week! How often do they find excuses for taking journeys, writing letters, balancing ac'counts, or in short doing something, which by a 'little management might probably have been 'anticipated, or which, without any material in'convenience, might be postponed. 'ness itself is recreation, compared with Religion, ' and from the drudgery of this day of Sacred • Rest, they fly for relief to their ordinary occu'pations.' Even busi 'Others again who would consider business as 'a profanation, and who still hold out against the * encroachments of the card table, get over much ' of the day, and gladly seek for an innocent re source in the social circle, or in family visits, ' where it is not even pretended that the conversa'tion turns on such topics as might render it in any way conducive to religious instruction or • improvement. Their families meanwhile are neg'lected, their servants robbed of Christian privi' leges, and their example quoted by others who * cannot see that they are themselves less religiously 'employed, while playing an innocent game at 'cards, or relaxing in the concert room. 'But all these several artifices, whatever they 'may be, to unhallow the Sunday and to change 'it's character, (it might be almost said " to relax "it's horrors,") prove but too plainly, however we may be glad to take refuge in religion, when driven to it by the loss of every other comfort, 2 and to retain as it were, a reversionary interest in an asylum which may receive us when we are 'forced from the transitory enjoyments of our 'present state, that in itself it wears to us a gloomy 'and forbidding aspect, and not a face of conso, 'lation and joy: that the worship of God is with ' us a constrained and not a willing service, which 'we are glad therefore to abridge, though we dare not omit it.' 12 Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Acts xvi. 31. Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. 1 John v. 1. I speak as unto wise men; judge ye what I say. 1 Cor. x. 15. THIRD EDITION, CAREFULLY REVISED. 1 |