230 APPEARANCE BEFORE GOD tSERM. XII?. How solicitously would you watch over your minds, lest they wander from worship ! How carefully would you keep your hearts ! Or suppose you saw the holy angels there which attend the churches in worship, would you not be ashamed to trifle in their presence? And has not the spiritual presence of the great God as much real, though invisible awfulness and majesty in it ! How dopersons/both of the polite and the vulgarworld) all agree :to( dress fine and gay,' and}make the best figure ofall the we k, to appear before nlen on the day of the Lord? But let us remember that we come not only.be- fore men, but before the living God, in whose sight, ornaments of the body are of noaccount, and, O, what pains ought we to take, to put on our best ornaments of the mind! To see that our graces all shine, whenwe are to stand before God ! And not to suffer one vain thought, one corrupt affection, to work in us ; nor a spot or blemish, if possible, to be found upon us ! Alas ! what millions of hypocrites have we in the world ? Howmany may we fear in every congregation? Iow many come to attend at prayers, but never seek to join their own wishes and desires with the words of him who speaks ? How many voices follow the tune in a psalm, but their souls feel no joy, no inward elevations of praise?J How many hear the word as the word of man, and their hearts have no sense of God speaking to them ? They sit before God as his people, but their heart goes after their covetousness, Ezek. xxxiii. 31. after their idols of business, or carnal pleasure, after every vain object of their eyes, or vainer images of the fancy. Let us take heed, therefore, how we shut our eyes, or harden our hearts against a present and a speaking God; for the word of the Lord is quick and powerful ; God speaking by his eternal word, Or by his ministers in the sanctuary, pierces the secret recesses of the soul and spirit: God sits there, discerning the intentsand thoughts of the heart; all things are naked and open before his eyes with whom we have to do, Heb. iv. 13. II. Remark. In attendance on publicworship, we should fix all our hope and expectation of profit upon the presence of God in it; for the design Of ordinances is to bring us to appear before God. Now, if in things
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