full of years. either desire or expect that your life will be one that is protracted farther; your only now-remaining care should be, that being prepared you may continually be looking out for death, which within a short while most certainly will visit you, that you may be in readiness after death to render an account of your long life unto God; you have, I hope, already long contemplated your approaching end, been intent upon it with many prayers and holy meditations, and have been so caring for the salvation of your soul, that nothing now remains on which I should admonish you, but that you persevere and bring to a happy conclusion the work you have begun; and I admonish you to do this, because you cannot safely cherish the opinion that you have sufficiently done so; for as long as God shall grant you life, there will be the offences of your early years to be mourned for, pardon on their account unceasingly to be sought, and your mind to be carefully fortified against entertaining for them a pleasing recollection, and against all those vices which more especially are wont to creep upon old age, of which kind, to mention no more, are peevishness and avarice.” 8th Form. The Curate, on visiting a young person, may address him with such words as these : A form which the Curate may use when he visits one that is young. "The young, my Brother, are apt to promise to themselves a continuance of health, but concerning death how very rarely do they meditate the indisposition, however, under which you are labouring affords a lesson that you are neither exempt from sicknesses, nor secure from death, and that, therefore, you ought to live as if within a few days about to die and to render up, at some unlooked-for time, that account which must most certainly be given of all your deeds. Whether you have so lived God and your conscience know, and it becomes not me, neither is it my desire, at a venture to accuse your past life: I exhort you, however, to ponder in your mind what sort of person you have approved yourself, with a truly contrite heart to seek in prayer God's pardon for your misdeeds, and for the future firmly to oppose your inclination towards all such offences as your memory and conscience witness against you." The Curate may then proceed to enumerate those vices to which, as experience teaches, the hearts of the young are most prone. If the conversation be with one who for some heavy crime is condemned by his country's laws to die, the Minister of Christ may thus direct his words: 66 9th Form. the Curate to one sen laws of his die. Death, and that, moreover, violent and a form which ignominious, my Brother, shortly awaits you; may address there are, however, advantages attached to it tenced by the which very rarely bless that which we com- country to monly speak of as natural death. You foresee your dissolution, and can, moreover, with a sound intellect, betake yourself to the important work of repentance, and dispose yourself aright for the death so soon to be inflicted on you; God grant that for the short space of life which yet remains you may aim at this with all your strength; remember that the thief obtained salvation whilst hanging upon the cross, because he came to a serious sense of his evil deeds; and doubt not but that you also may obtain pardon from the greatest and best of Beings, if you perfect your repentance, if you hold in detestation all your past wickedness, and grieve from your heart that you have therein offended God, if you now have a real love for all the commandments of the Most High, and, seriously desirous of pleasing Him, fully resolve that you will, so long as life remains, observe and keep the same; if, forgiveness being supplicated both from God and man, you make satisfaction as far as you are able to those individuals against whom you have acted injuriously, restoring those things of which you have unjustly deprived them, and labour to make amends to the public for the injuries you have inflicted on society, by discovering your accomplices in the crime for which you are under sentence of death if you faithfully perform these and other duties of the like description, you will, : in part at least, wipe out your disgrace among men, you will render God propitious, and may reasonably hope for eternal salvation, otherwise in vain to be expected, through the infinite merits of Jesus Christ, our Lord." If the Curate should be called upon to attend 10th Form. any one unknown to him, he may, at his first visit, address him thus: the Curate when he unknown to "Beloved Brother in Christ, altogether are A form which you a stranger to me, nor know I at all after may use what manner you have passed your days, and, visits one therefore, unless from your own questions and him. voluntary confessions, you furnish me with matter for suitable discourse, I can give you nothing beyond general advice; none other, however, will I now give you than such as I believe I should myself readily embrace if sickness, such as you now labour under, were to confine me to my bed: I recommend, therefore, that you should look back, and weigh your past life as in a balance; recall to mind, as much as you are able, what sins you have at |