vant of God. What does God bid me do? What, in this minute of time, which will be gone and carry me with it into eternity-what is my path of duty? While enemies blaspheme, and friends are beguiled, let me stand on my watch-tower with the Prophet, listening what the Lord God shall say to me. In any scheme of man I dare not be drunken. We, who are of the day, must be sober. Churchman or Dissenter, if I am a true Christian, I shall talk thus to my connexions. The sentiment of the multitude is ensnaring; but the multitude is generally wrong. I must beware of the contagion. Not that I am to push myself into consequence. The matter is between me and my God-Not one step out of a holy quiet and obscurity, but in order to utility.

Yet we must be active and bold, whenever duty calls us to be so. My own conduct, with respect to the religious world, is too much formed on my feelings. I see it in what I deem a lamentable state; but I seem to say "Well! go on talking, and mistaking, and making a noise: only make not a noise here:" and then I retire into my closet, and shrink within myself. But, had I more faith, and simplicity, and love, and self-denial, I might do all I do in my present sphere, but I should throw myself in the midst of them, and intreat and argue and remonstrate.

But then such a man must give himself up as a sacrifice. He would be misrepresented and calumniated from many quarters. But he would make up his account for such treatment. How would St. Paul have acted in such a state of the church? Would he not have displayed that warm spirit, which made him say O foolish Galatians! who hath bewitched you? and that holy self-denial, which dictated I will very gladly spend and be spent for you, though the more exceedingly I love you the less I be loved?

It is not to be calculated, how much a single man may affect, who throws his whole powers into a thing. Who, for instance, can estimate the influence of VOLTAIRE? He shed an influence of a peculiar sort over Europe. His powers were those of a gay buffoon-far different from those of HUME, and others of his class-but he threw himself wholly into them. It is true these men meet the wickedness or the imbecility of the human mind; but there are many right-hearted people, who hang a long time on the side of pure, silent, simple religion. Let a man, who sees things as I do, throw himself out with all his powers, to rescue and guide such persons.

On Fortifying Youth against Infidel Principles. I NEVER gathered from infidel writers, when an avowed infidel myself, any solid difficulties, which were not brought to my mind by a very young child of my own. Why was sin permitted?"-"What an insignificant world is this to be redeemed by the incarnation and death of the Son of God!". "Who can believe that so few will be saved?"Objections of this kind, in the mind of reasoning young persons, prove to me that they are the growth of fallen nature.

The nurse of infidelity is sensuality. Youth are sensual. The Bible stands in their way. It prohibits the indulgence of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. But the young mind loves these things; and therefore, it hates the Bible which prohibits them. It is prepared to say, "If any man will bring me arguments against the Bible, I will thank him; if not, I will invent them."

As to infidel arguments, there is no weight in them. They are jejune and refuted. Infidels are not themselves convinced by them.

In combatting this evil in youth, we must recollect

the proverb, that "a man may bring his horse to the water, but cannot make him drink." The minds of the young are pre-occupied. They will not listen. Yet a crisis may come. They will stop, and bethink themselves.

One promising method with them, is, TO APPEAL TO FACTS. What sort of men are infidels? They are loose-fierce-overbearing men. There is nothing in them like sober and serious inquiry. They are the wildest fanatics on earth. Nor have they agreed among themselves on any scheme of truth and felicity. Contrast with the character of infidels that of real Christians.

It is advantageous to dwell, with youth, on THE NEED AND NECESSITIES OF MAN. "Every pang and grief tells a man that he needs a helper: but infidelity provides none. And what can its schemes do for you in death?"

Impress them with A SENSE OF THEIR IGNORANCE. I silence myself, many times a day, by a sense of my own ignorance.

APPEAL TO THEIR CONSCIENCES. "Why is it that you listen to infidelity? Is not infidelity a low, carnal, wicked game? Is it not the very picture of the Prodigal-Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me?" The question why infidelity is received, exposes it, and shows it to the light. WHY-WHY will a man be an infidel? Your children may urge difficulties: but tell them that inexplicable difficulties surround you: you are compelled to believe, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, whether you will or no; and shall you not be a believer in the hundredth instance from choice?

DRAW OUT A MAP OF THE ROAD OF INFIDELITY. It will lead them to such stages, at length, as they never could suspect. Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?

The SPIRIT AND TONE OF YOUR HOUSE will have great influence on your children. If it is what it ought to be, it will often fasten conviction on their

minds, however wicked they may become, I have felt the truth of this in my own case: I said "My father is right, and I am wrong! Oh, let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!" The bye-conversations in a family are, in this view, of unspeakable importance.

On the whole, arguments addressed to the heart press more forcibly than those addressed to the head. When I was a child, and a very wicked one too, one of Dr. Watts's Hymns sent me to weep in a corner. The lives in Janeway's Token had the same effect. I felt the influence of faith in suffering Christians. The character of young Samuel came home to me, when nothing else had any hold on my mind.

On the Management of Children.

GREAT wisdom is requisite in correcting the evils of children. A child is bashful perhaps: but, in stimulating this child, we are too apt to forget future consequences. "Hold up your head. Don't be vulgar.' At length they hold up their heads; and acquire such airs, that, too late, we discover our error. We forgot that we were giving gold, to purchase dross. We forgot that we were sacrificing modesty and humility, to make them young actors and old tyrants*.

The reader cannot but admire the sentiments, which Bishop Hurd has, on this subject, put into the mouth of Mr. Locke, one of his supposed interlocutors in the Dialogue on Foreign Travels.

"Bashfulness is not so much the effect of an ill education, as the proper gift and provision of wise nature. Every stage of life has its own set of manners, that is suited to it, and best becomes it. Each is beautiful in its season; and you might as well quarrel with the child's rattle, and advance him directly to the boy's top and span-farthing, as expect from diffident youth the manly confidence of riper age.

"Lamentable in the mean time, I am sensible,is the con dition of my good lady: who, especially if she be a mighty,

CHRISTIANS are imbibing so much of the cast and temper of the age, that they seem to be anxiously tutoring their children, and preparing them by all manner of means, not for a better world, but for the present. Yet in nothing should the simplicity of faith be more unreservedly exercised, than with regard to children. Their appointments and stations, yea even their present and eternal happiness or misery, so far as they are influenced by their states and conditions in life, may be decided by the most minute and trivial events, all of which are in God's hand, and not in ours. An unbelieving spirit pervades, in this respect, too intimately the Christian world.

WHEN I meet children to instruct them, I do not suffer one grown person to be present. The Moravians pursue a different method. Some of their elder brethren even sit among the children, to sanction and encourage the work. This is well, provided children are to be addressed in the usual manner. But that will effect little good. Nothing is easier than to talk to children; but, to talk to them as they ought to be talked to, is the very last

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well-bred one, is perfectly shocked at the boy's awkwardness and calls out on the taylor, the dancing-master, the player, the travelled tutor, any body and every body, to relieve her from the pain of so disgraceful an object.

"She should, however, be told, if a proper season and words soft enough could be found to convey the information, that the odious thing, which disturbs her so much, one of nature's signatures impressed on that age; that bashfulness is but the passage from one season of life to another; and that as the body is then the least graceful, when the limbs are making their last efforts and hastening to their just proportion, so the manners are least easy and disengaged, when the mind, conscious and impatient of its perfections, is stretching all its faculties to their full growth."

See Bishop Hurd's Moral and Political Dialogues, ed. 6th.. Land. 1788. vol. 3d. pp. 99, 100, 101.

J. P.