can guard us against the seductions of this sin:"showing mercy to them that love him." Hence, the admonition of Joshua:-"Take heed that ye love the Lord your God;" and the prayer of the Apostle :-"The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God."

Where this love is implanted, it will operate to quicken our belief of every divine declaration; it will humble the soul in the view of that holy perfection in which it delights; it will produce what this commandment requires,

IV. A conscientious and devout observance of every institution God has prescribed, as the medium through which he will have us to evince our attachment to him.

Remember that obedience to this commandment must be the expression of your love to God,-love, which is to absorb all your heart, to employ all your mind, to put forth all your strength, to engage all your soul, while immortality endures. It is the want of this divine principle that explains the melancholy facts which crowd the history of man in his conduct towards God. "I know you," said Jesus to the pharisees, "that ye have not the love of God in you.'

Where love to God is the ruling principle, the heart will be aspiring towards God in every act of worship. The retirement of your chamber will be hallowed by your communion with the "Father of your spirit." The sensibilities of domestic life will be strengthened and sanctified by the sympathies excited in domestic prayer. You will make arrangements, and even sacrifices, for the sake of resorting to "the place where prayer is wont to be made." You will not only appreciate these engagements as privileges, but your conscience will recognize them as duties, by which your love to God is to be exercised, and of which account will be demanded in the day of doom. Would you have "a conscience void of offence towards God?" Seek, in the first

place, to have your conscience enlightened by the truth and influence of the Holy Spirit, that it may be impressed with the authority and the sanctions of the will of God. Thus illumined and aroused, your conscience cannot but throb with unutterable anxieties in the review of your conduct through every hour of your existence. These throbbings are not to be allayed by the remembrance of the past, for every recollection is as the sting of death; nor by the anticipation of the future,-for to the guilty spirit the future is haunted by the most terrible forebodings; nor in looking up to the throne of heaven, for it is a voice from that throne that awakens all your apprehensions ;-but in the CROSS, where the mercy and the jealousy of God are mysteriously and indissolubly blended,-in "the blood of sprinkling," which purges the conscience from dead works to serve the living God,—in Jesus Christ, who is the only "MEDIATOR" between God and man!

To the dictates of a conscience, thus enlightened and purified in every thing relating to the worship of God, we beseech you daily to take heed. You must, or willingly violate the commandment now set before you.

If your observance of divine institutions is conscientious, it will be devout. Equally afraid of the frigidness of form and the pride of ostentation, you will prove the sincerity of your secret engagements and of your family devotion, by the seriousness and punctuality, by the regularity and cheerfulness, with which you attend the social and public solemnities of religion. You will remember that it is your duty and your interest to be present at the commencement and at the close of these sacred performances, to engage in the exercises of prayer and of praise, as well as to listen to the instructions of the christian ministry. In the whole of these observances you will look up to God in faith and humility, with gratitude, penitence, and love:-and

for the time, the manner, the spirit, the society in which the duties of worship are to be discharged, you will search the scriptures, "calling no man master,"-remembering that " ONE is your Master, even CHRIST." Nor will you forget that this commandment appeals to your fears and to your hopes, for time, and for eternity, for yourselves and for your posterity.

LECTURE IV.

THIRD COMMANDMENT.

EXODUS, XX. 7.

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in rain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

THE NAME OF THE LORD is a phrase of peculiar significance in the sacred volume. As the Supreme Being is to be worshipped, he must be known; and, as he cannot be known by any similitudes, there must be something in the manner in which he has been pleased to reveal himself, to fill the mind with true and awful conceptions of his character.

By "the name of the Lord thy God" may be understood, in general, every medium through which he has manifested himself to his creatures. On no other principle than this can we explain the language which, throughout the whole of Scripture, ascribes such majesty and energy to the name of the Lord.*

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This name is "remembered,"-"feared,"-" loved,"-magnified," by his people; invoked in prayer and celebrated in praise. It is blasphemed," "polluted,"-" despised,"-or" dreaded,” by his enemies. It is "a tower of defence." Incense is offered to it. It is "great," holy,"- -"glorious." For the sake of this name mercy is entreated. It is sanctified" in the vindictive dispensations of Providence. It is "glorified" in the mediation of Christ. "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost," we are baptized with water. The name of God is " corded" in his church. The temple at Jerusalem was built that he might "put his name there." The name of Christ is "given whereby we must be saved;" and on that name we are directed to believe and to call for salvation.

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God has made himself known, in the productions of his power and goodness, every where around us. He makes farther discoveries of himself in the intimations which the present state affords of his constant superintendence, of a future reckoning, and of final destinies beyond the grave. At "sundry times and in divers manners,' God has spoken; and, by the dictation of the same unerring truth, what he spake has been recorded for the instruction of the world. It was while contemplating the fulness and grandeur of this manifestation of Him who is invisible, the royal psalmist exclaimed: "Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name." But it is by the "brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person," that God is fully revealed to man. "He is THE WORD. He was in the beginning with God, and he was God. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."

Our ideas of God must be derived from his own manifestations of himself in the works of nature,-in the government of the world,—in the word of truth, -and in the incarnation, life, death, and glory of his only begotten Son. In the Scriptures he has furnished us with a rich abundance and diversity of terms as the signs of these ideas. It must ever be remembered that those terms which God has condescended to employ, are not so much designed to be descriptive of himself, or verbal images of his character, as to excite in our minds the corresponding ideas derived from all the sources he has opened to us, and to call forth the affections which such ideas, if entertained, will infallibly produce.

It was for the purpose of impressing this consideration on the people he had chosen, so as to connect his own name essentially and exclusively with the solemnities of truth and the transactions of