the protection, the instruction, and the salvation of those that are under you. In furtherance of this object, let me earnestly recommend to you family religion. Establish, without delay, morning and evening worship at home. Read the Scriptures to your household. Ask, in devout prayer, the mercies and blessings of which you mutually stand in need; and beg for grace to perform your respective duties, as unto the Lord. And when the Sabbath comes, fail not to conduct your dependents to the house of God; you cannot command a blessing upon them, but you can place them where the blessing is usually vouchsafed. Be not satisfied, either for yourself or for them, with a half attendance on divine worship; remember the influence of example, and think it not much to come twice to His house one day in the week, who comes daily, nightly, and hourly with comforts and blessings to yours.-Have you weekly labourers to pay? I beseech you, pay them early on the Saturday, or, what would be better still, on the Friday ; that they may have time to make their needful purchases, without encroaching on the day of the Lord, and be enabled to prepare both body and mind for the service of the sanctuary. Oh that I could prevail on all, who are engaged in trade amongst us, to leave off the unhallowed practice of selling goods on the Sabbath day. It is breaking, they must know, the laws both of God and man; it is unfitting both buyer and seller for the peaceful and pious observance of the day of rest; it resembles the unsanctified traffic, which our Lord so severely reprobated, in the courts of the Temple; and it entails upon hundreds, throughout the week, the curse of a broken Sabbath.-I rejoice to perceive (and I sincerely thank them for it) that some of my neighbours have set the salutary example of shutting up their shops on the Sabbath, and have resolved, on a principle of conscience, to forego custom and profit, rather than thus trespass any longer against the Lord. And you, my friends, who get your bread by selling that liquor, which in moderation refreshes and strengthens the poor man, but which in excess poisons and destroys him; Oh, take heed that you do not seek your profit in the intemperance of your guests; if you encourage, or if you allow them, to add drunkenness to thirst, and to squander in drink those earnings which should feed and clothe and comfort their wives and children at home; then your house becomes a moral nuisance; and you dearly purchase your gains: you become in the sight of God accessary to that wretchedness which prevails in the drunkard's family; to those diseases which destroy his bodily health; and to that awful ruin which awaits his soul ! I thought I had done-but I feel I cannot lay down my pen without a word of tender encouragement to those dear children, who have for some time been the objects of our public care, and whom we seek to bring up as sound mem bers of the Church of England-that apostolic portion of the Church of Christ.-Even you can help your Ministers!-for out of the "mouths of babes and sucklings the Lord can ordain strength."-Let all then see, in your meek, and humble, and dutiful conduct, what a lovely thing it is to be religious. Who knows but the hearts of some thoughtless parents may be touched by your pious example and your affectionate behaviour?-and though only children in years, you may set a pattern of godliness to those who are older! and be the honoured and happy instruments of communicating spiritual life to those, from whom you derived your natu ral existence. How greatly would it strengthen the hands of your Ministers, if we could find in every class and in every station, helpers in the work of the Lord; if every man would teach his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know ye the Lord!-then we should speedily witness, through the blessing of God, a serious concern for salvation pervading the parish; an increasing thirst after the water of life; a more diligent attendance on the public means of grace: and a more humble, holy, and consistent walk in private. Then I might indeed indulge the blissful hope, that when I pen my fold for eternity, not one of those now numbered in my flock, should be wanting! And now, Brethren, I take my leave as your Annual Monitor, affectionately commending you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among them which are sanctified!" I remain, Dearly Beloved, Your affectionate Minister, and Servant in Christ, EDWARD WARD. ON SICKNESS. DEARLY Beloved, I HAD laid aside all thoughts of again addressing you as your Annual Monitor, but the Sickness which has so generally prevailed of late, induces me once more to adopt this mode of pastoral admonition; and to present you again with a view of our parish church, dear I would hope to the hearts of some, who date from thence, through the Spirit's teaching, their return to God, their saving knowledge of Christ, and their foretaste of that better world, where "the inhabitants shall not say, I am sick.” Let me then, in the first place, deeply impress upon your minds, that sickness, in whatever form it comes, comes from the Lord: that it is He, who gives the commission to the consumption, and the fever, and the inflammation. In general, when we are taken ill, we are anxious to trace our illness to some known cause. We were caught, we say, in a shower of rain, we sat in a draught of air, we slept in a damp bed, or we entered some infected chamber, and there imbibed the pestilential taint. These, and such like causes as these, are carefully recollected, and severally discussed: and we seem to ourselves to have made no trifling discovery, when we have at length decided, where and when and how the disorder took its rise. But seldom do we hear it said-" The hand of the Lord is upon me: this visitation is from him it is He who, in mercy to my soul, has sent this fit of sickness. All the circumstances of it were ordered by him: the damp bed, the shower of rain, the draught of air, the infected chamber, only performed his bidding. When he wills it, we escape unhurt from the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and from the sickness that destroyeth in the noon day. Let me then hear the rod, and who hath appointed it. Let me humble myself under the mighty hand of God, and possess my soul in patience, assured that He, who has manifested his love to me in Christ, only chastens me for my profit, that I may be partaker of his holiness." "Lord, in the confidence of faith, I trust thy truth divine; I would lie passive in thy hands, I |