the company and pursuits of the people of the world, there can be no real piety; religion does not, cannot exist in such a state of mind as this. A person may indeed go to church or chapel with uninterrupted regularity and untiring constancy, without suspending their amusements, or losing their relish for fashion, folly, or dissipation, just because they may keep up an attendance upon public worship without a particle of religion. Think how momentous, how awfully momentous a thing true piety is! It is the transaction of a soul with God on the high concern of eternal salvation; it is the escape of a sinner from all the consequences of his sin; it is the flight of a human spirit from the wrath of God, the curse of the law and the bitter pains of eternal death; it is repentance for all the sins of a life; it is the entire change of our whole moral nature; it is a deliberate surrender of the heart to God; it is the

setting out of an immortal mind upon her journey to glory, honour, and immortality: --what !—and all this, without deep solicitude, intense earnestness, absorbing interest? It were absurd to suppose it. Nothing can better describe or express the first stage of religious experience than the anxious inquiry of the Philippian jailor— "What shall I do to be saved?" What shall I do to gain the salvation of my immortal soul? What! the salvation of the soul, a matter of such little consequence that it may be carried on without any abatement of the natural levity of the human mind, or the ardent thirst after vanity? Is it possible that such an affair can be conducted while the mind is supremely intent upon the pleasures of the world? As well might you imagine a condemned criminal, intent at the same moment upon gaining a pardon, and enjoying the society of a party of card players; or a person

afflicted with a fatal disease anxiously seeking a remedy for his complaint, and at the same time enjoying the festivities of a ball-room. No. The things are incompatible. Religion must make us SERIOUS if it really take possession of our hearts. This very term has been selected, not inappropriately, to describe the commencement of piety in the soul, and it is said of any one recently awakened to the concerns of eternity, "She has become SERIOUS." And it cannot be otherwise. Serious we must and shall be, if we are sincere and earnest in religion. Can a shipwrecked mariner standing upon a sinking vessel ask without earnestness, the question-What shall I do to be saved? Much less can a lost sinner just awakened to see his danger and become desirous of salvation, ask the same momentous question without an intense anxiety of mind. Here then religion begins, in a clear perception of our sin both

by nature and practice; a discovering of our being in a fallen, ruined condition, in consequence of our transgression of the law of God; a sense of just liability to the wrath of God, a feeling of naked and defenceless exposure to the storm of divine indignation: and the necessary result of this will be a solicitous state of mind, which will render not only insipid, but distasteful, the vain amusements and fashionable follies of the world.

The next thing in real religion, and which was conspicuous in the piety of Clementine, is faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, for pardon and acceptance with God. Observe again her expressions―― "It is not God the Creator of the world that we really love, but God the SAVIOUR— God who receives us graciously. sacrifice of Christ answers to all the wishes and meets all the wants of my soul. Formerly I vaguely assured myself that a

The

merciful God would pardon me, but now I feel that I have obtained that pardon, that I obtain it every moment, and that I experience inexpressible delight in seeking it at the foot of the cross." "If God grant you patience," said a visitor to her during her last illness, "he sees that you merit this favour.' Hush," she replied with a most expressive eagerness, "talk not of merit." "Talk not of merit." O how much is expressed and taught in that one short sentence. A sinner has no merit, can have none, in the sight of God. How can he? As a sinner he merits punishment, and how then can he merit pardon? A just man falsely charged with a crime, may merit acquittal; but how can a sinner, truly charged with transgression, deserve or merit pardon? The thing is absurd, for it is a contradiction. If we are sinners, we deserve death; and how then by any subsequent conduct of our own can we deserve