Solomon describes its nature, when he demands, in the name of Jehovah, “My son, give me thy _heart_.” Prov. xxiii. 26. So does St. Paul, who says, “The kingdom of God is not meat and drink,” does not consist in outward things, “but is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” Rom. xiv. 17. And again, when endeavouring to undeceive the Jews, who were blind on this very point, he says, “He is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew who is one _inwardly_, and circumcision is that of the _heart_, in the spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not of men but of God.” Rom. ii. 28, 29. Forms may be excellent; the means of grace are necessary, and of divine institution. They are however but means, and operate, through the blessing of God, as the transparent medium does, which admits the light of the sun into a place of worship. But he who rests in them, and supposes a regular attendance upon them to be the whole of what is required in religious homage, thinks and acts as absurdly as a man, who, trusting to a transparent medium still to give him light, after the sun had quitted the horizon and ceased to illuminate the hemisphere, should find himself involved in the darkness of night. A sad but true emblem of the situation of the sinner, whose heart is not given up to God and changed by his grace; who sits down contented with the formalities of religion, though in the “region and shadow of death,” till death dissolves the delusion, and consigns him to the blackness of darkness for ever.