This leads me to remark:

(4.) Sincere worshipers are about the Lord, as beggars crowd about a well-known benefactor, to solicit and receive a supply of their wants. We all want many things besides the pardon of sin and deliverance from wrath; and public supplication, grounded on the sight and sense of these wants, is an essential part of public worship. Of this we have impressive illustration in various passages of Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple. (2 Chronicles vi.) We come hither to pray for blessings temporal, and especially for blessings spiritual; for the daily renewing of the Holy Ghost; for wisdom and consolation, for power and victory, for grace and glory. We have likewise many family wants, and many social and collective ones: we have wants and solicitudes for our friends, for our country, and for our kind. No man should come to the house of God with all his thoughts centered on himself. We come hither as fellow-creatures; and draw near to our common Creator with intercessions for each other, and for all sorts and conditions of men. And we have no want, for ourselves or others, which he is not both able and willing to supply, according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. May we never neglect this branch of our devotional duty! This house is not likely to want a hearing congregation: may it always have a praying congregation!

(5.) Sincere worshipers are about the Lord, as children are wont to be about their father and friend, in the intercourse of domestic society, to express their affection and gratitude, and to hold delightful communion with him. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him; and, in his gracious dealings toward them, connects with the majesty of the Supreme Potentate all the winning sweetness and all the condescending familiarity of the indulgent parent. This intimacy of endearing intercourse, this freedom of unfettered access, they peculiarly experience in many of the ordinances of his house. Then, by the Spirit of adoption which dwells in them, they cry, "Abba, Father;" and come even to his seat, and order their cause before him. Filled with holy admiration and gratitude, they appeal to himself for the sin

cerity of their devotion; and exclaim, "Lord! thou knowest all things thou knowest that I cannot praise thee as I would, nor serve thee as I ought or as I desire to do; thou knowest much that is amiss in me, in these and other respects. But thou knowest all things; and this, therefore, thou knowestthou knowest that I love thee!" He accepts with complacency the overflowings of their filial love, and meets them with renewed expressions of his paternal tenderness and favor. He manifests himself unto them as he does not unto the world; and truly their fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. Finally,

(6.) Sincere worshipers are about the Lord, as servants are about their master, or soldiers about their commander, to receive his orders, and to execute his pleasure. Perhaps there is some allusion in the text to the encampments of the Israel⚫ites in the wilderness. The several tribes were stationed in a particular order round about the tabernacle, which was the special residence of Jehovah's glory at that period of the legal dispensation. Now, one great purpose of their being thus about the Lord was, certainly, the prompt and effectual regulation of their marches and their halts. They looked to the tabernacle, and the cloud which covered it, for direction, and implicitly obeyed the direction thus received. Of this you will find plain proof in the ninth chapter of the book of Numbers, from the fifteenth verse to the end. Thus, at verse 17, we read: "When the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, then after that the children of Israel journeyed: and in the place where the cloud abode, there the children of Israel pitched their tents." And at verse 23: "At the commandment of the Lord they rested in the tents, and at the commandment of the Lord they journeyed: they kept the charge of the Lord, at the commandment of the Lord by the hand of Moses." In imitation of the Israelites, we, my brethren, should make a practical use of the tabernacle of our God, and of all the instructions and ordinances with which we are favored. Our attendance is not to terminate in the acceptance of divine truth, nor in that mere temporary enjoyment which is the immediate result of devotional feelings. When

we have heard, and understood, and approved, and enjoyed, we must then prepare ourselves to obey. Thus our profiting will appear unto all men; and by the increased purity of our tempers and conduct, and by our visible improvement in all holy living, our families and neighbors will take knowledge of us, that in this place we have been with Jesus.

II. The reverence which it becomes us to maintain in such assemblies. "God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are about him."

1. The fear which is mentioned in the former clause, as due to God even from the assemblies of his saints, is an emotion very different from that of servile apprehension or shy distrust. For we ought to approach God with filial confidence; assured that saints are ever welcome to his courts, and lovely in his sight. It is not the fear which hath torment that he requires; for he bids us come boldly to the throne of grace. But it is fear of that kind which is described in the second clause as consisting in reverence. It implies such a temper of mind as is produced by the most high and honorable thoughts of God; and by a deep and abasing sense of our own sinfulness, and of our absolute dependence on his providence and grace. The temper resulting from such views and feelings as these is reverence; a temper perfectly consistent with filial confidence and holy love, while diametrically opposed to all that impudent rudeness, that careless levity, and that carnal, boastful, tumultuous joy, which some religionists have presumed to obtrude on their Maker as the effusions of simplicity and zeal, but which are, in fact, the offspring only of ignorance and pride. This holy reverence all who are about the Lord in the ordinances of public worship should be careful to maintain,

(1.) In their spirit. They should labor to get their inmost souls impressed with a solemn sense of the presence and majesty of God by serious meditation, by earnest prayer, and by a resolute abstraction of their thoughts from everything that would tend to divert them from their great work, or produce a trifling and indifferent frame of mind.

(2.) In their words. "Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil. Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few." The reverential style of expression which I am now recommending is grievously violated by many: particularly, by such as do not hesitate to apply to God or to Christ, in their prayers and praises, those amorous and luscious appellatives, those epithets, expressive of the fondness of human passion, which it has been well said, "must revolt a man who feels that he cannot meet the same Being at once on terms of adoration and of caressing equality." We Methodists are without excuse if we do not guard against this species of presumption, after the convincing testimony which Mr. Wesley has borne against it in his beautiful sermon "On knowing Christ after the flesh," a sermon which every one of us should read and study before taking any active part in conducting either our social or our public worship. That reverential solemnity which should characterize our prayers and our hymns, should also be maintained in the composition of those melodies in which the high praises of God are celebrated. "Religious harmony," says Jeremy Collier, quoted by Bishop Horne, "must be moving, but noble withal; grave, solemn, and seraphic; fit for a martyr to play, and an angel to hear." How contrary to this are the light and fantastic movements of some modern tunes, more suitable to the ball-room, or the theater, than to those holy places and holy subjects with which they have been profanely associated! Under pretense of promoting Christian cheerfulness and zeal, they have excited a spirit of levity more akin to the mirth of fools than to the calm and chastened joy of saints. This error, I confidently hope, will be studiously avoided by those to whose lot it will fall to conduct the devotional harmony of this place.

(3.) In their whole demeanor. Every part of our conduct in the house of God should bear testimony to the humbling consciousness which we entertain, or ought to entertain, of our

own littleness, and of the greatness and condescension of the PRESENT DEITY. In a place so consecrated everything boisterous and noisy, everything trifling and ludicrous, all intrusions of worldly pomp and parade, ought to be carefully excluded. Nothing of drowsiness, or even of indifference, should be suffered to appear in our countenances and postures. Every look, every gesture, every step, should manifest that we feel ourselves to be on holy ground; nor should any violation of decorum and propriety, of which we should be ashamed in the presence of an earthly monarch, be allowed to insult the infinitely greater dignity of the King of kings.

2. That God ought thus to be feared, even in the assemblies of his saints, appears from various considerations:

(1.) His character demands it. When at any time, in intercourse with our fellow-men, we find ourselves in the presence of superior wisdom, or superior power, or even of superior goodness, we are naturally impressed with a corresponding sentiment of veneration. And shall not the infinite intelligence, and power, and goodness of the most high God excite reverence and humility? "Forasmuch as there is none like unto thee, O Lord; thou art great, and thy name is great in might. Who would not fear thee, O king of nations for to thee doth it appertain: forasmuch as among all the wise men of the nations, and in all their kingdoms, there is none like unto thee." (Jeremiah x, 6, 7.) Such is the God whom we adore. Now, when we are about him, when we are listening to messages from him, when we are supplicating his favor or celebrating his praises, is not the slightest approach to levity or irreverence inexpressibly unbecoming?

(2.) Consider, likewise, your own past character as sinners. Even angels, who have kept their first estate, who never violated their fealty, or forfeited their innocence-even those "first-born sons of light" are represented by our great poet, and that on scriptural authority, as manifesting toward their Maker the most profound veneration :

"Dark with excessive bright his skirts appear;

Yet dazzle heaven, that brightest seraphim

Approach not, but with both wings vail their eyes."