SERMON VIII.

A Taste for Devotion.

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PSALM lxiii. 5, 6.

My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips; when I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate upon thee in the night watches.

Ir is a grand point to be acquainted with the arguments which forcibly attach us to religion. It is great to be able to arrange, with conclusive propriety, the arguments which render virtue preferable to vice. It is a high favour to be able to proceed from principle to principle, and from consequence to consequence, so as to say in one's own breast, I am persuaded that a good man is happy.

But how sublime soever this way of soaring to God may be, it is not always sufficient. Arguments may indeed impose silence on the passions; but they are not always sufficiently cogent to eradicate them. However conclusive demonstrations may be in a book, in a school, in the closet, they appear extremely weak, and of inadequate force, when opposed to sentiments of anguish, or the attractions of pleasure. The arguments adduced to suffer for religion, lose

much of their efficacy, not to say of their evidence, when proposed to a man broken alive on the wheel, or consuming on a pile. The arguments for resisting the flesh; for rising superior to matter and sense, vanish for the most part, on viewing the objects of concupiscence. How worthy, then, is the man of pity, who knows no way of approaching God, but that of discussion and argument!

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There is one way of leading us to God much more safe; and of inducing to abide in fellowship with him, whenever it is embraced it is the way of taste and of sentiment. Happy the man, who in the conflicts to which he is exposed from the enemy of his soul, can oppose pleasure to pleasure, and joy to joy; the pleasures of piety and of converse with heaven to the pleasure of the world; the delights of recollection and solitude to those of parties, of dissipation, and of theatres! Such a man is firm in his duty, because he is a man; and because it depends not on man to refuse affection to what opens to his soul the fountains of life. Such a man is attached to religion by the same motives which attach the world to the objects of their passions, because it affords him ineffable pleasures. Such a man has support in the time of temptation, because the peace of God which passeth all understanding, keeps, so to speak, the propensities of his heart, and the divine comforts which inundate his soul, obstruct his being drawn away to sin.

Let us attend to-day to a great master in the science of salvation. It is our prophet. He knew the rational way of coming to God. Thy word, said he to himself, is a lamp unto my feet,

and a lantern to

my paths. Psa. cxix. 105. But he knew also the way of taste and of sentiment. He said to God in the words of my text, not only that he was persuaded and convinced; but that religion charmed, ravished, and absorbed his soul by its comforts. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips; when I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate upon thee in the night watches.-In discussing the subject,

I. We shall trace the emotions of our prophet, and to give you the ideas, if it be possible to give them, of what we understand by the piety of taste and sentiment. ·

II. We shall consider the words with regard to the humiliation they reflect on the most part of Christians; and, inquire into the judgment we ought to form of our own state, when destitute of the piety of sentiment and taste, so consoling to a regenerate soul.

III. We shall investigate the cause of this calamity.

IV. We shall propose some maxims for the acquisition of this piety, the want of which is so deplorable; and to enable you to say with David, My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips, when I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate upon thee in the night watches.

1. We must define what we understand by the piety of taste and sentiment. Wishful to compress the subject, we shall not oppose profanation to eminent piety, nor apparent piety to that which is genu

ine. We shall oppose reality to reality; true piety to true piety; and the religion of the heart to that which is rational and argumentative. A few examples, derived from human life, will illustrate this article of religion.

Suppose two pupils of a philosopher, both emulous to make a proficiency in science; both attentive to the maxims of their master; both surmounting the greatest difficulties to retain a permanent impression of what they hear. But the one finds study a fatigue like the man tottering under a burden: to him study is a severe and arduous task: he hears because he is obliged to hear what is dictated. The other, on the contrary, enters into the spirit of study; its pains are compensated by its pleasures: he loves truth for the sake of truth; and not for the sake of the encomiums conferred on literary characters, and the preceptors of science.

Take another example. The case of two warriors, both loyal to their sovereign; both alert and vigilant in military discipline, which, of all others, requires the greatest vigilance and precision; both ready to sacrifice life when duty shall so require; but the one groans under the heavy fatigues he endures, and sighs for repose his imagination is struck with the danger to which he is exposed by his honour: he braves dangers, because he is obliged to brave them; and because God will require an account of the public safety of those who may have had the baseness to sacrifice it to personal preservation: yet amid triumphs he envies the lot of the cottager, who having held the plough by day, finds the rewards at night of