it be sudden in itself, nevertheless, in regard of our prepared minds, it may not be sudden." Eccl. Pol. Book V. Sec. 46. Yet, making due allowance for that natural preference which even the Christian would give to some common mode of death, and for those moral and atmospheric influences to which all men are subjected, does not conscience sometimes testify that its own secret misgivings impart bitterness to the very thought of dying, and terror to every storm? Some persons sit counting the moments which intervene between each flash and clap, comforting themselves with the notion that the danger is still distant, though perchance their calculations may be interrupted by the arrow of death. God's fatherly providence is the Christian's secure and quiet resting-place. The lightnings are the Lord's obedient messengers. His destroying angels are continually executing his judgments around us, though we see not their flaming swords: danger is not really greater when we do. our Most men possess, in some degree, the power of mental abstraction. We can separate our thoughts from passing events, and live in some visionary world created by sportive fancy, and so beloved and delighted in, that fearing to let the fairy fabric perish, she is ever retouching it. The indulgence of this imaginative mood will soon damp our interest in life's realities, make its business insipid, and render the mind morbidly sensitive of pain, yet callous to generous feeling and true affection. Still the power of mental abstraction is invaluable; for, properly applied, it enables its possessor steadily and vividly to realize things unseen and eternal, amidst all the bustle and crowding pressure of things seen and temporal. But whether the mind be indulging in imaginative reveries, or entering with undivided interest into passing circumstances, there are moments of life when some startling event, or perhaps some sudden thought, like a shaft from an unseen bow, pierces the veil of the heart, and flashes before it in dazzling brightness its veritable, its immortal, its only real interests. Whether, in sunshine or in tempest, in solitude or in society, if we would attain to the full assurance of Christian hope, such momentary gleamings of mental light must be solicited and fanned, until raised into a steady flame, they shed over the path of endless life a mild unfading glory. N XX.-ON MEANS OF GRACE. BESIDES those general opportunities of improvement afforded us by Divine Providence, special seasons and ordinances are appointed to promote our growth in grace. God has given us his sabbaths, and his sacraments, and sent his ministers to declare the way of life. Whether the sabbath be exclusively made a day of spiritual and bodily rest, and entirely occupied with private and public acts of devotion, or whether that sacred privilege, rest, be sacrificed to the hallowed employment of leading little children to Christ, as in public ordinances, so in contemplative solitude, or in the active duties of a Sunday-school teacher, God's blessing may be confidently expected. Our progress heavenward may be compared to the ascent of some stupendous mountain; many intervening points rising one above another, lie between us and the summit; and as we gain height after height, and pause now and then to view the steep and dangerous pathway we have safely trodden, our notions of the distance and difficulties still before us, become more distinct and accurate, we look back and take courage, we look onward, and are sometimes able to gain between intervening objects and encompassing clouds so clear a prospect of our glorious goal that it revives our languid hopes, and animates our weary frames, while, reposing and refreshing ourselves, we prepare for new obstacles and new efforts in climbing the rugged way. A creature so limited as man is in all his сараcities and powers, might as well pretend to a kind of ubiquity, as free from the constraint of churches and articles, to live spiritually at large among religious creeds and forms. Even Protestant Churches differ considerably from each other. May unity of spirit pervade them all! Members of the Established Church would do well gratefully to consider the peculiar privileges which they possess in an appointed order of religious service calculated to promote decency and reverence, and devoid of superstition: a ritual at once devout,, scriptural, and fervid without fanaticism, a clergy the most learned and pious which any Christian community can boast. The universal adoption of music in military and in sacred services indicates its acknowledged power over human feelings. It is used in almost all Christian assemblies, in the pompous formularies of Roman Catholic worship, and in the simple services of the United Brethren. It acts as an anodyne on the spirits, and as a stimulant upon the imagination. To those who love music, its most sublime compositions, although the mind attaches no definite idea to the strains by which it is enraptured, appear to carry it beyond mortal utterance or mortal thought, where it hears the yet unintelligible harmonies of angelic hymns. Association of ideas can give sacred music charms even for those who are incompetent, from natural deficiency of taste and of ear, to appreciate the powers of modulated sound. He must add to this deficiency a senselessness of poetic feeling, and a dull want of common sensibilities, who can listen unmoved to the hymns of a congregation, or the Te Deum of a choir. The voices of the ministers and of the congregation are also sensitive helps to the excitement of devotional feeling, for their tones echo the sentiments of fellow-creatures, and claim our sympathy. Even the sight of an assembled multitude is not without a powerful influence over us. When ministerial preaching is regarded as a divinely constituted ordinance for conversion and for sanctification, and a whole congregation appears present before God to hear from his ambassador a declaration of the way of life, whether that ambassador be endowed or not with those gifts which |