certainty, when he will feel what he never felt before, when he shall be summoned by a voice which he cannot disobey, to quit this world and all that is in it. Then he will find how much he had need to conciliate the mercy of God by watchful perseverance in righteous living, and in the use of those means which conduce to it. Now it becomes him to keep his eye fixed upon that final consummation; to steer steadily onwards towards that harbour to which all are destined, and which to the righteous will be a haven of rest; to look upon death as that which will actually and speedily come upon him, and to set his whole soul to prepare for it by earnest repentance and incessant prayer.

God speaks to our senses as well as to our faith, and ratifies his word by warnings as tremendous and distinct as if the dead had rose and uttered them, that we may “give earnest heed" to the things

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which we behold with our eyes, if not to that which He by revelation has propounded to our belief. He could conceal from us the doom which has consigned us to the dust, transport from the view of the survivors the lifeless and dishonoured spectacle which excites their horror and amazement, and veil from our very contemplation that eternal ocean on which we shall speedily be launched. But the sad, funereal pageants pass along our streets, and the gulph of eternity draws us perceptibly within its vortex, with an attraction as visible as that which compels the bubbles of the stream to the cataract in which they are engulphed, that we may be roused to a sense of our condition, and seek, ere yet it be too late, to propitiate Him by whom we shall be either upheld on its surface, or plunged to endless pain within its infinite profundity.

If the most certain of all events, our inevitable summons to depart speedily

from the world, is insufficient to operate as a warning to wean us from it; if men lay aside the absolute certainty of their own mortality as much as if the certainty were on the other side of the question, and fail to live as they would give a thousand worlds to have lived at their dying hour; one of the reasons is, that they neglect or disdain to tie themselves down to practical rules; trusting in a too general way to conscience, co-operating with prudence to arbitrate and determine concerning the particulars of their duty. But it has ever been man's weakness to run from one extreme to another. While he contemns vexatious discipline and monastic severity, he is apt to lose sight of discipline altogether; and the danger is, not indeed that he strive to approve himself to the Most High by the scrupulous observance of burthensome rites or superstitious penances; not that he worship God with

Jewish or Roman Catholic ceremonies,

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but that he fail likewise to worship Him in spirit and in truth.

* Unless he inure himself by long

* "All that have a care to walk with God fill their vessels more largely as soon as they rise, before they begin the work of the day, and before they lie down again at night; which is to observe what the Lord appointed in the Levitical ministry, a morning and an evening lamb to be laid upon the altar; so that with them that are not stark irreligious, prayer is the key to open the day, and the bolt to shut in the night. But as the skies drop the early dew and the evening dew upon the grass, yet it would not spring and grow green by that constant and double falling of the dew, unless some great showers at certain seasons did supply the rest; so the customary devotion of prayer twice a day is the falling of the early and latter dew: but if will increase and flourish in the works you of grace, empty the great clouds sometimes, and let them fall into a full shower of prayer. Choose out the seasons in your own discretion, when prayer shall overflow like Jordan in the time of harvest.

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Keep strictly, as much as you are able, to those times of the day which you have designed to appear in before the Lord; for then you offer up not only your prayers, but the strict observation of set times, which is a double sacrifice, and an evidence that you will not dispense to pretermit that holy work for any avo

habit, rigidly to observe a stated period for devotion, sacred from the intrusion of worldly business and worldly cares; unless he govern himself by some systematic, salutary discipline, his devotions will surely be neglected he will be languid in observing them, prone to defer them, and easily seduced from them by the nugatory and profane encroachments of worldly affairs.

And although very celebrated and pious men have laid down rules deduced from the Gospel for our daily conduct, they may be thought difficult to observe, and from their very multiplicity likely to be overlooked or forgotten: whereas this one simple rule, observed sacredly and upon a religious principle, of rising early every

cation. He that refers himself at large to pray when he is at leisure, gives God the worst of the day, that is, his idle time. I account them prudent, therefore, that are precise in keeping canonical hours of prayer.” JEREMY TAYLOR. Christian Consolations.