The grand object of our assembling together is to join our fellow Christians in public confession, prayer, praise, and thanksgiving to Almighty God. The morning service, you should consider, contains a great deal that is not in the afternoon service: it contains the Litany, the most beautiful form of supplication that ever was composed; occasionally the Athanasian Creed, the Communion Service, with the Commandments, the Epistles and Gospels of the day, and the Nicene Creed, and likewise various hymns, psalms, and prayers, to which those who are absent from this service, must be almost utter strangers.

This habit also places another hindrance in the way to the communion-table; and also prevents you from hearing those explanations and exhortations on the subject, which many clergymen are accustomed to give on the day of its celebration.

How little knowledge must those who only join in one of the services, possess of that beautiful arrangement of our church, the Christian year, which gives such life and variety to our form of prayer. Advent, Lent, Easter, Trinity Sunday, Whit Sunday, and the Saints' Days, have each their appropriate Psalms, Lessons, Epistles. and Gospels, wisely selected to suit the season. These are particularly to be seen in the morning service.

Again, ministers often find it necessary to divide their subjects into two or more discourses; but how discourag ing must it be to the preacher, to find half of his hearers absent at the second part of his discourse, thus plainly showing that they have felt but little interest in the subject, that no good impression has been made, that the seed has fallen upon barren soil, or that the devil has been suffered to pluck it out of the heart.

In great towns, the morning service is generally the best attended; but I am now speaking to my country friends, who are so apt to neglect the morning service and attend. in the afternoon only. Let me beseech you to correct this ruinous habit of staying from God's house in the morning of His holy day, by which you lose the blessed opportunity of much religious instruction and improvement. The affairs of the family would not prevent it, if you had the love and fear of God before your eyes: the

cares of the family should not be a reason for neglecting the great duty of Christians to the Lord who bought them, and died to redeem them; though I am willing to allow for those few cases where this is the real reason1, and not the mere excuse. It is in vain to plead that you make up for neglect of public prayer by praying and reading at home :-real prayer, so far from keeping people away from the house of God, always sends them thither; and every page of the Bible condemns you, by showing that you have given the preference to worldly matters; that you have been careful and troubled about many things, instead of attending to the one thing needful. Far am I from desiring to deprive the poor of a comfortable dinner on the day of rest; yet there can be no great hardship in changing the hour, or arranging some plan, that the worship of God may not be neglected; remember, the sabbath is God's own day. You may repeat a form of words, as a grace before and after your meal; but actions speak more plainly than words; and those who have themselves neglected public worship, or suffered some member of the family to do so in order to prepare their meal, cannot, really from their hearts, offer up the words of thanksgiving and praise for it. Be assured, that on that awful day, when we shall stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, all excuses for the neglect of Him, will appear vain and contemptible. Then you may wish that every such feast had been a fast, and afterwards call in vain, like Dives, for a drop of water to cool your tongue. When you awake in the next world and find what you have lost, how will you regret that you had despised the frequent advice! it will then be too late. Use the blessed means therefore while it is day, and let not the world, the flesh, or the devil keep you from so profitable a service. It is not too late for you to amend; but you must do it immediately, or you will grow more hardened in disobedience, till your day of grace is over, and the just judgment of an offended God will overtake H. S. T.

you.

1 For the difference between a reason and an excuse, see vol. xii. p. 59.

1834.]

79

ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH HISTORY.

(In the last number, p. 49.)

Answer 1. Edward the Third began to reign in the year 1327.

A. 2. He was fourteen years old when he began to reign.

A. 3. The Queen-mother, and her favourite Mortimer, endeavoured to keep all power out of the young king's hands, and to manage the affairs of the nation themselves.

A. 4. The Queen and Mortimer were taken at Nottingham Castle.

A. 5. The Queen was confined for life in the Castle of Risings. Mortimer was hanged.

A. 6. Edward the Third was brave and ambitious. A. 7. He attempted to recover, in Scotland, the power which his father had lost.

4. 8. He fought the battle of Hallidownhill, and gained a great victory there over the Scotch.

A. 9. He next turned his arms against the French. A. 10. He fought the great battle of Cressy.

A. 11. The king's eldest son was the famous Edward the Black Prince; he commanded at the battle of Cressy, and shewed great courage and skill.

For a

A. 12. King Edward then besieged Calais. whole year his labour was vain: at length the citizens were obliged to submit, being compelled by want of food. King Edward threatened to put them all to death, being violently angry with them, for holding out so long. At length he agreed to be satisfied with hanging six of the principal citizens. These brave men appeared with ropes about their necks, prepared to be immediately executed; but the Queen Philippa intreated that they might be pardoned, as their bravery did not deserve punishment. The king listened to the pleading of the queen, and spared these brave citizens.

A. 13. Yes; the Scots attempted to invade England, in the king's absence.

A. 14. The Queen took the king of Scotland (David

Bruce) prisoner, at the battle of Neville's Cross, near Durham.

A. 15. The Black Prince fought the great battle of Poictiers.

A. 16. John king of France was taken prisoner.

A. 17. No; the Black Prince never lived to be king. A. 18. The king never looked up again after the death of the prince.

A. 19. He was treated with great neglect by his courtiers in his old age.

A. 20. This king died in the year 1377.

QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH HISTORY.

(To be answered in our next.)

V.

Question 1. Who became king after the death of Edward the Third?

Q. 2. In what year did he come to the throne?

Q. 3. How old was he when his grandfather died? Q.4. Who managed the affairs of the kingdom whilst Richard was too young to govern?

Q. 5. What tax was considered very severe on the poor, and at what age were they required to pay it?

Q. 6. Who resisted the payment of this tax, and headed a mob and marched to London?

Q. 7. Where did the king meet Wat Tyler and his followers?

Q. 8. How did the young king conduct himself on this occasion?

Q. 9. How did Tyler behave?

Q. 10. Who was the Lord Mayor of London at that time, and how did he act?

Q. 11. What pacified the people after the death of their leader Wat Tyler.

Q. 12. Did the king continue to act as he had begun? Q. 13. What two noblemen had a serious quarrel, and how did the king act towards them?

Q. 14. Did one of them return from banishment?

Q. 15. Who was this? whose son was he? and what relation was he to the king?

Q. 16. Had he any right to be king?

1834.]

BROTHER'S PICTURE.

81

Q. 17. What family ought to have had the throne after the death of king Richard the Second?

Q. 18. What caused the dispute between the houses of York and Lancaster?

Q. 19. What was the end of Richard the Second?

V.

BROTHER'S PICTURE.

(Continued from page 70.)

AND here I cannot deny myself and my readers the pleasure and the benefit of a quotation from the works of another excellent bishop, Bishop Taylor, whose words are so eloquent, and so perfectly in accordance with our previous remarks. But let me tell some of your readers who Taylor was:-Jeremy Taylor was the son of a barber at Cambridge; he was born about the year 1600; he obtained his education in the University of Cambridge, and is one instance out of many thousands of the blessings which follow from our college and church endowments, which are open to men of every rank, and have been the means of awakening, cherishing, and rewarding the talents and industry of men in humble life, in every corner of this blessed isle. The barber was a poor man; but the son of the barber had talents, virtue, and industry; and there were means at hand to call forth those qualities, and to reward them; and the son of the barber rose to higher rank, and attained to greater honours, than some of the first gentlemen in the nation. He was made Divinity Lecturer in St. Paul's Cathedral, and afterwards, through the help of Archbishop Laud, (himself the son of a clothier,) he obtained a fellowship of All Souls College, in Oxford; he then became Chaplain to the Archbishop, and was made Doctor of Divinity during the great rebellion, after the murder of Charles the First, and the overthrow of the Church; he retired into Wales, and lived by keeping a school; but, on the restoration of Charles the Second, and the return of law and order, he was promoted to the see of Down and Connor, in Ireland, and became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dublin.

His works are very numerous, very learned, very