it were sudden.
It is true Omnipotence can, when he pleases, still produce these
instantaneous effects, as he has sometimes done; but as it is not his
established or common mode of operation, it seems vain and rash,
presumptuously to wait for these miraculous interferences. An implicit
dependence, however, on such interferences, is certainly more gratifying
to the genius of enthusiasm, than the anxious vigilance, the fervent
prayer, the daily struggle, the sometimes scarcely perceptible though
constant progress of the sober-minded Christian. Such a Christian is
fully aware that his heart requires as much watching in the more
advanced as in the earliest stages of his religious course. He is
cheerful in a well-grounded hope, and looks not for ecstasies, till that
hope be swallowed up in fruition. Thankful if he feel in his heart a
growing love to God, and an increasing submission to his will, though he
is unconscious of visions, and unacquainted with any revelation but that
which God has made in his word. He remembers, and he derives consolation
from the remembrance, that his Saviour, in his most gracious and
soothing invitation to the "heavy laden," has mercifully promised
"rest," but he has no where promised rapture.

CHAPTER VI.

But to return to Mrs. Ranby's daughters. Is this _consistency_, said I
to myself, when I compared the inanity of the life with the seriousness
of the discourse: and contrasted the vacant way in which the day was
spent, with the decent and devout manner in which it was begun and
ended? I recollected, that under the early though imperfect sacred
institution, the fire of the morning and evening sacrifice was never
suffered to be extinguished during the day.

Though Mrs. Ranby would have thought it a little heathenish to have had
her daughters instructed in polite literature, and to have filled a
leisure hour in reading to her a useful book, that was not professedly
religious, she felt no compunction at their waste of time, or the
trifling pursuits in which the day was suffered to spend itself. The
piano-forte, when they were weary of the harp, copying some indifferent
drawings, gilding a set of flower-pots, and netting white gloves and
veils, seemed to fill up the whole business of these immortal beings, of
these Christians, for whom it had been solemnly engaged that they should
manfully fight under Christ's banner.

On a further acquaintance, I was much more inclined to lay the blame o