in exactly right here, because we have just been confessing our belief in the three Persons of the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

W. Yes, this is exactly so. I have, however, sometimes heard the Clerk and People say, Lord have mercy upon us, again; thus making four petitions. 7. Yes, and so have I; but this must be wrong; and, to be sure, as we have seen that such great pains were taken to make the service of the Church as good as possible; and since it was done by men who understood the thing so well, it seems a pity to add any thing to it: for we shall only stand a chance of making it worse, after all.

W. To be sure.-But let us go on. The next thing in the service is, The Lord's Prayer. We have here the privilege of again offering up the petitions conveyed in this prayer; and as these petitions contain the very life and soul of religion, we should always offer them up with real earnestness, and with a sincere desire after those things which we ask for, and which the Lord has promised to the prayers of his people. But as we have already conversed on the Lord's Prayer, we had better now go on to what follows.

T. Well, I see that some sentences follow, and it is a great delight to hear the Priest and the People lifting up their voices by turns, expressing their dependence upon God, and asking for his blessing on themselves, and their fellow-creatures. And, I think, that, in these

SENTENCES,

I can again see Scripture throughout.

W. Yes, they are chiefly taken from the Psalms. In the first of these we beg of the Lord to show his mercy upon us." This is the real spirit of prayer. We are sinners: and "mercy" is what we stand in need of. Our Prayer-Book, you see, will keep to Scripture, and will require us to confess ourselves

"miserable sinners," who, without divine mercy, must be lost.

T. Yes, and salvation must be the Lord's gift; and we, therefore, next beg of him, to "grant us his salvation."

W. And then we pray to the Lord to save the King." It is our duty to pray for the King. It is "by the Lord that kings reign." And, if we beg the Lord's blessing upon them, we may hope that their reigns will be prosperous and happy; that they will be able so to rule, that peace and true godliness may flourish and prevail, and convince us all how highly favoured is that land which is governed by a Christian king. Then we pray for the Lord's Ministers, the teachers of religion, and for the people too. I am sure we ought to pray for our Ministers, who are appointed to watch over our souls; theirs is, indeed, a hard task, and often a very unthankful office. How often are we angry with them, when they are most true to their duty, by telling us of our faults; and how often, through our carelessness, or obstinacy, is all their good advice thrown away upon us! This must be a great grief to a faithful Minister, and be apt to cast him down and discourage him; he knows, however, where to look for support,—and he will find it:-but still we ought all to join in prayer that the Lord would "endue his Ministers with righteousness," and give a blessing to their labours; and, if Ministers and people did join heartily in prayer for one another; if pious teachers met with the cordial assistance and prayers of their flocks, and both of them thus endeavoured to promote the work of the Lord, we should soon see the blessing of it, in the happiness and comfort of every place where the Christian religion thus prevailed; we should cheer and assist one another in our journey through this world, and should go to the blessed seats of heavenly happiness together, and be there bid to "enter into the joy of our Lord."

"to

Yes, my friend, I am sure we ought to pray for our Ministers and our Church very justly requires us to do so. But she goes on further, begging the Lord to make his "chosen people joyful,' save his people,"-" to bless his inheritance," and to "give us peace." Then we finish these short prayers with this important request, that the Lord would "make our hearts clean within us." If our hearts be clean, then our conduct will be pure and holy; and our words and thoughts, too, will be according to godliness. But we cannot cleanse our own hearts, and we can never have them right without the special grace of God, which, as our Catechism says, 66 we must learn at all times to call for by diligent prayer:" we, therefore, ask that the "Lord would not take his Holy Spirit from us;" that he would not leave us a moment to ourselves, but that he would support us constantly by that heavenly grace which alone can keep us from falling.

T. Yes, this is exactly so. If we really think what we are about when we are in the church, there are words to express every thing we would ask for. I have found this very particularly in

THE COLLECTS.

What beautiful prayers these are! They seem to express all the wishes and feelings we ought to have. There is sorrow for sin, and prayer for pardon; trust in the death and merits of our Redeemer, and earnest entreaty that we be daily renewed by the Holy Spirit, so that we may be enabled "plenteously to bring forth the fruit of good works," not for the praise of men, but that " of the Lord we may be plenteously rewarded." I have found wonderful comfort, as well as instruction, from these Collects. You and I have already said a good deal about them in the course of our conversation, and, therefore, we need say the less now; but I can truly de

clare, that I have found them to express just what I wished to say at church! and not only so, but I have found them to assist me greatly when I am praying by myself at home, or when we are all together in family prayer.

W. O then, you have begun with family prayer. I am very glad to hear it. There are several good books suited for that purpose; but, as you say, it would be a hard matter to find any better than our

own.

T. I assure you I find it so. However, I sometimes use other good books of family prayer. It makes a variety in the expressions, and so, perhaps, leads us to be more attentive.

W. It may so. In the church it is needful that we should keep to the same form of words, for many excellent reasons; but it is not so necessary out of the church; and, therefore, many good books have been put together for our assistance at home; but, as you say, we shall find few that contain more of the real spirit of the Gospel than those of our church, if we had but the grace to see it.

T. True; and if we look well into these Collects that we are speaking of, we cannot help seeing how beautiful they are, and how full of petitions for those things which we must always be wishing to ask for. I do not, however, desire that you should tell me any more about these Collects now, because it would take us too long. But did you never observe what excellent Collects those are that come after the Collect for the day? Our little girl learned these Collects at school, and when she came home at night she taught them to her mother and me. I verily believe that this has been a great help to us in the way of religion. When the little creature told us that the boys and girls always went to prayers at school, both night and morning, we could not help seeing that this was a heavenly way of bringing up children, and a way on which we might expect a blessing.

And we then considered that if children were taught to pray, it was not that they might leave it off again when they should grow up. Then we began to see that we ourselves had need of prayers; and our little girl repeated to us those Collects which she had learned at school; and we found in them just what we wanted to ask for, and we were taught, too, how we ought to ask.

W. Exactly so: in

THE FIRST COLLECT FOR PEACE,

we learn that God is "the Author of peace and lover of concord;" we learn that to know him is "eternal life," and that to serve him is "perfect freedom." But we know that the enemies of our souls are ever on the watch to take away from us this our eternal life, and to deprive us of this our perfect freedom; we, therefore, beg of the Lord that he would defend us against the assaults of our spiritual enemies, and give us that sure trust in his defence," that we "need not fear the power of any adversary;" and we see why we need not fear that power, because we are defended by a greater-even the " might of Jesus Christ our Lord."-Then

there is

THE THIRD COLLECT FOR GRACE.

What a beautiful morning prayer that is! What a blessing it is to think that whilst we have been asleep and unable to protect ourselves, we have been defended, and "safely brought to the beginning of another day," by a "heavenly Father, an Almighty and everlasting God!" And then, by thinking of his past care, we are emboldened to ask for more mercies, and to beg that he would keep us during the day, "from all sin, and from every kind of danger." To be sure, we are in danger every moment, and it is the Lord alone who keeps us from harm: