Early Female Piety. "I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me."-PROVERBS Viii. 17. IN the world of nature, we are now passing through the vernal quarter of the year. Spring, lovely, animating spring, is shedding its reviving and gladdening smiles upon us. It is always a season of beauty. "For lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land." Nature stands forth dressed in her garb of living green, decorated with the chaste colors, and perfumed with the mild fragrance of the violet, the primrose, and the cowslip. It is a season of joy as well as beauty; recovered from the gloom of wintry months, the earth smiles, and is vocal with delight. The feathered songsters of the grove blend their notes with the lowing of the herds and the bleating of the flocks; and the harmony is completed by the joyful sounds of the husbandman, and the gentle swell of the ocean breaking mildly upon the shore. But it is also a season of activity, as well as of love liness and delight. The farmer is busy in his fields, the florist in his green-house, and the horticulturist in his garden; and the torpor produced by short days and cold nights is succeeded by universal motion: for full well is it known and felt, that a seedless spring must be followed by a fruitless autumn. Hope adds the finishing mark, the stroke of grace, to vernal scenes. The blade springing from the well-cultivated soil, and the blossom pendant from the well-pruned tree, give the promise and prospect of the future crop. it And what is youth but the vernal period of existence; it is the season of beauty and of joy; should be the season of activity and of hope. It is now that the beauty of the human form is in all its untainted freshness, and the spirits of our animal nature are in all their unchecked vigor. And it should be now that all the energies of the soul are put forth in the way of self-improvement, to awaken the hopes, not only of their possessor, but of every observer. Do, my young friends, thus look abroad upon the field of nature; not only to poetize, but to moralize; not only to admire, but to imitate; not only to feel the throb of pleasure and thrill of delight, but to learn lessons of wisdom, and collect motives for self-improvement. You are, then, indeed you are, passing through your moral spring, and as in nature, so in your existence, there can be but one spring in the year; and in each case, it is the spring that will give the character to the whole of the year that follows. It is then the seeds of in telligence, of prudence, of virtue, of piety must be sown, or there will be no produce in the after-periods of your history. A seedless spring must here also be followed by a fruitless autumn, and a destitute, dreary, and cheerless winter. This sermon is devoted to the enforcement of early piety. Your first concern—and deep, indeed, should that concern be-is, of course, to understand the nature of real religion. This is of momentous importance. No language can exaggerate it. There can be no hyperbole here. Upon a right understanding of this subject is suspended your happiness for eternity. Ponder that word ETERNITY, and think of the millions of millions of ages, passing comprehension, it includes; all to be filled with torment or bliss, according as you understand and practice, or mistake the nature and neglect the claims of true religion. Should not this awaken solicitude of the deepest kind? What should increase the concern of your mind to deep solicitude, and almost to distress, is that both our Lord and his apostles lead us to believe, by what they have said, that mistakes on this subject are very common and very destructive, as you may learn by consulting the following passages of Holy Scripture: Psalm cxxxix. 23, 24; Matt. vii. 13-28; 1 Cor. xiii.; 2 Cor. xiii. 5–7; Gal. iv. 11-18; vi. 3–5. To guard against mistakes, go to the right source of information; consult the only infallible oraclethe Word of God. You have the Bible in your hand; search that-search it yourselves, and for yourselves. Do not be satisfied with merely consulting men's works, but consult God's own Word. All churches, whatever they may boast, may err, have erred, and have no authority or ability to settle this matter for you. Creeds and catechisms, prayer-books and missals, formularies and confessions, are none of them pure truth; this appertains only to the Bible. The Bible, the Bible alone, is the religion of Christians. Not that I would have you reject the help of these things, but only their authority. A humble, docile mind will be thankful for human aid in the great business of religion. There is a medium between despising assistance and so depending upon it as to cast off all selfinquiry. The pert and flippant self-sufficiency which would lead a young woman to neglect, much more despise, the judgment of those who have studied the Word of God more closely than it is possible she can have done, and whose calling it is to teach it, is no proof of that humility which is one of the brightest ornaments of her sex. It can not, therefore, be my intention to teach young females to think lightly of ministers and books, in the momentous concerns of religion; but simply to remind them of their duty to search the Scriptures for themselves, by which authority all books and all ministers are to be tried. Before we come to this source of information on the nature of religion, we may just remark that there are one or two things which we may presume be : forehand must of necessity characterize it. Since religion has first of all and chiefly to do with God, and since God can and does regard, search, and judge the heart-the true seat of religion must be the heart. It is not a mere outward thing—a round of ceremonies-or a course of unintelligent action. The soul must be religious; our whole inner self— the intellect the will-the affections-the conscience-must be under the influence of piety. Mark this there must be thought-choice-affectionconscientiousness. Again, whatever be true religion, it must primarily relate to God, and must of necessity be a right state of mind and heart toward him. It must also be to its possessor a very serious, solemn, important matter; it supposes great concern, for it is an affair for salvation—eternity— heaven. It must make a very different kind of character from that of the person who is not living under its influence. It is too great a matter to leave no mark, to produce no impression, to form no peculiarity. So that we may be sure while it lives properly in the heart, it will develop itself visibly in the outward character. With these ideas, which are at once obvious, instructive, and impressive, let us open the New Testament and see what descriptions of religion we find there; and we beg your very closest attention to them, as in the presence of God and the prospect of eternity. The apostle Paul, in setting forth the subject and substance of his ministry, describes it thus: "Testifying both to the Jews, and also to the |