of the influences which surround you, to lead you to the neglect of regular communion with your own heart. Do not delude yourselves, as is often the case, with the impressions that the circumstances which surround you, that your other duties, can justify or make up for the neglect of this. Your religious peace and progress cannot be maintained if this habit is neglected, and there can be no duty of life, there can be no circumstances to which it can be incumbent upon you to sacrifice the peace of your soul, present and eternal. Before this, all earthly considerations must be made to give way. If your worldly affairs must suffer in order to secure time for daily retirement, prayer, and study of the Word of God, they should. Such is the meaning of the Saviour, when He said, "If thine eye offend thee pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire." But your earthly prosperity will not suffer. Your duties to your fellow-men will not be omitted by a faithful and habitual attention to this and all the other ordinary and essential means of grace. Such was the spirit of the Saviour's teaching, when He said, again, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." Determine that you will at all hazards make your religious state your first duty, and all others will be better and more punctually performed. But if you begin by attending first to this world, and making its concerns most prominent, you will surely neglect the world to come. So arrange, then, your daily life, that you do not shut out from it your season of private communion and prayer, and this practice pursued will render your life cheerful, surely progressive, and happy. You will find yourself advancing in self-knowledge and self-control. You will find your religious feelings becoming more and more confirmed into fixed principles, and religion gaining more entire influence over your whole conduct, whether alone or in the world. It will show its power in your earthly employments as well as in your chamber. It will prove an ever-present help and guide amidst the perplexing cares and the distractions of this life. It will help you to preserve that equanimity of temper, that superiority to this world, of which we have so wonderful an illustration in the life of Christ. "And now unto Him, the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. AMEN." ХІІІ. SPIRITUAL AID PROPORTIONED TO DAILY DUTY. "As thy days, so shall thy strength be." DEUT. xxxiii. 25. - THE strength of the Christian depends greatly upon his living day by day for present duty, temptation, and trial, as they may come in accordance with the providence of God. If, trusting in Him who orders the events of his life, he seeks to do his duty each day, with a single eye to the approval of God, he will find himself strengthened to labor with energy in his appointed sphere, and to endure with patience and submission whatever sufferings may fall to his lot. But nothing is more difficult than to keep the heart thus engaged in the present work to which we are appointed and patient under the discouragements which it may involve. There is a besetting tendency, to which few are superior, to allow that strength, which is sufficient only for the present work of life, to be consumed in unavailing regrets for the past, or in disquieting fears for the future. Events may have occurred beyond our control, and may have changed the whole course of our lives, or we may have taken steps equally important in their effects, which may seem unfavorable. For these changes regret will be vain. And yet this does not seem to prevent the tendency to renew it, nor to overcome its influence in diminishing the vigor of present efforts. And as the past, even the irrevocable past, thus affects our present strength, so anticipation of the future, all uncertain as it must be, often has the same effect. It fills the heart with anxieties and fears which may prove entirely imaginary, but which are hardly less painful than if real. And thus strength is wasted in contending with shadowsand unreal evils fill the mind, and maintain over it a power not unlike that which vivid dreams exert, when men meet and encounter dangerous foes, and struggle as if for life itself. They are weakened even by an imaginary conflict, and the fear is greater which an unseen danger arouses than any which is felt in meeting the actual dangers and duties of life. Against this state of mind the Scriptures contain many warnings, and they also abound in promises designed to confirm the hope of all who are tempted to be discouraged in their course. One of these the words of our text bring before us: "As thy days, so shall thy strength be;" or, as in Scripture language day is often put for the events it brings, the passage may be thus expressed,— Thy strength shall be equal to any duty and trial which time shall bring. 1. Under the light of this promise, let us consider, first, The duties of the Christian life. There can be no doubt that many are kept back from taking upon themselves the Christian vows, through a solemn impression of the greatness of the obligation which they impose, and the untried duties which must be undertaken. And those who are already enlisted in the ranks of Christ's disciples, and especially those who stand as watchmen or heralds in the Church of God, may feel with peculiar solicitude the responsibility which rests upon them. They are conscious that they are unequal to so great a charge. They feel deeply their own infirmities and sins. They know how much depends upon their faithfulness, and are therefore often cast down by the burden of their own weakness. None can be more conscious than they, how far short they fall of that high standard which the Word of God places before them—how feeble their efforts, how weak their faith, how lukewarm their zeal, compared with what is required by the Gospel, and by the condition of that world in which they live. Every humble Christian, and every minister of Christ, is sensible, both of the greatness of his responsibility, and of his personal weakness; and as he looks forward to the future, is in danger of yielding to the fears which the greatness of the work tends to awaken. When he surveys the past, he feels most deeply how much has been left undone; what opportunities have been lost; what privileges have been neglect |