XVII.

SILENCE AND MEDITATION.

PSALM LXIII. 6.

I REMEMBER THEE UPON MY BED, AND MEDITATE ON THEE IN THE NIGHT-WATCHES.

THE elder Protestant moralists laid great stress, in all their teachings, on the duties of self-scrutiny and prayer. And though their complaints show that there was a frequent neglect of their injunctions, it cannot be doubted that, in our forefathers' scheme of life, the exercise of lonely thought filled a much larger space than it does in ours. It was deemed shameful and atheistical to enter the closet for nothing but sleep, and quit it only for meals and trade: passing the awfulness of life entirely by, and evading all earnest contact with the deep and silent God. A sense of guilt attached to those who cast themselves from their civil life into their dreams, and back again. That

inward life. How

our prayers' from groans and tears of old: nay, how unless there is a ow not what we l scarcely find we the printing-press to piety by main the faith of sly taking place Oss of depth and for what do the stand alone with y solitary soul; I isible church, and our to that spiritual anctification by direct , and must get it done sacraments.' And what roclamation that private become impossible, and he only through ambassador?

e of life, the exercise me larger space than if done meful and atheistical but sleep, and qu assing the aw seems to have gone out

al element of life. Those who

his element are no longer, like e strongest men of their day, most imple, most powerful in debate,

the merchant or the statesman should be upon his knees, that the general should pass from his despatches to his devotions, and turn his eye from the hosts of battle to the host of heaven, was not felt to be incongruous or absurd. Milton's mind gave itself at once to the discord of politics below, and the symphonies of seraphim above: Vane mingled with the administration of colonies, and accounts of the navy, hopes of a theocracy, and meditations on the millennium; and it was no more natural for Cromwell to call his officers to council than to prayer. Nay, without going back so far, there are few families of any standing, that do not inherit the pious diaries of some nearer ancestry, betraying how real and large a concern to them were the exercises of the solitary soul.

It cannot be denied that there is a great difference now. Not that Christians may not be found in many sects, and copiously in some, with whom the old devout habit is maintained in all integrity; of whose existence it is a simple and sincere ingredient; who still find an open door between heaven and earth, and pass in and out with free and earnest heart. But these represent the characteristic spirit of a former, rather than of the present age. The sentiments of our own times every where betray the growing encroach