made by him or by her, who has spent the better part of the daylight of life in drowsiness and laziness, exerting even the thinking faculties only for the purpose of discovering the means of securing food and raiment out of the fruit of the labour of others? Can any reasonable creature believe, that merely to believe, or to profess to believe, no matter what the thing believed, is to form a compensation and satisfaction for a neglect of his real duties as servant, master or parent? It is an abuse of words to call that serving God, which pro duces a neglect of the means of sustaining ourselves and our families; for, in our very organization, to say nothing of God's commands and of all his cautions against slothfulness; in our very organization, we find the proof of the duties of diligence and care; and to perform those duties well and truly is the very first service that God requires at our hands.

Look, therefore, upon those to be impostors who would persuade you, that, to be religious you must neglect the means of obtaining an abundance of food and raiment; that to secure heaven hereafter, you must be poor, ragged, and almost die with hunger; that, to be a child of grace you must be a moving assemblage of skin and bone, distressing to the sight and offensive to the smell; that God delights in sluggards, slovens and sluts, when you can scarcely read ten verses in the books of his laws which do not contain some command or other strictly enjoining industry, cleanliness and decency, and promising to bless with abundance the labours and I cares of those who obey those commands.

Let the mother, for instance, who has yielded to this pernicious sluggard-creating fanaticism, think, even now, of the account that she will have to render. "Lord, I have served thee most constantly. My "tongue has not ceased to sing hymns to thy praise "and to groan out amen to the words of my pious

guide. I have cast aside all worldly cares; husband, "children, all have been abandoned for the great object "of securing my precious and immortal soul. My "love of thee has left in my breast no room for affec"tion of any other kind; and, I have seen unmoved, "my children in rags and filth crying for that bread "which my husband's labour brought and with which "I, for love of thee and my own precious soul, fed the "holy man who repaid me with spiritual food. Poverty "I have hailed as a blessing; and want has been my "constant consolation. That time which worldlings "have bestowed on teaching their children to labour, "to rise early and to toil through the day, I have "spent in thy service, reading and meditating on the " 'pious effusions of our spiritual guides. Tracts and "hymns, and not the broom, the needle, or distaff, "have been the utensils in my hands; and, such has "been my love of thee, and my anxiety to save my "soul, that my heart has given to the winds even the "fate of my children, brought to an untimely end "through that want of industry and care which my "love of thee prevented me from teaching them whe"ther by precept or example."

Monstrous as this is, it is what truth would demand

from but too many mothers; and it is, in fact, what but too many really say in their hearts. Let all such look well at the words of my text. Let them deny that text to be the word of God; or let them confess, that true religion consists in imitating the Ant and not the Drone. At any rate, let them bear in mind, that poverty and want, disgrace and misery, are to be the lot of the Sluggard.

GOD'S VENGEANCE

AGAINST

MURDERERS.

Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder. Matt. Chap. XIX. ver 18.

MURDER is a crime of so deep a die; it is so direct a violation of the feelings of humanity; it has something in it so shocking to the very nature of man, that, at first thought, it would appear wholly unnecessary to warn men against the commission of it; and indeed, deliberately to set about such warning, and to remind men of God's denunciations against the murderer, would, on a cursory view of the matter, seem to be almost an insult to a christian community.

Unhappily, however, such warnings are necessary; for we but too often see beings bearing the human form capable of dipping their hands in human blood,

monsters so unfeeling, so brutal, as wilfully and aforethought to cause, with their own hands, that death, the bear sight of which even when proceeding from natural causes, is deeply affecting to all but callous hearts. With such, indeed, all remonstrance would appear to be vain: those who are deaf to the voice of nature, will hardly listen to that of reason. But, there are murderers who do not slay with their own hands; and there are murders which are perpetrated by means other than those of violence of any sort committed on the body. The murders of this latter description, which are by far the most numerous, are not so obvious, not so plainly seen, as those of the former. They are disguised from the world; they admit of no judicial proof; they escape the utmost vigilance of human laws; they set the just vengeance of those laws at defiance; they are reserved for the vengeance of God, from whom the cool, deliberate, cruel and hypocritical, smiling murderer cannot hide either his deeds or his thoughts.

It is of importance, therefore, for us to come to a clear understanding of the full intent and meaning of the word murder. "Thou shalt not kill" is one of God's commands; but that killing may take place without murder is very clear, for, in the continuation of those very commands, it is provided, that in some cases the punishment of death shall be inflicted; and, to fulfil these provisions of God's laws, there must he killing. It is evident, therefore, that, to put men to death according to laws which are just in themselves