for

expel them by mentally protesting against them, by offering a short, earnest prayer help, and by resolutely turning the attention upon something else. This task, difficult at first, will become easier by habit; and, if we are in earnest and look up to Him for strength, God will give us at length the victory over ourselves. But especially let me recommend this discipline to the young. Endeavour to gain the mastery over your thoughts; to restrain their wanderings; and to fix them, time by time, on what you ought to be thinking about. It is a habit you may form now much more readily than in after life. You will find the advantage in a mind better trained and adapted for the duties and pursuits of this life, and, still more, better fitted for the service of God. And you will escape those foul stains, which ill-regulated thoughts ever imprint upon the page of memory; and which in after years the soul would give the world to obliterate, but cannot.

And

But thirdly, a right direction and character should be given to our thoughts by accustoming ourselves to fix them on profitable objects. Meditation is a very difficult as well as a very important duty. We are naturally indisposed to think seriously and connectedly. We prefer to let the current of ideas float by as it will, without making any effort to direct its course. here is one of the ways in which we should deny ourselves. We should oblige ourselves to think of what we ought, not of what we would. Subjects for profitable meditation abound. Nature is full of them, and the course of God's providence; but, above all, they are most richly supplied by the wonders of His redeeming grace. The word of God should be the most frequent source of our topics of meditation. Our sinfulness and God's love; life and death; heaven and hell; the infinite mercies of redemption; the graces and duties of the Christian character; and chiefly the example of our

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Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, these are the topics, which, having culled them from the sacred page, we should by meditation mark, learn, and inwardly digest. Thus will the mind be occupied, strengthened, and improved. Sinful thoughts will be excluded by more fitting occupants. And we shall grow in the knowledge of heavenly things, becoming by God's grace more spirituallyminded, and learning day by day to "walk" more steadily "by faith," and "not by sight."

Fourthly, that we may not flag or grow negligent in our efforts, let us often call to mind, that as our thoughts are all known to God now, so they will all be brought to judgment by Him hereafter. Our hearts are now bare to Him. Every silent thought is as audible to Him, as if uttered with the blast of a trumpet. We can hide nothing from Him." O Lord, Thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising, Thou under

standest my thought afar off." And it is He who "will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil." Let us endeavour to gain an abiding conviction of this solemn truth. Let us remember God's eye ever upon us, and piercing to the inmost recesses of the heart. And let us check each sinful, wandering thought, with the belief, that for all these things God will bring us to judgment.

And lastly, let all our efforts be accompanied with earnest prayer. As our hearts are known to God, so they are wholly in His power to turn them as He will. As all sin can be subdued but by the Holy Ghost, so it is especially true with respect to sinful thoughts. They are far too numerous and too subtle to be suppressed by our own efforts, and spring too readily from our heart's evil soil.

In struggle with such foes, "the weapons

1 Ps. cxxxix. 1, 2.

of our warfare must not be carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds," in order to the "casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." Let it then be our daily, earnest prayer to Him, who sees that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves, that He will "keep us not only outwardly in our bodies, but inwardly in our souls that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul." And let us make David's petition ours: "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.'

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1 2 Cor. x. 4, 5.

2 Ps. cxxxix. 23, 24.