to bury the guilt, and wash away the stain of sin for ever, is not the altar of scriptural requirement. God will have no respect to it: and the offerer's soul will be defiled with the additional pollution of iniquity, even in holy things.

Superstition, may build an altar after its own form, dedicated with no more of the zeal which is according to knowledge, than the Athenians inscribed that which Paul saw" To the Unknown God," and superstition may make such offerings, as its own delusions have imagined fitting: but these are altars and sacrifices, not made to the Most High, for pardon through the propitiation of Christ; and therefore they are mere erections of the heart's idolatry. They are the Pharisees' proud self-worship in the temple. They are the blind and the lame, out of the flock of a complacent persuasion of self-righteousness. They are mere cold confessions of obligation to God, for bestowments of providential good. They are any thing and every thing, except the sacrifice demanded by Jehovah,-a confession of sin, an acknowledgement of the righteousness and justice of everlasting death upon the offender's body and soul, for his transgressions; and the laying of a believing, clinging, clasping hand upon the head of the victim,

who bore the tremendous burden of a world's sin upon the cross, and died for its redemption. But that altar, whose erection God will bless in every family, is the altar, where He is sought by the new and living way into the holiest through the blood of Christ. Faith cannot stir one step towards God with hope, except it first sees the sprinkled mercy-seat, and book of the law; and feels the worshipper's heart sprinkled also with the atonement of the cross.

Here then, is the mirror wherein to examine our family religion,-if indeed family religion, be not altogether a stranger to our habitations, if we are not living without God in the world. Have we learned that great and momentous doctrine of atonement, so early revealed to Abram, and so familiar to the whole gracious and happy experience of his life of faith? How do we assemble around the family altar? Merely as dependants on God's providence, or as the needy and urgent petitioners also, for the rich blessings of his pardoning grace and love? Are our hearts so subdued by the sin-convincing Spirit of God, so truly cast into the depths of conscious guilt before Him, so fully and awfully persuaded of the light in which his absolute purity, and the righteous administration of his

perfect law places sin, and those who commit it,(that is, all men who ever lived,) as to know that we must plead for mercy, and not challenge the reward of justice, on the ground of personal obedience to the law? Or are we without this sense of guiltiness, this conviction of a sinner's rightful portion from an offended God? Do we come to Him in the way of scriptural approach; taking refuge in the atonement, and resting every hope upon the preciousness of our Lord's death and passion? Or, do we come with the solemn mockery of a worship that merely owns a God of providence, but sees Him not as an avenger of evil, and yet as laying upon his own Incarnate Son the iniquity of us all? Cain was the first infidel that built an altar, and offered upon it to the Lord; and because he offered not vicarious blood, and would not admit his need of the Fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness, his oblation was rejected. Similar oblations have been presented before God, in the philosophical infidelity that denies atonement; thrusts God in Christ Jesus who made it, from his own work of unimaginable love in redemption; and denies the whole doctrine of the cross, as a doctrine of ignorant superstition. When we build the altar, whether in our

personal or family religion, we must take that one simple, massive, unhewn stone,-the tried and sure Corner-stone, already laid by Jehovah in the Zion of his Church,-" God purchasing the Church with his own blood." We must begin, continue, and end every approach to the mercy-seat with his propitiation. We must bring that purchase-price, with all its unimaginable merit before the throne of God; and we shall find it to be indeed the royal seat of tenderness and love. We have then, an open door to the Father's heart and the Father's grace. While sin remains upon our souls, we can make no acceptable approach to a holy God, whether in individual or family worship. Jesus Christ came to take away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Go we then, and lay our transgressions upon Him. Him. Then may we use the altar as an altar of incense in prayer. Then may we use it for our thank-offering of gladness, as reconciled unto God by the expiation of his Son; prepared to ask in filial assurance of hope, according to his will; and knowing that He will hear us, answer us, and bless us, among that great and happy congregation of his saints, "who shall have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."1

1 Revelations vii. 14.

SERMON XII.

THE IMMEDIATE INFLUENCE OF FAMILY

RELIGION.

GENESIS XII. 7, 8.

THERE BUILDED HE AN ALTAR UNTO THE LORD, WHO APPEARED UNTO HIM. AND HE REMOVED FROM THENCE UNTO A MOUNTAIN ON THE EAST OF BETHEL, AND PITCHED HIS TENT, HAVING BETHEL ON THE WEST, AND HAI ON THE EAST; AND THERE HE BUILDED AN ALTAR UNTO THE LORD, AND CALLED UPON THE NAME OF THE Lord.

It is not only one of the many, but one of the most dangerous methods, in which the spirit of darkness and delusion, brought by original sin upon the mind, works against the salvation of men, that it will allow them to admit a general rule of conduct, in the length and breadth of its requirement, but yet to produce reasons, why it may be transgressed in the objector's peculiar circumstances, or so modified and diluted in the obedience, as to become a mere