iour's caution: "Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life." It is easy to blunt the edge of our spiritual sensibilities, and to lose every perception of God's being and excellence. Worldliness is another; the insinuation into the heart of that dreadful falsehood, that we can be happy without God, but cannot be happy without the world..

Softness, effeminacy, and cowardice are sources of infidelity. The burden, the shame, the protracted pain of the cross, tho greater evils to which it will still make us liable, begin to weigh heavily with some, as they go back from Jesus.

Sloth is an enemy of faith. Faith must be kept vigorous by exercise. Unbelief grows best when we are spiritually asleep. If you remit study, meditation, prayer, and the activities of a self-denying obedience, you will gradually lose your perception and relish of the truth, and so your confidence in God.

Perverseness of will is an enemy of faith. There is, in some natures, a sullenness which makes them enjoy being contrary. They must have something to oppose, somebody to be opposed to, or they are not contented. The indulgence of that temper destroys faith.

Self will, too; no matter in what way it is indulged, even in the petty affairs of life, it separates the soul from its Saviour. Irascibility, or an angry disposition, is the enemy of faith. It is never indulged but it brings a cloud over the eye of faith, and chills the heart of love.

Covetousness, or a narrow clinging to money and possessions, will separate the heart from God.

Pride is another of our enemies. Sometimes it makes one delight in doubting where others believe; in showing off skill in argument; in despising where others reverence. It makes us reluctant to yield our prejudices; ready to take offense; averse to humbling ourselves before man or God.

Now we may retain the forms of religion after the very root of it has decayed; and when there is no longer confidence in God, there is no more real communion with God, no more life. But we may trace it beyond the heart.

2. It is induced by negligence, which permits those poisonous weeds to grow.

We begin to depart from God by indulging wrong thoughts. And we must be in the habit of questioning our imaginations and fancies, and not throw the reins on their necks; for, if we do, they will carry us away from God and holiness.

By refusing the cross. Just where Christ would hun.ble us we may resist. Just where he requires self-denial, we refuse to obey. The very opportunity may have come for us mightily, to attack our corruptions, and we neglect it; there begins a secret declension. We are not so strong in God from that time.

Neglect of the right kind of meditation.

the heart in God is to be strengthened

The confidence of

By discovering the reasonableness of that confidence:
By meditating on God's excellence and glory;

By vigorously applying the mind to discover them;

By filling the mind with the promises, and their fulfillment to others, and to us; and with the glory of their final fulfillment. Now we must see

III. The evil of departing from God. It is all summed up in this he is God," the living God." See,

1. Its immediate consequences.

It affects the whole character. Faith is the basis of all genuine excellence. But faith in God is the sum of Christian character. Here let us stand, fixed in this principle. After we have ceased to regard our heavenly Father as a Person, possessed of a moral nature, and an infinitely perfect character, all the rest of our religion is a delusion, our life is hollow; we have a name to live, and are dead. If any grace appears to be growing, it must be sickly, and soon wither. We have departed from the living God.

Its immediate consequences are realized, too, in the sense of diminished happiness. Every exercise of rational confidence in a being benefits us, and makes us happy. Distrust, or the want of trust is our misery. And after a being has reposed in God, and felt the strong support of his omnipotent arm, it is only wonderful that the same person, on becoming a backslider does not become deranged. What a change! To go from God to his creatures for support, for consolation; to abandon the arm of the Eternal, and lean on an arm of flesh! "Departing from the living God" to go to a dead creature! If it were not gradual, it would produce an overwhelming shock, which might well unsettle reason. In prosperity there is no sheltering in the liv ing God, in adversity there is no abiding under the shadow of the Almighty. Jesus has ceased to be the shepherd, and the poor soul wanders and stumbles on deceitful mountains, or in miry plains. And,

2. Its ultimate results are terrible.

By this unbelief those Jews lost Canaan who came out of Egypt with Moses; and it is this their example the apostle is here citing as the occasion of his warning.

It will certainly tend to diminish the glory of heaven to him who thus declines. All that dark season is a time of unfitting for heaven. It is a period taken out from the brief season allotted to preparation. This is sad to contemplate.

It will diminish his usefulness. What good is such a person doing by his example, by his conversation, his prayers? He has departed from the living God. There is no life, no power in him. It may be the precursor of eternal death. How does he know

that he shall ever recover from it? His former experience cannot assure him; the doctrine of "perseverance" cannot, for he has lost the evidence that he is in Christ, or ever was.

Here is a call for repentance to such as have departed from the living God. Let them contemplate the folly of incurring such a loss as the loss of God's friendship and favor and fellowship; of repose in the almighty and faithful Jehovah, the Friend of Abraham; the cessation of their own 'lofty and holy conceptions of the infinitely glorious One. Once they could adore him; the soul seemed to stand on the verge of infinity, and soar on its joyous wings, upward and upward, toward an ever increasingly attractive smile of parental love. But the infinite is now annihilated; and the soul has lost its wings, and sunk down to creep with the curse-burdened serpent on the ground, and feed on dust! Once the soul could cast its cares on the compassionate Redeemer. Now it must bear them alone. Once it was full of hope; the future was an opening vista of brightness, of repose, of blessedness. Now it is dark, repulsive, fearful. And for what has all this been sacrificed? Here is Esau again selling his birth-right for a mess of pottage. Not a moment should then be lost in recov ering what may be recovered of these squandered treasures of the heart. Repentance is the first step; that is, the belief of the evil of departing thus from God. This precedes all true belief in the mercy of God. To increase the strength of this godly sorrow, let memory recall the kind of service which has been rendered to God during the period of unbelief. Formality, heartlessness, insincerity have made them offensive to the heart-searching Jehovah, unprofitable to yourselves, and a reproach to Him whom they mocked. There has been unspeakable wickednessin our pride and blindness of heart. We have refused to see the truth, to bow to Christ's golden sceptre, to accept his grace, to trust his faithfulness.

Precious opportunities have been wasted, opportunities of improvement and of usefulness. Every Sabbath passed in unbelief is a misspent day; every sermon thus heard has furnished an opportunity of spiritual profit, only to be despised. The precious Word of God has lain neglected; providences have been unimproved; the influences of the Holy Spirit have been trampled under foot; the Lord's Supper has been a solemn farce to the careless participant. Every opportunity of prayer has been permitted to pass by as a cloud that had no rain. Precious, precious hours, days, privileges, opportunities wasted! These should bring the heart contrite and broken to God's altar while yet there is hope.

Who can measure the wickedness of treating God thus! His perfections of being and of character, his veracity, mercy, faithfulness, justice, all set at naught; and by such a creature as man, poor, insignificant man; by a man redeemed at such a cost; by

a man who has been enlightened and impressed by God's truth; a man who has vowed to serve him! Oh! let the heart break as it reviews the past; such a length of time spent in backsliding! How many days has it been; how many months; how many years? And all this time the soul has hung in fearful suspense over the hypocrite's hell. All this time there has been a reckless indifference to the welfare or the woe of others' souls. Surely the evil heart of unbelief is the evil to be lamented above all that generally causes grief. What is the loss of property, of health, of friends, of human favor compared with it!

Both professors of religion and those who have made no such profession should inquire, in view of the admonition we have been considering: Is there in me an evil heart of unbelief? "Take heed," is the word of warning. "Brethren" are ad

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dressed; for it is certain that all that are not united to Christ and his people by faith have in them an evil heart of unbelief. Brethren are addressed, because neither their profession nor their experience prevents them from having this fearful possession. Any of you," says the warning voice. Your station, your pretensions, others' estimate of you, will not make it impossible in your case. Look within: "lest there be in you an evil heart of unbelief." And to guide your research it may be well to inquire about your views of God himself. Do they affect the heart, either awaking reverence, or love, or trust, or godly sorrow? When you think of God, do you desire his favor above all good; do you lay your property, your plans, your person, your interests at his footstool; do you desire to cast down every barrier between your soul and him; does his loveliness, his glory, his love satisfy your soul? Inquire after your plans in life; what are you living for; what pleases you most, or with whom and where you are most contented. Inquire after your ordinary thoughts; in what channel they run, when you are in the Lord's house, in company, in business, alone. Inquire after your habits of reading, the character of the books you read, your motive in reading them, the impressions they leave on you. Inquire after your conversation; whether the general tenor of it is to promote faith or unbelief. There is not so much mystery about the loss of spiritual light and religious joy as many imagine. It is the withdrawal of God's Holy Spirit that accounts for it all. But the reasons of his departure may ordinarily be seen in some of the modes of grieving him here alluded to. We depart from God in one of two ways: by neglecting either the law or the gospel; by ceasing either to believe or to obey. If we try to obey without faith in Christ, we depart by a legal spirit from the God of grace. If we trust in Christ that we may be saved without obedience, benevolence, self-denial, activity, earnestness in doing right and doing good, we equally depart from the living God. The life of faith may be summarily defined: making Christ our trust, and Christ our example.

SERMON DLX.

BY REV. R. H. SEELEY, SPRINGFIELD, MASS.

THE RELIGIOUS FEELINGS AND ACTIVITIES OF THE UNREGENERATE, NOT GENUINE PIETY.

"O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? For your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away."HOSEA 6: 4.

MAN was made for religion, just as he was made for human society. He is no more truly adapted by his social nature for association with others of his kind, than he is adapted by his moral nature to possess the affections and fulfill the duties of a religious life.

The entrance of sin into the world has essentially and sadly affected man in both respects. The proper operations of his social nature are marred, misdirected, obstructed, or destroyed by the prevalence of selfishness and evil passions. In like manner the faculties of his religious nature are misdirected, perverted, (or "depraved,") abused, and (so far as the purposes for which they were created are concerned) destroyed by the selfish and corrupt tendencies which sin has introduced.

Man's abuse of his social nature discovers itself in the contentions, the cruelties, the crimes that are witnessed in families, neighborhoods, and nations, to such an extent that the earth seems like a vast Golgotha covered with the grim and ghastly remains of those who have spent their earthly career in preying on each other's hopes, and happiness, and life.

His abuse of his religious nature appears in the atheisms and impieties, the false religions and superstitions, the errors in doctrine and in practice, which cause the world to appear like another Sodom, in which there is scarcely the proportionate number of the upright to save it from destruction.

Nevertheless, though they are thus seriously and sadly affected in consequence of the fall, neither man's social nor his religious nature is entirely eradicated. Both remain, and, under certain conditions, may be brought into a right state of activity; since proper cultivation in the one case, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost in the other, may give the supremacy to better principles, and bring him to the development of a character for which he was evidently intended by his Creator.

But if this be so, if man's religious nature is not annihilated, but simply depraved by the fall, it is not unreasonable to suppose that its activities and deveopments in the unregenerate