n essential nature,
and its design, all conspire in this.

It was performed in the solemn assemblies of the people of God. The
oaths of his people were wont to come up before his altar. The people of
Judah and Jerusalem, both under Jehoash and Josiah, and those of Judah,
besides many of the kingdom of Israel, observed the exercise in the
temple. When performed not in religious edifices, but where the Lord
himself approved, it was not the less observed in his presence, nor the
less sacred a service. What gives to a religious assembly all its
solemnity, is the gracious presence of God. And this, which gave to the
house of God its holy character, confers on every place where his people
meet, whether in houses built with hands or under the canopy of heaven,
the character of a scene for the time set apart to his service. The
scene and the nature of the services correspond. By the scene where this
observance was kept, whether in the desert of Sinai, in the fruitful
land of Moab, in the temple at Jerusalem in its earlier periods, in
Jerusalem surrounded with ruins, but to be rebuilt, in houses erected
for the worship of God, or in the fruitful vallies, or on the barren
heath,--a scene of communion with God, its character, as an exercise
essentially devotional, is defined.

It is a holy exercise. Both in the Old Testament and in the New, the
Covenant of God is declared to be holy. He himself is holy, and he
requires that his people be holy too. And dissuading Israel from
confederating with the heathen, and in language addressed to all,
calling them to the exercise of Covenanting embodied in fearing his
name, he commands them to approach him as holy. "Say ye not, A
confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy;
neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid. Sanctify the Lord of hosts
himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread."[160]

It should be performed with godly fear and reverence. The Lord was made
known not merely as the God of Abraham, and the portion of Jacob, but to
intimate the same Covenant relation which these designations pointed
out, as also the fear of Isaac. And as Isaac, in Covenanting with Him
whom he acknowledged as his fear, could not but cherish towards him a
holy awe, so all possessed of an interest in that covenant into which
Isaac was taken, in vowing to the Lord, fear his holy name; and giving
intimation of the reverential feelings that prevail in their minds
whi