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to keep the attention awake by the shortness of each portion, and the variety with which one succeeds to another. But the effect of this beautiful service is greatly injured by the way in which the congregation's part is performed; in which there are two perverse faults that destroy the beauty of the service, and help to make it cold and uninteresting to the heart, even if it is not felt (as I fear it often is) to be tedious and wearisome. The first great fault is the neglect of kneeling. According to the directions in the Prayer-Book, the congregation kneel when they pray to ALMIGHTY GOD; stand when they praise Him in psalms, or declare their belief in the great articles of the Gospel; and sit when they hear the Word of GOD read, or listen to the voice of the preacher. This is the general order: you should kneel to pray, stand to praise, and sit to receive instruction. Unfortunately the kneeling is by too many quite neglected; sitting is so common, that I lately saw it stated as a universal truth, in a work describing the English Church system for the use of foreigners, that English congregations sit at their prayers! Now kneeling has in every age been the posture of prayer; it is the humblest posture, and therefore the fittest posture for prayer; the fittest for sinners imploring the ALMIGHTY to bestow upon them the spiritual and temporal blessings, of which they are so utterly unworthy. Think to WHOм we are praying! think of GOD'S Majesty! think of the glory of your risen SAVIOUR! think of CHRIST, at whose name every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth. Which of you would venture to sit unbidden in a king's court? and will you sit when you are told not to sit, but on the contrary commanded to kneel, in the Court of GOD'S House, where the majesty of the King of kings is really but invisibly present? I cannot think it possible, that those who sit through the prayers have really any reverence for GoD and CHRIST.

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The other great fault is, the dead silence, or at best the mere low muttering of the congregation in their part of the service. In spite of the directions of the Rubric, they take no visible part in the service except with their eyes; so that instead of the single voice of the Minister being answered in the Psalms by the blended voices of a multitude declaring aloud the glories of GOD, or His mercy, or His love, or the devout aspirations of holy desire, we have the one voice of the Clergyman alternating with the one voice of the Parish Clerk, to whom you have all agreed to give up your part of the service. At the time of the Reformation, when the English service was adopted instead of the Latin service, which had always been used before, few people could read, and therefore few could at first take a part in the new service. Then a Clerk was necessary, to lead the people; but now he is not wanted in the performance of the service, and the manner in which congregations have acquiesced in letting their parts be usurped by the Clerk, has been, and nearly everywhere is, fatal to the beauty of the most beautiful part of the service, the holy songs of prayer and praise, which we call the Psalms.

An old father of the Church, St. Basil, (as quoted in the Homilies,) speaks of "the joined sound of men, women, and children, as it were of the waves beating on the shore, in which the Christians of his day sent forth their prayers unto God." It is that "joined sound of men, women, and children, that our service so grievously wants; it is that of which it has been robbed, and which I trust that you will, in this congregation, restore to it. No instrumental music can compare in effect with the human voice, when a multitude pour forth together the expression of a common feeling: let us try this, and we shall find what a life and spirit is added to our service; we shall find that devotional fervour is contagious; that feeling is kindled by feeling; and we shall come really to delight in hymning the

praises of the MOST HIGH. We shall then know something of the beauty of social worship, the joint service of many worshippers uniting as brethren in one form of supplication, and lifting up their voices together as one band of fellow-worshippers!

But let us ever remember that outward worship (though a blessed and necessary work) is but a form, unless it carries the heart with it; unless it expresses the feelings of the heart, and re-acts, as it were, upon the heart by filling it with holy thoughts and feelings, by preserving and increasing its reverence for God's Word, and Sacraments, and ministers, and for His commandments. Holy as a Christian Church is, yet a Christian heart is a still holier thing, a still holier temple, unless the Holy Spirit of CHRIST has fled from its sanctuary, because we have defiled that sanctuary by sin! Oh! let us so worship in God's temples here, that we may (according to His promise to the Philadelphian Church) become pillars in the temple of GOD, in the new Jerusalem, and have CHRIST's new name written upon us, and go out no more. May we so worship GoD here, through His only and blessed SoN, that we may worship Him eternally before the throne of His glory in the heavens !

AWAY with high excitement, and the joys
Of sensual men! away delirious mirth!
Calm are all pleasures to which God has given
A lasting value, an abiding worth.

Pure pleasures grow beneath the roof of home
In hearts by holy discipline subdued.
Seek not abroad for too intense delight:

True joy then most is found, when least pursued.

FIRST APPEARANCE OF INDIA.

SAILING UP THE HOOGLY.

(Bp. Heber.)

ONE of the first specimens of the manners of the country which has fallen under our notice has been a human corpse, slowly floating past, according to the well-known custom of the Hindoos. About twelve o'clock some boats came on board with fish and fruit, manned by Hindoos from the coast.

They were all small slender men, extremely black, but well made, with good countenances and fine features-certainly a handsome race; the fruits were shaddocks, plantains, and coco-nuts, none good of their kind, as we were told. The shaddock resembles a melon externally, but it is in fact a vast orange, with a rind of two inches thick, the pulp much less juicy than a common orange, and with rather a bitter flavour, certainly a fruit which would be little valued in England, but which in this burning weather I thought rather pleasant and refreshing. The plantain grows in bunches, with its stalks arranged side by side; the fruit is shaped like a kidney potato, covered with a loose dusky skin which peels off easily with the fingers. The pulp is not unlike an over-ripe pear.

The whole river, and the general character of this shore and muddy stream, remind me strongly at this moment of the Don, between Tcherkask and Asof.

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Several boats again came on board us; in one of which was a man dressed in muslin, who spoke good English, and said he was "a sircar'," come down in quest of employment, if any of the officers on board would entrust their investments to him, or if any body chose to borrow money at 12 per cent.

1 A native agent, as well as a money-lender.-ED.

In appearance and manner he was no bad specimen of the low usurers who frequent almost all seaports. While we were conversing with him a fowl fell overboard, and his crew were desired to hand it up again; the naked rowers refused, as the Hindoos consider it impure to touch feathers, but the sircar was less scrupulous, and gave it up at the gangway. A "panchway," or passage-boat, succeeded, whose crew offered their services for fifteen rupees to carry any passengers to Calcutta, a distance of above one hundred miles. This was a very characteristic and interesting vessel, large and broad, shaped like a snuffer-dish; a deck fore and aft, and the middle covered with a roof of palm-branches, over which again was lashed a coarse cloth, the whole forming an excellent shade from the sun, but, as I should

apprehend, intolerably close. The ، serang," or

master, stood on the little after-deck, steering with a long oar; another man, a little before him, had a similar oar on the starboard quarter; six rowers were seated cross-legged on the deck upon the tilt, and plied their short paddles with much dexterity, not, however, as paddles usually are plied, but in the manner of oars, resting them instead of on rullocks on bamboos, which rose upright from the sides. A large long sail of thin transparent sackcloth in three pieces, very loosely tacked to each other, completed the equipment. The rowers were all naked except the cummerbund," or sash: the steersman, indeed, had, in addition, a white cap, and a white cloth loosely flung like a scarf over one shoulder. The whole offered a group which might have belonged to the wildest of the Polynesian islands. Several of these panchways were now around us, the whole scene affording to an European eye a picture of very great singularity and interest. One of the serangs had a broad umbrella thatched with palmleaves, which he contrived to rest on his shoulder while he steered his canoe, which differed from the

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