unabated into the service of his blessed Master. His zeal now burned
even with an increase of brightness; and no intenseness, no continuance
of suffering could allay its ardor, or damp the fervors of his
triumphant exultations. Finally--The worship and service of the
glorified spirits in Heaven, is not represented to us a cold
intellectual investigation, but as the worship and service of gratitude
and love. And surely it will not be disputed, that it should be even
here the humble endeavour of those, who are promised while on earth "to
be made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light,"
to bring their hearts into a capacity for joining in those everlasting
praises.

BUT it may not be unadvisable for the writer here to guard against a
mistaken supposition, from which the mind of our Objector by no means
appears exempt, that the force of the religious affections is to be
mainly estimated (I had almost said by the thermometer) by the degree of
mere animal fervor, by ardors, and transports, and raptures, of which,
from constitutional temperament, a person may be easily susceptible; or
into which daily experience must convince us, that people of strong
conceptions and of warm passions may work themselves without much
difficulty, where their hearts are by no means truly or deeply
interested. Every tolerable actor can attest the truth of this remark.
These high degrees of the passions bad men may experience, good men may
want. They may be affected; they may be genuine; but whether genuine or
affected, they form not the true standard by which the real nature or
strength of the religious affections is to be determined. To ascertain
these points, we must examine, whether they appear to be grounded in
knowledge, to have their root in strong and just conceptions of the
great and manifold excellences of their object, or to be ignorant,
unmeaning, or vague: whether they are natural and easy, or constrained
and forced; wakeful and apt to fix on their great objects, delighting in
their proper nutriment (if the expression may be allowed) the exercises
of prayer and praise, and religious contemplation; or voluntarily
omitting offered occasions of receiving it, looking forward to them with
little expectation, looking back on them with little complacency, and
being disappointed of them with little regret: by observing whether
these religious affections are merely occasional visitants, or the
abiding inmates of the sou