of Gamaliel, and made such progress as made some conclude that much learning had made him mad. He received his gracious qualifications in the third heavens. But with all these attainments he could never persuade, or change a single heart. Not accompanied with divine power, his best discourses, adapted in every respect to his hearers, instead of bringing sinners to Christ, exposed him to the contemptuous titles of a babbler, a setter forth of strange Gods, and an insignificant creature, rude in speech.

Moral suasion never did, and never will produce love to Christ in the carnal heart, which is enmity. The utmost which the best reasoning can do in this matter is to produce a cold, dry, uninfluencing light in the head, and some transient uneasy emotions in the conscience; while the heart itself is left hard as the nether millstone. Sin is too strong for the best arguments. The hearts of men are fully set in them to do evil. The heart is dead, dark, shut, and makes positive exertions to keep out the light. The old man fights hard for his own safety, and the enjoyment of his lusts. If he appears at any time to yield, it is only a kind of ill formed resolution, and insincere promise to repent at some future period and convenient season. The resolutions and engagements of the unrenewed heart are like those of one half awake. He promises to rise, but instead of performing, instantly falls faster asleep.

THE EFFECTS OF INDECISION ON PERSONAL RELIGION.

ONE day the duty is begun,-devotion for instance, and reading the Scriptures,—and under the burning eye of a new and strong apprehension, carried on vigorously to the bound of its allotted season. On the second, the same is done with a small abatement of spirit. An interruption occurs on the third, which is accounted necessary, and the man is not displeased. The fourth brings the recurring duty; but as the conviction is now rather remembered than felt, there is a corresponding want of ardour; and it is decided that there is too much formality in a determined allotment of time; the spirit revolts at restraint, and would rather measure the season by its own zeal; and so the duty, to justify the decision, is this day lengthened. Next day it is greatly abridged. On the sixth there is a cold formula without the spirit; the shoes of his carnality are not put off at the threshold of devotion; and he may be guilty of the awful impiety of doing mockery to that Being whom his suppliant posture acknowledges Supreme; he paints his own vain fancies on the screen of the sanctuary, mowing and chattering in prayer to the Almighty, whilst his heart is beneath his feet in dust,-in dust. The duty is again attempted on the seventh, but broken in upon by a pressing avocation; a determination to spend the Sabbath of the morrow with undivided care, helps to justify him in judging it better to put off the course of daily duty to a remoter day, which he is careful to fix, when the interruption, which he foresees unavoidable for a number of days succeeding the present, shall of

itself have ceased, or preventive arrangements be made against it. Thus in one duty, and in a similar way in all, do the undecided and unsteady mock themselves. Their lives are marked at little intervals by short courses of good, which, had they been put together in continuity, might have carried them onwards, till the habit had been confirmed of progressive strength; but broken off at first at short stages, there is no onward way,-no accession of moral strength against farther at tempts, but sure weakness in the consciousness of former failures. They pass from sin to repentance and again relapse,-of all beings the most unhappy, wanting the gay apathy of an unsmitten heart, and unable to justify themselves in their puny attempts to satisfy conviction. They have struggles in reference to Heaven, but in vain; they never gain the praise of overcoming one difficulty in the way. They take hold on eternal things, but soon let them go for meaner, and this of will, and, moreover, in the very moment of estimating them most highly; more foolish a thousand times than the caprice of the little child, that would drop the most precious jewel to snatch at a meaner, if a gaudier toy.

A HANDFUL OF WEEDS AND FLOWERS. As a man on a bridge waiting for his friend plucks a handful of weeds and flowers, and, in the caprice of impatience, drops another and another into the flood beneath, without discrimination and without respect to the beautiful above the mean, to the budding sprig more than the decayed stalk, intent only to mark how they are

The

borne away by the current; so is the dispensation of death over the children of men. statesman and the clown; the sage and the idiot; fathers in God, and light dancing women; the - babe in its first curdled beauty; the strong bearded man; the patriarch whose locks are ripe and full of awe; the beautiful, the brave, the noble; every age and every degree, fall, in the same moment of time, before that mighty leveller. The love of mother and of sisters, a beautiful wreath of affection, and strong! yet cannot it upbind his sheer cold scythe; and the manly youth comes no more forth among the people at his father's right hand. There is not merely an apathy but a selfish hope in us that can distinctly propose reasons why we should live many years beyond the age of our neighbour that was buried yesterday; but who would dare, on this, to found a cause to delay his spiritual preparation, were it even the act of a day, and not the great work of this probationary life-on this, a presumption warred upon by a thousand daily and fatal accidents? Who will not rather, in the face of the above truth, bestir himself for his own safety and the consolation of his friends?

A NOTION OF SAFETY IN THE GREATEST

DANGERS.

IN following a multitude, there is always more or less directly implied, a notion of safety. This seems to be part of the instinct of lower animals; and it is a common feeling in man, whether innate or acquired in infancy. It is this which leads the ignorant religionist to rest im

plicit faith in a creed of absurdities; and even in cases where want of knowledge and the weakness of natural religion can be no plea, but where the revealed commands of God are distinctly before men with all their sanctions, and addressed to every individual heart, there lurks in the minds of those who follow the multitude in things which these commands directly prohibit, a vague belief that the evil and danger are at least diminished, because they are not alone. In the case of unjust condemnation-each individual in the council argues, that his negative is of no avail amidst so many condemning votes, and therefore he need not incur the reproach of a dissent. He blames the multitude: and every little ring in the chain says it is not in me; and it is proved at last to the satisfaction of each heart, that the murder has been committed by a general term.

The Anglo-Indian, who sees an opportunity of speculating to advantage in the slave-trade, is at first staggered at the idea of making a market of our common humanity; but the influence of the multitude is around him, and he begins to see no crime in what is so common: that thousands are already in slavery, becomes the argument why more may be so, or further, that the Negroes in general were made for slavery. His wishes are measured, and a cloak of sophistry is made accordingly, "of ample room and verge enough" to cover their criminality. An excuse is found in the very cause of the sin; and, blind to an individual responsibility, he becomes a fearless trafficker in blood.

The apprehended terrors of death are less, that the loftiest intellect must submit; and because