But are we domestics of this favoured family? Should it be asked, how is this to be ascertained? the answer is ready. How would you ascertain whether you belonged to any other family from which you were naturally an alien? You would inquire, Has any agreement taken place between its master and me? Am I conscious of having offered myself to his service, and of acceptance by him? Do I really serve him? Do I partake of the provisions of his family, wear his livery, and lodge under his roof? Am I under his controul, and do I obey his will? In every well-ordered family there are rules to be observed, and privileges to be enjoyed. Am I conformed to the former, and do I enjoy the latter?" His ser"yants we are whom we obey."

It is a peculiarity of this household that the relations of child and servant are united in all its members. Every servant is the adopted child of the Householder, and every child is His willing and obedient servant. This consideration adds greatly to the comfort which is derivable from the image in our collect.

For God's household the church we now offer up our prayers. It is supposed that, as its members, we feel interested in the Divine Master's honour and advantage, and in the prosperity of all and every part of the family. But do we feel a lively interest therein? If we do not, surely our prayer is hypocritical, and we have reason to suspect the reality of our professed relation to the family. While we pray for the church, we are supposed to be praying for ourselves as constituent parts thereof. Oh, let us ascertain that we are so! For all who are without its circle are "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise; without

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God and without hope." God's family and Satan's comprise the whole human race. What inquiry can be more important than that which naturally arises from a review of this subject? "Whose am I, and whom do I serve?"

We proceed to consider what is implored in our collect on behalf of the church. We pray God to "keep His household the church in con"tinual Godliness." God's household is a Godly household; and we pray that He would keep it such.

But what is Godliness? It is defined in our church-catechism by the answer which is given to the question, "What is thy duty towards God?"

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My duty towards God, is to believe in Him, to "fear Him, and to love Him, with all my heart, "with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength; to worship Him, to give Him thanks, to put my whole trust in Him, to call upon Him, to honour His holy name and His "word, and to serve Him truly all the days of my "life." Godliness then is a supreme and universal regard to God in all our thoughts, words, and actions, influencing the heart and manifested in the conduct. It is a restoration of the Divine image; a participation of the Divine nature.

Godliness is carefully to be distinguished from morality. "That mere morality makes the sum and substance of practical religion, carries in it a double falsehood. It contracts the range of Christian duty, and it totally misrepresents the formal nature of the thing. In direct contradiction to this wicked maxim, I affirm, that although religion includes morality, as the greater perfection includes the less, so that an immoral man cannot be religious; yet a man may be irre, proachable in his moral conduct, and at the same

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time perfectly irreligious and profane: irreligious and profane in that extreme, as to be in danger of being cast at last into outer darkness, with his whole load of moral merit on his back. The notion that religion and morality are the same, generally as it hath too long prevailed, needs no other confutation, but what will spontaneously arise from a just definition of the terms. ligion, in the practical part, is a studious conformity of our actions, our wills, and our appetites, to the revealed will of God, in pure regard to the Divine authority, and to the relation in which we stand to God, as discovered to us by revelation. Morality is a conformity of our actions to the relation, in which we stand to each other in civil society. Morality therefore comprehends some considerable part, but a part only, of the duties of the second table.

"With the higher branch of duty, with the love of God, and of consequence with the duties of the first table, morality hath evidently no concern or connection. The worship, which I owe to God, is certainly no part of the duty which I owe to man. It is indifferent to morality, whether I worship one God, or many. Morality is not offended, if I worship graven images. Morality enjoins no observance of one day in seven; no feast of faith in sacramental rites upon the body and blood of the Redeemer. For reason, from which morality derives her whole authority and information-reason knows not, till she hath been taught by the lively oracles of God, that the Creator of the world is the sole object of worship; she knows of no prohibition of particular modes of worship; she knows nothing of the creation of the world in seven days; nothing of redemption; nothing of the spiritual life, and the

food brought down from heaven for its sustenance. Morality, therefore, having no better instructress than this ignorant reason, hath no sense or knowledge of that great branch of duty which comes under the general title of devotion

No clergyman, I apprehend, would be at a loss to find among his own parishioners, more than one person living in good credit and esteem among his neighbours, irreproachable in his general dealings with the world, a prudent manager of his affairs, and of consequence not addicted to any public scandalous excess; but, with all this, grossly negligent of religious ordinances. Go and expostulate with such a man; tell him that you are sorry to observe, that he is seldom seen at church-that he never comes to the Lord's table-that he never sends his children to be instructed in the catechism-that from these symptoms, notwithstanding the general probity of his life, you are apprehensive, he thinks less than it may be his interest to do about the concerus of futurity. The man, who is by no means lost to all sense of duty, will take your admonition in good part, but he will defend himself. And his defence will be, that he is at least a MORAL man. Press him farther. Ask him what particular merit he means to attribute to himself under that character; would he be understood to plead not guilty to your accusation; would he pretend that he is a scrupulous observer of the sabbath-never absent without necessity from public worship, and frequent in his attendance on the Lord's table? He will confess to you that he means no such thing-the contrary is notorious-and he would

face to so gross a falsehood. Does he mean that, notwithstanding his neglect of the external forms of religion, he hath still been exact in the better part, in the social duties of the Christian life? That he is liberal in almstender-hearted to the poor-slow to angerpatient of injuries-ready to forgive-that his affections are so set on heavenly things, that he is cautious of excess in the use even of lawful pleasure? Nothing of all this. The man is no hypocrite. He will not pretend that his life will bear so strict a scrutiny. But still he is a moral man. That is to say (for every thing more is excluded by his own confessions), he is no murtherer, no adulterer, no thief, no liar, no spendthrift, and with nothing more of the Christian character about him than is supposed to be contained in the negation of these crimes, he hopes to find admission into the kingdom of heaven

"Again, religion and morality differ not only in the extent of the duty they prescribe, but in the part in which they are the same in the external work, they differ in the motive. They are just as far asunder as heaven is from the earth. Morality finds all her motives here below: religion fetches all her motives from above. The highest principle in morals is a just regard to the rights of each other in civil society. The first principle in religion is the love of God; or, in other words, a regard to the relation which we bear to Him, as it is made known to us by revelation. And no action is religious otherwise than as it respects God, and proceeds from a sense of our duty to Him, or at least is regulated by a sense of that duty. Hence it. follows, as I have before observed, that although