one prevailing, now another, now soft, now loud, now quick, now slow-but the theme-the blessed theme! of Christian Devoutness still preserved throughout, and every string within the heart awakened, and every feeling touched through all its chords, till there is felt

"One life within us and around us,

Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere."

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CHAPTER III.

DEVOUT EXERCISES OF HEART.

By the heart, in this connexion, I mean the seat of those emotions which are stirred within us by the sense of personal interest and well-being;-the pleasure of possessing, and the pain of being without, a seeming good; the hopes and fears of future advantage or disadvantage, and all the joys and sorrows which accompany their excitement. These emotions, in the irreligious man, are vivid and unruly in proportion to the natural temperament, and they exhaust the energies on the unsatisfactory and ever-changing objects of a transitory world. But it is the privilege of the Christian to reduce all their fluctuations under the moderating influence of faith in God. It is one great mark of Piety to exercise Dependance on our Father's care, and by recognition of his all-pervading and controlling hand to possess our souls in patience. And this essential element of the Spiritual life must be nourished by that "Prayer and Supplication with

thanksgiving" which stills the beatings of the foolish heart by making known our requests to God,"

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and leaving them with him to be disposed of according to his will which consists, therefore, not merely in a meditative recognition and enjoyment of His presence, but in a habit of referring all things up to his disposal, and of waiting on him daily with a childlike trust.

Now, of all the pure fresh feelings of early youth, which make us love to look upon it, and which sustain our reverence and affection for human nature, notwithstanding its corruption, the most marked and lovely is that simplicity of Trust, that ready unreflecting Dependance which we see a child repose upon a Parent's love and a Parent's care. Το feel a sorrow and to communicate that sorrow to its Father's ear, to experience a want, and to bring that want to be relieved by its Father's hand, are, to the simple child, simultaneous movements of the heart. It knows itself, only in connexion with its Father it has no experience of pain or pleasure that does not fall back upon him - it looks up to him for explanation of every difficulty—flies to him in every danger-rests on him with quiet confidence in his power to protect and, folded in his arms, can look round with a steady eye upon a threatening world.

But as a little child towards its Father, so is the

Christian privileged to feel towards God. " Piety," observes the Swiss Reformer, Zwingle, "is a word applied as well between parents and their children as between God and man. . . . . . ... And that adherence of the heart, by which a man relies without wavering on God as the only good-who alone can soothe his sorrows, alone avert from him all evils or turn them to his good and thus regards him as a Father; this is piety; this is religion." And Prayer, therefore, as the exercise, and thereby the nourishment, of Piety, consists, in the first place, in referring up to God all our existing sorrows and joys.

For the essence of Devoutness consists in recognizing God as working all in all. Not only as present with all things, and the ground of their being; nor as merely actuating all things by his universal life; but as the Ordainer and Controller, the sovereign Disposer of every event. Nothing, we are sure, can happen, any more than it can exist, but by his permission and appointment—not a sparrow falleth to the ground without our Father. consequently whatever be the various appearances of things to the human eye, they are all essentially wise and good; the rays of light may take a thousand colours and shades of colour, from the surfaces they fall upon; but they are all alike pure colourless emanations from the bounteous Sun. True, this is a mysterious fact. But the child of

And

God has learned to live by faith, and not by sight, and therefore he is satisfied with knowing that so it is.

And it is practically necessary to him that he should believe this. He cannot do without it. The doctrines of a God and of Providence are nothing to his peace without this. He must refer every event to God's appointment or he cannot escape despondency in trouble, and presumption in prosperity. If from any other source than from my Father comes the calamity which pains me, I must crouch down under it in despair. If from any other source than from my Father comes the prosperity which exhilarates me, I shall give back to that source the homage of my praise. If there is more than one ultimate cause of all events, then is there more than one independent being; and to more than one the hopes and fears of a dependant creature must direct themselves. But the Christian has turned from idols to serve the living and true God-he has ceased to stop at secondary causes, because he has had revealed to him the Great First Cause-to him there is but One God the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him-and therefore he receives his sorrow and his joy as sent by Him, and Him alone.

And hence his warrant for praise, and for petition. All supplicatory prayer has no basis but the