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JER. vi. 16. Thus saith the Lord, stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, we will not walk therein."

Importance of cultivating sacred music, and practising it in the house

of God.

JULY.

VIII.

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SERMON

By the Rev. CHAUNCEY COLTON, A. M. President of Bristol College
Youthful Pleasure.

ECCLESIASTES xi. 9.—" Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let
thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the way of
of thy heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for
all things these God will bring thee into judgment."

AUGUST.

SERMON IX.

101

By the Rev. JOHN R. GOODMAN, Rector of Christ Church, Newbern,
N. Carolina.-Importance of Clerical Learning.

Acrs vii. 29.—“ And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the

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By the Rev. PALMER DYER, Missionary at Syracuse, Onondaga
County, New-York.-The Wrath of Man praises God.
PSALM Ixxvi. 10.-"Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the
remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain."

SEPTEMBER.

126

SERMON XI.

By the Rev. DAVID COOK PAGE, Rector of Christ Church, Louisville, "The Strait Gate" and "the Narrow Way."

Kentucky.-" LUKE xiii. 24.-" Strive to enter in at the strait gate; for many, unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able."

I say

133

OCTOBER.

SERMON XII.

By Rev. J. P. K. HENSHAW, D. D. Rector of St. Peter's Church Baltimore, Maryland.--The past state, and present prospects of the Church. Delivered before the Prayer Book, and Homily Society, of the Diocese of Maryland, 29th May, 1834.

PSALM cii. 13, 14. -"Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time is come. For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof."

NOVEMBER.

145

Brief memoir of the Rev. JAMES MONTGOMERY, D. D. By his friend the Right Rev. GEORGE W. DOANE, D. D. "The righteous hath hope in his death."

Lines by the Rev. Wm. Croswell, Rector of Christ Church, Boston.

165

175

Inscriptions for the monuments proposed to be erected by the vestry of

St. Stephens.

For the Grave Stone, and Mural Tablet.

177.

SERMON

XIII.

By the Rev. JAMES MONTGOMERY, D. D. Rector of St. Stephen's Church, Philadelphia.--The Service of the Church: its meaning, its excellences, and the defects in its performance.

Exod. xii. 26.-" What mean you by this Service ?"

DECEMBER.

SERMON XIV

178

By the Rev. NATHANIEL S. WHEATON, D. D. President of Washington College, Hartford, Conn.-Happiness or Misery the result of

choice.

GAL. vi. 7, 8.-" Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting."

Public Worship.-Observance of the Sabbath.

193

202

THE

PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL PULPIT.

VOL. II.]

SERMON BY THE LATE REV. GEORGE GRISWOLD.
SERMON BY THE REV. SAMUEL FULLER, JUN.

JANUARY, 1832.

ON IDOLATRY:

A Sermon

BY THE LATE REV. GEORGE GRISWOLD,

OF MASSACHUSETTS.

[NO. I.

2 St. John, v. 21-" Little children, keep yourselves from idols."

On the announcement of this text the imaginations of some may take the alarm.

What! they may be ready to exclaim, do you propose to warn a Christian assembly against a practice which has never appeared but in those times and places where darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people? Do you suspect any of us to be in danger of falling into idolatry? Yes; the whole tenor of Scripture authorises such suspicion; and it may be found, before we have dismissed our subject, that there are some, even in this assembly, who have not altogether kept themselves from idols. It may soon appear that idolatry is not so exclusively the sin of particular nations, and of particular periods, as is sometimes supposed; that it is rather the sin which most easily besets human nature; and thence that an exhortation to keep themselves from it is always in season to those who inherit that evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living GOD, which his word so fully describes, and which the actual state of the world so completely illustrates. Our general position is this: that the spirit of idolatry may exist in all its malignancy, and produce a decided rebellion against the sovereignty of Heaven, even when unaccompanied or uninfluenced by a visible form; and this sentiment it will be my endeavor to enlarge upon, illustrate, and apply to the consciousness of every individual. VOL. II-1

Man judgeth after the outward appearance; but God, who is a Spirit, judgeth all things; he is a discerner of the intents of the heart, and understandeth our thoughts long before we utter them. His claims on the love and obedience of all his intelligent creatures are absolute: they are like his own nature, eternal and immutable. Wherever this love is withheld, therefore; wherever these claims are practically disavowed,-it matters not what principles are set up in their place, nor on what particular objects they are bestowed,--the high and lofty ONE sees there an abandonment of those laws, which are the main pillars of his stupendous moral fabric; the Allseeing Eye perceives the disruption of those sacred ties which give order and consistency to the remotest provinces of his empire. Every act of rebellion is in his sight the signal of an universal revolt; for he sees in every instance of disobedience, the elements of a disorder which, if the contagion were to spread, and become general throughout his dominion, would strip his intelligent creation of its glory; would counteract the very purpose for which he made the worlds, and reduce all that was beautiful and grand in his sublimer workmanship, back again to the hideousness of chaos. No wonder then that he looks down from that awful throne which is high and lifted up, on every act of wilful disobedience, with displeasure and abhorrence; no wonder that He whose omniscient eye, piercing through that immensity which his presence fills, traces the sinful thing to its remote and unseen consequences, should look upon every transgressor with all the severity of his unbending justice; no wonder that the law should begin to utter its thunders when the sacred majesty of the law is threatened with violation. But oh! it is a wonder that, after the rash deed had been accomplished which brought down the just weight of its anathema on our race, after sentence of death had been pronounced the wages of transgression, GOD should still so love the world as to give his only begotten Son, that whosoever believed on him might not perish, but have everlasting life. And the greatest wonder is,-after all that has been done by GoD to magnify the law and make it honorable; after all that has been suffered by the son of God to bring in an everlasting righteousness; after all the striving of his

HOLY SPIRIT to convince the world of sin and reestablish principles of obedience in the bosoms of an apostate race,-that any of them should yet stand in need of the admonition to keep themselves from idols. It is a fact which fills Heaven with amazement, and Hell with triumph. That principle of alienation from GOD which began the work of death in the garden of Eden, has spread its contagious influence wherever the human race is found; has run its fatal career through generation after generation, till, notwithstanding what has been done by Him who put forth the might of his omnipotence and travailed in the greatness of his strength to arrest its progress, there is, even in this day of Gospel light and glory, among the vast majority of men, an entire alienation of their affections from the supreme and only Potentate. "Hear, O Heavens, and give ear, O Earth, for the LORD hath spoken: I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me."

The comprehensive spirit of Christianity teaches us to generalize on moral subjects, and to classify mankind according to their fundamental principles of action. He who looks upon his fellow men with an understanding enlightened by that word which is a discerner of hearts, will recognise in them but a faint likeness to the holy image which that word holds out; he who compares what he sees in the history of human life, with what he reads in the book of revelation, will see very few deeds that might not have been done had that book never been written. So rare, indeed, is the coincidence between the conduct of human affairs and the known will of God, that if the history of this world's doings were spread out in all its details, an overwhelming proportion of its activity would be found to have owed its first impulse to a principle of alienation from the living GOD, to which the Scriptures ascribe the attributes, and on which they bestow the denomination, of downright idolatry.

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Still the men of a refined and sensitive age, like the present, may shrink from such a charge as this reasoning would imply: may not be agreeable to believe that,—after so much light from Heaven has been poured upon our world; after the graven images have been utterly abolished, and the grosser forms of superstition

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