LETTER IX.

GENERAL EMPLOYMENT OF TIME.

IF you go through your household duties on a regular plan, and at regular hours, (for much depends on those two points,) you will find a considerable portion of your time left to you-not altogether, it is true, at your own disposal, for there are many claims upon the attention of every social being, and many unforeseen claims. Still, there will be in every week some hours of solitary leisure, which you may wish to know in what manner advantageously to employ, and on the right employment of which, your respectability as an intellectual being, in a great measure depends. It is well that every one should have pursuits capable of interesting the mind, so as not to be dependent on others for amusement and employment, or craving for the

perpetual excitement of society and change of scene. It is home resources that ladies require. The majority have either no pursuits at all, or their pursuits are of the most trifling and frivolous kind.

I am anxious that you should act worthily of your high calling. No one has a right to be idle.

-I pity the man,' says an excellent writer, who can travel from Dan to Beersheba,' and say It is all barren.' There is plenty of work for every one to do, without engaging in frivolous expedients for destroying time-time, that great gift of God, for every moment of which we shall hereafter have to give an account. I think it is Dr. Johnson's remark, the maxim is worthy of the English Seneca-that no pursuit is deserving of the attention of a rational being, which does not bear more or less remotely, on the great end of existence. All the pursuits of a Christian should converge; the centre of his circle of action should be firmly and distinctly marked; and every line that does not tend to that centre should be cast out as destroying the symmetry of the whole figure.

The choice of pursuits must depend in great measure on the constitution and powers of the in

dividual's mind. There is as great a variety in minds, as in faces, and wisely is it so ordered. The kind of power and the degree of power, alike vary. We are not responsible for the talents that we have not, but we are for the right improvement and employment of those that we have, and every one is bound to the cultivation of the faculties, so far as opportunity and leisure from other duties are given. There is truth in the old Scottish proverb as quoted by Addison, that an ounce of mother wit, is worth a pound of learning,' and there is truth also in his additional statement, 'that when learning is thrown into the scale of mother wit, the value of the latter is increased a hundred-fold.' It is foolish to attempt to disparage intellect and cultivation; their importance, in the present state of society, is very great; a really intellectual and cultivated mind, whether in man or woman, presides over a far wider sphere, and exercises within that sphere a far higher degree of power, than a mind of lower power, or of less cultivation. It is to your usefulness as a Christian member of society that I look; we want all the power, intelligence, judgment, activity, and exertion that we can summon; the enemy is assembling his forces, and pre

paring for the encounter, and under the banners of the god of this world,' Popery, Infidelity, Liberalism, in strong panoply, but in varied disguises are arrayed. Every one is bound to do what lies in his power, to give assistance to the common cause of his Lord and Master, remembering his words, "He that is not with us, is against us ;" and though it is perfectly true that human learning without the grace of God, will be but as Saul's armour on David, an incumbrance, and not a defence in the day of battle, yet, it is also true, that even a small portion of human learning, may under the blessing of God, be as the sling and the stone in the hand of the youthful warrior, effectual in the destruction of the giant foe. We look to the power of the Lord as the mighty agent; and would distinctly recognize, that all human efforts are but secondary and subordinate; yet, we remember too, that the Lord is pleased to work by means; and, while we would not, in presumptous folly, lean upon them,— that would indeed be leaning on a broken reed,— neither would we in arrogant enthusiasm, despise their use. I urge upon you, the right employment of your leisure hours, in the cultivation of your mind, as raising the tone of your character,

and as giving you an increase of power to work for your Saviour; and it is of little consequence what ignorance, prejudice, or frivolity, may allege on the opposite side.

On

What your studies may be, (though study is far too deep and learned a word to express my meaning,) must depend partly on your own tastes. no account whatever, give way to the most pernicious habit of novel reading. Like the use of tobacco, opium, snuff, ardent spirits, and every other bad and ruinous habit, it increases by indulgence. The great English moralist before referred to, used to say, 'that it is easier to be abstemious, than temperate'. Act on this principle; abstain entirely. Let no vain pretence of historical novels, or religious novels, prevail upon you, to break through your resolution.

'Truth is strange, stranger than fiction.'

Keep as much as you can to the truth. Sir Walter Scott was a man of genius, but he probably did more to vitiate the literature of our island, than any man of the day. This may seem a startling proposition, but it is susceptible of proof; if he raised the character of novels, he increased, to an amazing