COL. i. 28. Whom we preach warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom: that we SERMON I. SERIOUSNESS IN RELIGION A MOST INDISA PENSABLE DISPOSITION. I. PETER. IV. 7. Be ye, therefore, sober and watch unto prayèr. THE HE first requisite in religion is seriousness. No impression can be made without it. An orderly life, so far as others are able to observe, is now and then produced by prudential motives or by dint of habit; but without seriousness there can be no religious principle at the bottom, no course of conduct flowing from religious motives, in a word, there can be no religion. This cannot exist without seriousness upon the subject. Perhaps a teacher of religi 2 SERMON 1. on has more difficulty in producing seriousness amongst his hearers, than in any other part of his Office. Until he succeed in this, he loses his labor and when once, from any cause whatever, a spirit of levity has taken hold of a I mind, it is next to impossible to plant serious considerations in that mind. It is seldom to be done, except by some great shock or alarm, sufficient to make a radical change in the disposition; and which is God's own way of bringing about the business. One might have expected that Events so awful and tremendous, as death and judgment; that a question so deeply interesting, as whether we shall go to heaven or to hell, could in no possible case, and in no constitution of mind whatever, fail of exciting the most serious apprehension and concern. But this is not So. In a thoughtless, a careless, a sensual world many are always found, who can resist, and who do resist, the force and importance of all these reflections, that is to say, they suffer nothing of the kind to enter into their thoughts. There |