dependent of, both these forms of supplication. It may be properly and effectually performed, at any time, in any place, whatever we be engaged in, whether in reading, writing, or meditation; whether we be pursuing the necessary occupations of life, or partaking of its more trifling recreations and delights. During any of these employments, we may still offer up a short address to, and commune with, our God. We may, though but for a moment, prostrate our souls before him; we may implore his influence-his fatherly hand-his protection. When, to all human appearance, we are engrossed in the passing concerns and petty anxieties of the world, we may yet, in the midst of all these, send up an availing prayer unto the Throne of Grace; we may pour forth the warm feeling of gratitude and love, unseen by any human eye, unobserved but by that Being, unto whom all hearts are open, and from whom no secrets are hid." His lordship next shews, by a variety of cases, that there is no age or station in which this secret communion with God is not a duty and a privilege. The young, the old, the rich, the poor, the prosperous, the dejected, are all invited to "draw nigh to God," with the encouraging hope that "he will draw nigh to them." The bishop then adds: "But it is not necessary, were it possible, to particularize all the occurrences and concerns which so continually and powerfully call upon us to keep God in all our thoughts. It is the principle, the mode of prayer which I have been endeavouring to illustrate and recommend by these examples. I know not, however, how I can more accurately, or more forcibly, describe this religious feeling, thau by bringing back to your recollection those sensations, which many of you must have experienced, when the illness of a parent, of a child, or the partner of your bosom, had excited the apprehension of danger and death. At that agonizing hour, who has not felt his own weakness, his own inability to protect and save? Who has not poured forth his soul in supplication to that stupendous Being, in whom alone are the issues of life? And this is the very time and the occasion, when we appear as it were to be drawn nearer to, and to have a more spiritual intercourse with, the Almighty. The heart is in the prayer, and we implore, as we ought, the Lord and Giver, of all things. If our prayers he heard, how fervently and gratefully do we acknowledge the Divine blessing and interposition! We do not then wait for the recurrence of that stated period at which our devotions are usually offered up, but at the moment, and without preparation, thanks from the heart, and not the lips alone, are poured forth; and they may ascend, as we humbly hope and pray, a sacrifice not unpleasing to the Majesty on high. Now this sense of protection, this dependent frame of mind, which the illness or danger of those most dear to us thus temporarily excites, should be the pervading and habitual feeling of every true Christian towards his Creator and Redeemer." While inculcating the duty in question, his lordship has not forgotten to remind the penitent of Him by whom alone we can have access to the Father; Him who is "the Mediator of the new covenant," and the sole "way" through which guilty and offending man can approach a Being of infinite justice and purity. I could wish that his lordship had entered more fully into this part of his subject, particularly as it would have naturally introduced some of the most important features of the Gospel, and some of the holiest mysteries of the Christian life. Indeed, nothing is less intelligible to the mere man of the world, or to the formalist in religion, than truly spiritual communion with God. But to return to the extract. "Let not any one be deterred from thus breathing out his soul before the great Creator of all things, by a consciousness of his numberless frailties and transgressions. God, indeed, is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity: nor can any of the sons of rien, by their own merits alone, stand justified in his sight. Be it, how ever, always remembered, that unworthy as we are, we may still look up to a Divine Advocate and Redeemer. Jesus Christ himself, who partook of our nature, who died for our sins, and who knoweth whereof we are made, is now seated at the right hand of God, to make intercession for us. Humbled then as man must be, by a sense of his own omissions and demerits, yet is he still encouraged to draw nigh to the Throne of Mercy, and gratefully approach the Father through the Son." I will only entreat space for one extract more, in which his lordship states some of the advantages of" that vital but neglected mode of worship," which it is the object of his discourse to inculcaie. "I. In the first place, it has this superiority over public and domestic prayer, invaluable as they both are, that it cannot be performed at all, without a pre-disposing and devout affection of mind. We may join in repeating the words of our Liturgy, we may bend the knee with our family in prayer, without one suitable feel ing being excited, without approving ourselves the more unto Him, whom outwardly we appear to adore. Set forms of words must, from their very nature, be adapted to the general infirmities and wants of all mankind: they are therefore to be referred, by each individual, to the peculiar circumstances and necessities of his own case. And on this account they require an abstraction of thought, an effort, a personal application, which too many, it is to be apprehended, entirely fail in exerting. Whereas a supplication, a thanksgiving, the lifting up the eye or hand, an ejaculation, a thought elicited at the moment by passing occurrences, must be the effusion of the heart, and can never be poured forth in vain. Here our prayers are particularized. They arise from the occasion; the occasion prompts the prayer. No other ideas can intermix with ibis act of adoration. We must pray properly, if we pray at all. "H. Another recommendation of this rode of worship is, the quickness and the facility with which it may be performed. It requires no seclusion, no preparation, no language, but the language of the heart. We have the temple of the Lord always within us; and can continually present to him that oblation and homage which we know are well pleasing in his sight. Genius and eloquence here are of no avail. The most illiterate are not less accepiable than the most learned. To will, is to do. "III. Among the many beneficial effects arising from has beholding the Deity in all things, one of the most important is, that the proper discharge of this duty, and the habitual commission of sin, are totally irreconcileable, and can never subsist together. Who can dare to hold converse with his God, and yet resolve to perpeirate the deeds of darkness? "IV. No better test also than this can be adduced to prove, whether we are or are not in the number of those who belong unto God. In our performance or neglect of this duty, we can be subject to no delusion or mistake. Whereas we may observe the externals of religion, may maintain an outward propriety and decorum of manners, may even do many kind and charitable actions, and yet all this, without the true Christian motive, will profit us nothing. But no one can inwardly commune with his Maker and Redeemer, no oue can earnestly implore the Divine Spitit, without becoming a holier and a betler man. “Need I, or can I say more, to induce a Christian audience to draw nigh unto God, that so he may draw nigh unto them?” The reader will be pleased to find his lordship adverting in humble, but decisive, terms, to his own personal experience, that "through out a life, as happy as life appears intended to have been," this secret intercourse with God has been his constant habit and purest delight; that "under lesser calamities and disquietudes," it has made him "more than conqueror;" while under "heart-rending domestic privations," it has formed his "ouly consolation and stay." J.G. To the Editor of the Christian Observer. AMONG the objections which have been made to the truth of the divine mission of Moses, there is oue which appears to some persous of peculiar force. It is briefly this: that it is quite irreconcileable with our natural apprehensions of the Divine Majesty, to suppose, that the circumstantial directions which Moses delivered respecting the entire ritual of the Levitical worship, even to the vestments of the priests, the furniture of the tabernacle, the very cords, and nails, and hangings of the sanctuary, the stones of the altar, and similar particulars, were prescribed, as he aflirms, by the mouth of God himself. The inference is, that Moses, in asserting his immediate communication with the Almighty on all such trivial points as these, acted the part of an impostor; and consequently, that the religion which he promulgated has no claim to be admitted as a Divine revelation. Nor is this the whole of the consequence; for if the mission of Moses be an imposture, the mission of our blessed Lord must be so too;-not only because the Mosaic dispensation is asserted by St. Paul to have been, in the scheme of Providence, a necessary introduction to the Christian religion; but because our Lord himself, on many occasions, ratified and confirmed it by the strongest sanctions, and proved by his uniform obedience to it, that he acknowledged its Divine authority. But if the state of religion be considered, as it existed throughout the world, in the age of Moses, the whole of this objection will fall to the ground; and that which has too lightly been regarded by certain rash or superficial minds, as ao insuperable obstacle to admitting the truth of the Mosaic dispensation, will be found to confirm its heavenly origin, and to afford a striking proof of the Divine wisdom and goodness. For when the Almighty separated the posterity of Abraham from the other families of the earth, and by a new revelation of himself and of the worship which he required, made them the sole depositaries of the true religion, it is evident, that all the other nations had, either wholly or in part, apostatized from the worship of Jehovah, and had fallen into the practice of the grossest idolatries and most debasing superstitious. 66 It is a matter of some interest to trace the causes of this general defection. Jehovah "reconciling the world unto himself" through Christ, the promised Seed, and not imputing their trespasses unto them," was the sole object of primitive worship. For, immediately upon the fall of our first parents, God gave them the promise of a Redeemer; and together with this promise, he enjoined them the rite of animal sacrifices, as a type both of that death which is the wages of sin, and of that propitiation which he had appointed for its pardon. Accordingly, we find that the offering of vicarious animal sacritices prevailed universally over all the ancient world; and with it, were preserved some ob scure traces of the ends for which that significant institution was appointed; men every where feeling that their offences against God deserved punishment, and that they stood in need of some atonement to render them capable of pardon. But as the nature of the Deity, and the promise of the Redeemer, were gradually obscured and forgotten, the Supreme Being was represented under characters the most discordant to his real attributes; and men, conscious of their guilt, looked about for other mediators to appease the wrath of their imaginary gods, and invented new methods of atonement, such as they hoped would avert the fury of their supposititious deities. Hence arose the horrible system of human sacrifices, and all the barbarous rites, the gaudy pomps, and impure ceremonies of heathen worship. In short, from the superstitious observance of the outward form of religion, when its spirit was gone, and from the unauthorized devia tions from it and additions to it, which in the lapse of years were continually introduced by men, who "not retaining God in their know ledge," made gods to themselves after their own image, and sought to please them by ways of their own discovering, were derived all the monstrous abominations of those false religions which every where prevailed throughout the antient world, and which, whilst they degraded humanity to the lowest point, equally dishonoured the Divine nature. To preserve the Israelites from a similar apostacy, two points were to be secured. In the first place, as the alluring shews of pagan worship were admirably calculated to captivate the gross imaginations of the vulgar, Jehovah, in order to preserve his chosen people from being drawn aside into the idolatrous practices of the surrounding nations, was pleased to appoint them a religious ceremonial sur passing all others, perhaps, in the imposing splendour of its outward forms, but with this fundamental difference, that whilst the ceremonies of the pagan worship universally tended to efface the knowledge of the Almighty, and its mistaken sacrifices led its votaries to put their trust in imaginary mediators; all the rites of the Mosaic religion directly conduced to preserve the acknowledgment of the one true God, and pointed to the only effectual Mediator between God and man. In the second place, as the unauthorized human superadditions to the divinely appointed ceremonies of the primitive worship, had, in the end, proved utterly subversive of all true religion, it was, surely, a point of the highest importance to guard the chosen race from such a fruitful source of fatal errors, and to convince them, that, in the worship of the Creator, not even the minutest circumstance is acceptable, except it be done in conformity to his will, and in obedience to his command. For this purpose, every circumstance in the Mosaic religion was made the subject of a Divine precept; and in the whole structure of the Jewish temple, and its service, nothing was done, but as "the Lord said unto Moses." To these brief remarks I will only add, that, as it is certain that no man hath seen God at any time, nor heard his voice," it was the concurrent sense of all primitive Christian antiquity, that the Jehovah who shewed himself to Moses, and the other saints and prophets of the Old Testament, was no other than the eternal and co-equal Word, by whom alone the counsels of the paternal mind have been personally revealed to man. Y. FAMILY SERMONS. No.CXXXIII, Luke xv. 24.-This my son was dead, and is alive again: he was lost, and is found. OUR Lord probably intended the affecting parable of which these words form the conclusion, more immediately to represent the state of the publicans and pharisees, or of the Jews and the Gentiles. But it applies so forcibly to the case of us all, that we should lose the benefit of much important instruction, if we failed to consider it as relating to ourselves. We, like the prodigal son, have sinned against a gracious Parent; we, like him, need forgiveness; and if like him we return to the Parent whom we have forsaken, we shall find, as he did, a merciful reception, and shall be restored to all the privileges which we had forfeited by our disobedience. Of each of us it will then be said, as it was of the returning prodigal, He was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. Let us, then, with reference to our own case, proceed to consider his departure; his distress; his repentance; and his return and reception. 1. His departure. This prodigal was the younger son of a tender parent; he was surrounded with the comforts of life; he had doubt less been treated with peculiar kindness and affection; so that it was both his duty and his privilege to continue under the care, and to enjoy the society and instruction, of his indulgent parent. Thus has God acted towards us; thus have we been nurtured from our infancy by his bounty; thus has he made our cup to run over with blessings, affording us care and protection, and all necessary mercies for this life, with the bright hopes and prospects of an eternal one in the world to come. And all he demanded in return, was our obedience and affection; that we should faithfully serve him upon earth, in order to enjoy his presence and favour for ever in the kingdom of heaven. But the prodigal became discontented with his father's house. "Give me," said he, "the portion of goods that falleth to me." His father complied with his request; CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 217. and it is immediately added, that "be gathered all together, and took a journey into a far country, and wasted his substance with riotous living." Unhappy youth! to quit so bountiful a friend! Ungrateful child, thus to repay so kind a parent! Yet while we censure the prodigal, let us ask ourselves if there be nothing in our own conduct towards God that resembles that which we blame. While enriched with his bounties, how often have we forsaken him, and despised his commandments! By means of sin, we have lost the original dignity in which our first father was created: we have acted unwisely and ungratefully: "we have forsaken the fountain of living waters, and have hewn out to ourselves cisterns, broken cisterns, which can hold no water." Our pleasures, our vanities, our corrupt inclinations, have occupied the place in our affections which was due to God; we have loved and served the creature more than the Creator; and, instead of listening to his voice and obeying his precepts, have, like the prodigal, wandered as far as possible from his control. We may not have been grossly vicious in our lives; neither, perhaps, was the subject of the parable in the early stages of his career; but his first and great crime, and that which led to all the rest, was deserting his father's roof; in order, no doubt, to throw off the restraint of paternal authority. And thus it is with the sinner: having once wandered from Him who had the first claim to his affections, and sought for satisfaction elsewhere than in the paths of religion and obedience to God, he resembles this unhappy prodigal, and knows not how soon he may, like him, wanton in all the excesses of riotous living. 2. Such was his departure: let us now behold his consequent distress. "And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in the land, and he began to be in want." True satisfaction can be D |