ing. And not many days after the younger sontellectual power. When Sir Samuel Romilly gathered all together, and took his journey into visited Paris, immediately after the first French a far country, and there wasted his substance Revolution, he remarked, "Every thing I saw with riotous living. And when he had spent all. convinced me that, independently of our future there arose a mighty famine in that laud; and happiness and our sublimest enjoyments in this he began to be in want. And he went and joined life, religion is necessary to the comforts, the himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent conveniences, and even the elegances and lesser him into the field to feed swine. And he would pleasures of life. Not only did I never meet fain have filled his belly with the husks which with a writer truly eloquent who did not at least the swine did eat; and no man gave unto him. affect to believe in religion, but I never met with And when he came to himself he said. How one in whom religion was not the richest source many hired servants of my father's house have of his eloquence." I am persuaded that in bread enough and to spare, and I perish with things intellectual the rule will hold, that piety hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and is power. I am persuaded that no productions will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against of genius will survive to the end of all things, in heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy which there is not something of God; and I am to be called thy son; make me as one of thy further persuaded, that no book can exercise a hired servants. And he arose and came to his lasting ascendency over mankind on which his father. But when he was yet a great way off, blessing has not been implored, and in which his his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, Spirit does not speak. Of all the powers and and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the faculties of the human mind, the noblest is the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against one which God has created for himself; and if heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy that reverential or adoring faculty do not exist, to be called thy sou. But the father said unto or be by suicidal hands extirpated, the world will his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put soon cease to feel the man who has no fear of it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes God. The stateliest compartment in this human on his feet; and bring hither the fatted calf, and soul is the one which, in creating it, Jehovah rekill it; and let us eat, and be merry; for this my served for his own throne-room and presenceson was dead, aud is alive again: he was lost, chamber; and however curiously decorated or and is found." gorgeously furnished the other compartments be, if this be empty and void, it will soon diffuse a blank and beggarly sensation over all the rest. And thus, while the Voltaires and Rousseaus, of atheist memory, are waxing old and vanishing from the firmament of letters, names of less renown, but more religion, brighten to a greater lustre. So true is it that no man can long keep a hold of his fellow-men, unless he himself first has hold of God.

I could willingly extend these remarks to other species of composition, and would like to show particularly how many models of eloquent argument and engaging discourse are contained in the New Testament. But on the wide field of revelation, with its intellectual opulence, I forbear to enter. I can easily understand how the Bible was one of the four volumes which always lay on Byron's table; and it would be easy to fill a lecture with the testimonies, witting or unwitting, which painters, sculptors, orators and poets, have rendered to the most thought-suggesting book in all the universe. It never aims at fine writing. It never steps aside for a moment for the sake of a felicitous expression or a good idea. It has only one end-to tell the world about God's great salvation; and yet the wonder is, that it has incidentally done more to supply the world with powerful and happy diction, and literature with noble thoughts and images, and the fine arts with memorable subjects, than perhaps all other books that have been written. The world's Maker is the Bible's Author, and the same profusion which furnished so lavishly the abode of man, has filled so richly and adorned so brilliantly the book of man.

But if a sincere and strenuous Theism be thus important, such natural faith in God as buoyed the wing of Plato in his long and ethereal flights, or bulged the Saxon muscle of Shakspeare in his mightiest efforts, incomparably more prevalent is that intellectual prowess which a scriptural faith produces. He is no unknown God whom the believer in Jesus worships, and it is no ordinary inspiration which that God of light and love supplies to his servants. And were it not for fear of tediousness, I would rejoice to enumerate one genius after another which the gospel kindled, if it did not create. That gospel, beyond all controversy, was our own Milton's poetic might. This was the struggling energy which, after years of deep musing and wrapt devotion, after years of mysterious muttering and And just as that Bible is the great storehouse anxious omen, sent its pyramid of flame into old and repertory of intellectual wealth, so I must England's dingy hemisphere, and poured its moladd that its vital truth is the grand source of in-ten wealth, its lava of gold and gems, fetched

deep from classic and patriarchal times, adown dead truths into quenchless and world quickenthe russet steep of Puritan theology. This was ing powers.

the fabled foot which struck from the sward of For practical and devotional purposes, we Cowper's mild and silent life a joyous Castalia- could desire no better version of the Bible than a fountain deep as Milton's fire, and like it tinc-our own truthful and time-hallowed translation. tured with each learned and sacred thing it But for these purposes to which we have this touched in rising, but soft and full as Siloah's evening adverted-for the sake of its intelligent fount, which flowed fast by the oracle of God. literary perusal, we have sometimes wished that, And that gospel was the torch which, on the hills either in the originals or in English, some judiof Renfrewshire, fired a young spirit, Pollok-cious editor would give us, each in a separate himself both sacrifice and altar pile-till Britain fasciculus, the several contributions of each sacred spied the light, and wondered at the brief but penman. As it is, with the sixty-six volumes of brilliant beacon. But why name the individual the Bible all compressed into a single tome, we instances? What is modern learning, and the are apt to regard them, not only as homogenemarch of intellect, and the reading million but ous inspiration, which they are, but as contemone great monument of the gospel's quickeningporary compositions, which they are not. We power? Three hundred years ago the classics forget that, in point of time, there is the same were revived; but three hundred years ago the interval between Moses and Matthew as there is gospel was restored. Digging in the Pompeii of between the close of the canon and the compilathe middle age, Lorenzo and Leo found the lamps tion of the Augsburg confession. And, with in which the old classic fires had burned; but each portion divided into those numbered parathere was no oil in the lamps, and they had long graphs which we call verses, we are apt to lose since gone out. For models of candelabra and sight of the characteristic style of the various burners, there could not be better than Livy and compositions. An epistle looks like a poem, and Horace and Plato and Pindar; but the faith a history reads like a collection of adages or which once filled them, the old pagan fervor, apothegms. But allowing one book to contain was long since extinct, and the lamps were only the minor prophets, and another the general episfit for the shelf of the antiquary. But it was then tles, there would still remain upwards of twenty that, in the crypt of the convent, Luther and inspired penmen whose writings might, much to Zwingle and Melancthon observed a line of su- their mutual illustration, be bound up in separate pernatural light, and with lever and mattock volumes, and preserved in their individual idenlifted the grave-stone and found the gospel which tity. We should thus have in one volume all the Papist had buried. There it had flamed, "a that Moses wrote, and in another, chronologilight shining in a dark place," through unsus- cally arranged, all the writings of Paul. One pected ages, unquenchable in its own immortality, the long-lost lamp in the sepulchre. Jupiter was dead, and Minerva had melted into ether, and Apollo was grey with eld, and the most elegant idols of antiquity had gone to the moles and the bats. But there is One who cannot die. and does not change; and the Fountain of scriptural learning is He who is also the Fountain of life, the Alpha and Omega, Jesus the Son of God. From his gospel it was that the old classic lamps, when filled with fresh oil, were kindled again; and at that gospel it was that Bacon and Locke and Milton and Newton and all the mighty spirits of modern Europe, caught the fire which made them blaze the meteors of our firmament, the marvels of our favored time. And should any one now chance to hear me who is ambitious to be the lasting teacher or the extensive light of society-to paint or think or sing for a wider world than our railway readers, let him remember, that nothing can immortalize the works of genius if there be no gospel in them. The facts of that gospel are the world's main stock of truth-the fire of that gospel is the only Promethean spark which can ignite our

volume might contain all the psalms of David; another, those psalms-nearly as numerouswhich were indited by Moses and Asaph and others. In one cover might be bound up the gospel, the epistles, and the apocalypse of John; and in another that divine song, those confessions of a converted philosopher, and that ancient "wealth of nations," which were written down by Solomon. And under such an arrangement might we not hope that books, usually read in chapters or smaller morsels, might sometimes be read continuously, taken down from the shelf, as another attractive book would be taken, on a leisure evening, and read through at a single sitting? Might we not hope, in such a case, that while those who now read the Old and New Testaments would read them still, some who at present do not read the Bible might be tempted to read Paul, Moses and Isaiah? And is it too sanguine to expect that, as the searching of scriptures and sacred knowledge thus increased, some who first resorted to the book for literary entertainment might learn from it the lessons which make wise to life everlasting?

At all events, theology has not yet turned to

sufficient account the Bible's marvellous diver-ling aphorism and the sagacious paradox are sity. You know how opposite are the turns, and provided with food convenient in the Proverbs; how various the temperaments of different peo- and for those whose poetic fancy craves a banple, and how unequal their capacities. One has quet more sublime, there is the dew of Hermon a logician's intellect, and delights in dialectic and Bozrah's red wine-the tender freshness of subtility. Another has a prompt intuition and pastoral hymns, and the purple tumult of trideprecates as so much bamboozlement every in- umphal psalms. And while the historian is genious or protracted argument. Some have borne back to ages so remote that grey tradition the ideal faculty so strong that they never under- cannot recollect them, and athwart oblivious stand a proposition rightly till it sparkles as a centuries, in nooks of brightness and in oases of sentiment; poet-wise, their eyes are in their light sees the patriarch groups, clear, vivid and apex; they cannot descry matters of fact and familiar as the household scenes of yesterday; homely truths, which creep along the ground or there is also a picture sketched for the explorers travel on all-fours, but in order to arrest a vision of the future. For while the apocalyptic curtain so sublime as theirs, thoughts must spread the slowly rises, while the seven thunders shake its wings of metaphor, and soar into the zenith: darkness palpable, and streaks of glory issue while others are so prosaic, that they are offend- through its fringe of fire, the new Jerusalem ed at all imagery, and grudge the time it takes to comes down from heaven, and gazing on the translate a trope or figure. Some minds are pearly gates and peaceful streets and bowers of concrete, and cannot understand a general state- sanctity, our planet can scarce believe that she ment till they see a particular example. Others is gazing on herself, that this is old mother earth are so abstract, that an illustration is an interrup-grown young again; that this vision of holiness tion, and an example a waste of time. Most and bliss is nothing more than paradise restoredmen love history, and nearly all men live much that "new" but ancient "earth in which dwellin the future. Some minds are pensive, some eth righteousness." are cheerful; some are ardent, and some are sin- But in order rightly to appreciate this literary gularly phlegmatic. And had an angel penned diversity of the Bible's several books, it is essenthe Bible, even though he could have conde- tial to remember the plenary inspiration of the scended to the capacity of the lowliest reader, Bible collective. Imagine the case of an ache could not have foreseen the turn and fitted the complished evangelist. Suppose there were a taste of every child of Adam. And had a mor- missionary endowed with the gift of tongues, tal penman been employed, however versatile and called to ply his labors in different places at his talent, however many-faced his mind, he successive periods. He goes to France, and adcould not have made himself all things to his dressing its vivacious inhabitants, he abandons brethren, nor produced styles enough to mirror the direct and sober style of his fatherland; every the mental features of all mankind. In his wis- utterance is antithesis; every gem of thought is dom and goodness, the Most High has judged cut brilliant-wise; and the whole oration jigs on far better for our world; and using the agency gay, elastic springs. He passes thence to Holof forty authors-transfusing through the pecu- land, and in order to conciliate its grave burghliar tastes and temperaments of so many indi-ers, his steady thoughts move on in stiff procesviduals, and these men of like passions with sion, trim, concinnate, old-fashioned, orderly. ourselves," the self-same truths, the Spirit of Anon he finds himself amid a tribe of red InGod has secured for the Bible universal adapta- dians; and instantly his imagination spreads tion. For the pensive, there is the dirge of Jere- pinions of flame, and, familiar with thunder, tormiah, and the cloud-shadowed drama of Job. rents, and burning mountains, his talk is the tune For the sanguine and hopeful, there sounds the of the tempest. And ending his days in Arabia blithe voice and there beats the warm pulse of or Persia, through the fantastic sermon skip shaold Galilean Peter. And for the calm, the con- dowy antelopes or dream-like gazelles; while templative, the peacefully-loving, there spreads each interstice of thought is filled by a voluptulike a molten melody, or an abysmal joy, the ous mystery, like the voice of the darkling nightpage-sunny, ecstatic, boundless-of John the ingale as it floats through air laden with jasmine divine. The most homely may find the matter or roses. And thus, "all things to all men," of fact, the unvarnished wisdom and plain sense this gifted evangelist wins them all; whereas, which is the chosen aliment of their sturdy un- had he spoken like an Oriental to the Indian, or derstandings, in James' blunt reasonings; and like a Persian to the Hollander, he would have the most heroic can ask no higher standard, no offended each, and would have been a barbarian loftier feats, no consecration more intense, no to all. The teacher is one, the same evangelist spirituality more ethereal, than they will find in every where. The truth, the theme is one; over the Pauline epistles. Those who love the spark-and over again the same glorious gospel. Nay,

the substance of each sermon is essentially one; | Almighty God, to sound in our ears his eternal for it is a new forth-pouring from the same fountain, another yearning from the same full heart But to suit successive hearers the rhythm alters, the tune is changed.

word, has selected from of old instruments best suited to receive successively the breath of his Spirit. Thus we have in God's great anthem of revelation the sublime simplicity of John; the argumentative, elliptical, soul-stirring energy of Paul; the fervor and solemnity of Peter; the poetic grandeur of Isaiah; the lyric moods of David; the ingenuous and majestic narratives of Moses; the sententious and royal wisdom of Solomon. Yes, it was all this-it was Peter, Isaiah, Matthew, John, or Moses; but it was God." And such ought to be the word of Jehovah, like Emanuel, full of grace and truth, at once in the bosom of God and in the heart of man, powerful and sympathizing, celestial and human, exalted yet humble, imposing and familiar, God and man."

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Such is the principle on which the Great Evangelist has acted. In inditing sermons for the world, such is the principle on which the divine Spirit has proceeded. Speaking to men, he has used the words of men. When on the two tables God wrote the ten commandments, he did not write them in the speech unutterable of the third heavens, he wrote them in Hebrew letters, Hebrew words, and Hebrew idiom; and had it so pleased him, he might have given all the Scriptures in the self-same way. Employing no mortal pen whatever, from the top of Sinai he might have handed down the one Testament, and from the top of Olivet the other-the whole, from But here, gentlemeu, a thought comes over me Genesis to Revelations, completed without hu- compunctiously. It seems as if we had this man intervention, and on amaranthine leaves evening come, a large party of us, to view a faengraven in Heaven's own holograph. And in mous place, and we have stood on the lawn in such a case there would have been no dispute as front, or looked up from the quadrangle, and to the extent of inspiration; there would have told its towers and marked its bulwarks, and been no need that, like the electrometers of the sketched some of its ornaments: but however meteorologist, theologians should invent tests of commanding the elevation, however grateful the its intensity, nicely graduated from the zero of details and various styles, after all, the glory is superintendence up to the fulness of suggestion. within. O, my brethren, there is a loveliness But infinite Wisdom preferred another way. In- even in its letter; but there is life for our souls spiration he made the counterpart of the incar-in its divine significance. Be you not only Biblenation; and as in the incarnate mystery we have, visitors but Bible-occupants. That book which without mutual encroachment and without con- God has made the monument of the great refusion, very God and very man, so in theopneus-demption, and where he has put his own perpettic Scripture we have a book, every sentence of ual Shekinah, do you choose it as the gymnasium which is truly human, and yet every sentence of which is truly divine. Holy men spoke it, but holy men spoke and wrote it as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. And just as when God sent his Son into the world, he sent him not as an angel, nor even in the fashion of a glorified and celestial man, but in all points like his brethren; so when he sent into the world his written word, it came not ready-written with an angel's plume, but with reeds from the Jordan it was consigned to paper from the Nile, every word of it Hellen- Yes, my dear friends, as a supplement to this istic, or Hebrew, and every word none the less lecture, let me entreat you to peruse the Bible heavenly. And though the unlettered disciple, itself. With prayer, with expectation, with eyes who in the identity of the ultimate Author for- alert and open, read it: and when a few of you, gets the diversity of the intermediate scribes, who are friends like-minded, come together, read loses less than the dry critic who only recog-it, search it, sift it, talk about it, talk with it. And nizes the mortal penman, that student alone as he thus grows mighty in it, I promise each will get the full good of his Bible who recogni- earnest Bible student two rewards—it will make zes these parallel facts-its perfect and all per- him both a wiser and a holier man. vasive divinity, its perfect and all-investing hu- Wiser; for the sayings of God's word are solid. manity. Or, to sum it up in the vivid words of There is a substance which you must have noGaussen, "As a skilful musician, called to exe-ticed, cast on the sea-shore, the medusa, or seacute alone some master piece, put his lips by nettle, as some sorts of it are called; an object turns to the mournful flute, the shepherd's reed, rather beautiful as its dome of amber quivers in the mirthful pipe, and the war-trumpet; so the the sun. And a goodly size it often has, so large

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where you may nourish a youth truly sublime; the castle where, in a world of impiety and an age of peril, you may find entrenchment for your faith and protection for your principles; the sanctuary at whose oracle you may find answers to your doubts and light upon your path; the Spirit's home, whither your affections shall every day return, and where your character shall progressively ennoble it into a comformity with such a royal residence.