those claims. This is what is termed living by the moment. It is sometimes termed living in recollection; a form of expression, which indicates a state of mind awake or recollected to the claims of God upon us as they are momentarily presented. Thomas C. Upham.

Recollection is the life of religion. I know not how it is that some Christians can make so little of recollection and retirement. I find the spirit of the world a strong assimilating principle.

Acting from the occasion, without recollection and inquiry, is the death of personal religion. It will not suffice merely to retire to the study or the closet. The mind is sometimes, in private, most ardently pursuing its particular object; and as it then acts from the occasion, nothing is further from it than recollectedness. I have, for weeks together, in pursuit of some scheme, acted so entirely from the occasion, that when I have at length called myself to account, I have seemed like one awaked from a dream. The fascination and enchantment of the occasion vanish. I stand like David before Nathan. Such cases are, in truth, a moral intoxication; and the man is only then sober when he begins to school his heart.

Cecil.

If it were proposed to us by our architects to remove the grinning head of a satyr, or other classical or Palladian ornament, from the keystone of the door, and to substitute for it a cross, and an inscription testifying our

faith, I believe that most persons would shrink from the proposal with an obscure and yet overwhelming sense that things would be sometimes done and thought within the house which would make the inscription on the gate a base hypocrisy. And if so, look to it, whether that strong reluctance to utter a definite religious profession, which so many of us feel, and which, not very carefully examining into its dim nature, we conclude to be modesty, or fear of hypocrisy, or other such form of amiableness, be not, in very deed, neither less nor more than Infidelity. Ruskin.

In whatever age and country it is the prevailing mind and character of the nation to regard the present life as subordinate to a life to come, and to mark the present state, the world of their senses, by signs, instruments, and mementos of its connection with a future state and a spiritual world, there Religion is. There, however obscured by the hay and straw of human will-work, the foundation is safe. Coleridge.

In connection with this part of Arnold's labors, we have seen new reason to justify an old admiration for a religious rite prevailing in most Protestant churchesthe practice of Confirmation. It represents a momentous fact in the religious life of individuals, and helps to turn that fact to its proper account. We would mark with devout recognition, this era of experience; give voice, method, and direction to its tumultuous emotions; bring

its burning aspirations to merge in the cool, ascending breath of prayer; distinctly present the young disciple, fast becoming one of us, before the Master at whose feet he is to sit, and the God whose still, small voice he is to hear. Prospective Review.

Unless a tree has borne blossoms in spring, you will vainly look for fruit on it in autumn.

Hare.

A youth, one of the blackest of the Indians, had between his eyebrows the figure of a shining moon. Another youth, named Memnon, the pupil of Herodus, the sophist, had this moon when young, but as he arrived at man's estate, its brightness diminished, and at last entirely vanished. Apollonius of Tyana.

Of how many may it be said, as of the children of Israel, God took them indeed for his pleasant plant, but they were a very barren and ungrateful plant; he had made them a choice and a spreading plant, but not one delicious cluster was to be found upon them.

Culverwel.

Let none prevail with us to think that there is any period of life, or any sphere of our activity, or any hour of our rest, which can escape the range of right and wrong, and be secluded from the eye of God. Nothing can be more offensive to a good mind than the eagerness to claim, for some portions of our time, a kind of holiday

escape from the presence of duty, and the consecration of pure affections; to thrust off all noble thoughts and sacred influences into the most neglected corner of existence; and drive away Religion, as if it were a haggard necromancer, that must some time come, instead of a guardian angel that must never go. It were shameful to sanction the low-minded sentiment, which so often says of early life that it is the time for enjoyment, and makes this an excuse for dispensing with every thing else. Under such guidance, Life would have no secret unity; it would be no sacred Epic sung throughout by any constant inspiration, but a monster of incongruity; its first volume a jest book; its second a table of interest; and its last a mixture of the satire and the liturgy. I can form no more odious image of human life, than a youth of levity and pleasure, followed by a maturity and age of severity and pietism. Both sights in this succession, are alike deplorable; a young soul, without wonder, without reverence, without tenderness, without inspiration; with superficial mirth, and deep indifference; standing on the threshold of life's awful temple, with easy smile, without uncovered head, or bended knee, or breathless listening! Is that the time do you say for enjoyment? Yes; — and for enthusiasm, for conviction, for depth of affection, and devotedness of will; and if there be no tints of heaven in that morning haze of life, it will be in vain to seek them in the staring light of the later noon.

Martineau.

Man dwells, as it were, on the borders of the Spiritual and Material Worlds; we shall not wonder that there is such a tugging and pulling this way and that way, upward and downward, and such broken disorder of things! those that dwell in the confines of two kingdoms, being most subject to disquiet and confusion. Henry More.

God continueth the existence of this great world in a perpetual changeable course of Night into Day, Spring into Summer, Summer into Autumn, Autumn into Winter, and Winter into Spring again; and one Day is never perfectly like another; some are cloudy, some rainy, some dry, some windy; a variety which gives exceeding beauty to the World. It is the same with Man, who, according to the saying of the ancients, is an abridgment of the world, or another little world; for he is never in the same estate; his life glides upon the Earth, like the waters floating and waving in a perpetual diversity of Motion, which sometimes exalt him with hope, sometimes humble him with fear, sometimes carry him to the right hand with consolations, sometimes to the left with afflictions; and not one of his days, no, nor one of his hours is, in all points, like another.

This is a necessary Admonition; that we must endeavor to have a continual and inviolable equality of heart in so great an inequality of occurrences. And although all things turn and change variously about us, yet must we stand constantly immovable, always looking and aspiring towards our God.