ceptance of his creatures; but if it be a communication of unmerited love and goodness, it demands a ready, a cheerful, a grateful faith. Receive then the scriptures of divine truth, as they are indeed the only true guide, in the path of wisdom, to everlasting life. Put away from you all vain scepticism and unbelief. Ask the light of the Holy Spirit to shine upon his own word, and reflect it impressively upon your souls ;-then will that blessed agent come, unlock the treasures of the heavenly kingdom, lead you into his marvellous light, and "stablish, strengthen, settle you in the faith."

3. You owe obedience to the precepts and admonitions of the word of God-faith, love, and obedience, are all united: faith operates by love, and obedience is the fruit of both. "If ye love me," said Christ to his disciples, "keep my commandments." This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments." It is in the nature of love to seek to please its object;-if, therefore, you love God, you will do those things that are pleasing in his sight. And your love to God, and your reliance on

his word, will not merely suggest to you this obligation to obedience, but make obedience itself a pleasure. While you contemplate God with emotions of filial gratitude, as your Father, you will be delighted in acknowledging him as your law-giver; and whatever gratifications you may derive from your services to a fellow-creature, your chief satisfaction will be found in the consciousness of pleasing God. The more you cultivate love to him in your hearts, the more pleasurable will be obedience to his will. "I delight," says the apostle, "in the law of God, after the inward man.' And the Psalmist exclaims, "O how love I thy law it is my meditation all the day." Again, the practice of obedience to the precepts and admonitions of God's word, is not only pleasurable, but highly profitable, to him who loves God. David speaks of them as "sweeter than honey, or the honey-comb;" and declares, at the same time, that "in keeping of them there is great reward." If such be the happy state of your hearts, and such the sweet experience of which you are conscious, you will readily acknowledge that

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4. You owe to God the devout worship he prescribes in his word. Of obedience to the divine precepts we have just spoken in general terms: we would now in a particular manner, yet briefly, urge your attention to that expression of his will which God has made in his word, respecting the worship he requires. That God is to be worshipped, is a fundamental doctrine in all religions, true or false: here we have to do with the true and everliving God, and the worship due to him. This he has prescribed in his own word; the lip of truth has there taught us that "God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." The worship he requires is, therefore, spiritual. Adoration, prayer and praise; the hearing of the word of God, and meditating upon it, which are all parts of christian worship, must be exercises of the heart and mind. The nature and character of the Deity himself suggest, in a great measure, the kind of worship which he will accept. He is in himself the incorporeal, all-wise, omniscient, and altogether holy, Spirit;-nothing, therefore, merely ex

ternal, no bodily exercise, no pomp or ceremony, can be to him sufficient, or satisfactory worship. The attitude of adoration without the heart, is solemn mockery;-the voice of praise without heart-melody, is "sounding brass and tinkling cymbals;" the language of prayer, if the soul is not in it, is an abomination; and to come to the house of God as his people come, and to sit before him as his people sit, while the heart is far from him, is an hypocrisy which God abhors. Whatever worship you offer to God, however splendid it may be in the sight of men, however acceptable to human ears, if destitute of the heart, is rejected of God." What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord." He claims the heart as his due; and, rather than go without it, he condescends to ask it as a gift. He says to each of you, as you draw near to worship him, "My son, give me thy heart." He will, he Young profes

can, accept of nothing less. sors, consider this! Charge your souls betimes to reverence the Lord your God, and to render to him a holy and a pure worship. Remember the words which he spake by

Moses, saying, "I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me." This he still demands of his worshippers; and, as he cannot be deceived, think of the fearfully perilous ground on which the heartless formal worshipper must stand before him. "Search, therefore, and try your ways, and turn again to the Lord: lift up your heart, with your hands, to God in the heavens." Let me press upon each of you, as you would deprecate the wrath of the Most High, as you would be approved and accepted of him, to take to yourself the solemn admonition of David to his son :-" And thou, Solomon, my son, know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind; for the Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts: if thou seek him, he will be found of thee; but if thou forsake him he will cast thee off for ever." Let every young person who hears or reads this sacred counsel, appropriate it to his own benefit: let him enter devoutly into its spirit, and make it the law of his practice. Then will he know the blessedness of the man "whom the Lord