lies in its being my own convenience,' or 'my own opinion,' frequently operates to the tearing up every land-mark, and abandoning the whole domain to discord and desolation. Mere caprice, which is deemed of such trifling importance,will frequently produce mischiefs as dire as the most insatiable ambition and the love of sway; and not the less so when the kindly affections of those around are disposed to humour and accommodate it. Live in thy lot: observe its bounds; For God hath drawn the line. That persecutors, who wish to force. conscience, are grievous offenders against this rule, will be readily admitted; yet the spirit of persecution is frequently too manifest, where the name is held in abhorrence. How many of those who are in dependent circumstances have to endure cruel mockings, or illiberal restraints, on the ground of their religious opinions and their conscientious performances! If to remove our neighbour's land-mark be thus criminal, what form of expression can adequately stigmatize that spirit, which so operates against God? Yet how is His time, claimed for devotional duties, encroached upon! How are His sabbaths profaned! How is that heart, to which He has the sole right, occupied by vain thoughts, possessed by a corrupt world, or sacrilegiously given up to Satan! Traveller, art thou one of those, who have thus removed His land-mark, till nothing is left to Him but a few cold ceremonies, and those perhaps decreasing every day? No. XIV. The days of our years are threescore years and ten. WHAT is yonder merry group, who are shouting and gamboling about the wilderness, as though it were an Eden; pursuing butterflies, culling flowers, laughing and weeping with the humour and caprice of the moment? They are successively arriving at the first stage of their journey. On some of them ten returning springs have shed their gentle influence; they grow up like fair plants, in whom sunshine is gradually unfurling the timid leaves, expanding the tender blossoms, and affording a fair promise of future produce. Of their ensuing journey, these sportive beings anticipate no ill: past experience furnishes them with few warnings; or at best such as are soon forgotten G -put to flight by the first vanity that flits before them with hope to stimulate them, their expectations of the future are filled only with gay illusions; absorbed in the present, its transient sorrows and its joys, they heed not the times to come; and but for the irksome task which begins now to be imposed, they would, as far as it is possible to those who inhabita wilderness, be happy mortals. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I thought as a child;' and the season is not yet arrived, in which they are expected to 'put away childish things.' Such is man at the commencement of his course: low-traveller, were you and I. Such, fel Let it be our ambition not to remain such; not to retain the character of childhood by resisting the wholesome discipline under which we may be brought, and by inattention to the various lessons wisely selected by our heavenly Father for our instruction and future guidance. But here comes another group, dancing Let us stand aside while they pass on. or probably we may be incommoded by the contact. You look anxiously solicitude and apprehension for the fate of some of them cloud your brow, as you mark how heedlessly they speed their way. Ah! there is one timidly looking round, as if seeking a guide: he has heard some warning voice, and he has taken the alarm; let us then proffer our aid. And there is another too, equally aware of his peril and need, and equally desirous of an assisting hand. But although you should cry aloud, and lift up your voice like a trumpet,' behold, what fearful multitudes there are, now at the commencement of their journey, when they are totally unacquainted with the perils of the way—now, at this most eventful of all periods, to whom every remonstrance will prove as the jingling of brass and the tinkling of the cymbal. They have just arrived at their second stage: twenty summers' suns have shone on their heads, and ripened them thus far towards maturity; a small portion of |