A familiar instance or two may serve to illustrate this truth. How can any man, who neglects the worship of God, pretend to decide upon its importance and utility? How can he presume to deny its comfortable and salutary influence upon the soul, its powerful efficacy upon the character and life? It is a matter of experience; of which he therefore is unqualified to judge.—He that is a stranger to the grace of God in his heart, may despise those, that regard it and live by it, as fanatical persons, who are deluded by visionary ideas and groundless assurances: but he is only judging others by himself; and it would be marvellous indeed, if he, who is avowedly living without the influence of divine grace, should bear witness to the benefit and happiness which it confers.—What can the intemperate man know of the blessings of temperance? Nothing: except by the want of them.—What can the covetous man know of the pleasures of benevolence and liberality?—the licentious of the excellence of purity, or the ignorant of the treasures of wisdom?—Because the sinner, when overtaken by sickness or affliction, declares that he derives no comfort from religion, are we therefore to conclude, that religion has no comforts at all? Could we think it probable, that the promises of the gospel would afford consolation to him, in an evil hour, when he had all along been an alien to their nature, when they had been unheeded or despised? It is quite clear, that the benefits and blessings of our holy religion, that the knowledge of God’s word, the power of His Spirit, and the effects of His ordinances, must ever remain a secret to those, who have no intercourse with these things, and set their hearts against them. And whenever the Christian hears his conduct condemned, or his hopes undervalued, by such persons, he may treat them, not with proud disdain, but with a holy disregard: whatever their station in society may be, whatever their learning, whatever their reputation for judgment in worldly affairs, upon spiritual or scriptural matters their opinion is of no weight or worth.