nocent and pure, which, having begun with God's praise, has been spent as in his presence; which has proved the reality of our principles in temptation; and shall such a day end without gratefully acknowledging Him, in whose strength we have been strong, and to whom we owe the powers and opportunities of Christian improvement? But no day will present to us recollections of purity unmixed with sin. Conscience, if suffered to inspect faithfully and speak plainly, will recount irregular desires, and defective motives, talents wasted and time misspent; and shall we let the day pass from us without penitently confessing our offences to Him who has witnessed them, and who has promised pardon to true repentance? Shall we retire to rest with a burden of unlamented and unforgiven guilt upon our consciences? Shall we leave these stains to spread over and sink into the soul? A religious recollection of our lives is one of the chief instruments of piety. If possible, no day should end without it. If we take no account of our sins on the day on which they are committed, can we hope that they will recur to us at a more distant period, that we shall watch against them to-morrow, or that we shall gain the strength to resist them, which we will not implore?

One observation more, and we have done. The evening is a fit time for prayer, not only as it ends the day, but as it immediately precedes the period of repose. The hours of activity having passed, we are soon to sink into insensibility and sleep. How fit that we resign ourselves to the care of that Being who never sleeps, to whom the darkness is as the light, and whose providence is our only safety! How fit to entreat him, that he would keep us to another day; or, if our bed should prove our grave, that he would give us a part in the resurrection of the just, and awake us to a purer and immortal life. The most important periods of prayer have now been pointed out. Let our prayers, like the ancient sacrifices, ascend morning and evening. Let our days begin and end with God.

MEANS OF PROMOTING CHRISTIANITY.

We live at a time, when the obligation of extending Christianity is more felt than in many past ages. There is much stir, motion, and zeal around us in this good cause. Even those who seem not to be burdened by an excess of piety themselves, are in earnest to give it to others. The activity of multitudes is taking strongly this direction; and as men are naturally restless, and want room for action, and will do mischief rather than do nothing, a philanthropist will rejoice that this new channel is opened for carrying off the superabundant energies of multitudes, even if no other good should result from it.

We hope however much other good. We trust, that, whilst many inferior motives and many fanatical impulses are giving birth and action to large associations in Christendom; whilst the love of sway in some, and the love of congregating in others, and the passion for doing something great and at a distance in all, are rearing mighty institutions among us-still many sincere Christians are governed in these concerns by a supreme desire of spreading Christianity. They have found the Gospel an infinite good, and would communicate it to their fellow-beings. They have drunk from the Fountain of Life, and would send forth the stream to gladden every wilderness and solitary place, and to assuage the thirst of every anxious and afflicted mind. They turn with continual pleasure to the prophetic passages of Scripture, and, interpreting them by their wishes, hope a speedy change in the moral state of the world, and are impatient to bear a part in this stupendous renovation. That they are doing good we doubt not, though perhaps not

Y

in the way which they imagine or would prefer. The immediate and general success of their attempts would perhaps be ultimately injurious to Christianity. They are sending out, together with God's Word, corrupt interpretations of some parts of it, which considerably neutralise its saving power, and occasionally make it a positive injury. They are perhaps to do good, not by success, so much as by failure. Almost all great enterprises are accomplished gradually, and by methods which have been learned from many unsuccessful trials, from a slow accumulation of experience. The first labourers often do little more than teach those who come after them what to avoid, and how to labour more effec tually than themselves. But be the issue what it may, sincere Christians, who embark in this good work, not from party spirit and self-conceit, as if they and their sect were depositaries of all truth and virtue, but from unaffected philanthropy and attachment to Jesus Christ, will have their reward. Even a degree of extravagance in such a cause may be forgiven. Men are willing that the imagination should be kindled on other subjects; that the judgment should sometimes slumber, and leave the affections to feed on hopes brighter than reality; that patriotism, and philanthropy, and the domestic affections should sometimes break out in chivalrous enterprises, and should seek their ends by means on which the reason may look coldly. Why then shall we frown on every deviation from the strictest judiciousness in a concern, which appeals so strongly to the heart as the extension of Christianity? Men may be too rational as well as too fervent; and the man, whose pious wish of the speedy conversion of the world rises into a strong anticipation of the event, and who, taking his measure of duty from the primitive disciples, covets sacrifices in so good a cause, is an incomparably nobler spirit than he, who, believing that the moral condition of the world is as invariable as the laws of material nature, and seeking pretexts for sloth in a heart-chilling philosophy, has no concern for the multitudes who are sitting in darkness, and does nothing to spread the religion which he believes to have come from Heaven.

There is one danger, however, at a period like the present, when we are aiming to send Christianity to a distance, which demands attention. It is the danger of neglecting the best methods of propagating Christianityof overlooking much plainer obligations than that of converting Heathens-of forgetting the claims of our religion at home and by our firesides. It happens, that on this, as on almost every subject, our most important duties are quiet, retired, noiseless, attracting little notice, and administering little powerful excitement to the imagination. The surest efforts for extending Christianity are those which few observe, which are recorded in no magazine, blazoned at no anniversaries, immortalised by no eloquence. Such efforts, being enjoined only by conscience and God, and requiring steady, patient, unwearied toil, we are apt to overlook, and perhaps never more so than when the times furnish a popular substitute for them, and when we can discharge our consciences by labours, which demanding little self-denial are yet talked of as the highest exploits of Christian charity. Hence it is, that when most is said of labours to propagate Christianity, the least may be really and effectually done. We hear a torrent roaring, and imagine that the fields are plentifully watered, when the torrent owes its violence to a ruinous concentration of streams, which before moved quietly in a thousand little channels, moistening the hidden roots, and publishing their course, not to the ear but to the eye, by the refreshing verdure which grew up around them. It is proper, then, when new methods are struck out for sending Christianity abroad, to remind men often of the old-fashioned methods of promoting it, to insist on the superiority of the means, which are in almost every man's reach, which require no extensive associations, and which do not subject us to the temptations of exaggerated praise. We do not mean that any exertion, which promises to extend our religion in any tolerable state of purity, is to be declined. But the first rank is to be given to the efforts which God has made the plain duties of men in all ranks and conditions of life. Two of these methods will be briefly mentioned.

First, every individual should feel, that whilst his influence over other men's hearts and character is very bounded, his power over his own heart is great and constant, and that his zeal for extending Christianity is to appear chiefly in extending it through his own mind and life. Let him remember that he as truly enlarges God's kingdom by invigorating his own moral and religious principles, as by communicating them to others. Our first concern is at home, our chief work is in our own breasts. It is idle to talk of our anxiety for other men's souls, if we neglect our own. Without personal virtue and religion, we cannot, even if we would, do much for the cause of Christ. It is only by purifying our own conceptions of God and duty, that we can give clear and useful views to others. We must first feel the power of religion, or we cannot recommend it with an unaffected and prevalent zeal. Would we then promote pure Christianity? Let us see that it be planted and take root in our own minds, and that no busy concern for others take us from the labour of self-inspection, and the retired and silent offices of piety.

The second method is intimately connected with the first. It is example. This is a means within the reach of all. Be our station in life what it may, it has duties, in performing which faithfully, we give important aid to the cause of morality and piety. The efficacy of this means of advancing Christianity cannot be easily calculated. Example has an insinuating power, transforming the observer without noise, attracting him without the appearance of effort. A truly Christian life is better than large contributions of wealth for the propagation of Christianity. The most prominent instruction of Jesus on this point, is, that we must let men "see our good works," if we would lead them to "glorify our Father in heaven." Let men see in us, that religion is something real, something more than high sounding and empty words, a restraint from sin, a bulwark against temptation, a spring of upright and useful action; let them see it, not an idle form, nor a transient feeling, but our companion through life, infusing its purity into our common pursuits, following us to our homes, setting