must be our business in this world, if we would enjoy a warranted hope of felicity in the world to come; yea, it must be our element here, in order to a meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light. Every man's own conscience must decide how far this is his character: and experience; and every one must be left to apply the subject to his own case, for conviction, admonition, and encourage-Rev. T. SCOTT.

ment.

FAMILY PRAYER.

I MUST here more particularly advert to a practice, which may be truly considered as first and last in the arrangements of the Christian family; and that is, family prayer. This is indeed the only stated occasion on which the Christian can acknowledge God in his family; and this is the proper opportunity for diffusing religious instruction through his house. As we have here a subject of great moment, and, through a too frequent neglect of the duty, calling for the most serious admonition, permit me, my brethren, to premise my observations on it with one remark of general application. It is this: that if we acknowledge the duty of assembling the members of our household night and morning, for the pur-pose of social worship and hearing the word of God, no consideration whatever of its singularity, or of its inconvenience, should be suffered to interfere with its performance. Do-mestic arrangements might very soon be made to bend to this object: they ought to do so; and it is a fact, that no families are so well ordered as those which begin and end: the day with family prayer. A family without prayer has been well compared to "a garment without hem or selvage." And to decline the charge of singularity, did it really fall upon us for acting up to the dictates of plain duty, were the part only of cowardice, and of a double mind. But I must deny that it is singular at all amongst those whose example, or whose opinion on subjects of religious practice, are of any weight. So far from this, I would boldly say, that amongst persons duly aware of the importance of practical religion, and feeling for the souls of their relatives and inmates as for their own, the neglect of family prayer were indeed the highest and most unwarrantable singularity. The great

Archbishop Tillotson has strongly remarked, "The setting up of the constant worship of God in our families is so necessary to the keeping up of religion, that where it is neglected, I do not see how any family can in reason be esteemed a family of Christians, or indeed to have any religion at all." And one greater than any uninspired teacher has commanded us, "Thou shalt teach" these things "diligently to thy children, and shalt talk of them, when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and upon thy gates."

The true Christian will, I am persuaded, be found in the practice of that which has had the concurrence of the wise and good in every age of the Church; nay, which the very example of ancient heathens might be adduced to confirm. He will devoutly acknowledge the God of his fathers in family worship. He will see no reason whatever for expect ing from God a continuance of his domestic blessings, without the stated domestic returns of praise and prayer. As in private he would express his private wants, and his public ones in public; so in the family he will supplicate for family favours. Do children desire the safety and preservation of their parents; or parents, the health and welfare of their children? Are the members of a household mutually interested, that each, in the morning should go forth in strength to his respective labours that they should meet in peace after the toils of the day, and repose at night in a blessed security from the perils of darkness? The Christian openly avows the obligation, to ask of God, in presence of each other, these common blessings. He relies on the promise of his Saviour; "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." He seizes with avidity the sacred opportunity of family worship, for fixing, both in himself and in all belonging to him, those kindred dispositions towards God which are our best incentive and guide to love and harmony amongst each other. He values at once the duty itself, and the happy effects attending its performance."

[Archdeacon Hoare's Sermons.]

PICTURE OF OLD AGE WITHOUT AND WITH

THE BLESSINGS OF RELIGION.

WHEN the pulse indeed beats high, and we are flushed with youth, and health, and vigour; when all goes on prosperously, and success seems almost to anticipate our wishes, then we feel not the want of the consolations of religion; but when fortune frowns, or friends forsake us, when sorrow, or sickness, or old age, comes upon us, then it is that the superiority of the pleasures of religion is established over those of dissipation and vanity, which are ever apt to fly from us when we are most in want of their aid. There is scarcely a more melancholy sight to a considerate mind, than that of an old man, who is a stranger to those only true sources of satisfaction. How affecting, and at the same time how digusting is it, to see such an one awkwardly catching at the pleasures of his younger years, which are now beyond his reach, or feebly attempting to retain them, while they mock his endeavours and elude his grasp! To such an one gloomily indeed does the evening of life set in. All is sour and cheerless. He can neither look back with complacency, nor forward with hope; while the aged Christian, relying on the assured mercy of his Redeemer, can calmly reflect that his dismission is at hand, and that his redemption draweth nigh; while his strength declines, and his faculties decay, he can quietly repose himself on the fidelity of God; and at the very entrance of the valley of the shadow of death, he can lift up an eye, dim perhaps and feeble, yet occasionally sparkling with hope, and confidently looking forward to the near possession of his heavenly inheritance, even "to those joys which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it

entered into the heart of man to conceive."

[Wilberforce's Practical View of Christianity.]

SCRIPTURAL CONVERSION EXEMPLIFIED IN THE CASE OF THE REV. HENRY VENN. In the year 1747 he received orders, and soon after entered on the functions of his sacred office. His state of mind at this time is thus described by his biographer: "Religion had made no particular impression on his mind. He was moral and decent in his conduct, regular in his attendance on public worship, but he was a stranger to that influence of religion which

gives it a predominancy in the mind over everything besides, and to those views of the benefits and excellence of the Christian dispensation which render the Saviour the object of the highest regard and affection." At the same time he possessed high ideas of clerical decorum, and was scrupulously conscientious in acting up to his convictions of duty. Under this feeling, as his biographer conceives, from the day he entered the pulpit, he renounced cricket, at which he was a dexterous and devoted player, throwing down his bat and saying, “Let who will take it, because I am to be ordained on Sunday, and I will never have it said of me, Well struck, parson!" If we are not mistaken, a more accurate analysis of the motive or principle manifested on this occasion might discover less of conscientious feeling, than of a mere proud regard to his official dignity; it was not an act of self-denial, it was only denying one part of self to indulge or magnify another-he sacrificed his love of amusement to his pride of character. The time when he passed from the state of nature into the state of grace, seems to have been, not when he threw away his cricket-bat, but when, in the exercise of his ministerial function, he was arrested by an expression in the Form of Prayer, which he had been accustomed to employ, without, however, apprehending its true import. "That I may live to the glory of thy name," was the expression. As he read it, the thought forcibly struck him, "What is it to live to the glory of God's name? Do I live as I pray? What course of life ought I to pursue to glorify God?" The prosecution of the inquiries thus suggested led to a juster conception of “ the chief end of man,” which, with characteristic conscientious energy, he straightway followed out by a corresponding change in his mode of life. Above many who are in the main animated by a sincere regard to it, he lived to the glory of God's name. Having got the true idea of Christian life, he sought, and watched, and laboured to embody it. He gave himself much to reading and meditation, to prayer, and fasting. He did not, indeed, make these things his religion, as too many do; but he used them with all diligence as means, in the neglect of which, true religion cannot prosper in the soul. The adoption of these habits separated him from the gay world, with which he had been till now intimately associated; and under their practical effects, he became speedily formed into habits of active usefulness in the work of the Gospel.

CIRCUMSPECTION AND DISCRETION RECOMMENDED IN DISTRICT VISITING.

THERE are a great many persons in the world, whose only idea of doing good seems to be the act of giving money, or something which money will purchase, to the poor. Pecuniary charity, as a relief for physical suffering, they appear to consider the great work of Christian benevolence. Whereas it is but a very, very small department; and though it is a department which must on no account be neglected, still it is probably one, in which the labours of the philanthropist are most discouraging; and least effectual in producing any ultimate useful result.

The reason of this will be obvious, upon a little reflection on the nature and causes of poverty. Poverty, by which I mean the absolute want of the necessaries of life, arises, in a vast majority of cases, from idleness, mismanagement, or from vice. It is the punishment which Providence has assigned to each of these offences against his laws, and, as in all other cases, you cannot very easily abate the punishment, without increasing the sin. Good character, industry, and prudence, will, in almost any country, under almost any government, and in almost any condition, find a comfortable subsistence. Of course, there are exceptions; exceptions on a great scale, produced by great national calamities, and on a smaller scale, by individual sickness or suffering. There are men, undoubtedly, the utmost efforts of whose feeble powers will not procure the means of subsistence ;-and thousands may be reduced to beggary by a pestilence, or a prevailing famine, or turned out of employment by a change in the arrangements of business,- —or reduced to the extreme of hunger and despair in a besieged city. It is not, however, my province here to speak of these. They are beyond the limits of ordinary private Christian charity. They are great emergencies, which must be met, each by its own appropriate remedy, which the statesman must devise; or they are, as is more frequently the case, judgments from heaven, which admit of no remedy, perhaps even no sensible alleviation, from the hand of man, but will do their awful work to the full.

These instances are, however, rare; all the ordinary cases of suffering from poverty, are produced from one of the three causes above enumerated,-idleness, mismanagement, or vice;