is only confusedly received, is easily lost. In a day like the present, especially in a Heathen land such as India, young people should be furnished with the chief grounds of satisfactory proof on which the truth of revelation rests. Then when temptations rush in and religious feelings and susceptibilities are enfeebled, the mind has something to fall back upon; the main points of the gospel are not swept at once from the recollection; and truth has again time to resume its sanctifying sway.

3. Daily use of the great doctrines and precepts of Christianity is another means of fortifying the memory. Idle knowledge is soon forgotten; but knowledge brought daily into practice, and the business of our hearts and lives, is necessarily retained. A man may forget some early learning after the lapse of half a life if he has little occasion of recalling it ; but who loses his knowledge of his art, his profession, his main object? What physician, what merchant, what soldier, what advocate, forgets the implements of his constant duties and the means of his continually increasing success? He that "lives by the faith of the Son of God" is not likely to forget any of the main particulars of the great vast Redemption; and he that uses all his knowledge of the Christian rule of life daily, will not be the man to lose the memory of its chief branches.

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4. But the memory principally depends on the affections. Love and delight in religion will soon render the recollection of its truths unavoidable. I forget a friend, his name, his wishes, his last injunction when he left me, the tendency and bearing of his commands, it is in vain for me to pretend to love him; and accordingly on this test our Lord suspends this question; "He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." "The love of Christ constraineth us," saith St. Paul. And nothing is more certain than that

love quickens the recollection, suggests every little occasion of testifying attention, seizes all the smaller incidents which the person beloved is known to take pleasure in, recollects all his intimations, and abstains from whatever would be painful to him. Religion is the memory of the heart.

5. To shun those scenes which may afterwards fill the mind with recollections hostile to the spirit of Christian truth, is an obvious duty on this subject. The tablet of the memory can only contain a certain number of records. The heart and all the faculties are propense to the world and sensual things. To retain, therefore, the purity of the mind, to keep the thoughts from distraction in prayer, to be able readily to call up religious associations of ideas, when the necessary business of the day is passed, are amongst the objects of the Christian's efforts. What then shall we say of him who crowds his mind with impure and vain images, who turns not away his eyes from beholding vanity, who conforms himself to the fashions of this world; utterly regardless, not only of his inmediate loss of time, and money and influence, but of the evil treasure of dangerous associations which he is laying up for all his future life; of the store of sinful thoughts which he has prepared for Satan to work upon, when his most retired hours of devotion return; of the trains of ideas which, like thieves, will invade him and carry off his thoughts from religious truths, when he would give the world to be free from the violence.

6. Arrangement may be next adverted to as a means of fortifying the memory. Order in the use of time and the plans of duties; the wise distribution of the day; the times and places for prayer fixed; forethought to guard against interruptions, are of great importance. Religious thoughts will soon fade, if the duty of reviving and strengthening them be left to chance and the accidents of things.

Due arrangement will allow of what philosophers term, local memory; the scene, the day, the place, the seat in church, the closet, the self-same Bible, the well know voice of the minister, the solemn hour of prayer, may repair faded impressions on the memory, and assist the recollections of God and sacred things.

7. Caution against new and violent impressions, again, gives the memory time to call up its ancient memorials of truth, and prevents often a sudden and perhaps fatal surrender. Satan's art is to carry the citadel by surprise. Some new doctrine is plausibly urged; some sudden discovery in Revelation is vaunted; some old truth is over-stated or falsely applied; some one division of Christianity is magnified to the exclusion of all the rest. The thoughts are apt to be dispersed at the unexpected incursion; we commit ourselves before we are aware; consequences are forgotten. Caution, then, in receiving these violent impulses, must be resorted to. We must, like our Savior, repel one text of sacred Writ misquoted and misapplied, by saying, "It is written again." must take time to recall all the branches of truth, and keep in memory what has been so often delivered. Almost all errors in doctrine and declines in practice, have arisen from sudden and too easily admitted impressions, which, like marauders, have carried captive all the religious recollections.

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8. Conscientious diligence in the appointed means of grace is of the last importance on this subject. Never did any one retain long the memory and feelings of the truths of the gospel who was negligent of these means; and never did any one lose it that was conscientiously diligent in them. Upon whatever pretext men relax in prayer, in reading Holy Scripture, frequenting the public worship of Almighty God, and keeping holy the Sabbath, the lively recollection of Christianity fades, and their salvation is endan

gered. God has tied us to these means. He has created the entire system of them for our growth in grace. The periodical return of the day of rest, after every six day's worldly toil, is especially designed to remind man, to recall religious memory, to sound an alarm in his ear. If he neglects then the voice of the watchman, his blood will be on his own head.

Steadiness to the church in which we have been educated and blessed, a meek and thankful use of the public and private means of edification it affords, reasonable deference and respect to the ministers who serve at its altars, affectionate intercourse with them, and aid rendered in their various benevolent and religious designs, are also amongst the best methods of fortifying religious and devout recollections. A fickle, changeable mind, now of one church and now of another, cannot retain memorials which are perpetually deranged.

9. Meditation is of such high importance that it must be placed alone. Meditation is the voluntary calling up of religious thoughts, fixing them on their objects, and impressing the heart and conscience with them, and the duties they enjoin. Meditation collects the scattered forces of the mind, recalls them to the standard reared in the camp, reviews their number and accoutrements, and examines them as to their habitual discharge of their duties. Our Lord spent whole nights in prayer and meditation. Isaac went out "to meditate at eventide." The Psalmist found "meditation to be sweet ;" and implored that "the words of his lips and the meditation of his heart might be acceptable in the sight of his God and his Redeemer."

10. Lastly, fervent prayer to the Holy Spirit to sanctify the memory, to strengthen the intellectual powers, to purify the heart, to guide the determinations of the will, to direct to such immediate and

remote aids as may strengthen the memory, and to help us in avoiding all occasion of enfeebling it; to fill the mind, in short, with holy images and divine recollections, is a means indispensable to the success of all the rest. Self-confidence will assuredly betray us, as it did Peter, whose remembrance of the warning of his Lord after his fall, intimates that the failure in recollection had contributed to occasion that denial of his Master.

Two reflections shall conclude this subject.

The timid hearer is not to be terrified because he may conceive his powers of memory as to religious things to be lamentably feeble. Are these defects deplored; are the means of fortifying the faculty used; does he as a humble penitent cast himself on the merits of his Savior and seek the aids of the Spirit ?then let him not be dejected as if his case were desperate; perhaps disease or an exhausting climate may in part contribute to the defect. Perhaps that defect may not really be so great, as the trembling conscience would suppose. Possibly you may be mistaking of verbal, what I have been saying of practical and substantial memory. You suppose I have been treating of the memory of words, when I have meant the memory of things. Matters of fact, great doctrines, mighty principles, commanding duties you remember; though the recollection of dates, and words, and chapters is difficult. Be consoled then. You do "keep in memory what has been delivered to you," nor is "your faith in vain."

But if the righteous be thus scarcely saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Where the careless hearer; where he who lives without prayer, without a Bible, without a Savior sought for or desired, without hope and without God in the world?