quires more than six or seven hours sleep at the farthest; and if one quarter of your time consumed in total inaction be sufficient to recruit the corporeal and mental faculties, you will surely be anxious that no more should be sacrificed than is absolutely necessary. If you really feel the proportion to be inadequate, let an hour be taken from the evening rather than the morning. Retire to rest earlier, but do not lie in bed later. Look upon the beginning of the day as sacred; resolve that nothing shall rob you of it; remember that the enjoyment of it is the reward of a conquest, the spoils of an incursion upon an enemy's territory, unjustly acquired by him, and lawfully regained by you; that they are the uninterrupted hours upon which no unwelcome visitor intrudes, no unexpected engagement infringes, and no unlooked for employment trespasses. Shew that you know their value too well to throw them away; that you estimate their advantages at too high a rate to relinquish them. Consider the regret you have sometimes felt when you have omitted to improve them; the expense

of feeling it has cost you when your resolutions were ineffectual, and the satisfaction that crowned your triumph.

But let me remind you of one thing; that you cannot hope for eventual success in your endeavours to form this very desirable habit, without the assistance of the Holy Spirit. I need not urge upon you the consideration of your own weakness: a recurrence to many parts of your past experience will best convince you of this. Nor need I point out to you those passages in the sacred Scriptures in which his influences are promised, and his assistance is proffered. You are well acquainted with them, and I will conclude by intreating you to apply them to the present object; and whatever difficulties may appear to oppose, whatever impediments may threaten to obstruct, and whatever obstacles may seem to prevent, they shall all be completely removed and overcome; and you will experience the truth of that encouraging declaration, that through Jesus Christ strengthening us we can do all things.

I am, &c.

LETTER XIII.

To Mr. Charles G.

MY DEAR CHARLES,

WHATEVER arguments may have

been employed in the letters which I have already addressed to you on the subject of early rising, they have been principally, if not entirely, drawn from considerations which may be regarded as being exclusively of a temporal nature. Not but that I am fully sensible that every advantage, which I have endeavoured to point out to you as the result of this beneficial practice, may be rendered subservient to the promotion of more important objects, and the fulfilment of higher purposes; but the motives which have been urged have been such as might with equal propriety have been insisted on, if I had been addressing myself to one who was a stranger to the great truths of the Gospel, and who did not profess to be influenced by the doctrines, or guided by the

precepts of Christianity.

But you are

equally sensible with myself of the comparative insignificance of every motive that is not derived from the fountain of all truth; and of the deficiency of every result that is not connected with the advancement of the glory of God, and the promotion of our own spiritual interests. It is upon this ground that I now desire to meet you; and whatever may have been written with regard to your health, your time, or your intellectual improvement, it will not be of so much avail as those reasons which I would urge upon you as a Christian, and those principles of action with which I would endeavour to supply you from the word of God. To one who believes with a firm and, wellgrounded faith in the doctrines, who has imbibed with his earliest convictions the spirit, and who endeavours to practise in his daily walk and conversation the commands of Christ, such an appeal will not be made in vain; and I cannot but hope that if I succeed in convincing you that the habit which I have endeavoured to recommend forms an essential part of Christian

duty and gospel obedience; and that the contrary practice is opposed to those pure and holy precepts which the word of truth contains, and is inconsistent with the character of a disciple of Christ; I shall have succeeded in leading you to view the subject in a light in which you have never before regarded it, and that this will be followed by a corresponding practice, proving at once the sincerity of your convictions and your decision of character.

You have not now to be told that the Bible must furnish you with the grounds of your faith, and that from thence you are to draw the rules of your conduct; that it is there you must learn what you are to believe, and discover what you are to practise and that whatever temptations the desire of self-gratification may present, whatever allurements fleshly indulgence may offer, and whatever obstacles a sensual inclination may create; however uninviting an appearance the fear of personal inconvenience may give to particular passages of sacred writ; however we may be sometimes inclined to modify the requirements