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CULTIVATE GOOD SENSE. If your friends perceive you weak in any part of your views and conduct, they will think you weak in your religion.

AVOID VAIN JANGLING. There is a disposition in such friends to avoid important and pinching truth. If you will converse with them on the subject of religion, they will often endeavour to draw you on to such points as predestination. They will ask you what you think of the salvation of infants and of the heathen. All this is meant to throw out the great question.

SEIZE FAVOURABLE OCCASIONS—not only the mollia tempora fandi ;” but when public characters and public events furnish occasions of profitable reflection. Bring before

your
friends THE EXTREME CHILDISH-

Treat worldly amusements as puerile things. People of the world are sick at heart of their very pleasures.

NESS OF A SINFUL STATE.

ON THE

CHRISTIAN SABBATH.

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Ir belongs to our very relation to God, to set apart a portion of our time for his service : but, as it might have been difficult for conscience to determine what that portion should be, God has prescribed it : and the ground of the observance remains the same, whether the remembrance of God's resting from his work, any other

reason, be assigned as the more immediate cause.

The Jewish Sabbath was partly of political institution, and partly of moral obligation. So far as it was a political appointment, designed to preserve the Jews distinct from other nations, it is abrogated : so far as it was of moral obligation, it remains in force.

Our Lord evidently designed to relax the strictness of the observance. Christianity is not a hedge placed round a peculiar people. A slave might enter into the spirit of Christianity, though obliged to work as a slave on the Sabbath : he might be in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, though in the mines of Patmos.

Difficulties often arise in respect to the observance of the Sabbath. I tell conscientious persons, “If you have the spirit of Christianity, and are in an employment contrary to Christianity, you will labour to escape from it, and God will open your way." If such a man's heart be right, he will not throw himself out of his employment the first day he suspects himself to be wrong, but he will pray and wait till his way shall be opened before him.

Christ came not to abolish the Sabbath, but to ex

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plain and enforce it, as he did the rest of the Law. Its observance was nowhere positively enjoined by him, because Christianity was to be practicable, and was to go into all nations : and it goes thither stripped of its precise and various circumstances. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, seems to be the soul of the Christian Sabbath.

In this view of the day, a thousand frivolous questions concerning its observance would be answered. " What can I do ?” says one :

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answer, Do what true servants of God will do. Bend not to what is wrong. Be in the Spirit. God will help you."

In short, we are going to spend a Sabbath in Eternity. The Christian will acquire as much of the Sabbath spirit as he can. And, in proportion to a man's real piety in every age of the Church, he will be found to have been a diligent observer of the Sabbath-Day.

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ON

JUDGING JUSTLY.

A PERFECTLY just and sound mind is a rare and invaluable gift. But it is still much more unusual to see such a mind unbiassed in all its actings. God has given this soundness of mind but to few; and a very

; small number of those few escape the bias of some predilection, perhaps habitually operating; and none are, at all times and perfectly, free. I once saw this subject forcibly illustrated. A watch-maker told me that a gentleman had put an exquisite watch into his hands, that went irregularly. It was as perfect a piece of work as was ever made. He took it to pieces and put it together again twenty times. No manner of defect was to be discovered, and yet the watch went intolerably. At last it struck him, that, possibly, the balance-wheel might have been near a magnet. On applying a needle to it, he found his suspicion true. Here was all the mischief. The steel work in the other parts of the watch had a perpetual influence on its motions; and the watch went as well as possible with a new wheel. If the soundest mind be MAGNETIZED by any predilection, it must act irregularly.

PREJUDICE is often the result of such strong associations, that it acts involuntarily, in spite of conviction and resolution. The first step toward its eradication, is the persevering habit of presenting it to the mind in its true colours.

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VOD. III.

If a man will look at most of his prejudices, he will find that they arise from his field of view being necessarily narrow, like the eye of the fly. He can have but little better notions of the whole scheme of things, as has been well said, than a fly on the pavement of St. Paul's Cathedral can have of the whole structure. He is offended, therefore, by inequalities, which are lost in the grand design. This persuasion will fortify him against many injurious and troublesome prejudices.

Just judgment depends on the simplicity and the strength of the mind. The eye which conveys a per- : fect idea of the scene to the mind, must be unclouded and strong. If the mental eye be not single, the judgment will be warped by some little, mean, and selfish interests; and, if it be not capable of a wide and distant range, the decision will be partial and imperfect. For example: a man, with either of these failings, will be likely to blind his eyes from the conviction, that would dart on him, when he places a son or a friend in any sphere of influence, because he is his son or his friend; when a single or a strong eyc would show him, that the interests of Religion and Truth required him to prefer some other person. The mind must be raised above the petty interests and affairs of life, and pursue supremely the glory of God and the Church.

SOME minds are so diseased, that they can see an affair only in that light, in which passion or predilection first presented it, or as it appears on the surface. The essence, the truth of the thing, which must give character to the whole, and on which all just decision must depend, may lie beneath the surface, and may be a nice affair. But such minds cannot enter into it.

It is as though I should try to convince such per

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