He, who once went to preach unto MED. the spirits in prison, now preaches unto XIII. you by his servants, to whom he has given the ministry of reconciliation Time, place, occasion, are all united in my present address. Whether speaking from the seat or from the closet, by the pen or by the mouth, absent or present, the subject is urgent and the intreaty warm. "The Apostles daily "in the temple, and in every house, "ceased not to teach and to preach "Jesus Christ *." Permit an unworthy follower of the glorious company of Apostles, though at humble distance, to enter into the recesses of your private hours, that, with them, he may preach the word; preach it with effect, and using the authority of his office," be instant, in season, out of season, and reprove, rebuke, exhort, " with all long suffering and doc"trine." And oh! ye, whom lack

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MED. of faith, or lack of knowledge, whom XIII. sin, under one or other frightful ap

pearance, hath placed before me, be struck with the awful solemnity of the Word of God. Ye have, as it were, the sentence of death in yourselves. The reprieve is only in the Almighty!

"O Almighty and Everlasting God! “ ́who didst give to thine Apostles grace,

truly to believe and to preach thy "word: grant, I beseech thee unto "me, who am duly impressed with the "sanctions of thy holy Gospel, to love "that word which they believed, and "to receive the same through Jesus "Christ our Lord. Amen *.”

* Collect for St. Barnabas' Day.

MEDITATION XIV,

ACTS xvi. 25.

At midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them.

IT is not difficult to suppose that he MED. whose communication is cut off from all XIV. the visible world, should be desirous of opening a correspondence with the invisible Father of the universe, whose superintendance visits the remotest dungeons, and showers down divine blessings and benefits on the forlorn and the forgotten. As the door is shut which opens outward, it must be his chief care and concern to look at that which opens

MED. inward, and from thence to expect conXIV. solation which can spring from no other quarter.

But what is the key which thus lets out the soul, and lets in the light; which introduces to us a friend which neither bolts nor bars, solitude or privacy, can exclude, and begins an intercourse which is to last for ever?—It is prayer: it is the prayer of faith; it is the fervent address of a believing soul to the author of its being, made acceptable to him through the alone mediation of Christ.

I do not need to recommend prayer on general principles. Every nation of the earth, many of them pagan as they are, and have been, have distinguished themselves by opening a true, or polluted, channel of communication with the Divine Being, or with some disguised and frightful representation of Him. I do not need to meditate with those who are duly sensible of their daily wants, and, on pure and holy principles, worship, with Daniel, three

XIV.

times a day, with their windows open MED. towards Jerusalem. I do not need to meditate with you, whose souls are houses of prayer, whose bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost, and from whose pious breasts holy hymns and warm praises continually ascend. But I am called upon to join in your sacred meditations, ye sorrowful and dejected! who "sit in darkness and the shadow " of death, being fast bound in misery "and iron; whose hearts have been "brought down through heaviness, "who have fallen down and have none "to help them *. The chearful have many visitors-you have but few. "How "doth the city sit sorrowful that was "full of people! how is she become as " a widow! She weepeth sore in the "night, and her tears are on her "cheeks; among all her lovers, she "hath none to eomfort her. The ways "of Zion do mourn, none come to the

Ps. cvii. 10. 12.