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tion. These good people have been nurtured from infancy under the influence of the educational system of religion. Piety was rooted in them at so early a period of life, that it has become part of all the habits of their life. It has been to them as natural as their food and their drink, and its influence on them has been as constant and ever-present as the air they breathe. Thus their religious life has been symmetrically developed, growing into, sanctifying, vivifying, and illuminating their entire social and secular

life.

Their case illustrates the fact, that there is such a thing as piety pervading the deepest every-day life of a people, making their whole being peculiar; a piety which brings the sacred and secu lar together in the power of a hidden harmony, so that neither is unnatural to the other. With a people thus circumstanced their piety will not be confined to Sundays, churches and closetsthough here of course will ever be its home and earthly source— but it will go with them into the streets, gardens, and fields, and manifest itself in all their ever-day secular and social life. A piety in the life and spirit of which it will be possible to fulfill the Apostolic words: "Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." In the very instance discribed by our traveller in Switzerland, we have no more than an illustration in life of the injunction: "Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of Jesus Christ."

How different is all this from the piety developed in English life, especially under its austere puritanic forms! Here the free flow of a natural, childlike religious life is checked, and this is done under the idea that it is a mode of being that cannot be made to chime in with the common details of secular life. Pious feeling is not permitted to flow with ease, and in an every-day manner, but is regarded as being bound to some formal heralding of itself. To have it rise spontaneously to the surface of life, at all times and at all places, in every business and pleasure, is regarded as an empty use of it; and hence when it is manifested with this kind of spontaniety, it seems to an English taste as bordering on the profane!

To what may be called the fanatical spirit this type of piety is equally distasteful. That kind of piety is more concerned with its own frames, than with its blessings. It looks more to itself than to God. Though it loves to bring religion into its constant conversation, this is generally done with a kind of violence, and with something of parade in mien and manner. It, moreover, associates all piety so slavishly with awfulness and constrained solemnity that it spoils the genial flow of childlike and cheerful religious life, whenever it attempts to mingle with it. It lives in the life as a kind of foreign spirit that cannot fully domesticate itself with its business and recreation, its labors and cares, its joys and sorrows. It is rather the spirit of bondage unto fear, than the spirit of freedom unto cheerful devotion and love.

To our mind the sentence quoted at the beginning of this article, in connection with the facts we have presented, is very suggestive

of thought and reflection. We may have but feebly illustrated the difference between the two types of piety, and not have hit in all points the ground of their difference; yet the difference exists, is great, and very significant. The causes of the difference evidently run back into fundamental principles of theology both theoretical and practical, and involve very many things underlying them which do not at once present themselves to our view.

FUNERAL HYMN.

"'NUN BRINGEN WIR DEN LEIB ZUR RUH."

FROM THE GERMAN BY THE EDITOR.

This body, weary and distressed,
Finds here at last its kindly rest,
By God's decree, most wise and just,
It moulders to its mother dust.

It shall not ever dust remain,
Not ever shall corruption reign;
When Christ in glory shall appear,
He'll raise the body slumbering here.

Here learn, O man, thy mortal state
Here learn how vain are small and great;
When scores, and fears, and pains are past,

Death ends the weary scene at last.

Our lives, how speedily they fly, .
Death and eternity draw nigh;
Then shall the Lord rewards bestow,
According to our deeds below.

Here as we stand beside these graves,
Let each one call on Him who saves:
O God, in Jesus' name we pray,
Prepare us for our dying day!

When we have run our mortal race,
Be near us, Saviour, by Thy grace;
Let death our gain for ever be,

And sweetly draw our souls to Thee.

And O, in that triumphant hour,

When opening graves shall own Thy power:
Then joyfully may we arise,

To dwell with Thee above the skies.

THE SINS OF YOUTH.

BY THE EDITOR.

Youth is not only an interesting, but a most important period of human life. At this period purity is most valuable, and sin most destructive. Though the essence of sin inheres in the spiritthough our nature is depraved and poisoned by sin from infancy, and though parental defilements are in a measure entailed, yet are there nevertheless some lingering remains of paradise that seem to bless the period of youth. With some

"Trailing clouds of glory do we come.

From God, who is our home."

Even the Holy Scriptures refer back to youth as a season better than that which follows., "Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when His candle shined upon my head, and when by His light I walked through darkness; as I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle." There is something of innocence upon the youthful face, as the index of a corresponding comparative innocence within. The shadows of sin are not yet so dark upon the countenance. The stains of sin are not yet so deep in the heart. The stream of life, like all streams, is purest and freshest nearest its fountain. The waters become cloudy, and rily, and impure the farther they flow along impure channels. The life of the young scion is fresh, healthy, full of life and tenderness, beautiful and vigorous in its earliest growth. As its life advances, it acquires a coarser tissue of growth, a rougher bark, gnarly and broken branches, which breaking away, open avenues by which disease and death soon begin to find their way to its heart. The young lambs are more innocent, and gay, and beautiful than later in their life. The young birds have a happier, the old ones a gloomier song!

Something analagous is found in human life. It has been truly as well as beautifully said:

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As the heathen have a golden age to which they look back, with a sigh for what is past, so every spirit has a similar age of plea

sant momories lying in the period of youth. To this the spirit reverts with joy in every later period when life is neither so pure nor so blest. The same poet exclaims:

O joy that in our embers

Is something that doth live;
That nature yet remembers!
What was so fugitive!

The thought of my past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benedictions,

This season of comparative innocence and joy is sweet to the recollection of after life as it is free from positive and willful guilt. Sin is the serpent in this paradise. It is sin that casts a shadow over the bright fields of youth. It is sin that plants the thorn into this rose, and causes even its fragrance to bring pain instead of pleasure. It is sin that makes heaven recede from the vision of infancy, and causes "shades of the prison-house" to "close upon the growing Boy."

O sin, what a worm in the bud of human hope! What an ominous darkness stealing over the spirit of youth! What a blight to the promised joys of early life! It is as the burning breath of the pit scorching and withering every plant in the fair garden of innocence!

We need but recall to our mind the nature of sin to be impressed with a sense of its dreadful effects upon the tender life of youth. It is said to be a poison-leprosy! It is a disharmony in all right relations of life! It is a violation of all the laws of being. What the worm, the frost, the hacking of the hatchet, the bruise of a stone, the scalding with water, the scorching of fire, is to a young and tender scion, that is sin to the youthful soul. What over-taxing, over loading, over-drawing is to the young animial, that is the violence of sin to the youthful constitution. Its effect is to enfeeble, cripple, maim, and ultimately destroy.

At no period of life is the influence of sin so directly and surely disastrous as in youth. Not only because soul and body are then more tender, but also because there is a longer period before it in which to work out its legitimate results. We know that the effects of youthful sins do not always immediately appear, even as a bruise does not at once fester into an open wound. The effects of sin are always first inward, then outward-first in the soul and and later in the body. A worm may burrow for a long time in the hidden root before the effects of his work appear in the pale, sickly, dying leaf. When these effects are once seen, all remedy comes too late. The work of death is already done!

The sacred writers speak in sad tones of the effects of youthful sin on later life. Job says of the wicked man: "His bones are full of the sins of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust." Again, speaking of his own experience, he says: "Thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth." David takes up the same melancholy strain: "Remember not the sins of my youth." Those who

thus speak of the sad effects of youthful sin were in the period of age at the time. They speak of the effects of sin as appearing late in life. In old age they are made to possess what they would fain not possess; and they speak of these sins as "lying down with them in the dust."

The sins of youth are said to manifest themselves in physical or bodily results. Even the bones are said to be full of their dire effects. The effects of sin upon the health of the body are so well known as to need no illustration or proof. They are open to common observation, and attested by the sad experience of thousands. Even the countenance, as the prophet testifies, doth witness of them! These gloomy effects may be seen in the drunkard and glutton, the profligate and libertine, the whoremonger and harlot! The poet's picture is true to life:

"They are full of all disease. Their bones

Are rotten. Consumption licks their blood, and drinks
Their marrow up. Their breath smells mortally,
And in their bowels plague and fever lurk;
And in their very heart, and veins, and life,
Consumption's worm gnaws greedily unseen."

Sometimes a vigorous constitution may for a long while resist the effects of sin. The connection between sin and misery may seem to be broken. Judgment may seem to delay. The victim may begin to say: "I shall see no evil." But judgment will come. Sin is cause; sorrow is effect; and the consequences will come. Does not disease often for a long while lie latent in the system, But is nevertheless doing its sure work? Has Etna no bowels of fire when all is so calm and quiet on the surface? Is there no preparation of internal fires going on even when there is no heaving, no opening, no running lava down its sides!

When the oldest living Indian was a boy; on a calm morning in May, when all was peace and cheer in the deep forest, he carelessly shot his arrow into a healthy sappling. The bark grew around the half-buried arrow, and the healthy wood covered it. After many years the sapling which once was, now a tree, was used as the mast of a ship. It served its purpose on many a trip over a calm and quiet sea; but at length the vessel was caught in a storm. Then the wound was revealed, and became the unhappy means of sinking men and treasures into the bottom of the sea!

Yes, youth, and even middle life may escape the effects of youthful sin; but its sorrows will come in with the infirmities of old age. In the second childhood of life will return the effects of the follies of the first; and they "will lie down with us in the dust!" Though the young may trifle with sin now, they will groan and weep over its final results then. Every sin will cost a tear. Every youthful crime will be a thorn in the pillow of age. The day of retribution will come. Nothing is surer pay than sin. Its wages of sorrow will be paid. If they are long delayed, they will come with interest. "Be sure your sin will find you out!"

Listen to the words of a wise man, who had been wicked in his

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