which destroys every other hope, is but the commencement of his-As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness. Come, then, let us bow down and kneel before the Lord our Maker. Whatever your condition be, turn to the Lord that your prosperity may be holy, and your afflictions sanctified. Young persons, you are just embarked in a tempestuous ocean; you soon will be involved in storms where many wise men, many noble, have been sunk; let prayer be your polar star-what can guide and protect you but this?

1

NEAR VIEWS OF GOD.
February 8, 1801.

HUMILITY and repentance are the result of large acquaintance with God. Job said, I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee. It expresses two kinds of knowledge; the one speculative, the other practical. He had formerly a distant and vague acquaintance of God without contemplating him by that faith which seeth him who is invisible. He now had an intimate, a deep and practical sense of God, very different from the mere vague conceptions he had when he only heard of him ;-that knowledge which is practical, deep, intimate, and profound. The two effects were humility and repentance. Humility is produced by the sight of his greatness; repentance by a knowledge of his purity. It is the union of these that form the idea of God.

THE IMPROVEMENT OF TIME.

February 15, 1801.

LIFE is not to be marked by its felicities, but by its duties. Preserve order in the arrangement of time; distribute it into parts: for the want of this method many persons never succeed in the most virtuous employments; many cares rush upon them, and, having no plan, all will be distraction and hurry. Never depart from your plan because of slight inconveniences. It includes in it the making a right use of the leisure and interstices of life. Some seasons will occur of this kind; a right use of these form the character; for men are more formed and moulded by the choice of their amusements than by the force and pressure of business. Let your leisure be often employed in reading the Scriptures, in meditation, and in prayer. Let the Bible be always at hand; frequently take a cordial of comfort from it. Read religious books; learn to make a right use of your sacred time, to weed the soul from sin, and to dress it for immortality: these will have a decisive influence upon the happiness or misery of eternity. Consider how short and transitory time is; all the images that can express frailty have been employed and heaped upon life. One writer compares it to leaves, another to a shadow and a dream. The Apostle James compares it to a vapour, which the sun exhales, and then it disappears; and, compared with the protracted life of the patriarchs, it sinks

into a point; for that which in a time will be nothing, is nothing. It is a narrow isthmus dividing two oceans; an eternity past, and to come. A happy or miserable eternity depends upon a right improvement of your time. Since we cannot count upon time, let us redeem it; your only time is that which is present. Satan steals away our time by stealing the present. In the view of God we are contemporaries with him. The difference of time influences our imagination, but makes no alteration with God. Attend to the sentiments and feelings of dying men upon the value of life-they are on the confines of two worlds—they are passed through one, and they have a prospect of another. One month! one day more! They would esteem days above diamonds.

When Grotius was dying he was asked what he would recommend to others? He replied, "Be serious, be serious." But two words-all his vast knowledge induced him to express it in two words! There are many without half his learning would think their understandings insulted by such a request. Do not say, To-morrow I will reformto-morrow I will subdue my passions. To-morrow

may never come!

REMEDIES AGAINST THE FEARS OF DEATH.

June 28, 1801.

THE natural fear of death is a source of terror to the human mind. Christianity suggests several ways to conquer this :

1. A strict sobriety in the pursuits of life.

Let your moderation be known to all men. The more we live above sense, the more we are prepared for that world where nothing that is not spiritual can enter.

2. Another guard against the fear of death is to accustom ourselves to draw our enjoyments from those scenes which it cannot disturb.

The twofold nature of man connects him with two kinds of objects;-those that are present and visible, and those that are invisible and immortal : the more he draws his happiness from the last source, the more it will prepare him for the last conflict. He who seeks his pleasures in those things which relate to his intellect, not for distinction's sake, but for the increase of his virtue and the improvement of his mind, has entered on a career which will be extended through eternity. If you seek your happiness in the calm of your passions and the approbation of your heart, you will rise superior to the fear of death.

3. An eminent degree of the love of God, is another specific for the fear of death.

Perfect love casteth out fear, but especially the fear of death. Is it not a state of universal change? a state and condition where we have no previous

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acquaintance, where all things will be new? But God, in the amplitude of his love, will shed a domestic acquaintance over those regions. Jesus Christ said, In my Father's house are many dwellingplaces; if it were not so, I would have told you: I go to prepare a place for you. We shall then feel warm with the love of God, who is the God of that world. Besides, love naturally wishes to dwell with its object; and the principal difference that death makes, is an union with God. shew the good man the path of life; then all that conceals God will be removed, and all that shuts out the more immediate beams of the divine presence and vision; for then shall I see as I am seen, and know even also as I am known.

He will

Death places a good man with Him who will be all in all. Eternity will be to you, my brethren, but as your Father's house. Jesus Christ said, I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.

it;

4. By rendering our imagination familiar with

this is an exercise which good men have accustomed themselves to.

Archbishop Fenelon has a very similar thought. He says, "With what a holy familiarity our Lord speaks of the regions of glory, &c., while the apostles, when describing the heavenly state, employ the most pompous and energetic language; and seem, indeed, to labour for words, and to be almost dazzled with the lustre, and oppressed with the weight, of the subject. But Christ speaks of it with a familiar ease and freedom; just as a prince, who had been educated in a splendid court, would speak with ease of many magnificent things, at the sudden view of which a peasant would be swallowed up in astonishment, and would find himself greatly embarrassed in an attempt to explain them to his equals at home."