A.CATALOGUE OF SINS.

Did you ever try to make a catalogue of your sins? God has one in the book of his remembrance. Can you venture to attempt to form one for yourself? Make the trial, I entreat you, although it may bring sorrow into the heart, and tears into the eyes. Take in private a blank paper. Write at the top of it the law of God: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength, and thy neighbour as thyself." Or, draw out the Saviour's example under distinct heads. Or, add the ten commandments, and subdivide them into your duty toward God, and your duty toward your neighbour. Then, under each commandment draw two lines, one for things you have done, which, according to that law, you ought not to have done; the other,

for things you have left undone, which, according to that law, you ought to have done. Then, with prayer to God for his Holy Spirit, that you may not wish to omit any sin, begin to put down a memorandum of your sins of word, thought, and deed against that law. Would you omit the bad thought? I dare not advise it. God does not. "The thought of foolishness is sin." Prov. xxiv. 9. God's law is spiritual, Rom. vii. 14, reaching to the spirit. The tenth commandment, which forbids to covet, gives a spiritual character to all the preceding commandments. Our Lord also, in his sermon on the Mount, plainly declares, that an angry thought breaks the sixth commandment, and an impure desire breaks the seventh. And no wonder, for thoughts are the seeds of actions, and if the action is sinful, its root and principle must be sinful also. Bad thoughts, then, together with idle words, foolish speeches, corrupt communications, and all sinful actions, must be faithfully put down in your catalogue of sins. Though I advise this attempt, it is not because I think you can complete it. You will soon find the memory lost and overwhelmed in the effort. You will find more sins to

be recorded, than you once thought could have been crowded into so short a space of time. You will sigh over the sad picture of yourself. You will be obliged to give up the attempt, and to write at the foot of the list,

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'My iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am ⚫ not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of my head: therefore my heart faileth me." Ps. xl. 12.

LETTER OF S. T. COLERIDGE TO A CHILD.

THE celebrated philosophical and popular writer, S. T. Coleridge, died in England, on the 25th of July, at the age of 62. The last production of his pen, was a letter (written on the 13th of July) to an individual in whom he took a special interest, and to whom he says, "Years must pass before you will be able to read with an understanding heart what I now write." He says,

"I, too, have known what the enjoyments and advantages of this life are, and what the more refined pleasures which learning and intellectual power can bestow: and with all the experience that more than three score years can give, I now, on the eve of my departure, declare to you, (and earnestly pray that you may hereafter live and act on the conviction) that health is a great blessing; competence, obtained by honourable

industry, a great blessing; and a great blessing it is to have kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives -but that the greatest of all blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be indeed a Christian. But I have been likewise, through a large portion of my later life, a sufferer, sorely afflicted with bodily pains, languor, and manifold infirmities; and, for the last three or four years, have, with few and brief intervals, been confined to a sick room, and at this moment, in great weakness and heaviness, write from a sick bed, hopeless of recovery, yet without prospect of speedy removal. And I thus, on the brink of the grave, solemnly bear witness to you, that the Almighty Redeemer, most gracious to his promises to them that truly seek him, is faithful to perform what he has promised; and has preserved, under all my pains and infirmities, the inward peace that passeth all understanding, with the supporting assurance of a reconciled God, who will not withdraw his Spirit from me in the conflict, and in his own time will deliver me from the evil one. my dear child! eminently blessed are they who begin early to seek, fear, and love their God, trusting wholly

O,