The Select Works of Robert Leighton Author:Robert Leighton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ' I have borne chastisement: what I see not, teach tbou me ; and if I have done iniquity, I will do it no more." Oh ! were it thus with us, my brethren, how migh... more »t we rejoice, and insert into our praises all that is come upon us, if it had wrought or advanced any thing of this kind within us, this blessed compliance with the will of God, not entertaining anything knowingly that displeases him ; finding a pleasure in the denial and destruction of our own most beloved pleasures at his appointment and for his sake, whatsoever is in us, and dearest to us, that would offend us, that would draw us to offend him; were it the right hand, let it be cut off, or the right eye, let it be plucked out: or, to make shorter work, let the whole man die at once, crucified with Jesus, " That we maybe henceforth dead to sin, dead to the world, dead to ourselves, and alive only to God." SERMON III. PREFACE. There is no exercise so delightful to those that are truly godly as the solemn worship of God, if they find his powerful and sensible presence in it; and indeed there is nothing on earth more like to heaven than that is. But when he withdraws himself, and withholds the influence and breathings of his Spirit in his service, then good souls find nothing more lifeless and uncomfortable: but there is this difference, even at such a time, betwixt them and those that have no spiritual life in them at all, that they find, and are sensible of this difference; whereas the other know not what it means. And for the most part, the greatest number of those that meet together with a profession to worship God, yet are such as do not understand this difference. Custom and formality draws manylo the ordinary places of public worship, and fills too much of the room ; and sometimes novelty and curiosity, to p...« less