ors,") 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, 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 consolation 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.

Some indeed there are who with concern and grief will confess this to be
their uncomfortable and melancholy state; who humbly pray, and
diligently endeavour, for an imagination less distracted at devotional
seasons, for a heart more capable of relishing the excellence of divine
things; and who carefully guard against whatever has a tendency to chain
down their affections to earthly enjoyments. Let not such be
discouraged. It is not they whom we are condemning: but such as knowing
and even acknowledging this to be their case, yet proceed in a way
directly contrary: who, scarcely seeming to suspect that any thing is
wrong with them, voluntarily acquiesce in a state of mind which is
directly contrary to the positive commands of God, which forms a perfect
contrast to the representations given us in Scripture of the Christian
character, and accords but too faithfully in one leading feature with
the character of those, who are stated to be the objects of Divine
displeasure in this life, and of Divine punishment in the next.

It is not however only in these essential constituents of a devotional
frame that the bulk of nominal Christians are defective. This they
freely declare (secretly feeling perhaps some complacency from the
frankness of the avowal) to be a higher strain of piety than that to
which they aspire. Their forgetfulness also of some of the leading
dispositions of Christianity, is undeniably apparent in their allowed
want of the spirit of kindness, and meekness, and gentleness, and
patience, and long suffering; and above all, of that which is the stock
on which alone these dispositions can grow and flourish, that
_humility_ and _lowliness of mind_, in which perhaps more than in any
other quality may be said to consist the true essence and vital
principle of the Christian temper. These dispositions are not only
neglected, but even disavowed and exploded, and their opposites, if not
r