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providing Father for such helps! The Christian will prize them, and will diligently use them-not for the gratification of curiosity, not for the whiling away an idle hour, not for the substitution of a mechanical operation in the place of a Spiritual exercise, not to make Attention stand proxy for Reflection; but that by Attention, Reflection may be put in tion by the borrowed spark the light of our own spirit may be kindled. How often will the reading of some pointed question open up a new view of our spiritual state, and set us searching into ourselves for days. How often will some one suggested Idea illuminate whole regions of the mind, and make a thousand subjects, hitherto confused and dark, at once and in a moment clear to us. And how gently elevating is the quiet infusion of some soothing or awakening feeling, which finds and mixes with, a thousand kindred emotions and stirs them all into full life! It steals beneath our heavy stranded mind and before we are conscious of its influence floats it nearer to the haven where we would be. It breathes softly on our slumbering spirit like gentlest music, and insinuates itself amidst our confused conceptions, and rouses each successive train of feeling till we find ourselves, we know not how or why, awake, and alive, to God. Let the Christian therefore never be discouraged when his mind is dull and indevout, but turn to

some awakening volume, some favourite and influential passage, some suitable prayer, some spiritual hymn, above all some inspiring psalm or chapter of the word of God, and wait in humble faith,-out of which faith will steal a half-formed prayer-for the revival of his spirit, the breathing into him a devout and holy frame. It is the essence of wisdom, if we cannot reach directly our object, to take a circuitous course for its attainment, to address ourselves to some one intermediate means (however distant from our ultimate end), by which it may at last be reached. And it is the Christian's wisdom to do this, as, generally, for the regulation of his mind, and the formation of his character, so also for the sustenance of the Spiritual Life. That life is, alas! a weak and sickly thing, and it must be fostered with the most assiduous and much-contriving care; -it is a delicate emanation, a breath, — and it must be fanned with gentlest solicitude. We can do nothing, and can be nothing, of ourselves; but what can we not do (through God's gracious blessing on those susceptibilities which he himself has rendered capable of such manifold influences) by the wise and persevering use of various, minute, and in themselves most insignificant, means!

But then these helps must be ever carefully used as means. They must never be perverted to supersede the very end they are intended to promote.

The perusal of the page, the reading of the chapter, the utterance of the form of prayer, the singing of the hymn, must never be rested in as of themselves devotion, but only as the graciously provided food and nourishment of devotion. No man can rightly think and pray and feel for us;-he can only give us helps whereby we may think, and pray, and feel for ourselves. Nothing is ours but what we mentally appropriate. Nothing can benefit us but what we actually ourselves do. Into our own substance must all foreign aliment be assimilated if we would grow thereby. Through our own veins must it propel accelerated life. We must not only read, mark and learn, but we must inwardly digest, whatever God in his good providence has furnished for our spiritual food.

And how then shall we most effectually employ Devotional Reading, for our Spritual Nourishment? Let us suppose the word of God to be the means that we would use towards this end, what method shall we take ?

That method must be determined by the particular object that we now have in view. There are various objects for which we may read the word of God. For general information concerning the plans and doings of God in his education of the human For particular insight into the scheme of Salvation which he has revealed and executed by

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his dear Son. For getting our minds imbued with the leading ideas of Christian doctrine, and the governing principles of Christian practice-in short, for all things necessary to a godly life, for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. And according to our object so must be our method of perusal. For all true method must be suited to, nay take its rise from, the specific nature of the subject we are treating. Whether our perusal shall be cursory and continuous, or critical and fragmentary-whether it shall collect and combine various particulars, or trace steadily the developement of some one truth-whether we shall passively yield up our attention to the sacred text, or only take therefrom materials for active personal reflection—all this will be regulated by the specific end for which we open the holy book, at each particular time. This only must be constant: that we have some end; some deliberate purpose present to our consciousness when we consult the oracles of God; and that we do not take them up, glance over them, and put them down again, with an unmeaning listlessness.

When, then, our object is the nourishment of the Spiritual Life, this devotional end determines the corresponding devotional method to be pursued. We must bring to the bible such a spirit, and adopt in reading it such a course, as may best conduce to

the strengthening of our sense of God's immediate presence to our minds.

For this purpose we should meditate upon the bible as conveying to us the Voice of God himself. The Scriptures were written, it is true, by many and various men, in many and various ages. They were written by these men for the immediate use and benefit of their contemporaries, and with reference to the circumstances which surrounded them. But then those who thus wrote were partakers of the Spirit of God. What they said and wrote as the Ambassadors of God they said and wrote not from the conclusions merely of their own limited understanding, but from the secret inspiration of divine wisdom. And it is the special mark of wisdom (which mark, therefore, the divine wisdom possesses in perfection) that it so treats particulars as to bring them under general principles; and in the forms of the local and the temporary conveys the essence of what is universal and eternal. And consequently the Scriptures do not convey to us the voice of men merely, (however shrewd, and experienced, and devout they may have been,) solving the particular questions and directing the particular duties of their fellow men around them; but they convey to us, in and with this form of the revelation, nying and sustaining each particular voice even as a fundamental melody pervades and limits all the

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