indignant neighbours, perhaps your own relations, or creditors starve) continue adding surfeiting to feasting, or drunkenness to thirst?—No: They left that crime, I shall not say to brutes, (because many of them are not brutish enough to commit it,) but to you who make it your chief delight to turn your heated mouths into smoking chimnies, your overloaded stomachs into stewingpots, and your enormous bellies into moving hogsheads.

Had they contrived to meet the bottomless pit, by driving perpendicular ways towards the centre of the earth, with mouths full of prayers for other people's damnation and their own? No: They left that diabolical iniquity to you, impious Colliers, who send as many horrid imprecations towards heaven, as if you wanted to rend the roof of your pits over your heads, or to kindle the sulphur of divine vengeance about your ears.

Had they endeavoured to accumulate gold by cheating, stealing, or oppression? No: Although they were Jews, they probably detested those crimes, in the commission of which so many nominal Christians are grown brazen-faced and grey-headed.-Had they violated matrimonial engagements by seducing their neighbours' wives, or by fixing upon their daughters an indelible mark of infamy? No: They regarded the seventh commandment; and my text speaks of their wives and children, not of their whores and bastards.—Or had they learned Atheism of Pharaoh ? Did they say like him, or like our modern Who is the Lord? I know not the Lord!' Who is the Messiah? not bow to the Messiah? were ambitious of ministering to the Lord, and offering, instead of Aaron, victims that typified the expiatory sacrifice of the Lamb of God.

infidels,

I will

No: On the contrary, they

What was then their crime? They had provoked the Lord,' says my text. But how? By slighting his servants, exalting themselves, and setting a bad example before their neighbours. Moses sent to call Dathan and Abiram, who said, We will not come up.' By this lordly refusal, in which they persisted to the last,

tempt of God's ministers, stamped the neglect of his ordinances, and filled up the measure of their iniquity. A complication of crimes this, which was so much the more heinous, as their rank was more eminent, and their influence over the inferior part of the congregation greater than that of other Israelites.

I grant that we cannot exactly commit their transgression: Moses and the Tabernacle are no more: But have we not our places of worship? And has not one greater than Moses promised, that where two or three are gathered together in his name, there he is in the midst of them? They despised Moses the servant, and we despise Christ, the Son of God. Does this extenuate our crime? Certainly not, if the Apostle stated the case justly: Hear him, (Heb. x. 28, 29 ;) 'He that despised Moses's law, died without mercy. Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and done despite to the Spirit of grace? For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, and I will repay, saith the Lord.'

But let us consider a moment our partial imitation of Dathan's crime. How many are there among us, who when the book, the Providence, the ministers of the Lord, call upon us to forsake our sins, and come out of Babylon, that we may not partake of her plagues, shew the invincible obstinacy of Abiram! How many, who, when they are intreated to haste to Mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, the New Jerusalem, return, by their haughty or careless behaviour, the answer of rebellious Dathan, We will not come up:' Or that of those more civil rebels, who made light of a solemn invitation to the gospel-feast, and said, 'Pray have me excused!'

Numbers of us pay as little regard to the form as to the power of godliness. We are even void of religious decency: The return of the Lord's day invites, the bells call, our baptismal vow binds, our Christian name reminds, the canons of the church bid, the law of the land compels, the fourth commandment enjoins, con

science urges, the day of judgment rushes on, and greedy death stalks about ; all say,

Remember the

Sabbath-day to keep it holy, and go up to the house, to the table of the Lord.'—To give the utmost solemnity to the general invitation, a multitude of ministers and congregations alternately lift up their voices, and say, 'Serve the Lord with gladness, and come before his presence with a song.-O go your way into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise:' But what answer do most of us return? Alas, the very answer that cost Dathan and Abiram their lives. Our conduct speaks their insolent language; 'We will not come up :' You may celebrate the Lord's praises, explain his law, preach his gospel, administer his sacraments if you please; but those means of grace are nothing to us. We will neither seek the Lord in his appointed ways, nor edify our ignorant neighbours by setting them a good example: We will not come up.' Poor enthusiasts may worship God in the face of the sun; but we people of fashion, we men of parts and learning, we busy tradesmen, we votaries of pleasure, we self-righteous moralists, and we immoral pretenders to morality, are all above paying our Creator a public homage: We will not come up.' If God will bless us, let him wait upon us in our own houses, or in the fields of vanity: We give him leave; but indeed we are so slothful, or so busy; so proud, profane, or virtuous, that we neither will, can, nor need be at the trouble of going to his temple. We will not come up.' I repeat it, neglecters of God's worship, this is the plain language of your conduct; and if you know what passes in your breasts, you will find it is the secret whisper of your hearts.

6

O ye Christian Dathans, ye lofty Abirams, ye, who, like those proud Israelites, are in your respective parishes, princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation, men of renown:' The eyes of this populous neighbourhood are upon you, especially the eyes of your poor illiterate colliers, waggoners, and watermen.

rather than God's precepts? Are you not aware that they follow you as a bleating flock follows the first wandering sheep? Because they cannot read the sacred pages, or even tell the first letters of the alphabet; think you they cannot read, Secret contempt of Almighty God, on the sleeves, on which they sometimes see you laugh at godliness? And suppose ye they cannot make out Open pollution of the Sabbaths, when they see the remarkable seats, which you so frequently leave empty at church? Do you not know, that the lessons of practical atheism, which you thus give them in the free school of bad example, they learn without delay, practise without remorse, and teach others with unwearied diligence? Alas! the pattern of indevotion, which you set in the house of God, carries, before you are aware, its baneful influence through a hundred private houses. Oh! how many are now numbered among the dead, who have taken to the ways of destruction by following you! How many are yet unborn, upon whom a curse will be entailed, in consequence of the spreading plague of irreligion, which their parents have caught from you! And shall not their blood be more or less required at your hands? Shall not I visit for these things, saith the Lord? Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?'

Many of you, indeed, do not carry profaneness so far as to say with Dathan and Abiram, We will not come up.' You will come to the house of prayer; but alas! do you not turn it, so far as it lies in you, into a house of vanity, by behaving as if your employment there was to see and be seen? Or do you not consider it as a house of intrigue, rather than a spiritual infirmary; when you come to gaze upon the person who captivates your affections, rather than to wait upon the heavenly Physician, who wounds by repentance, and heals by a pardon, that the bones which he hath broken may rejoice ?'

But, if you do not turn the church into a house of vanity or intrigue; do you not esteem it the house of dulness, a dormitory, a temple of sleep, rather than the

house of God? In a word, when you say, Our bodies shall come up; do not your wandering minds too often reply, in imitation of the rebels mentioned in my text, "We will rove over the earth, we will not come up. Or, of we do, it shall be only to draw near to God with our lips, while our hearts are from him, his ways, his ordinances, and his people?"

So long as our practice speaks this dreadful language, is it surprising that so few should be the better for going up to the house of the Lord? And that the least hint given by the sons of vanity, that we are wanted at an idle dance, an indecent play, a gaming-table, a midnight revel, a bloody sport, &c., should find many of us ready to say, We will do ourselves the honour of waiting upon you; we will go up!' On such occasions as these, when the inflexibility of Dathan would be a virtue, how few, alas!, stand out as he did! How very few reply, with the unshaken resolution of Abiram, 'We will not come up!'

II. We have seen the crime of those men, and our partial imitation of it: Consider we next, the dreadful punishment, which was inflicted upon them, and which we have so arrowly escaped. They would not come up, therefore Moses rose up, and went unto them; and the elders of Israel followed him. And so will some messenger of Divine vengeance come down to us, if we persist in not going up to the house of prayer, to implore Divine mercy. For, how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation,' and to the last, slight the Saviour in his word, his service, his ambassadors, and the sacramental pledges of his dying love?

A crowd of spectators accompanied the man of God, and when he had bid them depart from the tents of those wicked men,' he wrapt himself, by a strong faith, in the mantle of Divine Power, as St. Peter and St. Paul did afterwards; when the one was going to punish lying apostates with sudden death, and the other to strike the sorcerer Elymas with blindness. His pastoral rod became a rod of iron,' stretched out to break in pieces