the following from the last head, in which he is showing the reasonableness of the duty.

"These reflections it were easy to amplify and enlarge, but enough, it is hoped has been advanced to convince you, that the love of God is not a blind inexplicable principle, proceeding we know not whence, and tending we know not whither, and consisting in we know not what; it is not an unaccountable attraction; it is not an unenlightened glow of heart; it is not the overflowing of a sensual joy; it is not the ecstacy of a mysterious devotion; it is nothing above the capacity of all men to understand, or above the power of all men to attain; nothing contrary to, or surpassing human nature it needs not to hide itself for fear of disgrace, for it has no connexion with the perversion of any human principle; but, on the contrary, it is in the depraved heart alone that it cannot subsist: it has no dependence on ignorance or darkness; on the contrary, it is only from true and important knowledge that it can proceed.

"The love of God is one of the most natural operations of the human heart, the most obvious and self-approved direction of its sentiments; for it is to admire, what is perceived to be truly admirable; to esteem, what is infinitely worthy to be esteemed; and to cherish in our hearts with complacency and delight, the idea of what confessedly deserves our supreme affection: it is, to cultivate a grateful sense of kindness that exceeds our tenderest thoughts, and of beneficence that passeth knowledge.— To be devoid of the love of God, not only betrays an unnatural opposition to the dictates of self-love, and of charity; but also to that other powerful and amiable principle, by whatever namne you call it, which recommends all moral goodness to our hearts. It implies a strange insensibility to our own happiness, to the happiness of our brethren, and to the noblest obligations; a criminal prostitution of our affections, and a perverseness and inconsistency of character, alike wretched, deplorable, and guilty," p. 170.

We are not however to understand by such expressions, that this affection is so natural as to be unavoidable, or even to be easily maintained. We conceive that there are many things, to which the tendency is strong, and yet that tendency may be prevented. Nay, in certain situations there may be such obstacles opposed, as may render it exceedingly difficult to keep the natural direction. Such may be the situation of men in their present existence. They are so formed by their Creator as unavoidably to love goodness, whenever they have a fair and full perception of it, and to love the Infinitely Good, whenever they receive a full impression of his character. But here is the difficulty, to receive this impression. The state of discipline, in which they are placed, has many hindrances. Their attention is perpetually drawn away and arrested by other objects, and the most glorious is obscured; so that without careful pains, diligence, reflection, watchfulness, they pass it by unheeded; they do not see it; and, not seeing, of course do not love it. For, intimate knowledge and close perception of the excellence of the Divine character are essential to the

love of it. If a child be not intimately acquainted with its mother, it will not love her; yet love to parents is a natural affection.

Our author, aware of all this, goes on in the next discourse to speak of the circumstances which hinder the growth of this affection, and the care and diligence required to keep it alive. It is full of wisdom, and cannot fail to delight and improve the serious reader. We quote from the first division.

"The very means by which the love of God must make its impression, are themselves capable of excluding it from our hearts, and instead of leading us to him, of engrossing our affection and attention to themselves. The works of God, the laws and events of providence, and even the word of God itself, are all capable of exciting in us many different sentiments, besides the love of him; sentiments that have no connexion with it; and that, in some instances, are even repugnant to it.

"We may gaze upon the works of nature, and be highly entertained with the views that they exhibit to us; we may attend to the course of providence, and be deeply affected by the various scenes through which we pass; we may have the word of God every morning and every evening in our hands, and yet, for all this, the love of God may be a stranger to our hearts-a stranger there it will be, if, whilst we are conversing with his word, his providence, and his works, we have it not in our intention and desire to conceive and to cultivate this affection. Each of them present a variety of objects in every scene that they set before us, capable of exciting a variety of affections: and unless, whilst we contemplate this variety, our attention be particularly and expressly directed to the display manifested by them of those attributes of God, which render him the object of our admiration and love, our minds will be diverted from one object to another, and distracted by a succession of very different impressions and affections.

"To love God, we must have lively apprehensions of his excellencies, and to attain these, our attention must not spend itself on those sensible and external things which comprehend the notices of them; it must not be wasted on the mirror, it must look upon the image it contains; it must not be diverted by any foreign object, but fixed and regulated by the sin cere desire, and the express intention to possess our hearts with the love of God. And, after all, to whatever degree of vivacity this affection may be raised by the power of serious contemplation, it will quickly need to be revived again. It is a plant too delicate not to stand in need of constant and unwearied tendance, and perhaps, with all our care, it may be impossible in this world that it should at all times be preserved in equal health and vigour. Yet, the influence of the love of God upon our temper and conduct, may be, and ought to be habitual. To render them habitual however, it is necessary that the impressions of the divine excellencies should from time to time be renewed upon our hearts; that the affection should from time to time be rekindled there, and that the intervals of renewing and rekindling these impressions and affections, should not be too distant.

"Though the effects of any sentiment upon our temper and conduct may remain after the sentiment itself has subsided in our hearts, yet these effects will be impaired by the power of time alone; and the succession of other sentiments will assist the power of time to impair them. The influences of any affection whatever, which survive the affection itself, will be

in proportion, not only to the vivacity in which the affection is conceived, but also to the frequency with which it is cherished and revived.

They who are best acquainted with the love of God, in whose hearts it is most familiar, and over whose lives it has most power, can tell you, how much this sentiment, and the salutary influences of it, are liable to suffer from the cares of this world; even from the necessary avocations and the indispensable business of life. They can tell you, how this affection needs to be refreshed from day to day, by serious conversation with the works, the providence, and the word of God. They can tell you, what power it derives by withdrawing from the cares and influences of the world, to attend upon the ordinances of religion; and they can tell you too, how necessary a devout and habitual attendance is, not only to its im provement, but even to its preservation. With all their solicitude and care, they do not boast of its vivacity and power; they regret the interruptions that it often suffers, and the weakness in which it often languishes their comfort is, that God knows their frame and their condition, that they can appeal to him for their sincerity, and trust his mercy as to their imperfection. If, then, we are really desirous that the love of God should retain its due influence, we must, in the first place, exert a constant vigilance to guard against the various unfriendly influences of the many different objects by which we are surrounded, and of the various occupations in which we are necessarily engaged." pp. 175-177.

The sermon is concluded by some animated and glowing appeals on the utter inconsistency of worldly-mindedness with this holy affection.

There are four other discourses connected with the same subject, showing the incompatibility of the love of pleasure with the love of God, and describing the characteristics of those who are governed by the love of pleasure. And, we must be permitted to say, we consider these discourses among the most admirable we have seen, for their solemn and impressive eloquence, the high standard of moral purity they uphold, and the hallowed spirit of piety they exhibit. And yet, though they allow no quarter to fashionable levity, or vulgar vice in any form, but would sweep them as foul contaminations from God's earth; yet there is nothing like indiscriminate railing against the enjoyments of time; no cynical and fanatic outcry against even the innocent pleasures of life. The preacher keeps his temper, and does not lose sight of his common sense. He begins, as a man of enlarged views would always do, with stating that every species of pleasure is not incompatible with the love of God, or religion; well knowing that thus he should gain a greater influence to his reasonings and exhortations respecting those which are incompatible. We have not room to quote as largely as we wish. Our readers must be content with a few short extracts, until they can read the whole for themselves.

"It is not when the heart is captivated by the frivolous amusements, or when the eye is dazzled with “the pride of life," that we can see, or are disposed to see the manifestations of the glory of God. So long as our views are attracted by the glare of worldly vanities, or centered on the object of some sensual desire, the discoveries of God's glory, however obvious, and however clear, will elude our observation; they will be to us as if they were not. If the current of our affections be directed towards sensible objects, and the force of habit have once fixed them in that channel, it will carry all our thoughts along with it, and will leave us little inclination, and indeed little power, to employ our attention upon any thing, that has not some obvious relation to those scenes and objects in which we have our principal delight. It avails not that our general apprehensions of God, his character and government, may be just. General apprehensions are always too languid and obscure to awaken the affections of the heart. It is only by a serious and continued attention to the particular displays of the perfections of God, that the correspondent sentiments can be excited in our breasts: while our attention is engrossed by other objects, whatever we may know of him in general, our love to him will not rise." p. 191.

"But our love of God depends upon the moral sensibility of our hearts, for it must arise out of our perception of the moral excellencies of his character. In his eternity, he is awful; in his omnipotence, he is tremendous; it is in the moral glories of his character, that God is the object of our esteem, our veneration, and our love. It is his purity, his equity, his veracity, his fidelity, his love of virtue, his abborrence of unrighteousness; bis attention to the wants, his condescension to the frailties of his creatures, his tender mercies, and his liberal beneficence which extends itself to all his works; these are the perfections that we love in God, and in proportion to our sensibility to the excellence of these perfections, will be the vivacity of the love we bear him. If we discern nothing excellent in these, we shall discern nothing excellent in God, except those attributes of independence and of power, which, separated from his moral glories, would render him an object of terror, rather than of love. If our hearts are become so callous that these moral beauties can make no impression on them, the love of God can have no admittance there." p. 192.

But to return, You are saying to yourselves, perhaps, that your pleasures are none of them forbidden pleasures, and that you need not to be warned against the practices of which you are not guilty. Indeed, my friends, I would gladly hope, that to warn you against pleasures that are decidedly licentious, to exhort you to beware of criminal indulgencies, whether of appetite or imagination, would be superfluous and impertinent. You, I would willingly persuade myself, have not so learned Christ-You are too well acquainted with his doctrine concerning the conditions of acceptance with your Maker, to think of reconciling the hope of future happiness, with the indulgence, either of the lust of the flesh, or the lusts of the eye, or of the pride of life" in any forbidden instance, or by any forbidden means. But is it unknown to you, that no man suddenly becomes abandoned? Is it unknown to you, that vice steals into the heart by imperceptible degrees, and acquires her dominion over us in such manner and by such means as may be least alarming? Is it unknown to you, that she allures our approaches towards her, first by one step. in which considered in itself there may be nothing blameable, and afterwards by another, which compared with the former may be very little different from it, till, at length, by differences so minute that they escape our notice, or perhaps even encourage our advances, she accomplishes the greatest revolutions in our character, and alters it from good, to less good. less good to evil, from evil, downwards through its various stages, till

we arrive at last at the most abandoned? Is this, my friends, unknown to you?--Are you so ignorant of the deceitfulness of sin, of the power of habit, and the influence of example, as, that in an age when the love of pleasure seems to be continually gaining ground upon the love of God, the caution to beware of it should be deemed superfluous? It cannot be. Vice ever lays hold on some natural propensity to bring us into her power; a good reason surely why we should keep an attentive eye and a steady rein upon these principles of our frame that are most seducible, and the more steady, and the more attentive, in proportion as external circumstances favour their undue increase, or encourage and facilitate their corruption. "If there be, as you have seen there is, a real opposition between the love of pleasure and the love of God, it behoves us at every time and in every scene, to set a guard upon this principle; but, in a scene and at a time in which almost every thing around us, tends to induce, to inflame, and to embolden this principle, it behoves us to be doubly vigilant and resolute to restrain its wanderings, and to check its growth.

"I will suppose, if you will have it so, that you neither are guilty, nor in danger of becoming guilty, of any such voluptuous indulgencies, as, considered singly, and in themselves, are criminal; yet you have no reason to conclude from this, that in respect to the love of pleasure, either your temper or your conduct is what it ought to be. Though none of your pleasurable gratifications, considered singly, be criminal either in their nature or in, their degree, yet, notwithstanding this, your character may still be exceedingly inexcusable and unworthy. It is not merely the criminal gratifications of this passion that are inconsistent with the love of God, it caunot consist with even a prevailing taste for pleasure. Where the desire and the pursuit of pleasure have formed and fixed the habits of the mind, there, in that mind, there is no room for the love of God. Sensuality and levity of spirit, though they should be so restricted, by regard to credit, or to interest, or by any other principle, as never to break out into any flagrant violations of the law of God, are, nevertheless, where they constitute the temper of the heart, irreconcileable enemies to the genuine love of God.—Do not then, my friends, soothe yourselves with the thought, that your pleasures are neither of the basest nature, nor indulged to an extravagant degree; consider what your temper is; what are your prevailing affections; what are your habitual pursuits? Is pleasure, not spiritual or moral, but worldly pleasure of some species or other, the idea that first meets you in these several inquiries? You are not then uninterested in any admonition that warns you to beware of the love of pleasure. Do not flatter yourselves with the reflection, that carnality or levity is not your appropriate character." pp. 205-207.

Take also the conclusion of the whole.

"My friends, you have much to do with God; yourselves and every thing in which you have any interest, are absolutely in his hands. You have far more important transactions with him than any that you are conscious of in this world; it will not be very long before the youngest of this audience will find it so. The time will come, I could tell the day beyond which it will not be deferred, but the day before which it will not come, I cannot tell; the time will come, when you will find this world vanishing away, and another opening upon you, this world of trial ending for ever unto you, and a sense of everlasting recompense commencing. You know as well as I do, would to God that you would let the idea sink deep into your hearts, that the round of this world's pleasures will not last for ever. New Series-vol. I 7