Sapphira, how God regards this sin.  In prayer, strive to follow, in your heart, the words of the person who leads, applying the several parts of the prayer to yourself in particular, when they suit your case, and yet bearing in mind the various subjects of petition, which relate to the congregation and the world.  In all the exercises of public worship, labor and strive against wandering thoughts.  This is the time when Satan will beset you with all his fury.  Now you must be well armed, and fight manfully.  Be not discouraged, though you may be many times foiled.  If you persevere in the strength of Jesus, you will come off conqueror at last.

5.  “Take heed how you hear.” (1.) Consider the speaker as the ambassador of Christ, sent with a message from God to yourself.  For such truly is every evangelical minister of Christ. (2.) Diligently compare the doctrines, which you hear from the pulpit, with the Holy Scriptures, and receive nothing which does not agree with them.  The figure used in the passage referred to, (2 Cor. 5:20,) is borrowed from the practice of one government sending a person on a particular errand to another.  The analogy in this case, however, does not hold good throughout.  It is like a sovereign sending an ambassador to persuade rebels against his government to submit to him, and accept of pardon.  But, in such a case, it would be possible, either for some person, who was not sent, to deliver a false message in the name of the king, or for one who was really sent, to deliver a different message from the one sent by him.  So it is in relation to preachers of the gospel.  There are many, whom Christ has never sent, who are spreading abroad lies over the land; and there are others, really sent by Christ, who have, in some respects, misapprehended his meaning, and therefore do not deliver his message just as he has directed.  But, our blessed Lord, foreseeing this, has wisely and kindly given us a check book, by which we may discover whether those who speak in his name tell the truth.  Hence we are commanded to “search the Scriptures,” and to “try the spirits, whether they be of God.”  And the Bereans were commended as more noble, because they searched the Scriptures daily, to know whether the things preached by the apostles were so.  If, then, they were applauded for trying the preaching of the apostles by the word of God, surely we may try the preaching of uninspired men by the same standard. (3.) Beware of a fault-finding spirit.  There are some persons, who indulge such a habit of finding fault with preaching, that they never receive any benefit from it.  Either the matter of the sermon, the apparent feeling of the preacher, or his style and manner of delivery, does not suit them, and therefore they throw away all the good they might have obtained from his discourse.  Remember that preachers of the gospel are but men.  So weak are they, that the apostle compares them to “earthen vessels.”  Do not, then,