pressive? Alas! the fact is only more widely acknowledged the same, that the most awful truths may a thousand times be repeated on the ear, and their solemnities allowed, but no impression be made on the heart. Is this blindness to spiritual things a peculiar perversity? or does the same hold of discernment of every kind? Be admitted the suggestion about novelty and custom. The sun, or the fine planet of the moon, or the stars up in the silent night, or the rainbow with its seven stripes of glory,-call not now the world out to gaze; but any other phenomenon of the heavens, not because of a greater beauty, but the infrequency of its appearance. And the same in a multitude of instances, but,—be it remarked-of things indifferent that have no immediate influence on worldly interest for a man's spirit is generally alive to the state of his fortune, at every the most minute degree of its advancement, or the contrary. To be constantly engaged in the accounts of his business, instead of inducing the insensibility of custom, only brings his affairs nearer to his heart, and : sharpens his cares about new gain, in relation to which, things otherwise indifferent become impressive. The farmer, in hope or fear, watches the sun distinctly, and ere he goes to sleep, marks all the appearances of the heavens, and can remember last year's clouds: And likewise the watchful sailor, who has a deeper interest in the same, who can familiarly describe every sign in the sky, and has a name for every degree of the wind's force. What palliation, then, for such as ascribe indifference in religion to the blunting influence of custom, not to be overcome by human nature? Only this worse confession,—that religion is not immediately influential on our happiness, but accounted secondary to earthly interests. The examination of their plea hath found out a greater evil. Custom cannot deaden them to circumstances of wealth and outward estate. This is one class of things. But it can make them callous to remote appearances in nature, and to religion. These are virtually on the same level to him; and make up another class of things, of course, inferior to the former, This introduces, at once, a wide and melancholy field of observation,—the various modifications of worldly-mindedness, and its influence on our immortal spirits ;-how the present life overcomes futurity, by being daily with us, as a small object near the eye can shut out the most magnificent prospect beyond. We shall attend to this a little, because it is always of mighty importance to detect those pleas in the heart of man, which, if they cannot leave iniquity unquestioned, can yet establish for it, in this life, over righteousness, a high ascendant. And may the Eternal Spirit of God, the Severe Sanctifier, with his fan and his purging fire, deal with our hearts in this matter: and, as he animated the Holy Jesus to whip the pollution of vile craft from God's temple in Jerusalem, so may he expose and drive out from our hearts every delusion and base plea, and make them temples of his own full and holy Inhabitation. CHAPTER I. WORLDLY-MINDEDNESS. With low-thoughted care, Unmindful of the crown that virtue gives.-MILTON. How difficult were it to guess, from observations on his common life, that man has relations to a time anterior and to a future, infinite in importance beyond what bind him to the present. A careful education, according to worldly wisdom; the zeal of relatives to establish a youth in life by the same rule; the ready compliance of his spirit, and its increasing earnestness, closing over so much gain, then stretching for more, unless diverted at first by pleasure, and led in progress through folly and infatuation, and beyond into ruin, the loss of good men's esteem, recklessness, despair, disease, death,—this, in either alternative, and, in almost every man's case, making up the bustle of the world; the scramble after |