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And here I am assured he met Him whom he sought, and with whatever feelings he may have entered that closet, he felt it a happier man. Here, far from all discordant sounds, surrounded by the gently rustling trees and sweetly singing birds, in the peaceful and solemn stillness of the morning, what scene could be more suitable for communion with God, what place more calculated to induce close and intimate intercourse with a kind and indulgent Father, a "Father who seeth in secret." I think many might find such closets where, if sought with a right heart, God would meet and bless them. Such are in their beauty now while the year is in its strength and prime; but, ah, you who have a privacy which is always available, little know how mournful it is to be deprived of these sweet retreats, to see them stripped of their beauty and torn from us by the unsparing hand of winter. But there is a day coming in which stern winter will have lost his power to rend from us any of our delights, when we shall dwell in the presence of the Lord who inhabiteth the praises of Israel, and shall go out no more for ever. Seeing then that such a rest remaineth for us, what is more proper than that we should exercise our souls now in that communion with our heavenly Father, of which we are capable in our imperfect state? How much better prepared will we be to meet him as our Judge; how much less strange will the praises of heaven seem to us!

O, my dear fellow-traveller to Zion above, let us seek God more in our closets. We call ourselves, in our confessions, dying men; why then not live like dying men? When we are about to finish the work of dying and to wind up the long account, think you that having spent too much time in our closets will be a cause of regret to us? Dare you say that it will? The contrary may. Do we wish much peace for ourselves? Do we seek great things for

SPRING-TIME AND SUMMER OF SALVATION. 333

the Church?

do we want to see our Redeemer's cause prosper greatly in all the earth? Let us seek these things in our closets, and while we do this, let us see that other things be not left undone.

THE SPRING-TIME AND SUMMER OF

SALVATION.

Youth is the most favorable time, always, for becoming a Christian. Then the heart is tender, and the conscience is easily impressed, and the mind is more free from cares than at a future period, and there is less difficulty in breaking away from the world and usually less dread of the ridicule of others. Then numerous promises in the Bible meet us, assuring us that God loves those that love him, and that they who seek him early shall find him. No peculiar promise is made to man in middle life, or in old age. The time of youth, compared with old age, has about the same relation to salvation, which spring-time and summer, compared with winter, have with reference to harvest. The chills and frost of age are about as unfavorable to conversion to God as the frosts and snows of December are to the cultivation of the earth. He who suffers youth to pass by, intending to become a Christian when he is old, is acting in about the same way in which he would act, who should suffer the genial suns of April and May and June to pass by, and should intend to strike his plough in the soil when stern winter throws his icy chains over streams and fields, and when the whole earth has become like a hard rock. The great mass of those who are saved are converted in early life; and when that season passes away, it is like the passing away of spring and summer, in reference to the harvest. At no future period of

life can you find the same advantages for becoming a Christian. You may live many years; and in future life I do not deny that you may find some advantages for becoming religious, and I do not deny that you may then become a Chritian. But whatever there was in that season that was peculiarly favorable will return no more, and can be found no where else. And when you have stepped over the limits of youth unconverted, you have gone beyond the most favorable time you can ever have for preparing for heaven. But suppose that youth is to be all your life, and you were to die before you reached middle life, what then will be your doom?

A season when your mind is awakened to the subject of religion, is such a favorable time for salvation. All persons experience such seasons; times when there is an unusual impression of the vanity of the world, of the evil of sin, of the need of a Saviour, and of the importance of being prepared for heaven. These are times of mercy, when God is speaking to the soul. All men, I say, experience them. They do not occur, indeed, often in political excitements— in the pressure of business—in the struggles of ambition, or amidst the dense throng that is crowding on for gain and honour. But they occur when those stormy scenes are lulled to repose, or in the intervals when the mind is turned away from them; in the evening, when, weary and sad, you come home to the quiet of the family; in the stillness of the Sabbath, when the thoughts are turned to the world of rest; in the sanctuary, when the words of the gospel drop like rain, and distil as the dew; in the moments of calm retrospection, when a man sits down to think over the past, and when he cannot but think of the life to come; on the bed of sickness, when he is shut out from the world, and in those moments when he thinks he scarcely knows why, of the grave, of judgment, of eternity.

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Those are 'summer' suns in regard to salvation. pared with the agitations and strifes of public life, they are, with reference to salvation, what gentle summer suns are to the husbandman, compared with the storm and tempests when the lightnings flash, and the hail beats down the harvest which he had hoped to reap. And the farmer may as well expect to till his soil, and sow and reap his harvest when the black cloud rolls up the sky, and the pelting storm drives on, as a man expect to prepare for heaven in the din of business, in political conflicts, and in the struggles of gain and ambition. But all-all that is favorable for salvation, in such serious moments, will soon pass away, and when gone they cannot be recalled. They are favorable moments, sent by a merciful God to call you from the world, to prepare you for heaven. Improved, they are like the summer sun in reference to the harvest. Lost, or neglected, they are like the passing away of spring, when not a furrow has been turned, or a seed

sown.

A revival of religion, in like manner, is a favorable time for securing salvation. There are influences on your heart when others are pressing into the kingdom, which exist at no other period of your life. It is a time when there is all the power of the appeal from sympathy-all the force of the fact that your companions and friends are leaving you for heaven; when the strong ties of love for them draw your mind towards religion; when all the confidence which had in them becomes an argument for religion; and when, most of all, the Holy Spirit makes your heart tender "and speaks with an unusual power to the soul. But such a time, with all its advantages, usually soon passes away : and those advantages for salvation you cannot again create or recall-any more than you call up the bloom of spring in the snows of December.-A. Barnes.

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FRUITS OF INFIDELITY AND THE BIBLE.

Rousseau, the French Infidel, on his return to Paris, (says Lord Brougham, in his Sketches of Men of Letters), went to live at an inferior hotel, or rather lodging-house, near the Luxembourg, and there, dining at the table with the family, he became acquainted with a female servant, a girl from Orleans, where her father had held a place in the mint, and her mother had been a shop-keeper, but both were reduced to distress. Their name was Le Vasseur, and the girl's Theresa. She was about twenty-three, of modest demeanor, and so much without education, that, even after living with him for many years, she never could read the figures on the dial-plate of a clock, or tell in what order the months succeeded each other. He became attached to her; she cohabited with him, and bore him five children, all of which he sent one after the other to the Foundling Hospital, regardless of the poor mother's tears; and after twenty-five years of this intercourse he married her. The mother, a vulgar and affected woman, lived with them; and the father, whom he could not endure, but of whom Theresa was very fond, was, on the pretext of economy, sent at the age of eighty to the workhouse, where the disgrace of this treatment immediately broke his heart.

Thomas Paine was another Infidel, who, as some yet alive in this city know, yielded up his spirit in a tempest of agony and despair; alternately uttering fearful curses, and calling for help on the insulted name of Christ! An aged gentleman, well acquainted with him, says, 'One evening I found Paine harranguing a company of his disciples, on the great mischief done by the Bible and Christianity. When he paused, I said "Mr. Paine, you have been in Scotland; you know there is not a more rigid set of people in the world than they are in their attachment to

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