"Quench not the Spirit." Abstain from those things, which tend to extinguish his kindly influences. Give entertainment to the serious and rational convictions excited in your minds. Seek the Lord while he may be found, and call be found, and call upon him while he is near.

Some will ask perhaps, Whether they can expect success in such a use of means, as any are capable of in their unregenerate state ?-We cannot promise men success on any thing short of a sincere compliance with the gospel. We aim, however, to address them according to the different characters in which they appear. We would instruct the ignorant, alarm the thoughtless, undeceive the selfconfident, and encourage the desponding, and thus be made all things to all men, that we may by all means save some. We would place duty before all men, and urge it by gospel motives. We would shew them the impossibility of obtaining salvation by strict law; open the plan of grace, and press their compliance with it. When we hear them speaking, and see them acting discreetly-when we observe in them an attention to their religious advantages, and an engagedness in the work of their salvation, we hope they are not far from the kingdom of God. We hope, the good work begun will be accomplished. But we exhort them to look to themselves, that they lose not the things which they have gained. And we solemnly warn them, that if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the latter end is worse with them, than the beginning.

Then said Micah, Now I know that the Lord will do me good, seeing I have a Levite to my priest,

GOD instituted, for the church of Israel, a form of worship adapted to their circumstances, and to that age of the world. Its peculiar ordinances were designed to guard them against the superstitions of the heathens, and to preserve them from disunion among themselves.

Before the temple at Jerusalem was built, God appointed, that his tabernacle should be placed in Shiloh, and that the tribes should there assemble, at the great festivals instituted in the law.

To perform the common service of the tabernacle the tribe of Levi was separated; and from this tribe the family of Aaron was selected for the peculiar duties of the priesthood; such as offering sacrifice, burning incense, expounding the law, and enquiring at the oracle.

The continued enjoyment of God's favour depended on a faithful adherence to his institutions.

The Jews, though fully instructed in the true and acceptable worship of God, soon began to corrupt it by human inventions. Instead of assembling at the place where God had recorded his name, they chose other places of worship according to their own humour. Instead of attending on the ministrations of the orderly priests, who were set apart and educated for their office, they made priests of the lowest of the people. Instead of directing their adorations to the one Supreme God, they worshipped the heathen deities, which were but creatures of imagination, or senseless idols formed by art and man's device.

The first successful attempt to introduce idolatry into the church of Israel, is related in the chapter where our text is, and in the next following. Previous attempts, indeed, had been made; but those, being open and publick, gave an alarm, and were immediately opposed. This was made more privately, and in a time of political confusion, when there was no king-no settled government, in Israel; and therefore it met with no effectual opposition.

The idolatry, which finally proved the ruin of the Jews, began in the house of Micah; was here carried on by a vagrant Levite; from hence it was transferred to the tribe of Dan; and there it continued, until the ark of God was taken by the Philistines, and the tabernacle removed from Shiloh. After this, it was for a time suppressed; but in the reign of Jeroboam, it was again revived, and was never wholly and finally extirpated until the BabyIonian captivity.

This Micah was of Mount Ephraim. He lived in the same house with his mother, who probably was a widow. She had, by some means, collected a

quantity of silver, which Micah stole from her. Vexed at her loss, she uttered such dreadful imprecations as frightened him into a confession of the theft, and restitution of the silver.

The fond mother now blesses her son, and says, "This silver I had wholly dedicated to the Lord, to JEHOVAH, for my son, to make a graven image and a molten image." She did not intend to renounce the God of Israel; but to worship him by an image, which she considered as having the divine presence residing in it. This, though not the grossest kind of idolatry, yet was an impious degradation of the glory, and a vile corruption of the worship of that infinite and invisible Spirit, of whom there can be no corporeal similitude. And it naturally led to still more gross superstition. When men begin to depart from God, they can prescribe to themselves no bounds. They know not how far they shall wander, where they shall make a stand, nor how they shall return. God has instituted the order of his house. If forsaking this, we follow our own inventions, we shall soon fall under the power of a wild imagination, and become subject to the influence of infernal artifice; and there is but a precarious hope, that we shall recover ourselves out of the snare.

Micah agreed to his mother's proposal. The silver was given to an artificer, who made thereof a molten, and a graven image. These Micah placed in his house. He then made an ephod in imitation of the pontifical vestments, and teraphim in resemblance of the urim and thummim; and he consecrated one of his sons for a family priest. Well pleased, no doubt, he was with this fine device. He had not renounced the God of Israel: He had only contrived to pay him an easy service. He should be excused from the trouble of going to Shiloh, and attending at the tabernacle, for he had

gods and a priest in his house. It appears, from the next chapter; that his neighbours were drawn into the same superstition; and neglecting the instituted worship of the sanctuary, they attended on the ministrations of this new fangled priest.

Some time after this, a young man, who, by his. father's side, was a Levite, wandering about for employment, or perhaps for an easier subsistence, came to the house of Micah. In those days of anarchy, the Levites were probably neglected; and this youth, quitting the service of the tabernacle, travelled the country in quest of a better livelihood.

Micah enquired, who and whence he was; and, learning that he was a Levite, he invited him to officiate in his house, as a priest. For this service he promised him food and raiment, and ten shekels of silver by the year. "And the Levite was content to dwell with the man, and he became unto him as one of his sons; and Micah consecrated the Levite, who became his priest."-"Now," says he, "I know that the Lord will do me good, seeing I have a Levite to my priest."

This Levite however, had no better right to the priesthood than Micah's son; for by divine institution, this office was confined to Aaron's family. It was an impious presumption in Micah to attempt the consecration of a priest, and in the Levite to accept it from his hands. This service belonged not to every man ; but was assigned to the priests themselves. And indeed, if the Levite had been of the priestly order, and regularly consecrated, he was still grossly impious in favouring Micah's superstition, and in encouraging his separation from the appointed place, and instituted form of divine worship.

But his motive was to obtain a subsistence. Little encouragement had he hitherto found in his excursions. A maintenance is now offered. Rather