attendants upon games of all sorts; and if no more time be spent in them than is necessary to unbend the mind, and fit it for a return to its employment. But when recreation becomes, as of late in this nation, a trade and a profession, and is made a means of putting the soul upon the rack of contending passions, it no longer deserves the name, but is in reality a drudgery imposed by the adversary of human happiness upon those who will not give their time to the service of their Maker. In one word, it is Egypt and the taskmasters over again. From which we have reason to pray that our good Lord would vouchsafe to deliver us all!

Thirdly, Cut off, as much as may be, unnecessary visits. Of all thieves, they are the worst who rob us of our time, because for the loss of that no amends can ever be made us.* And there are in every place some who, being idle themselves, do their best endeavours to make others so; in which work, partly through a disposition in those others to be made so, and partly through a false fear and shame, which hinders them from fraying away such birds of prey, they are too often suffered to succeed. An assembly of such persons can be compared to nothing but a slaughter-house, where the precious hours, and oftentimes the character, of all their friends and acquaintance, are butchered without mercy. And, perhaps, there are few maxims that have more truth in them, than one laid down by a great master in the art of

*On the Robbery of Time, see a most excellent paper in the Idler, vol. i. No. 14.

Holy Living, "No man can be provident of his time who is not prudent in the choice of his company."

Lastly, Examine, every evening, how you have spent the day. For how can that man know the state of his affairs who keeps no account? The task, at first, will be irksome, and the adversary will try every way to make you neglect, and by degrees drop, the practice. And why? Because he knows that no person who continues it will long remain under his power. It will let you into some secrets that will greatly shock and alarm you. But you must know your follies; how else can you reform them? Whereas, when a constant and faithful performance of this exercise, the benefits and advantages of which are without number and without end, has brought you acquainted with your errors, every day will correct those of the preceding. You will find that God has given you time enough for every good purpose*, but none to waste. You will soon know the true value of time, and become an adept in the management of it.—And of this be assured, for your comfort and encouragement, that the time rightly employed, be it when it may, is with God "an acceptable time;" and that every day well spent is to yourselves "a day of salvation."

* This seems to be intimated to us in that question of our Lord," Are there not twelve hours in the day?"— John, xi. 9.

LIFE A JOURNEY.

PSALM CXIX. 19.

I am a stranger in the earth.

AND was it then peculiar to the son of Jesse, the sweet Psalmist of Israel, to be so? No, surely; it is a character in which every son of Adam appears and acts upon the stage of life. We have all a home; but that home is in heaven. We are strangers in the earth; we are here in a foreign land, through which we travel to our native country, there to possess everlasting habitations. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews having, in the eleventh chapter, celebrated the Old Testament worthies, and the wonders which they wrought, through the divine principle that was in them, sums up the account in the following words: "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things, declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned; but now they desire a better country, that is, an

heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city."

Agreeably to this account, if we look into the story of those friends and favourites of heaven, the ancestors of the Israelitish nation, we find them sojourning in a land that was not theirs; dwelling only in tents, soon pitched, and as soon removed again; having no ground of their own to set their foot on, save only a possession of a burying-place (and that purchased of the inhabitants), where they might rest from their travels, till they shall pass at the resurrection of the just to their durable inheritance in the kingdom of God.

Such was Jacob's notion of human life, expressed in his answer to the Egyptian monarch, who had enquired his age-"The days of the years of my pilgrimage," says the patriarch, "are an hundred and thirty years; few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage."

Look at the posterity of Jacob, the chosen people of the Most High, after they had been delivered from the house of bondage. View them likewise dwelling in tents; sojourning for forty years in a vast and howling wilderness; attacked by enemies; stung by serpents; and in danger of perishing for want of provisions; but still supported by the hand of Providence, and at length conducted to the land

of promise. Consider, O Christian, this history and in it behold thy pictured life!

When the children of Israel had taken possession of Canaan, they might be said, in some sense, to have obtained a settlement. But, in truth and propriety, what settlement can any man be said to have obtained, to whom will soon be brought (and he knows not how soon) the message which was brought to king Hezekiah, "Set thine house in order, for thou must die!" This was the case with the Israelites, no less after their settlement in the land of Canaan than before it. Notwithstanding, therefore, the rest, which God had there given them, you find David, in the ninety-fifth Psalm, speaking of another future and distant rest, still remaining for the people of God, in a better country, that is, an heavenly. And, accordingly, though settled in the promised land, you hear him still crying out, in the words of the text "I am a stranger in the earth."

And what shall we say with regard to the Son of God himself, when for us, and for our salvation, in the form of man, he honoured this world with his presence? Did he not pass through it as a foreigner returning to the celestial mansions from whence he descended? Did not he live and act as such, and was he not treated as such by those to whom he came? Yes, verily, he was a stranger and a sojourner here below, as all his fathers according to the flesh were before him, and as all his children according to the spirit have been, and must