thenticates. And we touch a string, in unison with which such hearts are strung, and therefore do they vibrate with it, and swell the trembling prelude into a sustained and full-voiced chaunt of Adoration which rises, like a fragrant cloud of incense, up to God. Thus felt and chaunted one, who now has joined the choir of heaven,* when he exclaimed before the Majesty of Nature

"O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer,
I worshipped the Invisible alone." +

Thus felt another kindred spirit, when he sang of one who, having gazed upon the loveliness of earth, and sea, and sky,

The spectacle

"His spirit drank
sensation, soul, and form,

All melted into him; they swallow'd up
His animal being; in them did he live,
And by them did he live; they were his life.
In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living God,

Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired.
No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request;

*Multis ille bonis flebilis occidit,

Nulli flebilius quam mihi!”

+ Coleridge.-Hymn before Mont Blanc.

Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind was a thanksgiving to the power

That made him; it was blessedness and love!"

And need I add, that thus mused, and kindled, and adored a greater than all uninspired men, "the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet Psalmist of Israel," when "the Spirit of the Lord spake by him, and His word was in his tongue." Take a single instance in that glorious Hymn—the hundred and fourth Psalm He had begun, therein, with Contemplation of the "honour and majesty" of God; he had gazed upon the light with which he clothed himself as with a garment, and the heavens that he stretched out as a curtain he had looked abroad upon the stedfast earth, the mighty deep, and the refreshing streams; - he had meditated on the various provision which the Lord had made for the sustenance of man, and beasts, and universal life;— but long before his survey is completed, out of Contemplation springs forth devout Emotion-his soul begins to expand, and to ascend, and press beyond herself; the Spirit within him breathes forth towards the Spirit of the Universe, and he exclaims in short, re-iterated, broken bursts of Adoration, — "O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom *Wordsworth.-The Excursion.

hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches!""The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever: the Lord shall rejoice in his works."—“ I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. My meditation of Him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the Lord!"-"Bless thou the Lord, O my soul. Praise ye the Lord!"

Christian Reader, do we cultivate this spirit of holy Meditation enough? Do we not too often think more of ourselves when we draw near to God in prayer, than of Him in whose bright presence we stand? And do we not thus defeat one great purpose of Devotion, which is to raise us out of self and its anxieties, and above the world and its vexatious occupations, and away from sense and its ever intruding images, into the pure untroubled region of the fair and good? If we make Devotion merely the enumeration of our wants, our fears, and our hopes, of our weaknesses, our sorrows, and our sins, we still are lingering amidst those wants and fears and sorrows, and sins; we are looking only on a reflected image of ourselves and of our circumstances; we seem to be leaving the world beneath us, yet, like a troubled ghost which cleaves still to the flesh, we are only hovering around the spot where its remains do lie. But, if we look forth upon God in self-forgetting Meditation, we are won

away unconsciously from all our lower wants and fears, and when we rise up from the vision of his excellence and descend again to meet them, we are astonished to perceive how insignificant they were, we behold them in a light shed down from heaven, and we can bear our griefs, and set about our duties, with a new and tranquil mind. Even as when the distempered man has tossed all night upon a sea of tumultuous dreams, and his soul is shattered by them he breaks away from the bewildering trance, with morning's dawn; looks out upon the fresh and sparkling prospect; drinks in the air of heaven; and is astonished at the very possibility of being shaken as he has been, by unreal phantoms of the brain. O be sure of this - the more we think of God and realize his presence, the more shall we become like God. We shall catch some faint resemblance of the features that we are familiar with, and while we gaze upon his glory we shall be changed into the same image from glory to glory, by the Spirit of the Lord.

236

SECTION II.

DEVOTIONAL READING.

But

THE Spiritual life is a mental life; and by the exercise of Mind, therefore, must it be nourished. Mind is exercised not only by Observation and Reflection, but by appropriation of the observation and reflection of other men. And this appropriation is accomplished most effectually by Reading. Reading, therefore, is an important means of nourishing the Spiritual life; the devout perusal and self-application of such writings as elevate the mind, refine the moral sense, and rouse the slumbering energies. It is not easy to originate our own states of mind. We need not only occasions for thought, but the suggestion of thought. We need not merely truths and feelings stored up in ourselves, but the daily application of some impulse from without to wake up and bring out those truths, and exercise those feelings. And for this God has vouchsafed, besides the voice of our immediate friends in temporary intercourse, the words of our fellow Christians of every age and clime in permanent writings. Blessed be our all