"the house of the Lord," say of the worship of God," Behold what a weariness is ❝ it, and when will the Sabbath be gone?” How many, instead of finding the duties of religion pleasant and delightful, account them an irksome and burdensome task! O that such persons would consider how they could bear to spend an eternity in the service and worship of God, when a few hours spent in these employments are felt so painfully tiresome!

Let a sense then of your manifold sins and imperfections, fellow Christians, keep you ever humble before God, and stir you up in future to the utmost activity and diligence in his work and service, and to a devout, strict, and regular attendance on his house of prayer. Prize, highly prize the ordinances of our holy religion. In the sanctuary below, you prepare yourself for, and anticipate the work of the sanctuary above. You join yourself beforehand to the society of angels and blessed spirits on high; you already enter on the delightful employment of eternity, and begin the song which is heard for ever around the throne of God. And while you meet together in this place, remember that many

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he had lately taken from the sheepfold and anointed king of his people Israel.

But David, being in many respects an eminent type of Christ, the word may well be considered as having a very different and a far more important signification assigned to it, as having an immediate reference to the Messiah, who is often styled, by way of eminence, "the Lord's Anoint"ed." In this view of the phrase, the Psalmist may be considered as acknowledging his unworthiness and guilt, and the justice of the divine procedure in having banished him from his ordinances on account of his trangressions, but praying that God would look upon him in mercy, thro' the merits of the great Mediator, who was to make a complete satisfaction for sin, and to bring in everlasting righteousness. Thus exercising a firm and lively faith in the promised Messiah, David prayed and hoped that his person and services might be accepted in the Beloved, that God might again lift up on him the cheering light of his reconciled countenance, visit him with the joy of his salvation, and again restore him to sweet communion with his Maker in the sacred services of the sanctuary.

VERSE 10. For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand: I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.

We at last see the reason for longing so ardently for the courts of the Lord. A day spent there was better than a thousand any where else. The meanest office there was more honourable than the most dignified in the tents of sin. These, my friends, are the sentiments of a man after God's own heart: these are the sentiments of a man worthy to sit on a throne. What a happy world would this be, if such sentiments as these always reigned in the breasts of the great; if they were sufficiently wise to understand this, that a day in God's courts was better than a thousand spent amidst the joys and pleasures of this world; that the lowest station, when accompanied with religion and virtue, was more honourable than the most exalted when degraded by vice! Though David was raised from the humblest situation to the throne of Israel, his mind was not intoxicated by his greatness: he still retained a relish for the simple and sublime pleasures of religion and virtue, to which

prince and peasant have equal access, and which are the purest source of honour and of happiness to both.

In this fleeting scene, my brethren, various parts are assigned us: Some are powerful, some are dependent; some are rich, and some are poor; some are engaged in one occupation, some in another: but no situation in which we are placed by Divine Providence, no occupation which it may be our lot to exercise, is in itself mean or degrading. Whatever be our rank, and whatever be our employment, let us still be honest, and virtuous, and pious; there all the honour lies: let us avoid vice and folly; these are the only sources of disgrace. Is the poor man contented, honest, industrious, and resigned to the arrangements of his heavenly Father? he is as noble, as great, perhaps more so, than the proudest monarch upon earth. He exercises and improves the talents God hath given him; and what can the greatest do more? He walks in the path of the just, which, "like the shin

ing light, shineth more and more unto "the perfect day ;" and where is the man that can appear in a situation more honour

able? He is co-operating with the Divine Spirit, in carrying forward his immortal soul to perfection; and who can boast of an employment more important and digni fied? He holds fellowship in the exercises of prayer and praise with the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and where is the man that enjoys a society more noble or more delightful? He aspires to those glories, and to those joys, which are as exalted as heaven, and as eternal as the soul; and who can entertain an ambition and a hope more ravishing and more transporting?

VERSE 11. For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.

It is, my brethren, what makes the courts of the Lord so amiable and so desirable, that they are the courts of Him who is a "sun and shield." God is a 66 sun, because he is to the soul what the natural sun is to the world. As the sun enlightens the world by his beams, so does God enlighten the soul of his servants by his word and spirit. He dispels the