in human form, and the Unction of the Holy One which abideth,-these the common heart of man hath forsaken, and refused to be charmed withal.

I testify, that there ascendeth not from earth, a Hosannah of her. children to bear witness in the ear of upper regions to the wonderful manifestations of her God! From a few scattered hamlets, in a small portion of her wide territory, a small voice ascendeth like the voice of one cry

ing in the wilderness. But to the service of our general Preserver there is no concourse, from Dan unto Beersheba, of our people; the greater part of whom, after two thousand years of apostolic commission, know not the testimonies of our God; and the multitude of those who do, reject or despise them!

But, to return from this lamentation, which, may God hear, who doth not disregard the cries of his afflicted people! With the full sense of obligation to the Giver, combine a humble sense of your own incapacity to value and to use the gift of his Holy Oracles. Having no taste whatever for the mean estimates which are made, and the coarse invectives that are vented against human nature, which though true in the main, are often in the manner so unfeeling and triumphant, as to reveal hot zeal, rather than tender and deep sorrow, we will not give in to this popular strain. And yet it is a truth, by experience revealed, that though there be in man most noble faculties, and a nature restless after the knowledge and truth of thingsthere are, towards God, and his revealed will, an indisposition and a regardlessness, which the most tender and enlightened consciences are the most ready to acknowledge. Of our emancipated youth who bound after the knowledge of the visible works of God, and the gratification of the various instincts of nature, how few betake themselves at all, how few absorb themselves with the study and obedience of the word of God! And when, by God's visitation, we address ourselves