sanctified the Lord's day in public worship. See, then : Did you never absent yourself from God's worship needlessly; as through sloth, idleness, business, or for the sake of pleasing com'pany, or because you said you could do as well at home? Did you always come to public worship with a design to own and honour God? What did you never come inconsiderately, or out of curiosity, you did not know why, because it was the custom; or because it was a sort of entertainment; it may be to make an appearance, and to be taken notice of for one thing or other? And then again, have you always laboured to join in the several parts of worship with attention, reverence, and suitable affections? to loathe yourself while speaking of your sins, and to exalt God's mercy and majesty while singing his praises, to hear his holy word with all modesty, meekness, and humility, and to wait at his table with becoming fervency and devotion? Say, upon the whole, how have you acted your part in public worship? Have you done it to the glory of God? or have you not sought your own pleasure whether in absenting from, or when you have approached unto, the courts of the Lord? Secondly.-Private exercises were said to be another part of our duty in sanctifying the Lord's day. By these I mean the duties of secret prayer, examination, reading, and meditation, in which every Christian ought to be employed alone in certain convenient portions of the sabbath. Consider then, what answer can you make on this head? what do you say respecting the duties of the closet on the Lord's day? Have they never been neglected, never slighted ? The mornings, noons, and evenings of the sabbaths, how have they been spent? Have you at none of these seasons left your closet to take your pleasure? perhaps never thought of anything else you had to do than to take your pleasure and amuse yourself, as thinking Sunday the time for recreation? And so again,

Thirdly. -What answer can you make regarding religious communication? In this respect, too, have you never spoken your own words on the Lord's day? I wish we may all deeply lay this to heart; for the tongue is an unruly member. Unprofitable conversation is the bane of sanctifying the sabbath. But I ask, have you not spoken your own words? Let us all impartially judge, and we shall all certainly condemn ourselves in

this particular. Yet let us not lie down under the condemnation; but, confessing our sin in this respect, and earnestly imploring pardon for Jesus Christ's sake, let us henceforward take heed to our ways, that we do not thus any longer offend with our tongue. Consider, my brethren, what has been your conversation in the morning before you have come to this house: has it been about insignificant things? How sad a preparation for public worship! And what have you done at noon? what! still vanity? And then in the evening; what! nothing but unprofitable talk, as if on purpose to forget what had been doing at the church, and to lose the serious impressions that had been made on the mind? To say the least, if we cannot converse together upon religious things on the Lord's day, it were much better we should keep asunder. But the shame of being thought religious, the custom of visiting on this day, and method of running together in public places, where it is unreasonable to expect one serious word should be spoken, have so established unprofitable conversation on the sabbath, that we are come to speak our own words without suspicion of our doing anything amiss, and thereby have both destroyed that honour due to the day, and that spiritual advantage we should otherwise reap from it. I wish we would try the difference; and see what keeping alone or conversing only on religious subjects would produce. It is a pitiable thing, that, while we wish well to our souls, we should be taking in poison with our meat every Lord's day.

By this time we may be able to judge whether we have ceased on the sabbath-day from worldly affairs to good purpose. As far as we sanctified the Lord's day in public, in private, and in all our communications, we have done this; but as far as we have failed herein, and sought our own pleasure, we have not. And if this matter be well sought into, I suppose we shall all find we have abundance to answer for at the judgment-seat of Christ.

The third and last thing contained in a due observance of the Lord's day was said to be a right aim in ceasing from worldly labours, and in exercising the religious observances just mentioned. Now the righteousness of the aim is, when there is a correspondence between our design in keeping and God's design in instituting the sabbath; which was said in the introduction of this discourse to be twofold.

I. His glory.

II. Our spiritual profit.

First.-Hath then our design, in the observance we have paid to the sabbath, principally been to glorify God? I gave them my sabbaths,' says God, to be a sign between me and them ;'* namely, a sign that I the Lord Jehovah, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, am their God, and they consequently my people. The sabbath was to be a sign of this. How so? Why, because God hath appointed it so to be; having enjoined his people to sanctify the seventh day for this purpose; to the end that they observing this his institution, by meeting together to worship him, all the world may know he is the God they profess, and they the people whom he will bless and preserve. So you see the due observance of the sabbath, especially in all the parts of public worship, reverently and humbly, is the great instituted means of our professing God to be our God. Indeed there is no other proper means of making such profession. How should the world know whom we serve but by the significant method here provided for us, wherein we, laying aside all worldly things at God's command, do meet and join together in worship in honour of his name? The consequence of this is, that every Christian coming into public worship, and observing the Lord's day, doth hereby own God in Christ as his God; doth take this public way of making such acknowledgment, and of professing that as a lost sinner he looks for salvation upon that glorious plan contrived by the blessed Trinity, in which the Father sends, the Son comes, and the Holy Ghost applies what the Son so sent of the Father hath effected. Now yourselves only can judge whether to make profession of the Trinity, and of faith in Christ as the only ground of your hope in time and eternity, hath been your aim in observing the Lord's day, and particularly in coming to public Christian worship; which to do is indeed mere folly if a man have not this faith. If this were more the believer's aim in observing the Lord's day, it would have a direct influence to his observing it more strictly. Besides this,

Secondly. Hath your aim in sanctifying the Lord's day been the sanctification of your own soul? The sabbath, considered as a rest, immediately leads our faith forward to the rest remain

* Ezek. xx. 12-20.

ing for believers in heaven; and at the same time, by enjoining us to cease from labour, doth represent to us the necessity of ceasing from sin in the way to that glory which shall be revealed. It is a gracious design to have heaven in the eye, under the observance of the weekly rest, to be looking to an exalted Redeemer, so both enlivening our hope of the eternal inheritance, and mortifying under the influence of that hope the power of sin. Well may the believer say, "this is a temporary rest, yet it is a gracious one, it gives me opportunity to consider with more attention my eternal rest: how glorious, how delightful, how perfect, how endless! it is no imagination. Jesus is gone before to prepare a place, and he will come again; I see him already by faith on the clouds, he calls from their dust the departed saints, he places them near him on the right hand, he bids them enter into his joy. They live, they reign for ever; they are for ever with their Lord. Come then, my soul, thou wilt not barter heaven for a poor vain world. Down, down, ye vile lusts; ye foes to my Saviour and my soul, I forsake you all; pleasure, interest, ease, honour, esteem, and pride, I sacrifice you all to my eternal hopes." You cannot but say such views as these are altogether becoming the day of remembering a risen Redeemer gone away into heaven. But are they yours? Do you thus sanctify the Lord's day, and have you always thus sanctified it? O for how much nobler purposes was this day designed than for vanity, pleasure, and sloth!

From what hath been said on the sabbath, I am confident you will all see cause enough of condemnation and of humiliation. You belong to a crucified Master; see in this instance again how you have pierced him. And while you seek and humbly rely on the pardon of these sins through the merit of his blood, let that blood influence you to a godly sorrow and hatred of all your transgressions. So Jesus shall see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied;' to him, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, be glory, honour, and praise, world without end. Amen.

6

SERMON XXXIII.

GALATIANS iii. 24.

Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.

FROM a distinct consideration of the duties respecting godliness required of us in the four first commandments, we have abundantly seen that use of the law described in the text, namely, of serving as a schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ. These commandments applied to our consciences have condemned us all; and, if we have duly considered the curse annexed to every single breach of them, the sense of our manifold guilt will needs bring us unto Christ, that we may be accepted by God's mercy through the merit of his perfect righteousness. I say, we have all been condemned, for who among us is guiltless? Review only what we have gone over, and say if one and all be not guilty. Doth not the following confession suit every one of us? Lord, thou knowest my heart, and my ways are not hid from thee.

66

Wilt thou be exact to mark what is done amiss? Thou knowest I have had other gods before thee; I have set up my worldly idols in my heart; worldly things I have loved too much, and trusted in too much, and feared the loss of them beyond all things; but to love thee, to trust in and fear thee, how little has my heart known to do this? Thou Searcher of hearts knowest what a stranger I have been to thee, how little I have known thee, or desired or endeavoured to know thee, how sadly I have forgotten thee, how much of my days is gone by and thou wast not in all my thoughts; yea, and when I have thought of thee, how unbecomingly it has been ; with how little esteem and gratitude, with how little reverence, with how much distrust of thee and murmuring against thee!