God." Let us then seek the grace of the Holy Spirit, especially as experience has taught us the vagrancy and instability of our own minds in religious duties, when left unaided from above. He that is exercised in piety, well knows that prayer is a sacred action, which cannot be performed aright, without a steady command of the thoughts; and that a steady command of the thoughts, depends in a great measure on the habitual rectitude and government of the will; and an apostle hath assured us, "that it is God that worketh in us both to will and to do of his own good pleasure." He, therefore, who can say, My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed," has abundant cause to add," I will sing and give praise."

66

SECTION III.

ON WORLDLY CARES IN DEVOTION.

By worldly cares, I mean those perplexities and agitations of mind, which arise from an inordinate concern about earthly objects, and temporal pleasures. Stupid indifference, and a fond over-heated affection to these things, are both culpable; and the chief difficulty with a good man, is, in finding and keeping the middle course, which runs between extremes on the right and on the left. Some, indeed, are alternately inclined to opposite faults; by turns cold and hot, covetous and profuse; such are well described by the couplet of the poet,

as

"Men, who at sometimes spend, at others spare,

Divided between carelessness and care."

Aristotle, the most acute and laborious of all' the ancient philosophers, the tutor of Alexander the Great, and the oracle of the learned through a series of ages, is said, as he expired, to have uttered this sentiment:-" Helpless I entered

this world, anxious I have lived in it, and agitated with trouble I leave it:-First Cause of all things, pity me!" A Christian has certainly advantages, which the famous but unhappy Stagyrite never possessed; yet is he not exempt from a portion of the same misery. Anxiety respecting the past, fretfulness concerning the present, and solicitude about the future occurrences of life, may equally throw the mind from the even balance of tranquillity, and unfit it for devotional exercises. These are so many separate sources of care.

Sometimes the Christian reviews the past, like a traveller who retraces the ground over which he has gone; the eye often fixes on a series of disasters and disappointments, but unnumbered mercies are overlooked and disregarded. While we are poring over our griefs, losses, calamities, and bereavements, we forget how many deliverances from danger God has wrought, how many consolations in affliction, and how many supplies in necessity, he has bestowed. Perhaps our hopes were built on slight grounds, or suspended on slender threads; and yet disappointment is felt, like the shock of an earthquake. We wonder that so fair, and apparently so firm a fabric, should be suddenly overthrown, when in fact we have cause rather to wonder at our own folly and presumption in expecting it to have been capable of standing,

Perhaps we cherished an extravagant fondness for the gourd, while we sat under its refreshing shade; and therefore, when it was blasted by the east wind, or devoured by a worm at the root, we began to indulge immoderate sorrow. How frequently does the recollection of unfavourable and afflictive events, cast a thickening gloom over the mind, and clog the free motions of the soul, with accumulated and almost insupportable burdens of care! Thus the venerable patriarch poured out his pathetic language: "Oh that I were as in months past, in the days when God preserved me; when his candle shone upon my head, and when, by his light, I walked through darkness; as I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle." Job xxix. 2-4.

Sometimes the Christian murmurs at the state of his present circumstances.

"The smoothest course of nature has its pains, And truest friends, through error, wound our peace."

But when unusual impediments block up our path, when troubles come not singly, but in troops that beset us on all sides,-when foes multiply and friends fail,-impatience too soon chafes and irritates the spirit, and causes répining. Discontent is a weed which exhausts and impoverishes the soil in which it grows, and poisons every wholesome plant around with

its deadly shade. It generally happens, that a man full of anxious care, looks about and imagines every person more fortunate and prosperous than himself. Weighing the lots and comparing the conditions of many others, he rashly concludes his own to be the worst; his farm is less productive, his business less lucrative, or his office less honourable than those of his neighbours; he has more slights from his acquaintance, more trouble with his children, or vexation with his servants, than any body else. Why, says he, does this and the other man rise and flourish in the calm sunshine, while so many black wintry storms are continually breaking upon me? Why do even wicked men succeed in all their purposes and plans, and undertakings, while my endeavours, grounded on equity, and guided by prudence, prove always vain and ineffectual? The ingenious fable of the ancients, represents Prometheus as chained to a barren rock, with a vulture incessantly feeding on his liver; and is not this fiction realized and reduced to fact, in every man who becomes the prey of anxious, unmitigated, heart-eating care? "Fret not thyself because of evil doers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity." Sometimes the Christian, with deep solicitude, anticipates the future. This is one of the most copious and prolific springs of care. Though