ordinary benefits, but peculiar proofs of God's goodness, unlooked for successes, singular concurrences of favorable events, singular blessings sent to our friends, or new and powerful aids to our own virtue, which call for peculiar thankfulness. And shall all these benefits pass away unnoticed? Shall we retire to repose, as insensible as the wearied brute? How fit and natural is it, to close with pious acknowledgment, the day which has been filled with divine beneficence! But the evening is the time to review, not only our blessings, but our actions. A reflecting mind will naturally remember at this hour that another day is gone, and gone to testify of us to our Judge. How natural and useful to inquire, what report it has carried to heaven! Perhaps we have the satisfaction of looking back on a day, which in its general tenor has been innocent 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? 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 hour 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! Let our prayers, like the ancient săcrifices, ascend morning and evening. Let our days begin and end with God. LESSON LXXIV. Baneful Influence of Sceptical Philosophy. CAMPBELL. O! LIVES there, Heaven! beneath thy dread expanse, Who, mouldering earthward, 'reft of every trust, Could all his parting energy dismiss, And, when the gun's tremendous flash is o'er, Are these the pompous tidings ye proclaim, each mute and living thing? Launched with Iberia's pilot from the steep, To worlds unknown, and isles beyond the deep, And wheeled in triumph through the signs of heaven? Truth, ever lovely, since the world began, LESSON LXXV. Affecting Picture of Constancy in Love. - CRABBE YES! there are real mourners - I have seen A fair, sad girl, mild, suffering, and serene; Attention, through the day, her duties claimed, And to be useful as resigned she aimed: Neatly she dressed, nor vainly seemed to expect Pity for grief, or pardon for neglect; But when her wearied parents sunk to sleep, She sought her place to meditate and weep. Then to her mind was all the past displayed, That faithful memory brings to sorrow's aid: For then she thought on one regretted youth, Her tender trust, and his unquestioned truth; In every place she wandered, where they'd been, And sadly-sacred held the parting scene, Where last for sea he took his leave; - that place With double interest would she nightly trace. For long the courtship was, and he would say Each time he sailed - this once, and then he day Yet prudence tarried, and when last he went Happy he sailed, and great the care she took, He called his friend, and prefaced with a sigh Give me one look, before my life be gone, that! and let me not despair,— O! give One last, look! - and now repeat the prayer." He had his wish-had more; I will not paint The lovers' meeting: she beheld him faint With tender fears she took a nearer view, Her terrors doubling as her hopes withdrew; He tried to smile; and, half succeeding, said, "Yes! I must die,”. and hope forever fled. Still, long she nursed him; tender thoughts meantime Were interchanged, and hopes and views sublime. To her he came to die, and, every day, |