Let us seek to prize our means of grace while we have them. In a country which is the reputed palladium of liberty;--where the greatest of all liberty, the liberty of the truth, has been purchased by the blood of our fathers,--the time, we trust, with God's help, may never come when these bulwarks will be overthrown--when our sanctuaries will be closed--our Bibles proscribed--our Sabbaths blotted from the statute-book--and bigotry, in league with rampant infidelity, again forge the chain and rear the dungeon. But remember, that protracted sickness or disease may at any time overtake us, and debar us from the precious blessings of the _public_ sanctuary. Yes! I say the _public_ sanctuary. God's appointed ordinances can never be superseded or rendered obsolete by human substitutes. Some may urge that books now-a-days are better than any preaching;--that the press is more potent and eloquent than any living voice. But church or pulpit is not a thing of man's device. It is a divine institute. The speaker is an _ambassador_ in his Master's name, charged with a vast mission from the court of high heaven, and the House of God is the appointed audience-chamber. God does not, indeed, (nay, far from it,) forsake "the dwellings of Jacob." The lowliest cottage-home may become a _Bethel_, with a ladder of love set between earth and heaven, traversed by ministering angels! The secluded sick-chamber may become a _Patmos_, bright with manifestations of the Redeemer's presence and grace! But, nevertheless, "_Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary_." The promise remains, "I will make my people joyful in my _house of prayer_." It is the solemn "trysting-place"--the pledged ground of covenant intercommunion. "THERE _I will meet with thee, and commune with thee from off my mercy-seat!" "The Lord loveth the gates of Zion!" "How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!_"[22] [22] Ex. xxv. 22; Psalm lxxxvii. 2; Numb. xxiv. 5.