hunger and thirst after righteousness be indeed kindled and cherished in your bo

soms.

Encourage heavenly-mindedness in your companions. Join with your brothers and sisters, at convenient seasons, in serious conversation, or in prayer, and singing of hymns. Teach the younger ones, and try to fill their little hearts with holy desires. Be diligent in secret prayer, and consider none of the means of grace as mere forms, but expect to meet your Saviour in them. Even when you are enjoying earthly pleasures, sometimes raise your mind. beyond them in thoughts like these: "If God bestows such pleasures upon me, while yet a sinful child below, what must those glories be which he has prepared for me above!" Encourage feelings of thankfulness to God, for the little innocent pleasures you enjoy, as well as for the greater blessings of life. In short, by every means in your power, cherish feelings of childlike delight and confidence in God. Put your hand as it were within his, as you walk through the wilderness of this world, and ask him to be your companion and your guide; and without doubt he will be with you

all your journey through, as he was with the Israelites of old. He will daily feed your souls with manna, and bring you at last to the heavenly Canaan, where you shall be fed with the grapes of the promised land; you shall sit down with your Saviour, and drink of the juice of the vine new in your Father's kingdom.

ADDRESS V.

"Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy." Matt. v. 7.

THE child who knows the wickedness of his own heart; who feels that he deserves God's anger, and mourns for his sins; who is become meek and lowly of heart, hungering and thirsting after a new nature; is very pitiful and merciful to other people: he knows that he wants mercy from God, and therefore wishes to shew it to others. We ask God in our prayers, every day, to forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us; and those who really feel that they want forgiveness, will be always ready to forgive others.

It is one part of mercy to forgive the sins of others; and it is another part to shew them kindness and love. It is also a part of mercy to be kind and pitiful to brute creatures. But however mercy may

shew itself, it is still a fruit of true humility.

Many persons are called good-natured, and really are so sometimes, who are not truly merciful. I have seen many persons kind to animals, and good-natured, and civil in general, who have shewn at other times great harshness and severity in judging of their neighbours conduct, and a great want of tenderness and forgiveness when they have been offended in some point about which they are particularly jealous. Nothing but feeling in a very strong way that we are sinners, and deserving of God's anger, can make us truly merciful at all times.

I shall now try to shew what is the behaviour of children who are truly merciful; next, I shall shew how merciful children obtain mercy; and lastly, according to my usual order, shall beg you, my dear children, to examine yourselves whether you are merciful.

A merciful child, feeling his own sin, is ready to forgive others; and knowing how God has borne with him, he is patient with others. Few days will pass in which

he will not meet with some cause of offence. Perhaps his brothers and sisters will be carelessly doing some little harm to his playthings, books, or something else that belongs to him, and often, from that ill-temper which is common, and so much indulged among children, they will be saying or doing something unkind to him: but he will be ready to make allowances for them; he will forgive the offence in his own heart, before the offender has asked forgiveness, or shewn any disposition to do it.

If the person who has offended him should express any sorrow for his fault, the merciful child, like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, will see him afar off, and run and fall on his neck, and kiss him. To seek forgiveness when he has himself offended, and to forgive when others have offended him, are two things which he will always be in great haste to do.

In the next place, the merciful child will be patient.

It often happens that an elder child has a little one for his companion who is very teasing and troublesome. A patient child, re