astonishing, and I believe is rarely thought so, except by those who have nothing of either but the affectation of them. Many, I have no doubt, have set up for great wits, and fine ladies, upon no other pretensions to either than a sturdy opposition to all order of time and place.

A good method wisely arranged and punctually observed in the distribution of our time, would materially assist us in rightly employing it. Religion, business, mental improvement, the exercises of benevolence, ought all, so far as the ever varying circumstances of life will admit, to have their proper allotments. Each hour should know its proper employment, and receive its proper care in its season. No man should leave his days to be occupied by whatever accident or chance can seize them; for then trifles being more common and clamorous than other things of greater importance, are likely to run off with the greatest share.

Have always some work in hand, which may be going on during the many intervals, for many there will be, both of business and recreation. Pliny, in one of his letters, where he gives an account of the various methods he used to fill up every vacancy of time, after several employments, which he enumerates, says, "Sometimes I hunt; but then I carry with me a pocketbook, that whilst my servants are busy in disposing of the nets and other matters, I may be employed in something that may be useful to me in my studies; and that if I miss of my game, I may at the least bring home some of my own thoughts with me, and not have the mortification of having caught nothing all day." This is the way to excellence and wisdom; and it is VOL. II.

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a road open to all. Carry about with you, therefore, some book, or subject, which will gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost; for these fragments, like chips of diamond, or filings of gold, are too precious to be thrown away. It is with our property as it is with our time, when we look at it in the gross, we spend freely because it seems as if it would never be exhausted; and when we have hours, half hours, or quarters, we squander them because they are not worth keeping. There is a proverb which our frugal ancestors have taught us, "Take care of the shillings, and the pounds will take care of themselves." So in reference to our time, I would say, "Take care of your hours, and the years will take care of themselves." A man that is thrifty of his money, will grow rich upon what another throws away as not worth saving; so a man that is thrifty of his time, will grow wise by those interstitial vacancies which intervene in the most crowded variety of employment, and which many are foolish enough to squander upon trifles, or saunter away in idleness.

Avoid procrastination.-Do at once, what at once ought to be done. Let not the season of action be spent in the hesitancy of skepticism, or the purpose of future effort. Do not let tomorrow be perpetually the time when every thing is to be done, unmindful that the present time alone is ours, as the past is dead, and the future yet unborn.*

Erasmus furnishes one of the most striking instances on record of the fruits of a diligent improvement of time. "His life was one con.tinual peregrination; ill supplied with the gifts

* See an admirable story in Miss Edgworth's Popular Tales, entitled To-Morrow.

of fortune, and led from city to city, and from kingdom to kingdom, by the hopes of patrons and preferment, hopes which always flattered and always deceived him; he yet found means, by unshaken constancy and a vigilant employment of those, hours, which in the midst of the most restless activity, .will remain unengaged, to write more than another, in the same condition, would have hoped to read. Compelled by want to attendance and solicitation, and so much versed in common life, that he has transmitted to us the most perfect delineation of the manners of his age; he joined to his knowledge of the world, such application to books, that he will stand for ever in the first rank of literary heroes. How this proficiency was obtained, he sufficiently discovers by informing us that the Praise of Folly,' one of his most celebrated performances, was composed by him on the road to Italy, lest the hours which he spent on horseback should be tattled away without regard to literature."

A right improvement of time, then, my dear children, is the way to knowledge, which does not in every case require uninterrupted leisure; only keep the mind open to receive ideas, and diligently employ every spare moment in collecting them, and it is astonishing how rapidly the accumulation of mental treasure will go forward. But it is chiefly in reference to eternity that I exhort you to redeem the time. Too many attempt to justify their neglect of religion by pleading a want of opportunity to attend to its high concerns: but how inadmissible such a plea is, the subject of this chapter plainly proves : for, as we have formerly shown, religion is a

right disposition of mind towards the great and blessed God; and we now see that such a disposition, besides the more solemn seasons of public and private prayer, will pour its influence over the whole of a man's life, and fill the interstices which are left between the most crowded occupations, with ejaculatory petitions to heaven, and the aspirations of a soul panting after God, and the anticipations of a renewed mind looking towards eternity.

Remember, then, above all things, that time was given you to repent of sin, to pray for pardon, to believe in Christ, to work out your salvation, to lay up treasures in heaven, to prepare for the solemnities of judgement, and secure that happiness which is not measured by the revolution of years, but is, in the strictest sense of the word,-eternal.

CHAPTER XXII.

On the obligation to enter into fellowship with a Christian Church.

RELIGION is a personal thing, and the gospel first addresses us in our individual and separate existence. We must each for himself repent of sin, believe in Christ, obey the law. Nothing can be a substitute for this: no line of pious ancestry, no connexion with living Christians, no communion with the Church of God, will be of any avail to us in the absence of faith and holiness. Still, however, religion, though personal in its nature, is social in its tendency and

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exercises it is superinduced on a being formed for society, and who carries this propensity of his heart into his every situation. Hence his piety leads him to seek the companionship of men of "like precious faith." Christianity acknowledges and hallows this principle of our nature, and exhibits it in her own divine institutions. The New Testament, therefore, while it insists on the necessity of a personal religion, equally demands a social one. It knows nothing of that piety which keeps its possessor separate and apart from those who partake with him of the "common salvation." The first thing we read of, after the miraculous effusion of the Holy Ghost, is the preaching of the gospel; the next the conversion of sinners, and then we find that " they that gladly received the word were baptized and the same day there were added to them about three thousand souls. And they continued steadfastly in the Apostle's doctrine, and fellowship, and breaking of bread, and prayers. And all that believed were together, and had all things/common. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness, and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favour with the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved."

Such is the lovely picture which the inspired historian gives us of the first effect of the preaching of the gospel, in which we perceive, not only that souls were converted, but that immediately upon their conversion they were drawn to each other by the force of mutual love, and formed a voluntary and blessed fellowVOL. II.

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