refresh our bodies, to renew our visit to the fountain of life, that our souls may also be refreshed.  The twilight of the evening is also a favorable season for devotional exercises.  But, let me entreat you to be much in prayer.  If the nature of your employment will admit of it, without being unfaithful to your engagements, retire many times in the day to pour out your soul before God, and receive fresh communications of his grace.  Our hearts are so much affected by sensible objects, that, if we suffer them to be engaged long at a time in worldly pursuits, we find them insensibly clinging to earth, so that it is with great difficulty we can disengage them.  But, by all means, fix upon some stated and regular seasons, and observe them punctually and faithfully.  Remember they are engagements with God.

For your devotional exercises, you should select those times and seasons when you find your mind most vigorous, and your feelings most lively.  As the morning is in many respects most favorable, you would do well to spend as much time as you can in your closet, before engaging in the employments of the day.  An hour spent in reading God’s word, and in prayer and praise, early in the morning, will give a heavenly tone to your feelings; which, by proper watchfulness, and frequent draughts at the same fountain, you may carry through all the pursuits of the day.

As already remarked, our Lord, in the pattern left us, has given a very prominent place to the petition, “THY KINGDOM COME.”  This is a large petition.  It includes all the instrumentalities which the church is putting forth for the enlargement of her borders and the salvation of the world.  All these ought to be distinctly and separately remembered; and not, as is often the case, be crowded into one general petition at the close of our morning and evening prayers.  We are so constituted as to be affected by a particular consideration of a subject.  General truths have very little influence upon our hearts.  I would therefore recommend the arrangement of these subjects under general heads for every day of the week; and then divide the subjects which come under these heads, so as to remember one or more of them at stated seasons, through the day, separate from your own personal devotions.  Thus, you will always have your mind fixed upon one or two objects; and you will have time to enlarge, so as to remember every particular relating to them.  This, if faithfully pursued, will give you a deeper interest in every benevolent effort of the times.  The following plan of a daily concert of prayer was, some years since, suggested by a distinguished clergyman in New England.  It gives something of the interest of the monthly concert to our daily devotions.

SABBATH.  Sabbath duties and privileges;—­as preaching, Sabbath-schools, family instruction, &c.  Eph. 6:18-20. 2 Th. 3:1.

MONDAY.  Conversion of the world;—­the prevalence of peace, knowledge, freedom, and salvation.  Ps. 2:8.  Isa. 11:6-10; 62:1-7; 66:8, 12.