How ready are we, even in spiritual concernments, to depend on outward forms and ceremonials! and to hope, or despair of success, according to some circumstantial attendants on worship? One is ready to say, “If it were a nice enquiry into some deep doctrine, I should get something by hearing the word.” Another complains, “Alas! If it had been a sermon of grace and privileges, I had not been so careless in my attention, nor wasted my time.” And a third satisfies his conscience with this, “If I had heard moral duties enforced powerfully on our practice, then I could profit by the preaching; or if he who ministers had but more skill in composing, more fervency of speech, more warmth in delivery, more graceful pronunciations, more strength of argument; surely I should feel more lasting impressions of religion under every sermon.” And thus we go on from week to week, and worship without any sensible benefit, because we seek all from men. But, alas! if all these things were exactly suited to our wishes, the matter ever so agreeable, the manner ever so entertaining, the voice ever so charming, and the performance ever so affectionate; if God be not there, there is no lasting benefit; _Paul may plant, and Apollos water, but God gives the increase_: 1 Cor. iii. 6. The ministration of the word is committed to man, but not the _ministration of the Spirit_. What can a man do to give eyes to the blind? To give ears to the deaf? Can a man make the lame to walk? or raise the dead to a divine life? and turn sinners into saints? _Who is sufficient for these things?_ A minister is ready to say, “When shall I preach to such a people? they would learn and profit by my sermons.” A christian is ready to say, When shall I hear such a minister, or partake of such an ordinance, or hear a discourse on such a subject managed in such a particular method? And they are ready to go away discouraged, as though all hope were gone, when they find a disappointment in the pulpit; as though the graces of God were confined to a particular instrument, or as though the words of a man were our only hope. When any of us have been at church, and waited in the sanctuary, let us examine what did we go thither to see; a shadow of religion? An outside of christian forms? a graceful orator? The figures and shapes of devotion? Surely then we might with as much wisdom, and more innocence, have gone _to the wilderness to see a reed shaken with the wind_. Can we say as the Greeks at the feast; John xii. 21. _We would see Jesus?_ Or, as Absalom; 2 Sam. xiv. 32. _It is to little purpose I am come to Jerusalem, if I may not see the king’s face._ To little purpose we go to church, or attend on ordinances, if we seek not, if we see not God there.