great a sense of awe and reverence as in the house of God. It thereby sustains, by a perpetual help, the ever-fainting faith of our hearts: it keeps a daily check upon this visible world, which is always growing up about us and closing us in on every side. First, then, it is a witness for the unseen world. Next, it strengthens the habits of devotion. Let any one who has kept a watch upon himself say, whether it is not most certain that at no time is his mind more fenced from distraction, and more drawn towards the object of worship, by the outward admonitions of the eye and ear, than in the church. And this passes into all the acts of public worship,into the confessions, prayers, praises, thanksgivings. Again; there is a direct incitement to devotion in the consciousness of united worship. So it was ordained by the constitution of man's heart; and this natural feeling is the bond of the communion of saints. Man was as little made to worship alone, as to live alone: united homage is the destined bliss of man. And, once more; there are special promises made to united prayer: Christ has promised to be in the midst of us, and to grant what we ask with one accord. We cannot limit this blessing: no man can say how great it may be. And shall any man say that this is not profitable? or that all this is not necessary for every redeemed soul of man? or that daily worship is a duty less binding,

and a blessing less to be longed for, in a parish where there are only two or three who come to share it, than in a parish where there are two or three thousand? Duties and blessings are no more to be determined by numbers than are the gifts of the Holy Ghost to be purchased with money. Wheresoever there is a church, an altar, and a priest, there God looks for His daily homage, and there He will hallow, by large gifts of daily benediction, the souls of the two or three who wait upon Him. "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." All the services and sacraments of Christ are as necessary for the sanctification of one soul as of the whole Church on earth.

3. Again; it is sometimes said, that the pastors of the Church have no time for daily service that if they were every day in the church, they would have less time to give to visiting their people, managing their schools, and the like. It is considerate in people to allege these reasons for them, though assuredly they would not allege them for themselves. And that because they know that the Church strictly commands "all priests and deacons" to "say daily the morning and evening prayer, either privately or openly, not being let by sickness or some other urgent cause;" and also, that "the curate that ministereth in every parish church or chapel, being

at home, and not being otherwise reasonably hindered, shall say the same in the parish church or chapel where he ministereth, and shall cause a bell to be tolled thereunto, a convenient time before he begin, that the people may come to hear God's word, and to pray with him;" and also that the Church, in the Ordination Service, places the ministering in the church foremost among the offices of the priesthood. So far from diverting their time, it would give it a fixedness and regularity which would wonderfully extend their pastoral usefulness. Every day, at a certain hour, their people would know where to find them, for counsel, or consolation, or help of any kind. Nothing would more assist them in their office, than a habit formed in their people, of coming to seek them in the place where the parish priest is daily known to stand ministering in the order of his office. They are now too often compelled to act in an obstructed and unheeded way, as a mere visitor or reader in the cottages of their people; and they that have most tried it, will best know how hard it is to win their thoughts from the crowd of household-work which lies around them. What we want is, to stir our people to some more direct, personal, energetic acts of religion, than the passive listening to a sermon, either in church or out of it. The act of

1 Preface to Book of Common Prayer.

coming to the house of God, and praying, is such an act; but of this part of the subject we are not speaking now. The clergy of the Church would be greatly furthered in their pastoral work, by a disposition in their people to join them in daily worship. It would restore, also, to their office its true but most forgotten character, and bring down unknown blessings upon their ministry.

It

4. I will notice only one more objection. is said, that the habits of life are so changed as to make daily service impossible. And certainly, when we see that from sunrise to sunset the working-man is at his labour; the mechanic or manufacturer twelve or sixteen hours a day at his furnace or his loom; the man of business, the lawyer, the trader, from nine or ten in the morning to five or six in the evening, ever toiling; the man of the world, even still more laboriously, and without relaxation, bound down to the round of courtesies, and engagements, and usages of life, we may well confess that the habits of life are changed--but for the worse. Once the world waited upon the Church, and took its hours and seasons from the hours and seasons of God's worship; His service went first in the cycle of all the goings-on of life: but now all is reversed. The Church must wait upon the world. Worship is thrust aside; is pent up in one day of the seven; is

narrowed to one service in that one day. The poor working-man wrings a scant livelihood out of an over-laboured week. Six whole days are his earthly master's share: one is all he has for God and his own soul. Far worse is it with the poor sicklied workman in the manufactory; and hence comes a sour and restless discontent. Life is an uncheered, grating toil, which jars and galls the whole man in soul and body. Life has for them few gleams, little or nothing of gladness or of freedom: even wife and children, which make the natural heart to spring, give to a wearied and saddened people but little happiness. In them they see their own toilworn life, as if it would never end, beginning over again. So, too, with the learned professions, and with rich traders, and men of commerce; they are ever complaining of an unrelieved pressure of daily toil. Many men fairly break down, in body or mind, under the stress of life. Of those who cannot wait on God daily, because they are so over-laboured in doing the nothingnesses of society, I need hardly speak; and yet these are the habits of life which are pleaded in bar of the daily worship of God. Times and habits are changed; indeed, and miserably for the worse: changed so that all men are crying out for rest, and for release from an oppressive burden; so that the great adversary of God's Church has prevailed, through these changes, to