present; no glory that is not founded in vanity, and doomed to destruction? whose votaries, when they have loved, served, flattered, worshipped, sacrificed, through life, ask forgetfulness as a last boon, and even that boon, ask in vain? Will you surrender your mind, with all its budding energies, your sensibility yet in its spring-bloom, to the literature of that world which heeds not the serpent and its sting, if the flowers that hide them be but fair? No! dearest you will not call the restraints which religion imposes on youth and on genius, other than an easy yoke, which it is their glory and happiness to wear. You will not cast aside your Bible as a dull book, commanding and connected with duller duties; the perusal of it will not be the task-work and penance of some lonely hour of which conscience is the angry ruler; you will rather esteem it your mind's pleasure-garden, an intellectual Eden, containing what is "good for food, and pleasant to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise;" whilst the Tree of Life towers in the midst, neither barred off by prohibition, nor guarded by flaming sword. Whether

reading for your soul's profit, or your mind's pleasure, you will continually exclaim, with Tertullian, “I adore the fullness of the Scriptures."

I remain, my dearest,

Yours.

LETTER III.

I COME now, my dearest

to speak of the Bible as the book of God. If it is the wonder of heaven to be independent of that book, it is the glory of earth to possess it. If the "spirits of the just made perfect" are admitted to behold the face of God, we, through the medium of the Scriptures, may even here understand somewhat of his character if they are received into his glory, we may be led by his counsel.

But who, alas! beholding the gross neglect or wandering attention the Scriptures generally receive, would imagine that the possession of them was any privilege! that they contained the revelation of "the mystery hid from ages and generations," and still with

held from many nations and people; that they, and they only, made known to us "the way of peace!"

And yet as far as our species is concerned, we may say, one sun! one Bible! Shut that awfully-glorious book, blot from the human memory all we have learnt from its pages, and it is as though you quenched the dayspring!-the whole world lieth in darkness! To guilty miserable man there remains no God!-no heaven!-no guide in life!-no support in affliction!-no victory over death! the grave becomes a fathomless abyss, and eternity spreads round him like the ocean, dark, illimitable, fearful! Open the Bible again, the sun is restored, and with it, life, glory, gladness, and strength! If all the minds now on earth could be concentrated into one, and that one applied the whole of its stupendous energies to the study of this single book, it would never apprehend its doctrines in all their divine purity; its promises in their overpowering fullness; its precepts in their searching extent ;-even that glorious mind, sufficient to exhaust the universe, would only discover that the Scriptures were in

exhaustible.

It is sad to contrast our indifference towards the sacred volume, with the ardent love manifested by the Old Testament saints, who had but a little portion of it, and that little closely veiled. We may perhaps think with envy of the visions vouchsafed to them, forgetful, that Abraham, who was called the friend of God, Jacob, who beheld heaven opened and the angels ascending and descending, Moses enveloped in the majesty of Mount Sinai,-knew the plan of redemption less perfectly than the poorest Christian, who, with the spirit of grace in his heart, has the whole Bible in his hand. Abraham rejoiced to see Christ's day, but he saw it through the dimness and the distance of two thousand years. Moses knew by the law, that the Lord was merciful, gracious, and long-suffering, but he knew not the plenitude of "grace and truth" revealed by Jesus Christ. Jacob recognized him as "the angel who delivered him from all evil," but not in his emphatic character-" a propitiation for the sins of the whole world." The prophets were doubtless filled with believing, and magnificent ideas concerning "the glory to be re