But in communing with your heart, you should not be fatisfied on finding nothing very criminal there. If you have attained fo far, commune with it a little more clofely. Confider, that you are not only inftructed to leave off wickednefs; but to do good. You find, for inftance, on looking into yourfelf, that altho you have never cheated your neighbour, you have rarely fhewn any kindness, and tendernefs to him-that, on moft occafions, you have rather been the priest, and the levite, than the good Samaritan. You have paffed by on the other fide, when you have seen him in distress; you have purpofely shut your eyes, inftead of running to relieve him. Thus again, on communing with your heart, tho you find, you neither prophane the name of God by fwearing; nor fpend his fabbaths in idle paftimes; nor neglect either public, or private devotion; yet ftill you cannot but perceive, the world has your affections; and that your heart does not know the meaning of having it's converfation in heaven. You believe indeed in God: but you trust in the world. You talk of heavenly things: but it is from earthly things that you expect your happiness. You go to church: but your pray ers ers are lifeless. It is irkfome to you to attend the public worship of God. You are glad, when it is over, that you may be again among your amufements, or in your business. Your body perhaps may be in a pofture of devotion: but your thoughts are gadding abroad in the world, and bufy in all its concerns. You feel your heart dead to all the offices of religion. You receive daily bleffings from God-your life-your foodyour cloathing-the means of happiness both here and hereafter a thousand comforts a thousand mercies but your heart feels no impreffions of gratitude. It is rarely raised to heaven, in one fervent thanksgiving. You read the fcriptures indeed occafionally; but you read them with coldness, inattention, and indifference. Your heart feels none of the comforts they fhould adminifter. You may know what they contain: you can point out without book perhaps our Saviour's miracles; and are minutely acquainted with the circumftances of his life and death: but is your fpirit fo impreffed with what you read, as to be conformed to their fpirit? Do Do you feel the effect of what Chrift and his apoftles fay; and take pains to perfuade yourself, that what they fay, they are speak. tality of the foul: but you feel more delight in the comforts of your body. You wish to go to heaven but you would be glad, in your road thither, to stop, and take up all the pleasures of the world as you go along. Thus you profefs yourself a chriftian: but where is that true, fincere faith in Chrift, which leads to good works→→ where is the holinefs, the devotion, the piety, and the purity, which can make you in earneft a difciple of the bleffed Jefus ? If you a&, as you ought, you will call yourself to account for all this lukewarmnefs. You will commune with your heart. Such worldly habits, you will cry, can never purify my foul. They can never fit it for a place of holiness.-Heaven is a state of holiness; and if I wish to arrive there, I must make my foul holy like it. God hath promised me everlasting happiness; but he requires me firft to earn it, if I may fo fpeak, by paffing religioufly through a state of trial. Let me then strive to awaken every feeling of my heart let me daily commune with it; that by thinking earneftly on the mercies of God in Christ, I may gain that heavenly difpofition, which alone can fit me for his kingdom. Thus Thus my brethren, I have confidered the principal fins, infirmities, and deficiencies, which, more or lefs, we all feel, and which we fhall all be enabled to discover in ourselves, by applying the text as we ought, and communing with our hearts. I need not employ more time in impreffing the neceffity of it. You fee, in two words, the state of the cafe. You know this world will not allow you to fin on for ever. That is a clear point. There must be an end in one fhape or other. The queftion therefore comes to this: repent of your fins, on one hand; You must either or, on the other, midst of them. God will cut you off in the There is no middle way.-Now, which of these two methods you will take, God hath given you the liberty to chufe. If you chufe to continue in your fins, and not endeavour to amend your lives, you have your option-you must take the confequence. But if you chufe rather to repent of your fins, than to be cut off in the midft of them; then the text comes in with its ufeful advice. The first step in amending your faults, is to make yourfelves acquainted with them; and this can only be done by communing with your own hearts.-May God's bleffing affift you in fettling this very ferious |