of the soul, real remorse of conscience for past as well as for present coldness and dryness. It must be a very hard heart, indeed, which is not moved by these "Considerations," so touchingly simple are they, so plain, and so wholly true. They deal with such doctrines and facts as have an universal application, which admit of no dispute, and which are always confirmed by some passage from Holy Scripture. It must be allowed, on all hands, that it is necessary for the soul to be aroused to feel its own needs, to regard its own wounds, that so it may be directed to a source whence these needs can be supplied, and these wounds be healed. One great aim of this Treatise, is to arouse, as well as to direct the mind, to lead it to consider its own wants, and to seek by prayer to have those wants supplied. The book is essentially a guide to prayer. It represents, from its beginning to its end, the continual outpouring of heart before God; an outpouring that is ofttimes expressed in the very same words which imply, at the same time, a new phase of thought. These several repetitions are not to be regarded as tokens of intellectual inferiority, but as so many developments of a plan, which is both carefully laid down and accurately carried out under a seeming carelessness of expression.
Regarded as a Manual of Mental Prayer, each of these
