votional experience, if you let such direct rays from heaven pass unnoticed. Do not wonder that the COMFORTER will not always come into your closet, nor meet you regularly at the sacrament, when you wish Him to do so-if you often refuse to go alone with him, or out for him, when he is whispering to you what he would have you to do. This "still small voice" is one of the small things which you must not despise. "If you do," (Sheshbazzar would have said,) “ God may reverse the Horeb vision of Elijah; and make the stormy wind, the earthquake and the fire, follow the still small voice."

These, however, are but passing hints. I want, in order to encourage you to prize and cherish the beginnings of the good work of grace in your own soul, to mark most attentively, how the Saviour estimated and treated even "the blade" of true piety, before “the full

not despise the day of small things! He often treated as "great things," prayers and faith which others would have despised, and which the offerers themselves were afraid or ashamed of, as too weak and imperfect to be accepted.

Both the proofs and promises of this delightful fact are, of course, rising in your memory like stars, in light and loveliness. You could repeat them, without my quoting them at all. So far well. But let us just look over some of them for once, as illustrations of the Oracle on which this essay is founded, that we may see and feel how transportingly true it is.

I know not which of them is your favourite. Mine is, that sweet assurance to young and weak disciples, "He shall feed his flock as a Shepherd; He shall gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom." You cannot be weaker than a lamb is, when it requires

such care from the shepherd. And remember; it is the weakness, and not the innocence of the lamb, which engages thus the shepherd's sympathies.

The allusion is from the East. Often, on going out amongst the folds in the morning, after having kept watch all night, against the wolves, the shepherd finds a young lamb, chilled with the dew or the frost of the night, and unable to follow the flock to green pastures or still waters. He raises it gently from the ground, and wraps it to his bosom under his own warm cloak, and carries it forward, thus, until it revive. Now "the Great Shepherd," is just such a "good shepherd!" All the sheep, and even some under-shepherds, may not have tenderness nor patience, to watch over such a lamb as you, nor to wait until you are able to follow them on hill and through valley but the Shepherd of souls, is the Bishop of souls;

and He will neither leave nor forsake you. He can be "touched with a feeling of your infirmities," and thus can bear with them, until you can bear to move and rest with all his flock. He will even gather you in his arms, until you can walk in his footsteps; and carry you in his bosom, until you can follow him whithersoever he goeth. Thus, He does not despise the day of small things: but according to their smallness, makes his care and tenderness great. And, will you despair of weakness, which He pities? Will you give up hope, whilst He gives this heed, and hand, and heart, to the weak in faith, and to the fainting in hope?

Take another view of your case. "A bruised reed shall he not break." No; the music it makes at first, may be neither harmony nor melody; may be rather sad than sweet; but He will not break it, nor cast it away, because of its broken notes. He will mend and moisten

it, until its tones are clear and melodious. "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings," He perfects praise. Many a bruised reed, which was once almost as dumb or dull as the harps upon the willows of Babylon, is now sounding out the New Song, with not a little of both the spirit and compass of the golden harps before the throne of God. And, however bruised, you are not a broken reed. A broken reed is cast away from all the means of mending. But you are not only in the land of the living, and thus in the place of hope; but you are also under the care of a Minister, or under the guidance of a friend, or have access to some book, whose chief object is to tune and strengthen bruised reeds, until they can

"Join their cheerful songs,

With angels round the throne."

Remember; Jesus says, (and you can surely

take his word!) "Blessed are they that mourn,