terest in its benefits; the overawing influence of its doctrines and services; the operation of the social principle, and an irresistible sympathy with those who do "worship God in spirit and in truth"-these will sufficiently account for their apparent devoutness, without resorting to the uncharitable solution that they are feigning what they do not feel, and "playing antics before high heaven." And God forbid that any dark, unworthy suspicions, any harsh imputations on the part of the confessedly religious, should turn their feet wholly from God's house, or make them feel, while there, that they might only be cold and careless spectators, lest any exhibition of lively feeling should put in question their sincerity, and lest their very "prayer" should be deemed " an abomination before God."

Yet assuredly there is danger that this participation in the outward duties, without the inward and life-giving spirit of devotion, may end, if it did not begin, in hypocrisy. The means may soon be mistaken for the end; "the form" substituted for " the power of godliness;" and the deceiving and deceived heart may forget its own hollowness in the loud tone and orthodox language of its professions. The seeming worshipper, himself cheated into a belief of his own sincerity, may at length, with the Pharisee, thank God for his observances and offerings, when he ought to be "smiting upon his breast," and asking forgiveness for "the

iniquity," the dread iniquity, of what ought to have been "his holy things." He may pride himself upon services, the very remembrance of which should fill him with shame, and humble him to the dust. This is the last exhibition we shall present of " the deceitful heart." May the guilt which it involves, and the consequences to which it naturally leads, tend to open the eyes and awaken the repentance of those "who have a name to live, while they are counted dead before God."

CHAPTER III.

THE DECEIVED HEART.

66 He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot turn again and deliver his own soul." "If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!"

"Take heed to yourselves that your heart be not deceived."

ERRONEOUS principles are often esteemed but little dangerous, provided the heart be right in its intentions and feelings. The kind and accommodating creed of modern liberalism makes it a matter of minor importance who is worshipped, or how he is worshipped, if there be only sincerity in the worshipper. Now the great difficulty in the way of this pseudo-charity is, that it proves so much, and extends so

far, as to equalize all truth and falsehood, all right and wrong. It sets out, moreover, with a supposition which in itself involves an impossibility; for the heart is not, and cannot be, right when it is subject to the warping influence of erroneous and debasing views, when it enshrines principles that are radically wrong in its holiest sanctuary of feeling, guards them with its most watchful jealousy, and imbodies them in action with its most fervent enthusiasm and its most active zeal.

"He feedeth on ashes," said the evangelic prophet, in reference to the maker and worshipper of idols, whose folly he had so sarcastically and inimitably exposed; "a deceived heart hath turned him aside that he, cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?" If the reader will be at the pains to consult the forceful chapter in which these words occur, he will doubtless acknowledge that the keenness of the satire is proportioned to the fatuity and heinousness of the offence. It furnishes us with a case admirably in point. Those against whom it directs its pointed sarcasm were doubtless sincere. A species of zeal sent them out to the forest to choose their tree, cheered their labours while they were making it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man." With a liberality worthy of a better cause, they tavished the silver and the gold for its covering and adorning. There wás piety in their hearts when

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they knelt before its shrine, and fervour in the supplications which they there poured forth, in the sacrifices which they unsparingly offered. We see the confidence of assured belief in their system stamped upon their every word and act. Sensitively alive to the honour of their chosen idols, shocked at the very idea of unbelief in their power, prompt to punish disrespect to their altars as sacrilege, they would have been ready, if need required, to war or to die in their cause. According to a fashionable hypothesis, then, their unquestionable sincerity should have excused and sanctified their manifest delusion; and they should have been as much accepted when they bowed themselves, in the darkness of their benighted understandings, before "the stocks and the stones," "called upon Baal," or "poured out. drink-offerings to the queen of heaven," as though they had been worshipping Jehovah with a rational and a holy worship. Yet what is the fact? What saith the inspired recórd? After all this laborious zeal and costly devotion, it gives the disparaging comment that they are" feeding on ashes; that a deceived heart hath turned them aside;" that these "makers of graven images are all of them vanity;" and "that their delectable things shall not profit."

Here, then, is the case of men who were sincerely and systematically devout, while every step in their course was a new remove

from truth, from God, and from salvation. The blindness of the mind deceived and perverted even the willing heart; and this deceived heart, acting on false principles and under a gross delusion, turned them into the pathway of error and death; and the delusion so increased and thickened around them, that they could" by no means deliver their own soul," nor even ascertain that there was a flaw in their principles, "a lie in their right hand.”*

This may possibly be imagined an extreme case, resulting entirely from, the fact of their having forsaken the true God. But we think that it may be shown that similar results follow from all error, in a proportionate degree, even when men ignorantly or improperly worship the true God. Incorporate falsehood or mistake with the principles of action, and "the deceived heart" must turn men aside from the truth; and in exact proportion to the grossness of the error will be the improbability of its discovery and renunciation,

To exemplify this: let one mistake the spirit of true religion and the character of God, blindly supposing that error, however uninten

A similar delusion, springing from sincere but mistaken devotion, might be feared as a natural result from the veneration of images, relics, &c., especially in the case of the credulous and fgnorant, the increasing strength of a false dependance being easily misconstrued into an evidence of deepening piety and greater spiritual safety,

The same effect will also be perceived, in a proportionate degree, from all that tends to make men rest in the mere externals of religion, in forms and ceremonies, as of independent importance and efficacy."