class of men within the pale of christendom; and those upbraiding discourses, which ought to have belonged to Jews only, we find are not inapplicable to christians. Do you ask, if it be possible, that such contemptuous and frivolous excuses are still offered to extenuate neglect of religion, and to quiet an insulted conscience? Yes; they are yet offered, and yet admitted, not indeed by God; seldom indeed, and not without reluctance by our consciences; but easily and often by a thoughtless and indulgent age. In the time of our Saviour, they were offered to excuse the rejection of the Messiah; now, to excuse a neglect of the peculiar duties of his religion, even where its truth is acknowledged. The gospel feast is still open. Religion offers her repast of pleasures, unadulterated, inexhaustible and immortal. The master of the feast continues to send forth his servants to repeat his urgent invitations, to express his unabated good will, and even while he is waiting to welcome us to his presence, we still venture to return some one of these worthless excuses, which seem to have served even to the present day as a manual of apologies for irreligious negligence.

Let us then take a rapid review of the excuses, which are offered to palliate indifference to religion; let us see if their importance consists not rather in their number, than in their strength. The profligate and incorrigibly wicked seldom offer excuses; those of the professed infidel demand a longer and closer attention, than the limits of a discourse allow; the excuses of the christian world only, we propose now to examine.

1. First, then, it is often said, that time is wanted for the duties of religion. The calls of business, the press of occupation, the cares of life, will not suffer me, says one, to give that time to the duties of piety, which otherwise I would gladly bestow. Say you this without a blush? You have no time, then, for

the especial service of that great Being, whose goodness alone has drawn out to its present length your cobweb thread of life; whose care alone has continued you in possession of that unseen property, which you call your time. You have no time then to devote to that great Being, on whose existence the existence of the universe depends; a Being so great, that if his attention could for an instant be diverted, you fall never again to rise; if his promise should fail, your hopes, your expectations vanish into air; if his power should be weakened, man. angel, nature perishes.

But, let me ask, by what right do you involve yourself in this multiplicity of cares? Why do you weave around you this web of occupation, and then complain, that you cannot break it? Will you say, that your time is your own, and that you have a right to employ it in the manner you please? Believe me, it is not your own. It belongs to God, to religion, to mankind. You possess not an hour, to which one of these puts not in a preferable claim; and are such claimants to be dismissed without allotting to them a moment?

But for what else can you find no leisure? Do you find none for amusement? Or is amusement itself your occupation? Perhaps pleasure is the pressing business of your life; perhaps pleasure stands waiting to catch your precious moments as they pass. Do you find none for the pursuit of curious and secular knowledge? If you find none then for religion, it is perhaps because you wish to find none; it would be, you think, a tasteless occupation, an insipid entertainment.

But this excuse is founded on a most erroneous conception of the nature of religion. It is supposed to be something, which interrupts business, which wastes time, and interferes with all the pleasant and profitable pursuits of life. It is supposed to be some

thing which must be practised apart from every thing else, a distinct profession, a peculiar occupation. The means of religion, meditation, reading and prayer will, and ought, indeed, to occupy distinct portions of our time. But religion itself demands not distinct hours. Religion will attend you not as a troublesome, but as a pleasant and useful companion in every proper place, and every temperate occupation of life. It will follow you to the warehouse or to the office; it will retreat with you to the country, it will dwell with you in town; it will cross the seas, or travel over mountains, or remain with you at home. Without your consent, it will not desert you in prosperity, or forget you in adversity. It will grow up with you in youth, and grow old with you in age; it will attend you with peculiar pleasure to the hovels of the poor, or the chamber of the sick; it will retire with you to your closet, and watch by your bed, or walk with you in gladsome union to the house of God; it will follow you beyond the confines of the world, and dwell with you in heaven for ever, as its native residence.

2. It is said, am I not as good as others? Why is an attention to religion, an unpopular piety, a rigid virtue required of me, which cannot be found in the circle of my acquaintance, or in the world at large? Why am I urged to set up as a reformer, or expose myself to the scorn of mankind? But the majority of men are poor; does this however check the ardour of your pursuit of wealth; or do you avoid a new acquisition, because you fear it will expose you to the envy of your inferiours? The majority of mankind are ignorant; but is ignorance therefore honourable, or is learning contemptible or invidious? We have now supposed, that piety and unsullied virtue would sometimes be attended with scorn. But even this is an unwarranted supposition. Piety is venerated by the impious. Unyield

ing virtue is admired by the corrupt, disinterested goodness by the selfish, temperance, chastity, humanity by the intemperate, unchaste, and ambitious. Consider, too, to what extravagances this excuse › would lead. It places you loosely floating on the inconstant tide of popular manners. If this rises, you indeed are raised; if it falls, you descend, bowever imperceptibly, on its surface. It is an excuse, which might be offered with equal propriety by the corrupt inhabitant of Sodom, as by you.

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3. Again, it is said, religion is dull, unsocial, uncharitable, enthusiastic, a damper of human joy, a morose intruder upon human pleasure. If this were true, nothing could be more incongruous than the parable, which represents it as an entertainment. But if this be the character of religion, it is surely the very reverse of what we should suppose it to be, and the reverse indeed of what it ought to be. Perhaps, in your distorted vision, you have mistaken sobriety for dulness, equanimity for moroseness, disinclination to bad company for aversion to society, abhorrence of vice for uncharitableness, and piety for enthusiNo doubt, at the table of boisterous intemperance, religion, if she were admitted as a guest, would wear a very dull countenance. In a revel of debauchery, and amidst the brisk interchange of profanity and folly, religion might appear indeed a dumb, unsocial intruder, ignorant of the rhetoric of oaths and the ornaments of obscenity. These are scenes, it must be acknowledged, of what is falsely called pleasure, in which religion, if embodied and introduced, would be as unwelcome a guest, as the emblematic coffin, which the Egyptians used to introduce in the midst of their entertainments. From such instances, however, to accuse religion of being unfriendly to the enjoyment of life, is as absurd as to interpret unfavourably the silence of a foreigner, who understands not a word of our language. But as

long as intemperance is not pleasure, as long as profaneness, impurity, or scandal is not wit, as long as excess is not the perfection of mirth, as long as selfishness is not the surest enjoyment, and as long as gratitude, love, reverence and resignation are not superstitious affections, so long religion lays not an icy hand on the true joys of life. Without her all other pleasures become tasteless, and at last painful. To explain to you, indeed, how much she exalts, purifies and prolongs the pleasures of sense and imagination, and what peculiar sources of consolation, cheerfulness and contentment she opens to herself, would lead us at present into too wide a range.

4. Excuses for irreligion are drawn from the failings and imperfections of christians. There, says the profligate, are your boasted saints. They have their faults, as well as those who make not so great pretensions to piety. Thus it happens, that some remains of imperfection, some constitutional infirmity, some unamiable weakness of good men, is brought forward and exhibited in all the triumph of illiberality to the gaze of a censorious world. The character of the mind is drawn from a single trait, from some casual wrinkle, some unlucky deformity. The point, in which a good man is as frail as others, is selected and comtemplated with renewed pleasure, while those points, in which he is superiour to other men, are unobserved or unacknowledged. This is partial, unjust, uncharitable, iniquitous. But the excuse closes not here. Of what religion has failed to remove it is most absurdly called the cause. If apparently devout and pious habits are ever found associated with a temper, which is not open as day to melting charity, it is religion which hardens the heart, it is religion which locks the coffers. Whatever passion it has failed to subdue, or whatever fault it has been unable to prevent, it is impiously said to encourage. Equally absurd would it be, to