Alexandria Daily Gazette, Commercial & Political

FOR SATURDAY'S READING.

There is perhaps no doctrine of our holy religion of more consolatory and useful tendency than that which represents man as the "temple and habitation" of the Deity. While his immensity and omniscience assure us, that he is every where present, and beholds all the secret workings of our minds, his infinite goodness and mercy give us the utmost confidence, that He, whose tender mercies are over all his works, will confer upon those who walk in his statutes and judgments, all those blessings which are needful for their happiness—that he replenishes the soul wherein he vouchsafes to dwell, with the rays of divine light, refreshes it with his own consolations and admits it to that freedom and communion with himself, which is peculiarly delightful and inconceivably beneficial.

When the adorable Majesty of Heaven condescends to allow us this distinguishing privilege, is it not astonishing that any of the human race should be indifferent about it, or even to the cultivation of those dispositions which render us meet or this enjoyment? Alas! the men ot this world immerse themselves so deeply in the enjoyment of the pleasures, the profits and honors of this life, and form such close attachments to temporal things, that they have but little relish, and less fitness for a spiritual intercourse with the Author of their beings and the true Source of happiness.

But can there be any pleasures, profits or honors equal to those which belong to man in the sacred relations in which reason and revelation represent him? Can any thing more improve and exalt our natures, than by faith meditation and prayer, to ascend up to the First Cause and Principle of all things, to behold, admire, and taste his surpassing excellence? Can any pleasure and satisfaction be equal to that which arises from the intimations of the divine love and the tokens of his favor? To love and be loved by the greatest and best of beings, who is the inexhaustible Source of all good, and who can free us from every pain, secure us from every danger, and confer upon us every blessing—is not this the most exalted happiness of which the nature of man is capable? If these things then have any weight as they certainly should have the greatest, ought they not to engage us to consecrate ourselves as the temples of God, avoiding every sin which may defile us, cultivating every virtue that may improve us, that God may send his Spirit to dwell in our hearts and prepare us for living with him in everlasting glory?