Page:Some Reflections on the Importance of a Religious Life.djvu/22



is my earnest desire, my dear young friends, that having been taught that the true worship of God cometh only from the heart, you may gladly resort to our religious meetings at the appointed seasons, and under a reverent sense of the purity and holiness of him whom you profess to serve, seek to present yourselves before him in solemn silence, to be of those who fulfil, in a spiritual sense, the words of the psalmist, “The eyes of all wait upon thee,” and to partake from him of the subsequent declaration, “Thou givest them their meat in due season.” As we secretly confess our sins unto him, and ask for the forgiveness of them, for the sake of Jesus Christ, and beg for the renewings of the Holy Ghost, the soul is tendered and contrited before the Lord, and in his own time some sense is granted of the continuance of his mercy, either by the immediate extension of his love, by the ministry of the word, or by the application of some portion of Holy Writ.

May you be earnestly concerned then, in religious