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Your ardent mind will hold a familiar and holy intercourse with your Father in heaven. Not an anxiety will you feel, but you will communicate it; not a reasonable wish will you indulge, but you will express it; not a known duty will you discover, but you will pray for grace to perform it. To enter into further particulars, would be unnecessary. The Christian has every day new sins to confess, new duties to perform, new temptations to encounter ; requiring, of course, new modifications of prayer and praise.

"If I

But one subject, let me entreat you never to forget. It is the rising glory of our Immanuel's kingdom. Say with David, or rather with those weeping captives who were mingling their tears with the waters of Babylon, forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning; if I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy." You live in a day of wonders. Your being, perhaps, has opened in the millennial morn. It is possible you may live to see its full-orbed splendours. O then, in every prayer remember Zion; remember the Heathen who sit in the valley and shadow of spiritual death. Take an enlarged view of this subject; read the promises which secure to our Redeemer the whole habitable globe; peruse them until your soul is fired with the prospect. Then go to the mercy-seat, and plead for their fulfilment. Go, bear on your heart a sinking world. Let your whole soul be drawn forth on this glorious subject. If it be not your lot to carry the glad tidings to the benighted, sustain, by your prayers, the hands and the hearts of those whose are the privilege and the glory. Say not, I am a poor insignificant creature; what will my prayers avail? Ah! if every Christian were thus to reason, what would become of our Zion? Have you an interest at the throne of grace in your own behalf? do you hope so? and, believing so, do you act accordingly? Then have you also an interest there in behalf of a perishing world. That interest you must use. By all the prospective glories of the Messiah, I beseech you to use it. By all the deep and inconceivable miseries of the Hea

the possibility of their deliverance, I conjure you to use it. Whatever you forget, forget not the millions who are perishing for lack of vision. Forget not the self-denying Missionary who has gone to relieve them; forget not the Societies which are pledged to this holy enterprise. The day is coming, when this subject will hold a prominence in our supplications; when the prayer, "Thy kingdom come," will come gushing from the heart, and be reiterated with an earnestness which shall indicate its near approach, and be prophetic of its universality.

You see from my protracted remarks on this subject, that I consider prayer the life and soul of the Christian. Upon the young Christian I cannot too urgently press its importance. Prayer is the key of heaven. O what has it not done? By it Elijah shut up the skies, and no dew nor rain descended on the guilty land. By it Jacob placed a ladder between heaven and earth, and formed a communication for angels. By it Daniel shut up the mouths of ferocious lions; Samson shook the pillars of Philistia's temple; and Peter was delivered from prison. Prayer is a mighty weapon in the hands of the weakest. Use it then; never, O never, yield up this weapon.

LETTER IX.

I SHALL make but a few additional observations, on the subject of prayer; although, I confess, my pen would pursue the delightful theme through many pages more.

The Apostle commands us to "pray without ceasing. Are we by this to understand, that every moment of our time is to be spent in prayer? This, undoubtedly, is not his meaning. The import of the exhortation is, Omit not this important duty; be regular and punctual in your daily visits to the altar; and see to it that you continually preserve a prayerful frame of spirit. No person can plead for a more strict interpretation of the passage than this. It implies all that the Apostle meant to inculcate: and be assured that if you persevere in such a course, you will not subject yourself to the charge of "casting off fear, and restraining prayer before God."

The seasons of prayer are stated and occasional, ordinary and extraordinary. No Christian can maintain a close walk with God; none can keep alive the hallowed fire in the soul, without daily kindling it afresh at the altar. None can grow in knowledge and holiness, without stated and regular seasons of prayer. "Give us this day our daily bread,” implies as much the aliment of the soul, as the nourishment of the body. The one can no more live in health and vigour without prayer, than the other without food.

It is usual to recommend the morning and the evening, as the most suitable seasons for prayer. In this, I fully There appears to be something peculiarly appropriate in this arrangement of duty.

concur.

When the darkness has passed, and the light has again dawned upon the earth; when we rise from our couch, and find our faculties invigorated by the restoring slumbers of the night; when we view the beauties of the morning landscape, listen to the melody of birds, and feel the balmy breath of nature, playing coolly and sweetly around us; when praise and thanksgiving to God seem inscribed upon every feature of a revived world: how can we be silent? how withhold the burst of rapturous adoration? These scenes, I am aware, awaken no such feelings in the hearts of multitudes. They gaze on them, it is true; but they recognise not the hand that formed them. They feel no thrill of gratitude, nor offer one note of praise. Not so with the Christian. To him they convey a lesson, through the eye, to the soul; and lead him "from nature up to nature's God."

How proper, then, is the morning, for secret converse with your God! It is your privilege to reside in the country. You live amid nature's magnificence. The unobstructed arch of heaven is your canopy. For your eye the forest waves, the meadows smile, the garden unfolds its beauties, and spring and summer vie in their efforts to regale your senses. You are not crowded into a noisy and profligate city, and shut out from almost every thing that is pleasant to the eye, and calming to the soul. No, you

Let your first hours, therefore, be his. Let not sloth nail you to your couch, when all nature invites you to awake and join the general concert of praise. "Awake, psaltery and harp," must be your language; "I myself will awake early." Mary found her way to the sepulchre ere the day dawned; nor wept at that sepulchre in vain.

Early devotions are all-important. They are so, because they afford time to attend, without distraction, to the secular duties of the morning. As the day breaks, summon your recollections, and rise with the rising light. Give your first hours to God. Pour out your soul before him in gratitude for nocturnal blessings, and throw yourself on his protection for the day. Be assured, this early application to his throne will distil upon the soul a peace and a serenity that shall not depart ; but shall gild every look and action, and make the day glide onward smoothly and happily. You will thus allow yourself time, and not be hurried in your prayers. You will also be free from interruptions, and the fear of them. This is all-important to a right discharge of sacred duties. It is indispensable that the mind should be free from solicitude and cares: and there is no time in the day that will so secure to you that freedom as the early part of it.

Arise so early as to allow yourself half an hour for the performance of your morning devotions; more, if your soul desire it. It is good to stipulate with yourself for half an hour. The devotions of many are insipid, and burdensome, and unacceptable, because they have no definite time allotted for their performance. They snatch a few moments in the morning, and hurry through a form of prayer; which, though for the time it may pacify the conscience, yet in the end it accumulates their guilt. They do not make a business of prayer. This is the great reason why the exercise is a burden. Now, avoid this, my young friend, by having an early hour, and always occupying the full time in a constant and conscientious attention to your devotional duties. You will find by experience, that there is a great advantage in being thus systematic. It will tend greatly to elevate your standard of piety, and make you, not a lean

In your evening devotions, I should advise you to occupy, as a general rule, as much time as in the morning. I know that circumstances must be regarded; but I would endeavour to secure at least half an hour in the evening. Let this hour not be the last before retiring; because, generally the body is too much wearied, and the mind, by sympathy, too drowsy, to make devotion any thing but a task and a burden. Let it be early in the evening. If the hour of sunset is most convenient, let it be then. This was the time at which the patriarch Isaac was engaged in meditation and prayer, and it certainly is a very appropriate and delightful hour.

How proper and pleasant is it to sit down at evening, and review the mercies of the day, call in the thoughts from distracting occupations, and then pour the whole soul into the bosom of God! Our slumbers then are sweet and refreshing. No visions of guilt, no fearful anticipations, heave the troubled bosom. These are the tortures of guilty impenitence. They are the scourges of a conscience unpacified by the blood of atonement; the forebodings of that dreadful doom that awaits all who continue unreconciled to God by the death of his Son.

DIVINE BLESSINGS.

"Thou openest

GOD bestoweth his blessings seasonably. thine hand," saith the Psalmist, " and fillest all things living with plenteousness. The eyes of all wait upon thee, O Lord; and thou givest them their meat in due season."

How glorious an idea of the Divinity is this! He but openeth his hand, and an infinity of blessings flows from it: he but openeth his hand, and the whole creation is at once abundantly supplied, relieved, and rejoiced. And, to crown all, he doeth this at the very time when that relief is most demanded, and best fitted to effect its ends. "Thou givest them their meat in due season."

The secret and less discernible measures of the divine goodness, in the dispensations of Providence, are best esti

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