On the

of the most valuable results of systematic meditation. other hand, if this be borne in mind, it may very fairly be assumed that to follow the guidance of GOD the HOLY GHOST, should He vouchsafe any special illumination, would be the part of Christian prudence, no less than of Christian reverence.

But the end to which the intellect will direct its energies is this, -the selection of some one point for action or imitation. This is indispensable. It must be one point, not many: and, when chosen, no time must be lost in acting on it. Most men will, or ought to know enough about themselves, to be anxious for some thing bearing on the improvement of their own character, or their besetting sin. It is the privilege of saints to meditate with a view to acting upon others, although it certainly ought to be the practice of clergymen. But most men "hide GOD's words within their heart, that they themselves should not sin against Him."

This done, the intellect retires, and the point upon which it has fixed as cardinal is transferred to the will. This is the soul-the crisis, of the meditation. That the will may embrace the duty or practice selected by the intellect from the materials which have been considered, it becomes necessary that the affections should be forced to act upon what as yet has been only contemplated intellectually. Will, as we all know, results from the union of desire and reason; but while it is their joint result, it can control them separately. Hence it is, that as men are responsible for what they believe, so they will have to answer for what they love. In the well-disciplined soul of the Christian, the affections are all perfectly under control; he is as little the creature of impulses proceeding from within as of circumstances pressing from without; and, moreover, when conscience bids, he can concentrate his affections upon a given object, not artificially, and as though under constraint, but with the full play, the gushing freshness of a natural impulse. Writers like Mr. Kingsley, who seem to think that human nature is only respectable, when it is lawless and undisciplined, are incapable of understanding the church-statement, that the powers of the soul only enjoy perfect freedom when self has been annihilated, and impulse is enslaved to the law and will of JESUS CHRIST. Such, however, is the fact the perfect Christian "offers and presents unto God Himself, his soul and body to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto Him." Our LORD JESUS CHRIST was never subject to impulse: His every affection was under perfect restraint: He only loved when He willed to love: He only felt sorrow when He willed to feel it; He was never surprised into an exercise of His affections which His will did not sanction; He "looked on the young man," and "loved him ;" He appointed a time and place for His Mental Agony, and then with full consciousness of what He was going to breast, He "began to be sorrowful;" He 1 Prayer of Oblation, Communion Office.

walked to the grave of Lazarus, and when there, "He wept." His inner life, no less than His Sacred Body, was perfectly His Own, and beyond the reach of external or internal circumstance; but He did not love, grieve, compassionate with less intensity, because He felt pity, grief, and love, only when He perfectly willed to exercise these affections. And in such proportion as the Christian becomes conformed to the image of JESUS CHRIST, his inner life is characterized by this same feature of perfect selfcontrol; he suspends and he exercises affection when he wills to do so, and he wills when conscience bids him: but his affections are not the less genuine, vigorous, and hearty, because they are held in obedience to the governing principle of the soul, and are projected at its bidding upon rightful objects. Train any natural power, and you may cripple or develope it: but men would long ago have been savages again if the former had been the normal and the latter the accidental result of training; and experience has shown that mind and body gain strength, when nature is kept somewhat under check and discipline,-instead of losing it.

We need therefore be under no apprehension of artificiality in proceeding to direct the affections upon the object of meditation. Our power of doing so will depend upon the discipline of the soul, not upon the natural peculiarities of our individual psychology. We CAN do so, if we WILL. We can, as Christians, who have God's grace, love Him; we can hate His enemy the Evil Spirit; we can abhor sin; we can grieve over that which grieves our LORD; if we only will to grieve, to hate, to love.

This exercise of the affections will often atone for the deficiencies of the understanding. Emotion in uneducated men, has often supplied the place of culture. "A strong and pure affection concentrates the attention on its objects, fastens on them the whole soul, and thus gives vividness of conception. It associates intimately all the ideas which are congenial with itself;

it.

seems to stir up the soul from its foundations, and to attract to itself and to impregnate with its own fire whatever elements, conceptions, illustrations can be pressed into its own service. . . : Every minister can probably recollect periods, when devotional feeling has seemed to open a new foundation of thought in the soul." We quote this remark of a Socinian writer, who is not generally prone to undervalue the office of the intellect in religion, or to exaggerate that of the affections, by way of showing that when spiritual writers on meditation recommend us to give great attention to the exercise of the affections, they do it on this ground, that while the intellect can never do the work of the affections, the affections, under the guidance of will, may achieve that of the intellect. Love implies knowledge; but knowledge does not imply love. Here then the soul must linger in the presence of our LORD, 1 Channing. Works, Part II. p. 454. London and Glasgow, 1855.

laying her inmost being before Him, and entering into reverent yet confiding and affectionate conferences with Him. Here, like Moses, Christians may talk to Him face to face, as a man speaketh with his friend: here, like children, the brethren of the Only SON, Christians may seek and embrace their FATHER, in the full liberty of the Spirit. Here, if a penitent, the soul will renew acts of faith, hope, love, and contrition: she will renounce and accuse herself; she will distrust, blame, humble, hate herself; she will implore the Divine mercy, and in fear and trembling will admire the love of CHRIST which passeth knowledge, and which has spared one so guilty, and defiled. Here, if advancing in the religious life, she will give expression to the graces of love, joy, peace; for, in, and with GOD; longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, towards others; faith, meekness, temperance; admitting very heartily her sad shortcomings in not corresponding with the gracious agency of the Holy Spirit. She will sigh to GOD for more perfect unworldliness, more purity of intention, more zeal for the salvation of others, more sensitiveness of conscience. Here, if living near to God, she will boldly claim His Friendship, and His Blessing; will insist on the Power of the Blood of JESUS CHRIST, with which she has been sprinkled at Baptism and in Penitence; will assure God that she desires to live for Him, to die for Him, to rest perfectly in Him, to be utterly conformed to Him, to glory in Him alone, to offer self to Him without reserve, to do all to His greater glory, to be perfectly united to Him. And in any case it would be desirable here,—(1) by casting oneself upon GOD, to nerve the soul for future sufferings; (2) to resolve to sacrifice any cherished inclination or pursuit which is at variance with clerical or Christian perfection; (3) to make a perfect oblation of self to the Blessed Trinity, as the End and LORD of the Soul by Creation, by Baptism, by Confirmation, by Ordination.

In closing the meditation it will be of importance to pause for any further suggestions of GOD the HOLY SPIRIT,-to pay parti cular attention to the practical resolution to which the exercise of the intellect leads, and which the will confirms, and to pray that GOD will give strength manfully to abide by it.

It is not easy to recommend a good book for beginners in meditation. Indeed such a book has long been a desideratum in our devotional literature. Dr. Hook's "Meditations for every day in the Year," would better be described as pious reflections; they lack the method, the nerve, the point of meditations. The "Daily Steps towards Heaven," is a valuable work for those who have made progress and can supply from the stores of their inward life what is wanted to give substance and development to its sugges tions. Beginners complain of it as not sufficiently suggestive ;1

1 The Meditationes of Avancini from which the Daily Steps' is an adaptation was specially written for priests-and, if we allow for Roman peculiarities-is a very valuable work.

and in its English dress it is only intended for lay use. We want a book of clerical meditations, more formal and systematic than Mr. Pinder's work on the Ordinal-more distinctively clerical than the adaptations of Nouet and Avrillon, edited by Dr. Pusey. The model seems to be furnished by the great work of L. De Ponte; but it should be of English growth, and should teem with references to the English formularies, otherwise it will always pass for an exotic, and will fail to touch the heart, and influence the mind of the English Church.

Meanwhile it may be suggested that the parables and miracles of our blessed LORD, the Messianic Psalms, and above all the history of the Passion, as they stand in our English Bibles, may by the application of an adequate method become materials for meditation.1 It is a very good plan to keep a Psalter and New Testament for the purposes of private devotion, as the margin may easily be used for analysis in pen and ink; and in this way the Church of England precept by daily reading and WEIGHING of the Scriptures to wax riper and stronger in the priestly 'ministry,' would be obeyed in a much more satisfactory manner than, it is to be feared, is at present generally the case.

We have said thus much on meditation because it lies at the root of the priestly life, and is of primary importance. We have seen that it is practically implied by the injunction to say the Daily Service, which else is likely to lead to habits of formalism. But it also implies self-examination. For unless the soul know her own deformity and weakness she will never project herself with sufficient constancy and resolution upon the thought of GOD, and the phænomena of the supernatural world. I thought upon my ways; and turned my feet unto Thy testimonies.' A priest's self-examination will of course have to cover a larger ground than a layman's in proportion to his larger and more serious obligations; it will have to consider the same duties under more complex relations; it will have to keep an eye on the tendency to certain deep and very subtle sins, (such as the love of power and influence for their own sake, and apart from the work of CHRIST, or certain disguised forms of spiritual pride,) incidental to the ministerial position and its temptations.

But meditation, when systematically pursued, contributes very materially to promote other features of the devotional life. It must have occurred to most thoughtful persons, that the practice of ejaculatory prayer is one peculiarly adapted to meet the requirements of the present day. We live in an age and country where the energies of those who seriously labour for the cause and kingdom of JESUS CHRIST are overtaxed to an unprecedented extent. Those who give most time to prayer give but little when it is meted

1 As an assistance to the analysis of Scripture on Patristic principle we would recommend Kilber's Analysis Biblica, recently reprinted at Paris. The Psalter is analysed so as peculiarly to fit it for meditation.

in the measure of antiquity. But perishing souls cry for succour, and the forces of Satan never consent to an armistice during which the Christian priest may draw more plenteous draughts of water from the wells of salvation, to supply the needs of his own soul. Certainly pastoral labour may be prayer if it is offered to GOD, but it must be sanctified by this intention of doing it for Him, and in His strength, however hurried and informal may be the movement of the soul by which such an intention receives expression. Again, there are many intervals during the day which the clergyman who knows the truth of Leighton's remark, that "the grace of GoD in the heart of man is like a tender plant in an unkindly soil," will be careful not to lose when they may be devoted to short but earnest intercourse with our blessed LORD. In passing from cottage to cottage, or while waiting at a railway station, or in the sacristy of the parish church, the soul of the pastor ought to rise spontaneously to the throne of GOD; and the morning meditation will have supplied materials for doing this, culling from Holy Scripture or from the Prayer Book some choice and piercing words, praying for mercy, or for the gift of Divine love, or for CHRIST'S continued presence, or for spiritual discernment: petitions such as may be darted up to heaven, to win in the very labour and heat of the day supplies of grace and consolation from the Divine heart of our compassionate and ever-present LORD.

Again, although as a general rule it is wise in praying with the sick and poor to use only the Church's words, there are occasions when extempore prayer becomes a matter of necessity. It is impossible, or almost so, that the research of the parish priest should have been able to anticipate every variety of mental and moral weakness by his selections from the copious stores of antiquity; and the risk of using general language when there is need of pointed applicability to a particular case is very great. A soul must be led to GOD, not under cover of a general formula, but, as she is, in His Presence. It is to be feared, that many who do not hesitate to approximate to the doctrinal errors of dissenters on such vital questions as that of Baptismal Regeneration or the Eucharistic Presence, feel nevertheless a sort of superstitious scruple against such a use as this of extempore prayer as being dissenting: verily they strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Extempore prayer is dangerous if not almost impossible in the mouths of those who are strangers to systematic meditation upon dogmatic truth; it is a very efficient aid in the hands of a clergyman whose inner life is fed by meditation, who may be himself drinking of God's pleasures as out of a river, but who " can have compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out of the way," and who knows what it is to lie with a broken heart at the feet of JESUS Crucified.

It is obvious, moreover, that meditation will furnish capacity for prayer during periods which may elapse before the commencement