God has an indisputable right to all we possess; because all we have is the effect of his power, and the result of his unmerited bounty. The _heart_ is more especially his claim; because he first made it himself, and, when fallen, redeemed it with the blood of his Son. _My Son give me thy heart_, Prov. xxiii. 26, is therefore his most reasonable and gracious demand. To give it to any thing else, save to its original Proprietor and Redeemer, is black ingratitude, is palpable idolatry: and to pretend devotion, when the heart is withheld, is hypocrisy and dissimulation. Give God any thing, and keep back the heart, and you virtually give him nothing, or present him with an abomination. _He is a Spirit_, _and they who worship him_, _must worship him in spirit and in truth_. John, iv. 24. The most tedious round of duties, the most punctual and ceremonious attendance upon forms, are but so many elaborate modes of affronting Jehovah, if _the heart be not right with God_; and so many delusive methods to conceal a latent malady, which is open to the eye of omniscience, as the foulest insincerity, and the rankest pride. They who honor the Lord with lip-service, or draw nigh to him in mere formality, are they who _trust in lying words_ and espouse a delusion; especially when crying out, _The temple of the Lord_, _the temple of the Lord_, _are these_. Jer. vii. 4. But how few consider this with becoming seriousness and attention! Hurried on in the circle of dissipation, and driven impetuously forward by the torrent of popular example, multitudes possess neither leisure nor inclination, to examine the grounds of their profession, or to compare their hearts and lives with the word of God. As if religion had nothing to do with the _heart_, they only profess with their lips, what, alas! is strongly reprobated by the current of their affections and the tenor of their lives. The lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, and the pride of life, are their favorite idols: and to sacrifice to these, not to the Lord of Hosts, is the wish, the desire, the ultimate resolution of their hearts. To such, an inspired Apostle says, _Ye adulterers and adulteresses_, _know ye not_, _that the friendship of the world is enmity with God_. James, iv. 4. They attend public worship; but while they are visible in their pews to the eye of man, their real selves, their hearts, appear to omniscience to be pursuing their vanities, and wandering immeasurably far from God, when they should be approaching him in the most solemn and intimate communion: so that in the very act of pretending to worship him, they mock him most. Their “week’s preparation” is hurried over with the rapidity of a school-boy repeating his task; only with not so much attention, nor with equal fear; and, while they feel religion to be perfect bondage, and go through it as a drudgery, they nevertheless depend upon their lame performances for acceptance, and so