grounds for the belief of God and a future state "could not be intellectually more evident without becoming morally less effective; without counteracting its own end by sacrificing the life of faith to the cold mechanism of a worthless, because compulsory, assent."

This remark is exceedingly profound and important. The evidence of faith may be as demonstrative where the heart is right, as that of mathematics to the understanding; but the life of faith is not in the clearness of the proof, nor the comprehensiveness of the reason that embraces it, but in the congenial affections that spring to meet it, in the intuitive unerring spiritual yearnings that predict it, and in the earnest of the Spirit, which is the consequence and seal of our adoption as the sons of God.

Without or star or angel for their guide,

Who worship God, shall find him. Humble Love,
And not proud Reason, keeps the door of heaven.
Love finds admission, where proud science fails.
Man's science is the culture of his heart,
And not to lose his plummet in the depths
Of nature, or the mere profound of God.

YOUNG'S Night Thoughts.

How much I regret to see so generally abandoned to the weeds of vanity, that fertile and vigorous space of life, in which might be planted the oaks and fruit-trees of enlightened principle and virtuous habit, which, growing up, would yield to old age an enjoyment, a glory, and a shade.

JOHN FOSTER.

AND when I grieve, O rather let it be
That I, whom Nature taught to sit with her,
On her proud mountains, by her rolling sea,-
Who, when the winds are up, with mighty stir
Of woods and waters, feel the quickening spur
To my strong spirit,-who, as my own child,
Do love the flower, and in the ragged burr

A beauty see, that I this Mother mild

--

Should leave, and go with care and passions fierce and wild.

DANA'S DAYBREAK

You do well to improve your opportunity; to speak in the rural phrase, this is your sowing time, and the sheaves that you look for never can be yours, unless you make that use of it. The color of our whole life is generally such as the three or four first years in which we are our own masters make it. Then it is that we may be said to shape our own destiny, and to treasure up for ourselves a series of future successes or disappointments. Had I employed my time as wisely as you, in a situation very similar to yours, I had never been a poet perhaps; but I might by this time have acquired a character of more importance in society, and a situation in which my friends would have been better pleased to see me. But three years misspent in an Attorney's office were, almost of course, followed by several more equally misspent in the Temple, and the consequence has been, as the Italian epitaph says "Sto qui."

COWPER'S LETTERS.

CHAPTER IX.

Voices of the Spring continued-Spiritual Agriculture, laborious-The Fallow Ground, and the breaking of it up, in preparation for Sowing -The Process of Subsoiling in the Mind and Heart-The Connection between Working and Praying-Consequences of the Skimming System.

THE Poets and Prophets of the Old Testament drew much of their imagery and illustration of spiritual things, from rural occupations. So did our Blessed Lord and His Disciples. From this, as well as from their announcement of everlasting principles their perpetual dealing with such principles, and their introduction of the human soul into the presence-chamber of eternal re alities, resulted the universality, simplicity, and homely power of their compositions. God was pleased to put His Word in this shape.

Now there are two spring directions in the Prophets, bringing together the work of sowing and praying, and illustrating the dependence of each of these duties upon the other, and the redation of both for success to the state of the moral soil, and the labor necessary to be performed upon it; directions from different husbandmen, but almost in the same words, yet with some variety of addition and details; two in particular, so pointed and

full of meaning, that we must bring them together from Hosea and Jeremiah. "Break up your fallow-ground," says the first and earlier Prophet (earlier by about a hundred years), "for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you." This command comes down in the midst of a perfect shower of rural images; and it connects, in a remarkable manner, the ploughing, and all that kind of work upon the heart and mind, indicated in that part of husbandry, with the work of seeking God, the work of effectually praying.

"Break up your fallow-ground," says the second and more majestic of these Prophets, but not more pointed, and sow not among thorns. Break up your fallow-ground, or all your sowing

will be in vain. Here the process turns upon the sowing; in the other case upon the seeking; in both cases it is necessary for success. It is time to seek the Lord; but it is useless to seek him, indeed there is no true seeking of him, unless therewith you go to work upon your own soil, your own heart, and break up the fallow-ground.

It is time to sow; but it is useless to sow, unless first you dig and plough, and break up the hard soil, and the thorns with it. The work of praying itself is a kind of sowing; it is a sowing with God's promises; and to this work especially both these Prophets refer, announcing directly, in answer to the question, How shall we gain God's blessing? a work to be done on our part, along with prayer, if we would render prayer effectual. The intimate and essential connection between praying and working is nowhere in the Word of God more strikingly exhibited than in these passages.

In some of Paul's recorded experiences, as well as admonitions, the illustrations of the same kind of truth are most instructive