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Another effect of this Christian love to ministers will be prayer for them. We are required to intercede for all men, but in an especial manner for those who watch over us in the faith. If he who was not " a whit behind" the chief of the apostles thought it necessary, upon various occasions, to say to the Hebrews, the Ephesians, the Thessalonians, " Pray for us," it is surely no disparagement to modern pastors to suppose that they stand in need of the same assistance, and no enthusiasm to expect that the sincere prayers of their flock will be effectual to the same end. In the public services of the church, we earnestly remember our ministers at the throne of mercy, and there are few manuals of prayer for individuals, or for families, in which they are forgotten; so that we have no possible excuse for the neglect of this easy and interesting obligation.

Were we duly to appreciate the difficulties and the responsibility of the sacred function, we could not fail to supplicate the especial blessing of God for all on whom it has devolved; and amongst these, our own pastors ought, evidently, to claim a distinct enumeration. Our benevolent wishes will also rebound upon ourselves; for we are never so likely to derive profit, as from one for whom we have supplicated the throne of mercy.

Such then are some of the effects of Christian affec

their charity rather by what they do not, than by what they do; and will impute to avarice or want of feeling what resulted from uncontrollable necessity.

How easily might these effects be prevented, and the visits of ministers be rendered doubly agreeable to themselves, and doubly useful both to the bodies and souls of the afflicted poor, by a very trifling sum given into their hands for this purpose by those who are able, and are therefore in duty bound, to assist in relieving their burdened neighbors. The sums, though very considerable, which the laws of the country require, by no means discharge us from voluntary alms, if our means are adequate to the demand. We give nothing from genuine philanthropy if we give only what we cannot withhold.

tion. By the reciprocal discharge of these interesting duties, the ministerial relation will be rendered mutually useful and happy, till that eventful moment arrives, in which the distinction between pastors and their flock will be forever forgotten, by all becoming "one fold under one Shepherd."

COMPARATIVE VIEW OF NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION.

In looking around among the majority of professed believers in revelation, a serious observer is sometimes induced mentally to ask,-"In what manner do these persons differ from mere deists?" Their character, perhaps, is not immoral: but this single mark is too equivocal to stamp their designation; for natural religion enjoins morality, while health, and comfort, and the hopes of respect in society, all combine to render it eligible.

As yet, therefore, there is nothing exclusively Christian in their deportment.-" But they occasionally, or even habitually, attend Christian worship." A prudent or time-serving deist may do this, from a regard to decorum, or popular sentiment, or the well-being of society, which he acknowledges could not exist without some show of religion; and Christianity being, he thinks, not worse, and probably better, than others, he adopts it, with all its supposed evils, for the sake of its exterior good effects.

But perhaps the persons in question really believe the articles of the Christian faith-so far is well; yet if their creed be merely an unmeaning recognition, they are still not necessarily unsuitable companions for the deist, who will scarcely wrangle with them for a latent article of belief, so long as they contrive that it shall have no visible effect upon their conduct or their heart.

What then is their real religious system? Why evidently they have none. Religion has never seriously entered into their calculations. So far, however, as their ideas have attained a definite shape, we may perceive a few principles of what is called natural religion, mingled with certain crude, ill-understood notions from revelation, but without any harmony or proportion in the general design.

The persons under consideration, while they do not deny the truths of Christianity, seem to think it somewhat too strict in its requisitions. Though they do not perform, as they admit, all that scripture, strictly construed, may seem to require, they comfort themselves with supposing that they observe with tolerable propriety all that the light of nature suggests, and all therefore that God in reality demands. Their domestic and social relations, we are told, are respectably filled: they are useful and honorable members of the community; so that, upon a general review of their character, they fondly conclude, that whoever may be finally excluded from the joys of heaven, they at least shall not be among the unhappy number.

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In reasoning upon the subject of religion, especially with those who acknowledge the truth of revelation, it is not always safe to quit scriptural ground, and to recur to the principles of merely natural theology. however, the practice be on any occasion allowable, it is surely so in making the endeavor to convince the professed Christian of the unsuitability of his conduct to the dictates of revealed religion, by showing how completely he falls short even of the imperfect standard of deistical philosophy. For this purpose, it will be endeavored, in the succeeding pages of this essay, to point out a few prominent characteristics of what is called natural religion, with the corresponding duties and obligations of its professor. Deists themselves, though in their own conduct often the most profligate of men, have yet sometimes inculcated in their writings,

almost universally diffused, is more probably the result of reasoning and argument, if not of remote tradition, than of an innate persuasion necessarily coeval with the first dawnings of the human understanding. To vindicate the goodness and justice of God, which may seem to our feeble reason to require that he should not leave himself without witness in the conscience of any intelligent being, it is by no means necessary to suppose the idea of his existence to be a native impression. If such an idea really exists, it matters not, in the present argument, in what manner it was derived.

On the present occasion, therefore, disquisitions of this kind are by no means required; for if a duty has been explicitly admitted by deists themselves, (whatever might be their motive for its admission,) it will equally answer the present purpose,-namely, that of appealing to the consciences of professed Christians,— whether the duty were really suggested by natural reason, or whether, being first disclosed by divine revelation, it appeared so rational, that even those who rejected revelation in general could not refuse to admit that individual precept.

Natural religion, as professed by deists, is founded, in common with revealed, upon a belief of the existence of God. From this primary doctrine spring all our moral obligations; so that nothing can be more important than to keep it ever present to our view.— We cannot, indeed, easily find persons who formally and avowedly deny it; but a considerable degree of practical forgetfulness on the subject is almost universal.

For this forgetfulness, the best remedy is indeed the constant perusal of the sacred volume. There we uniformly perceive traces of the Divinity: there his nature, his perfections, his offices are plainly unfolded. We are explicitly taught in what manner he made, and in what manner he governs the world. Scarcely any event is recorded without evident marks of his interposition. The whole volume of revelation, therefore,

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