d of man is like a moving picture, supplied with objects not only
from contemplation on things present, but from the fruitful sources of
recollection and anticipation.

Memory retraces past events, and restores an ideal reality to scenes
which are gone by for ever. They live again in revived imagery, and we
seem to hear and see with renewed emotions what we heard and saw at a
former period. Successions of such recollected circumstances often form
a series of welcome memorials. In religious meditations the memory
becomes a sanctified instrument of spiritual improvement.

Another part of this animated picture is furnished by the pencil of Hope.
She draws encouraging prospects for the soul, by connecting the past and
present with the future. Seeing the promises afar off, she is persuaded
of their truth, and embraces them as her own.

The Spirit of God gives a blessing to both these acts of the mind, and
employs them in the service of religion. Every faculty of body and soul,
when considered as a part of "the purchased possession" of the Saviour,
assumes a new character. How powerfully does the apostle, on this
ground, urge a plea for holy activity and watchfulness! "What! know ye
not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which
ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price:
therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's"
(1 Cor. vi. 19, 20).

The Christian may derive much profit and enjoyment from the use of the
memory, as it concerns those transactions in which he once bore a part.
In his endeavours to recall past conversations and intercourse with
deceased friends in particular, the powers of remembrance greatly improve
by exercise. One revived idea produces another, till the mind is most
agreeably and usefully occupied with lively and holy imaginations.

"Lull'd in the countless chambers of the brain,
Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain;
Awake but one, and lo, what myriads rise!
Each stamps its image as the other flies;
Each, as the varied avenues of sense
Delight or sorrow to the soul dispense,
Brightens or fades: yet all with sacred art
Control the latent fibres of the heart."

May it please God to bless, both to the reader and the writer, this
feeble attempt to recollect some of the communications I once enjoyed in
my visits to the Dairyman's dwelling!

Very soon after the receipt of the la