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thou art called to celebrate his love, and to invoke his mercy and power, in the holy sacrament of his supper, be it thy care to form the most lively and affecting views of thy fallen and lost estate. Ah! who will cherish with the most fervent gratitude, the precious emblems of the Saviour's love? who will invoke with the most sincere and sacred solicitude, the divine manifestations of grace and glory which this holy ordinance was designed to dispense? who will experience in their most exquisite fervors, the pleasures of that holy communion with God, which sometimes lift the soul on the wings of ardent hope, to the celestial streams of bliss which flow in the city of the living God?-The humble christian, who, cherishing a deep sense of his weakness, his unworthiness, his need of mercy and grace, stays his soul, with supreme and ardent faith, on that all-sufficient and glorious Saviour, who gave himself to be the life of the world.

THE PRAYER.

O GOD, who art infinitely pure and perfect, and in whofe fight dwelleth nothing that is unholy or unclean; with deep humility, I confefs the numerous fins which have defiled my confcience, and which call for the condemning fentence of thy juftice. I acknowlege, O Lord, that thy laws are infinitely holy, juft, and good; calculated to advance the perfection and glory of my nature, my present peace, and everlafting welfare. But,

everlasting Redeemer. Base and insensible hast thou been; if the lively emotions of gratitude have not been enkindled by the animating review. Base and insensible hast thou been, if the infinite mercies which thou hast reviewed, inflaming every devout and tender affection,, have not been triumphantly celebrated in the ardent burst of praise to the greatest and best of beings, thy Father, Redeemer and God.

Thou hast been exposed to the holy inspection of that God, whose penetrating eye brings to light the secret actions which the deepest shades of darkness covered. The enquiry, in which thou hast been engaged, involves, in its momentous issue, thy present peace, thy everlasting welfare and salvation. If then the enquiry has been conducted with that awakened and serious solicitude, with that sacred and resolute impartiality, with that scrutinizing and inflexible rigor, which those awful considerations are calculated to excite, thou hast found, O my soul, that thou art guilty, deeply guilty, in the sight of thy almighty and holy Judge. The searching and illuminating beams of the Spirit of God, probing thy inmost thoughts and affections, have disclosed the latent and dreadful depths of thy depravity and guilt. The abasing view of the infection of sin, which like a subtleand paralising poison, diffuses its deadly and corrupting taint through all thy powers and

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affections, must have laid prostrate thy towering claims to spotless purity and undeviating virtue. The view of thy deplorable degeneracy, irresistibly urged on thy reluctant pride, must have prostrated thy aspiring pretensions to that matchless perfection of intellectual faculties, to that unerring rectitude and celestial purity of moral powers, which rendered thee the hallowed boast and delight of thy maker, when, at the first, his inspiring voice arrayed thee in the resplendent glories of his divine. image. Alas! How has the gold become dim! how has the fine gold become changed! the crown has fallen from my head. Woe unto me, for I have sinned!"

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An understanding once enlivened by the unerring beams of divine light, and drawing the luminous rays of knowledge from the infinite source of truth, is now wrapped in heavy and impervious mists, which blunt and bear down that penetrating vigour, by which, in her state of primeval perfection, she intuitively discerned the glory of God, and attained a full and resplendent knowledge of his laws. Alas! her once noble and lofty powers, now enfeebled and depraved, are the continual sport of resistless prejudice and furious passion which misguide, pervert, and. defeat her most vigorous researches. A will, which once erect and active, followed, with undeviating and certain course, the enlightened dictates of an unclouded understanding,

Wednesday Morning.

MEDITATION.

REPENTANCE.

O MY SOUL! if the conviction of thy fallen and condemned state thus irresistibly forced upon thee, by the unerring declaration of God himself, by the view of the world around thee, by the history of human nature, by the faithful testimony of thine own conscience,-if this conviction of thy fallen and condemned state, has been sincere and lively, thou wilt perceive the necessity of deep and effectual repentance.

How shalt thou express thy sensibility to thy demerit, thy deep sorrow for the sins which have roused against thee the wrath of heaven, but by humble, earnest and reiterated confession. How shalt thou awaken the mercy of that God whom thy sins have provoked, but by those unfeigned sighs and tears of lively sorrow by which the true penitent always seeks to express his sense of his aggravated guilt. How wilt thou subdue the unhallowed passions which destroy thy purity and peace,

ing nature of man to the brutes, who, ingloriously sink into the earth from whose degenerate bosom they sprung. O my soul! when I contrast the pure, celestial and resplendent powers, which, in thy primeval state, conformed thee to the image of thy Creator, and admitted thee to the immediate vision, and enjoyment of his love, with the sensual, impure, and corrupting passions by which thou art now enslaved, can I wonder, that, till restored by his grace to the glorious image thou hast forfeited, thou dost groan under the agonizing weight of his displeasure, under his indignant and awful curse.

Abasing to thy towering pride, painful to thy aspiring self-love, O my soul, but irrefragable and certain as the oracles of truth in which it is decisively revealed, as that divine plan of salvation of which it is the conspicuous and essential basis, is the truth, that human nature is degenerate and corrupt. When God viewing man in his fallen state, pronounces, that "the imaginations of his heart are evil continually," when the holy Job, borne down by the blaze of divine glory which displayed, in overwhelming colors, the deep corruption of his nature, vents his profound contrition in the affecting exclamation "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes;" when the holy king of Israel, awakened to remorse at the view of crimes of the deepest dye, which, through the rage of fell lust, he had committed, follows

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