Aids to Meditation on-1. Prayer-2. Holy Prayer which may be added to their Morning A SHORT ADDRESS TO YOUNG PERSONS PREPARING FOR CONFIRMATION & FIRST COMMUNION. DEAR YOUNG FRIENDS IN CHRIST JESUS, Though you are still young, and have not as yet seen much of the world and its temptations, yet I doubt not that many of you, on the evening of a day in which you felt that you had sinned or had done something which caused deep grief to your parents or to those you love, have cried out "Oh, that this day were blotted out from my life!" But the cry is in vain. The day, with its doings, is past, it cannot be recalled. What was then sown must be reaped. It is thus with many. In the evening of life they look back and survey the past. They see the pain and the misery they have caused to themselves, to their friends and to those who loved them. With sorrow amounting to anguish, they cry out, “Oh, give me back those years, let me live my life over again! Vain is such sighing, vain is such anguish. Life, with its opportunities, is past; and the day of reckoning come. Do you, my young friends, wish to avoid such a sad experience? Do you wish at the close of your lives to see an abundant harvest of good fruits, and not a harvest of thistles and thorns? You are still young. Life lies before you. You are now in the seedtime. Much depends on what you sow, and how you sow it! My earnest desire and prayer for you is that you may now sow good seed to the glory of God, that it may be carefully watered and tended, that the soil of your hearts in which it is sown may be good and thoroughly prepared for the reception of the seed, and that you may bring forth good fruit in due season. CONFIRMATION. PART I. A plain statement of the Nature and Benefits of Confirmation; with a notice of some of the Wrong Notions about the rite. THE object of this little work is THE to instruct those who read it, and help them to lead useful lives. I therefore ask any person who takes it up, before he goes any further, to offer up an earnest prayer to God to let this book do him good by helping him in his upward and onward course. He may say this short prayer, "O Lord, give me more and more of Thy Holy Spirit; that the instructions of this book may be an abiding blessing to me and may help me in my preparation for Confirmation. Amen.' This first part I shall divide under four heads. I. I shall try to explain the nature and origin of Confirmation. II. I shall speak of that which is done by you in Confirmation. You ratify or Confirm the three-fold vow promised for you at your Baptism. III. I shall speak of that which is done to you. Confirmation is a means of grace, wherein those who have been baptized are confirmed or strengthened. IV. I shall mention some of the wrong notions people have about Confirmation. I. As to the nature of this rite, what it is. This we learn very distinctly from the Bible. We read in Acts viii. 14-17, that "when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: who when they were come down, prayed for them, |