to the seas and to the floods. The state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precicus in mine eyes; I have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart: I have (though in a despised weed) procured the good of all men. If any have been mine enemies, I thought not of them; neither hath the sun almost set upon my displeasure; but I have been as a dove, free from superfluity of maliciousness. Thy creatures have been my books, but thy Scriptures much more. I have sought therein the courts, fields and gardens, but I have found Thee in thy temples. ten "Thousand have been my sins, and thousand my transgressions; but thy sanctifications have remained with me, and my heart, through thy grace, hath been an unquenched coal upon thy altar. O Lord, my strength, I have since my youth met with Thee in all my ways, by thy fatherly compassions, by thy comfortable chastisements, and by thy most visible providence. "As thy favors have increased upon me, 80 have thy corrections; as Thou hast been alway near me, O Lord; and ever as my worldly blessings were exalted, 80 secret darts from when I have Thee have pierced me; and when ascended before men, I have descended in humiliation before Thee. "And now, when I thought most of peace and honor, thy hand is heavy upon me, and hath humbled me, according to thy former loving kindness, keeping me still in thy fatherly school, not as a bastard, but as a child. Just are thy judgments upon me for my sins, which are more in number than the sands of the sea, but have no proportion to thy mercies; for what are the sands of the sea to the sea, earth, heavens? and all these are nothing to thy mercies. "Besides my innumerable sins, I confess before Thee, that I am debtor to Thee for the gracious talent of thy gifts and graces, which I have neither put into a napkin, nor put it (as I ought) to exchangers, where it might have made best best profit; but misspent it in things for which I was least fit; so as I may truly say, my soul hath been a stranger in the course of my pilgrimage. Be merciful unto me (O Lord) for my Saviour's sake, and receive me into thy bosom, or guide me in thy ways." XVI. BISHOP ANDREWS' DEVOTIONS. The Rt. Honorable and Rt. Reverend Lancelot Andrews, D.D., Lord Bishop of Winchester, was born A.D. 1555, in the parish of Allhallows, London, and was the ecclesiastical light of the age in which he lived, though his theological works are now almost forgotten, and only his prayers have survived his commanding influence and reputation. He died in 1626. Of his habits of devotion, Bishop Buckeridge thus speaks, in his funeral sermon: "Of this reverend prelate I may say, his life was a life of prayer. A part of five hours every day did he spend in prayer and devotion to God. In the time of his fever and last sickness, besides the often prayers which were read to him, he continually prayed to himself, though he seemed otherwise to rest or to slumber. And when he could pray no longer with his voice, yet, by lifting up his eyes and hands, he prayed still; and, when both voice, and eyes and hands failed in their office, he still prayed with his heart, till it pleased God to receive his soul to himself." Bishop Andrews' Devotions in Greek and Latin were published in Oxford in 1675. Various translations have since been issued. Milton's sonnet on Bishop Andrews shows the lofty estimate the poet entertained of his religious character. The following is Bishop Andrews' Horology: "O Thou, that hast put in Thine Own Power give us grace that we may pray to Thee "Thou, that for us men and for our salvation, wast born in the depth of night, grant us to be renewed daily by the Holy Ghost until Christ Himself be formed in us, to a perfect man; and deliver us. "Thou, that very early in the morning, at the rising of the sun, didst rise again from the dead, raise us also daily to newness of life. and deliver us. "Thou, that at the third hour didst send down thy Holy Ghost 66 on the Apostles, take not that same Holy Spirit from us, but renew Him every day in our hearts; Thou, that at the sixth hour of the sixth day didst nail together with thyself on the Cross the sins of the world, |