wisdom and prudence which he has bestowed upon you ! Surely you were once foolish and unwise, even as others ; and perhaps were ready to say of those who felt what you now experience, " Thou art beside thyself: much attention to religion hath made thee mad." Well, bless God that your eyes are opened, and that, though ye were once blind, ye now see. Yet rest not in what ye have attained : you know but little yet in com- parison of what remains to be known : there are heights and depths in divine things, which will be opened more and more to your view to all eternity ; and the promise is, that " you shall know, if you follow on to know the Lord :" therefore seek to " grow in knowledge and in grace: while others stumble at the word, and make the ways of God an occasion of falling, do you be pressing forward ; and let " your profiting appear unto all men." Pray more and more for " a spirit of wisdom and understanding ;" and endeavour, with truly Christian pru- dence, to act up to the convictions of your conscience : so shall your knowledge and holiness advance each other, till you come to that blessed place, where faith shall be turned into sight, and hope be consummated in enjoyment.]
Joel ii. \2 — 14. Now, saith the Lord, Turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with iveeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments ; and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and mer- ciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil. Who knoweth if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him, even a meat-offering and, a drink- offering unto the Lord your God ?
THE season of Lent has, for many centuries, been set apart in the Church of Christ, for the purpose of promoting in the minds of Christians a deeper humi- liation before God, and of preparing them for a more profitable celebration of those mysteries which we commemorate in the Passion-week. The utility of consecrating that season to the end proposed was felt by the fathers of our Church at the time of the Reformation ; and they have enjoined on all the members of our community to employ it in a more than ordinary course of penitence and prayer. But, unhappily, the superstitions of the Church of Rome, from which we separated, have excited such disgust in the minds of the generality amongst us, that we have run to a contrary extreme, so that at this day we put scarcely any difference between this season and the other parts of the year. Our Church ex- presses a regret that she is not able to enforce the rites of penance on offenders, as the custom of earlier ages had sanctioned : and if, in the stead of penance, we put penitence, I can most cordially unite in that