"Art thou CAST DOWN UPON THY SICK BED? Call for the elders of the Church, and let them PRAY. James v. 14. This was Hezekiah's recipe, when he was 'sick unto death; He turned his face to the wall, and PRAYED.' 2 Kings xx. 1, 2. This was David's recipe: Have mercy on me, O LORD, for I am weak. O LORD, heal me for my bones are vexed.' Psal. vi. 2. "Art thou infested with importunate TEMPTATIONS? —PRAY. So did St. Paul, when the messenger of Satan was sent to buffet him. Thrice I besought the Lord, that it might depart from me.' 2 Cor. xii. 8. So did David. 'While I suffer thy terrors I am distracted. Thy fierce wrath goeth over me. But unto Thee have I cried, O LORD; and in the morning shall my prayer prevent Thee.' Psal. lxxxviii. 15, 16. v. 13. 66 6 Art thou afflicted with the SLANDERS OF EVIL TONGUES? PRAY. So did David. The mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue. - Hold not Thy peace, O God of my praise.' Psal. cix. 2, 1. "Art thou distressed with poverty?-PRAY. So did David. 'I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me. Help me, O LORD my God, according to thy mercy.' Psal. cix. 22, 26. "Art thou bereaved of thy BODILY SENSES? -Make thy address to him that said, 'Who hath made man's mouth, or who maketh the dumb, and the deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the Lord?' Exod. iv. 11. Cry aloud to him with Bartimæus. Lord! that I receive may my sight.' Matt. x. 47, 51. And if thou be hopeless of thine outward sight, yet pray with the Psalmist 'O LORD! open thou mine eyes that I may see the wondrous things of thy law.' cxix. 18. Psal. PRAY. "Dost thou droop under the grievances of old age? So did David. 'O! cast me not off in the time of old age: forsake me not when my strength faileth. O God! Thou hast taught me from my youth; now also, when I am old and greyheaded, O God, forsake me not.' Psal. lxxi. 9. 17, 18. "Art thou troubled with the FEARS OF DEATH?-PRAY. So did David. My soul is full of trouble, and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. I am counted with them that go down into the pit. I am as a man that hath no strength. Free among the dead, thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. But unto Thee have I cried, Ó Lord: and in the morning shall my prayer prevent Thee.' Psal, lxxxviii. 3—6, 13. So "Dost thou tremble at the thought of JUDGMENT? did the man after God's own heart. My flesh trembleth for fear of Thee, and I am afraid of Thy judgments.' Psal. cxix. 20. Look up, with Jeremiah, and say to thy Saviour Lord! Thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life; O Lord, judge Thou my cause.' Lam. iii. 58, 59. "Art thou afraid of the power, malice, subtlety of thy SPIRITUAL ENEMIES ?-PRAY. So did David. 'Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God; save me from them that rise up against me.' Psal. lix. 1. 'O hide me from the secret counsel of the wicked.' Psal. Ixiv. 2. 'Consider mine enemies: for they are many, and they hate me with a cruel hatred. O keep my soul, and deliver me.' Psal. xxv. 19, 20. So did St. Paul pray that he might be freed from the messenger of Satan whose buffets he felt, and was answersd with, My grace is sufficient for thee.' 2 Cor. xii. 9. So he sues for all God's Saints May the God of peace tread down Satan under your feet shortly.' Rom. xvi. 20. 6 " "Whatever evil,' in fine, 'it be that presseth thy soul, have speedy recourse to the throne of grace; pour out thy heart into the ears of "the Father of all mercies and God of all comfort; " and be sure, if not of redress, yet of ease. We have His word for it, that cannot fail us: "Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee; and thou shalt glorify me.". Psal. 1. 15. '*"'. - pp. 59-63. The second part comprises four chapters, the first of which contains devotions for those who are "afflicted in mind"; the second, devotions for those who are "afflicted in body "; -the third, devotions for those who are "afflicted in estate"; and the fourth, "thanksgivings for deliverance from affliction." In this, as well as in the first part, Mr. Horne makes a free use of the compositons of others. The prayers are principally selected from the English Liturgy, and from the devotional writings of the earlier English divines. And it is against this part of the volume that we take the most exception. Not only are doubtful doctrines introduced into these prayers, but the Scriptural rule of addressing our petitions to God through and in the name of Jesus Christ, is repeatedly transgressed, and prayer is made to Jesus as to Almighty God. If it were so in an instance or two we should not mind it, but we cannot approve of a * Bishop Hall's Balm of Gilead, chap. xviii. book of devotion, in which our feelings regarding the proper object of supreme religious homage are so frequently shocked. While on this subject we would notice another particular, which we cannot regard, at this day, but as a poor affectation. We mean the use of the name Jesu, in invocation, instead of Jesus. This is retained from the Latin formularies, in which the vocative form of the word is all right and proper; but what is right and proper in Latin is not so in English, simply because it is not English. We do not doubt that there are many worthy people who think there is something uncommonly pious and mysterious in saying Jesu Christ rather than Jesus Christ. Let all such be informed, that there is no piety and no mystery in the matter, but only a sin against the modern and correct usage of their own mother tongue. We know that Jeremy Taylor and other writers of former days employed this form, but we nevertheless assert that to retain it now is a mere affectation. At least let some consistency be preserved, and not one prayer begin, as on page 218, "O Lord Jesu Christ," while the very next begins O Lord Jesus Christ." The poetry of the Appendix, consisting of thirty-six hymns, is selected by the American editor with taste. Among them is the following, by Mrs. Sigourney, which we have often read before, and always with emotion. The last verse is fine. 66 BLESSED ARE THE DEAD. They dread no storm that lowers, "Who are so greatly blessed? From whom hath sorrow fled? While all things toil?—The dead! The holy dead! Why weep ye so Thrice blessed! they have done with woe, "Go to their sleeping bowers, Deck their lone couch of clay "We dream, but they awake; Dark visions mar our rest; 'Mid thorns and snares our way we take,— For those who throng the eternal throne, They are the living, they alone, P. 25 [For the Christian Examiner.] ART. III. Seduction. It has been justly observed in a late valuable little book, that "people are at last beginning to awake and to inquire;" not only into the physical, but moral and intellectual nature of man. If the impulse goes on, and it will go on, gross vices, at least, must soon hide their diminished heads. Intemperance is already obliged to skulk into corners and hide in caverns. Let the friends of human-kind begin to pursue as earnestly the hydra monster Seduction, and the conquest of the other will be certain. Is it not well-known that seduction leads thousands to intemperance? The betrayed husband, the broken-hearted wife, the disgraced youth and ruined maiden, alike too fatally prove that it is so. Will parents who have "named the name of Christ," unresistingly submit to the domination of a vice, which is destroying many of the fairest and most promising youth of our cities and even villages, because it is admitted into the drawing rooms of the rich and the halls of legislation? Neither wealth nor power will any longer protect from scorn the brutalized drunkard. Ought they to protect the seducer? Shall the pure and high-minded be obliged to dwell in close neighbourhood with panders of gross crime, and daily see youth, manhood, and old age drawn into the vortex prepared by these pests of society, and not be allowed to publish their infamy, because they are secretly upheld by wealth and influence? "Delicacy forbids," says one; "Common decency excludes the discussion of this vice from our public lectures, our journals, our news-papers," says another; "People and nations, from time immemorial, have submitted to its existence,' says a third; and, for the truth must be told, a fourth will tell you, that "panders and brothels are necessary evils and cannot be removed." More than forty years have we watched, and with increasing dread, the growing prevalence of seduction in our country, and recently meeting with a paper, printed in a sister state,* we hailed it as the announcer of a new era in public opinion. We hope the time has come, when real delicacy will fill every heart, when woman will rise in true dignity to banish the specious villain from the circles of beauty and fashion; when every mother shall be roused to the religious duty of guarding the moral purity of her daughters. It is remarked by a late writer, that the French people sin with more circumspection than the English, and have the art of making gross vice less disgusting by veiling it with a mantle, wrought by the Graces; but are they less criminal in the sight of God, than the most vulgar sinner in creation? We may studiously avoid comments on the sin of seduction, we may live in the near neighbourhood of a brothel and seem not to know it, we may see the youthful victim lured into this hell, we may see a man in his meridian power perish there, we may see the gray-headed sinner hobble to the yawning gulph and sink there, and from delicacy avoid all notice of the moral ruin before us, or fearfully whisper the horror that we must feel; but are we guiltless, when we do thus? Is it not too great a sacrifice to false delicacy? * McDougal's Gazette, published in New York. |