tion of Balak; equally interested; equally ignorant; and, if seriously attentive to their situation, must be equally anxious and alarmed. In support of this proposition I observe generally, that every sober man must, with absolute certainty, discern that he is a sinner; that his worship, therefore, must proceed from a sinful heart, and must of course be sinful worship; and, by irresistible consequence, that it cannot be accepted by a holy God. This observation no man in the exercise of common sense will deny. Openly before mankind he may perhaps contradict it; but in his closet, and to himself, while employed in serious thought, this would be impossible. Men may indeed escape, at least in a great measure, from a conviction of their guilt, and evade the painful consequences which flow from the acknowledgment of it. This may be done by a series of efforts to establish in their minds opinions, which, by their influence, particularly sooth the conscience, and lead the understanding away from the subject. It may also be done from mere inattention, when long and habitually continued, and changed gradually into an entire forgetfulness of the subject. But the denial of our sinfulness can never be the direct result of consideration or conviction.

If we are sinners, it follows irresistibly that all our moral actions are sinful. Particularly is this true of our worship,a service in which, if in any thing, purity of character is absolutely demanded. If our worship is sinful, nothing is more certain than that it cannot be acceptable to God.

The doctrine thus exhibited by reason with unanswerable evidence, is, in a very forcible and satisfactory manner, declared by the Psalmist. "There is forgiveness with thee, that "thou mayest be feared;" and again, "Let Israel hope in "the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him "there is plenteous redemption." The former of these declarations may be thus paraphrased: "Thou art a forgiving God, "and mayest therefore be feared or worshipped. If this were "not thy character, worship could never be presented to thee "with a possibility of acceptance." The latter passage may be paraphrased in this manner: "Let Israel hope in the Lord, "because he is a merciful God, and has provided for mankind

"a redemption amply sufficient for the forgiveness of their "sins, and the acceptance of their souls. Otherwise there “could have been no acceptance, and of course no hope."

But of the forgiveness of God, the Gentiles knew, and could know, nothing. Hence it was impossible for them to devise any worship which he would accept, or of the acceptance of which they could form a rational hope.

Still it must be acknowledged, that the Gentiles did, in fact, entertain indistinct, obscure, and doubtful hopes of the favour, not indeed of Jehovah, whom they knew not, but of the gods whom they worshipped, and who, being themselves morally impure, might not unnaturally be expected to be unsolicitous concerning the absolute purity of their worshippers. With these apprehensions they performed various religious services, which they hoped would be acceptable to their deities. As these are the amount of all the religious worship ever devised by mankind, in considering them we shall examine whatever human reason has thought proper to adopt of this nature, for the purpose of obtaining the favour of any deity whatever. I say, "which human reason has thought proper to adopt," because I entertain not a single doubt that even these services, instead of being devised by reason, were either relics or perversions of the worship prescribed by ancient revelation, traditionally and imperfectly conveyed down to those by whom they were performed. The

First of these modes of worship was prayer.

Prayer, I acknowledge, is an obvious duty of natural religion. As we obtain all things from earthly benefactors by asking, nature itself may be considered as dictating this mode of obtaining favour from God. But what views must a sober Gentile form concerning his own prayers? Were his mind spotless, there could be no rational cause for perplexity or doubt. But he is a sinner. What, then, must be the use of prayer to him? It certainly cannot be to inform God of what he did not know before. An omniscient being can want no information, and can receive none.

It cannot be to change either him or his purposes. The immutability of both forbids every supposition of this nature,

The first and great use of this religious service, without which it can be efficacious to no valuable end, is to change the suppliant, and make him a more proper and worthy recipient of the blessings for which he prays. But of this change in their proper character the Gentiles could not be conscious. Of real virtue they were not the subjects, and did not know in what it consisted. But it could not be increased in them before it began to exist. To a discerning Gentile, therefore, prayer must seem useless; for of its primary use he must have been totally ignorant.

Equally ignorant must such a Gentile have been of the only remaining motive to prayer, the hope of acceptance, and the consequent attainment of blessings from God. Sinful prayers could furnish no such hopes, and all his prayers were sinful. Commands, promises, and other encouragements to prayer were to him absolutely unknown. Whence, then, could he derive a rational expectation of receiving any blessings as an answer to his prayers?

From these observations it is plain, that the Gentiles prayed from tradition and custom, and not from a conviction of the usefulness of this duty to themselves, nor from any well grounded hope of obtaining in this manner blessings from God. Socrates seems to have considered this subject with care, and concluded that it was impossible to determine whether God would accept any worship from man; or if he would, what that worship was.

Secondly, Praise was also generally offered up to God by the Gentiles.

The same difficulties incumbered this service which attended prayer. To be thankful to God for the blessings which we receive from his hands is certainly a dictate of natural religion, not less obvious than any other. But how could it be known, or even conjectured, that he would accept this service from a sinner, polluted, as it ever must be, by his impure character ? What arguments can even now be devised to prove that this or any other act of worship, rendered in the indulgence of that opposition to the divine character, which is the controlling disposition of a sinful heart, can be acceptable to our Maker?

It is a remarkable fact, that in the prayers and the hymns of the heathen, at least so far as I remember those which I have seen, there are no petitions nor thanksgivings for moral good. They prayed and returned thanks extensively for natural good, but very generally at least, if not universally, were silent with respect to moral good. The Grecian philosophers, as a body, absolutely denied, that for blessings, included under this name, they were indebted to the gods at all.

Thirdly, The Gentiles also offered sacrifices.

These were embarrassed by all the difficulties which have been mentioned, and by many others. The sacrifice of a victim could be nothing to God, whose are the cattle on a thousand hills; nothing while living, and certainly nothing when dead and consumed by fire, or even by the worshipper. To such gross deities as those of the Gentiles they might seem, in the view of such gross minds, to be a gratification. To Jehovah this was not possible.

ator.

At the same time it was evidently sinful to put a victim to death unless with a known command, a permission of the CreBut neither a command nor a permission of this nature could be known to a Gentile. The institution of sacrifices, revealed to Adam, and the renewal of this revelation to Noah, together with the permission to eat flesh, were absolutely lost out of the knowledge of the Gentile nations. Hence they could perceive no right which they had to the life of a victim, either for sacrifice or food; for evidently such a right can be derived only from the pleasure of the Creator.

From the gross apprehension, that sacrifices were of some value to God, arose among the Gentiles the scheme of rendering them more acceptable by increasing the value of the things which they offered. To this scheme the text strongly alludes. "Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or ten "thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for "my transgression; the fruit of my body for the sin of my "soul?" Hence were derived the hecatombs of the Gentiles at large, their golden statues, their oblations of gems, rich vestments, incense, and other things, which were peculiarly expensive. Hence the Carthaginians, Mexicans, and Peruvians of

fered up hundreds and thousands of human victims, the noblest and brightest of their young men, and even their young children. Hence, in a word, human sacrifices were offered throughout the whole heathen world. The oblation of inanimate substances was attended with most of the difficulties which have been mentioned above; and that of human victims, while it was accompanied by all these, was also an unnatural and most aggravated sin. Instead, therefore, of rendering the worshipper acceptable to God, they only increased his guilt and the severity of his condemnation. At the same time they proved, like the anxious inquiries of the text, that those who presented their oblations, were in their own view sinners against him; and that they were labouring to expiate their sins, to appease his anger, to avert the punishment which they dreaded, and if possible, to obtain an interest in his favour. Nor did the same things prove in a less decisive manner that the suppliants, like Balak, knew not how to perform this indispensable service, and were labouring absolutely in vain.

Fourthly, Another mode of Gentile worship was ablution. Ablutions were practised throughout a great part of the Gentile world, and, as it would seem, with entire confidence in their purifying efficacy. For this end some waters were occasionally consecrated; while others were pronounced permanently holy. Such were the Nile, the Kristna, and the Ganges. In the nature of these waters sometimes, and sometimes in the manner of using them, it was supposed there was a power to cleanse the soul from sin. Probably this dreaming supposition grew out of another, equally visionary, found extensively in the ancient philosophy, that sin was an attribute of matter, and not of mind.

We who know that sin is seated only in the affections and volitions of the mind, see what they did not, and could not see, that ablutions, except when they are intended to be mere symbols, are perfectly unmeaning and useless; and only wonder that any of the human race could ever attribute to them any other character.

Fifthly, Another act of worship among the Gentiles was

penance.