And in like manner, shall the exercises, acts, and offices of private repentance exclude those of the public repentance? Shall the duties of the closet or family supersede those of the parish or the Church?

Besides, can every poor, plain person, that perhaps cannot read, perform his penitential exercises and devotions, as well at home, as when God's minister, and your guide, directs and helps him, and does it for himself and him too?

Come then, dearly beloved, consider these things with melting, tender, and relenting spirits; come, once more I beg you, see the piety and the wisdom of the Church in appointing this penitential day and office. See, I pray you, the usefulness of it, and cheerfully bear your part in it. Do not fail to come, when you have one to go before you, and to go with you, to assist and join with you, in your penitential desires and endeavours of having an offended Father reconciled to you.

2. Wicked and impenitent persons are against it. These, be sure, must be against all days of public repentance.

They will scoff at them, and laugh at you; call them popish, and seemingly despise both you and them, though perhaps they inwardly revere them, and you for keeping them.

But still they will go on, because all their business lies in this world, and they are not concerned for the next. Self-examination and recollection, meditation on the holy nature of God, and the execrable nature of sin, and preparatory thoughts of that kind to repentance, are strange to their obdurate souls; they will trouble themselves with no such cares, or inter

rupt the pleasures of life, with such severe speculations or mortifying practices, but go on till death and judgment overtake them. And, therefore, it is no wonder that this second sort of men have nothing to do with such a severe day of penitence as Ash-Wednesday, or that with them.

No wonder if these be against it, who, while they thus continue, and desire no benefit by it, show how little they are concerned about their passage out of the world, or what their lot and portion shall be, on the other side of the grave.

These carnalists have no notion of the world of spirits, or conversing with pure and separate intelligences; they never consider what good angels are, nor how they make themselves equal to them, and help to fill those seats, which the apostate spirits left vacant in heaven.

3. Those evil spirits do, therefore, what they can to disgrace and defame the observation of this and other penitential fasts, because they would discourage repentance, and all its acts and exercises, and have them quite laid aside.

Wherefore, it is no wonder that devils and accursed spirits should be against repentance, and particularly against the acts and offices and exercises of public repentance on Ash-Wednesday, which I would entreat all poor, misled dissenters to consider, and other men, who, upon other principles, are against observing it; for they gratify the Devil in setting themselves against it-they help to enlarge his kingdom by opposing it; for those wicked spirits are enemies to all self-denial and mortification-to all austerities by fasting, penitence, and prayer-and would have the spirits of men like their own, un

mortified, impenitent, unruly, disobedient; and their inferior powers rebels to their superior; reason subject to sense; the spirit to the flesh; and the Church and the whole economy of salvation in it overthrown, with all the means and methods and ministry, by which God hath determined to save men.

Wherefore, come, my dear neighbours, be true to your souls and the means of salvation, though never so unpleasant and cross to sense; your eternal interest requires it; and heaven and an immortal life are an ample recompense for all the severe duties and exercises of repentance, by which you crucify yourselves to the flesh, and the world. They will make you less in love with the world, and much fitter to leave it. They will help to make death comfortable to you, and your passage from this to the next state more easy, and, in the meantime, conform you, more and more, after the image of that Christ in whom you believe.

"These things have I told you, that when the time shall come you may remember that I told you of them;" and that I may "give in my accounts of you, my care, and cure, with joy, and not with grief."

I WILL, THEREFORE, THAT MEN PRAY EVERYWHERE, LIFTING UP HOLY HANDS."

1 TIM. ii. 8.

THE SECRET OF BEING ALWAYS WITH GOD, AND OF ENGAGING HIM TO DWELL EVER IN OUR HEARTS, IS TO PRAY ALWAYS."

S. ISIDORE.

Daily Devotions.

I. It is not intended that persons who have been privileged to use the "Ancient Hours," should, in any way, change their custom, though even they may, here, find fresh matter of devotion, for the Lenten season, suited to their needs.

But, as comparatively few have the opportunity of keeping all the hours, and as it is desired to assist the many, rather than the few, it has been thought well, in the first instance, to confine the devotions to three acts in the day,-the early morning, the mid-day, and the evening. It is presumed, of course, that, in addition, as many public services as the Church affords, will be also duly attended.

II. The advice of Bishop Taylor should be kept in mind: "It is good to keep within the circuits of a man's affections, not stretching at all the degrees of fancy and desire, but leaving the appetites of religion rather unsatisfied, and still desiring, than, by stretching out the whole faculty, leave no desires, but what are fulfilled and wearied."

What another thoughtful writer, now lost to us, has said, is also of great value: "We ought to attempt nothing but what we can do. There is a kind of inward feeling which often tells us what we have a right to do, and what we have not. We have often a misgiving, as if what we are attempting to do does not really belong to us. Let us carefully attend to this inward voice. This applies especially to our devotions."

III. All devotions should consist of-Adoration, Thanksgiving, Oblation, Contrition, and Petition.

H