Thorough repentance and conversion.

A common case.

its way, you may easily, with God's blessing, accomplish your desire. Here follow some rules.

1. See that you make your peace with God thoroughly. This book, being a continuation of the Young Christian and Corner-Stone, takes for granted that the reader has had fully explained to him the necessity and the nature of repentance and conversion. I shall not now, therefore, repeat what has already been said on that subject. No person can be happy who does not confess and forsake his sins, and make peace with God;-that is very plain,—and we are altogether too far on in the course of our instructions to the young Christian, to urge it here. It is one of the elements which we have gone by. The point to be urged here, is not merely that you must confess and forsake sin in order to enjoy peace and happiness, but that you must do it thoroughly, and frequently, so as to keep at all times in a state of perfect peace with God.

The religious history of the soul is commonly this. A young man when first convicted of sin, and brought to heartfelt repentance, feels so overwhelmed with a sense of the enormity of his guilt, and his heart is so full of love and gratitude to God, that it seems to him that he can never wander again. Sin seems to have lost all her power. Temptation is robbed of all her alluring colors, and stands exposed before him, the object of his utter aversion. He wonders that he could have sinned as he has done, and is sure that he can never do so again.

But sin is wounded, not destroyed. The evil plant is cut down, but not eradicated. The roots remain, and in a few days or weeks, when the excitement of his first ardor is over, they begin,-slowly,—to sprout again. Whatever his great besetting sins may have been, they appear again, disguised, however, by assuming a modified form, and intermingled with other and better plants in the garden of his heart, so that he does not notice them. He is busy about something else, and in the meantime the noxious

Incipient neglect of prayer.

Backsliding.

The usual steps.

weeds grow on, but grow so gradually, that though he at last begins to see them, they do not startle him. He gets accustomed to them, before he observes them.

By and by he finds himself indulging sin, and perhaps committing overt acts which imply that he has made a very considerable progress in his downward road. Some Saturday night as he is returning to rest, he thinks, just as his faculties are sinking into slumber, that he has, to all intents and purposes, actually neglected secret prayer during the whole week. His moral sensibilities are however so much blunted, that he does not feel the guilt of this, but still he recollects how often he has heard the danger of this sin pointed out, and perhaps how often and how emphatically he has himself pointed it out,-and he feels a moment's alarm. But it is a very superficial alarm; he commences a prayer, but before he has framed many of his petitions, his growing drowsiness overpowers both conscience and reason, and he sinks to sleep. The only effect of this momentary alarm is, not to make him return to his duty on the next week, but only to feel a little more uneasy in the neglect of it.

Or perhaps his besetting sin is pride, or sensuality,-the indulgence of some appetite, or animal passion,-or worldliness, or covetousness; and he finds after a time, that these sins, though he hoped they were crucified and slain, are still existing in all their strength. They have returned however, in the manner already explained, so gradually, that he has become familiar with their dominion again They have fastened their chains upon him by slow degrees, and he has gradually become accustomed to their thraldom, so that he does not arouse himself to any vigorous effort to escape; he only perceives his condition just often enough, and just distinctly enough, to make him uneasy and unhappy. God withdraws from him and hides his face. His prayers are not heard. He knows they are not heard. He perhaps keeps up the form, but he feels guilty ana

Necessity of entire reconciliation with God.

2. Order in worldly affairs.

condemned all the time. But the most that he does, in the way of repentance and return, is to say now and then, in a moment of more serious reflection than usual, “I am wandering sadly from God: I must return. This will never do; for I am destroying my peace and happiness, and endangering my soul." Then he sinks again into his lethargy.

Now what I mean to say to the reader, in respect to this part of my subject, is this. If you wish to be happy,—if you wish to have any real peace, any steady and substantial enjoyment, you must make up your mind decidedly, whether you will be the child of God, or not. If you expect him to take you under his care, you must be his, really, honestly, thoroughly,-not merely in pretence and in form. If you find, therefore, in looking into your heart, that you are not happy, it is very probable that the cause may be, that you are not really and fully at peace with God. You have only declared a truce, and then recommenced hostilities. Of course, you cannot expect to enjoy a quiet and a happy heart. You may depend upon it, that your days must be days of uneasiness and misery, until you come and make yourself wholly the Lord's. To secure your happiness then, your first duty is most faithfully and thoroughly to examine your spiritual condition,-to confess and to crucify your dearest sins, and casting yourself upon the merits and atonement of your

and lasting peace with God. to go on to the next step.

Savior, to make a complete Then you will be prepared

2. And the next step, in the order of importance, is, to see that all your worldly affairs are in order. The magic power of system in facilitating effort, has often been praised, but it has, if possible, a still greater power to promote happiness. People talk about the cares of business, the perplexities of their daily lot, the endless intricacies in which they find themselves involved. But they are, nine out of ten of them, the cares of mismanagement,-the perplexities and the intricacies of confusion. The burdens of human

Effects of system.

History of James.

His morning's duties.

life, are, probably, upon the average, doubled, and sometimes rendered ten-fold greater than they otherwise would be, by the want of regularity and system. The proof of this is, that when a man, either from some native peculiarity of mind, or the effect of early education, acquires the habit of order and method, he can accomplish more than twice as much as ordinary men,-and of all the men in the community, he is the most likely never to be in a hurry,but always to be calm and quiet, and to have leisure for any new and sudden call. Now, if he can do twice as much, with no more care and hurry, it is plain that he could perform the ordinary work of man, with a far more quiet and peaceful mind. This is unquestionable. The facts are notorious, and the inference from them immediate and irresistible.

But let us look more particularly at the manner in which irregularity and confusion, in the management of worldly business, affects the peace and happiness of the heart. There are few persons so correct in this respect, that they will not find a testimony within them, to the truth of what I shall say. We will begin with a very simple case.

James is a school-boy. His affairs, though not quite so intrinsically extensive and important, as those of an East India merchant, are still important to him. He has his business, his cares, his disappointments, and the conditions of success and happiness are the same with him as with a'l mankind. We will, therefore, take his case as the basis of our illustration, as we hope this chapter will be read by many a school-boy, and the imagination of the man can more easily descend to the school-boy's scene of labor, than the boy's ascend to that of the man.

James, then, as I have said, is a school-boy, and his first duty in the morning,-I speak only of his worldly duties here, is to rise at six o'clock, and make the fires in his father's house. James hears the clock strike six,-but it

James's sufferings.

Procrastination.

Its folly.

is cold, and he shrinks from his morning's task, so he lies still, postponing the necessary effort; his mind, all the time dwelling upon it and dreading it, and his conscience goading and worrying him with the thought that he is doing wrong. Thus pass fifteen minutes most wretchedly. The mistake he makes, is in imagining that of the two evils, a little sensation of cold on his face and limbs, while dressing, and on the other hand, the corroding tooth of a disturbed conscience, gnawing within, the former is the greatest. So he quietly waits, suffering the latter for fifteen or twenty minutes, until the lapse of time makes it too intolerable to be borne any longer, and then he slowly forces himself out of his bed; when he finds,-sagacious boy,that he has got still to bear the other evil, after all. Instead of taking the least of the two evils, he has taken both, and the bitterest first. Many of my readers will acquit themselves of James's folly. But be not in haste. Do you never in any way procrastinate duty? Look over your mental memorandum, and see if there is nothing upon it that you ought to do, but which you have been putting off, and putting off, because you have been dreading it. If so, you are James completely. He who procrastinates duty which he knows at last must be done, always does, of two evils, choose both, beginning with the bitterest portion.

I said James had chosen two evils. He has, in fact, chosen three, for the recollection of this neglect of duty, or rather the impression it has made, will continue all the morning. For hours, there will be a settled uneasiness in his mind, whose cause and origin he may not distinctly understand, though he might find it, if he would search for it. He feels restless and miserable, though he knows not exactly why.

When James comes down to his work, he finds no proper preparation made. The wood, which ought to have been carefully prepared the evening before, is out under the snow. The fire has gone out, and his tinderbox he cannot