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employments; abstracted from the ordinary occupations of a fleeting and uncertain life, and dedicated to the concerns of an existence which will be without end. The importance of the object might well claim such provisions.

The power of miracles necessary for the first success of a new faith, which was to take possession of the world without violence, has ceased since that faith was rooted and confirmed; and gospel truths confided to human custody, and guarded by civil establishments, as the highest privileges we can enjoy, are unfolded and propagated by congenial institutions. If not taught, they will be unknown; if not obtruded on the recollection, they may be forgotten. "How "shall they call on Him in whom they have "not believed, and how shall they believe in "Him of whom they have not heard? and "how shall they hear without a preacher " ?” It is not for us to say what other plan Providence might ordain for the preservation of the Christian faith, if the system here established should be forcibly overthrown, or

h Rom. x. 14.

tamely resigned; it is sufficient to know, that the means which we use have been sanctioned in a parallel case by the divine adoption, and have been found adequate to their end; and we may well doubt whether man can propose a wiser course than that which has been sanctioned by the divine adoption.

The adoration of the closet applies only to the individual; household prayer comprises the family. Both these are unsoliciting and unostentatious acts of devotion: they may unhappily be omitted till the time once set apart for their performance shall be regularly occupied by other business, and the consciousness of its recurrence obliterated from the mind. But a nation's worship is guarded by stricter forms, is imposed by more observable circumstances; it is directed by more instructed agents, it is executed in a more solemn manner. The service of the Church cannot be neglected till it is forgotten. He who pertinaciously absents himself commits a wilful and conscious act of disobedience on every revolving sabbath. This sacred day cannot steal past unnoticed: the universal pause

of business must awaken the mind of the most thoughtless; the appearance of these sacred edifices attracts his eye; the solemn sounds by which we are summoned to worship strike his ear. All these methods has a wise spirit of legislation adopted in order to call the human attention during one day in seven from the perishable concerns of this world, and direct it to those of another to which we are fast approaching, and which will be without end. That object to which the Apostle professes that he dedicated his two Epistles, namely, the putting men duly in remembrance of those truths in which they were already instructed, was surely worthy the care of those who believed in the doctrines delivered by the Apostles.

Wherefore, “What prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, or by all 'thy people, which shall know every man "the plague of his own heart, and spread

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forth his hands toward this house, then “hear thou in heaven thy dwelling-place, "and forgive, and do, and give to every man "according to his ways, whose heart thou "knowest; (for thou, even thou only, know

"est the hearts of all the children of men ;) "that they may fear thee all the days that

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they live in the land which thou gavest "unto our fathers."

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