playing about the head, but starving the wellsprings of the heart, and drying up the fertile streams of a holy and charitable life! An accurate systematic form is the last perfection of knowledge; and a systematic thinker is the perfection of an educated man. Therefore it is high intolerance of the far greater number, whose heart and whose affections may be their master faculty, to present nothing but intellectual food, or that chiefly and moreover, it is a religious spoliation of the heavenly wisdom, which hath a strain fitted to every mood; and it is an unfeeling, unfaithful dealing between God and the creatures whom he hath been at such charges to save. And to look suspicious upon those who are attracted to the sacred page by its gracious pictures of the divine goodness, and love it with a simple answer of affection to its affectionate sayings, or a simple answer of hope to its abundant promises-to undervalue those who feed their souls with its spiritual psalmody, or direct their life by its weighty proverbs, reckoning an authority and grace of God to reside in every portion of it-to suspect those who live on devotion, on acknowledgments of Providence, and imitation of Christ, because they cannot couch their simple faith and feeling in technical and theological phrase, but sink dumb when the high points of faith are handled-all these-the baneful effects of holding so much acquaintance with formularies of doctrine, and so little with the Word itself-so much acquaintance with the religious spirit of the age

and country, and so little with the spirit of God, argue a narrow form of religion, and an uncharitableness of spirit, from which we pray God to deliver all who pertain to the household of faith!

Oh! brethren, let me now drop this strain of censure which the honour of the Bible hath forced me to maintain against my better liking, and speak persuasively in your ear for a noble and more enlarged perception of the truth. Pour ye out your whole undivided heart before the oracles of God. Give your enlarged spirit to the communion of his word. Be free; be disentangled. Let it teach; let it reprove; let it correct; let it instruct in righteousness; let it elevate you with its wonderful delineations of the secrets of the divine nature, and of the future destinies of the human race, higher than the loftiest poetry: and let it carry you deeper, with its pictures of our present and future wretchedness, than the most pathetic sentiment ever penned by the novelist: and let it take affection captive by its pictures of divine mercy and forgiveness, more than the sweetest eloquence: let it transport you with indignation at that with which it is indignant, and take you with passion when it is impassioned; when it blames be ye blamed; when it exhorts be ye exhorted; when it condescends to argument, by its arguments be ye convinced. Be free to take all its moods, and to catch all its inspirations. Then shall you become instinct with all Christian feeling, and pregnant with all holy

fruits, "thoroughly furnished for every good word and work."

Why, in modern times, do we not take from the Word that sublimity of design and gigantic strength of purpose which made all things bend before the saints, whose praise is in the Word and the church of God? Why have the written secrets of the Eternal become less moving than the fictions of fancy, or the periodical works of idle literature; and their impressiveness died away into the imbecility of a tale that hath been often told? Not because man's spirit hath become more weak. Was there ever an age in which it was more patient of research, or restless after improvement? Not because the Spirit of God hath become backward in his help, or the Word divested of its truthbut because we treat it not as the all-accomplished wisdom of God-the righteous setting works of men along side of it, or masters over it-the world altogether apostatizing from it unto folly. We come to meditate it, like armed men to consult of peace-our whole mind occupied with insurrectionary interests and suffer no captivity of its truth. Faith, which should brood with expanded wings over the whole heavenly legend, imbibing its entire spirit-what hath it become? a name to conjure up theories and hypotheses upon. Duty likewise hath fallen into a few formalities of abstaining from amusements, and keeping up severities-instead of denoting a soul girt with all its powers for its Maker's will.

Religion also, a set of opinions and party dis-. tinctions separated from high endowments, and herding with cheap popular accomplishments-a mere serving-maid of every day life; instead of being the mistress of all earthly, and the preceptress of all heavenly, sentiments-and the very queen of all high gifts, graces and perfections, in every walk of life!

To be delivered from this dwarfish exhibition of that plant which our heavenly Father hath planted, take up this holy book. Let your devotions gather warmth from the various exhibitions of the nature and attributes of God. Let the displays of his power overawe you, and the goings forth of his majesty still you into reverend observance. Let his uplifted voice awake the slumber of your spirits, and every faculty burn in adoration of that image of the invisible God whieh his word reveals. If Nature is reverend before Him, how much more the spirit of man for whom he rideth forth in his state! Let his Holiness, before which the pure seraph veils his face, and his Justice, before which the heavens are rebuked, humble our frail spirits in the dust, and awaken all their conscious guilt. Then let the richness of his mercy strike us dumb with amazement, and his offered grace revive our hopes anew; and let his Son, coming forth with the embraces of his love, fill our spirits with rapture.-Let us hold him fast in sweet communion; exchange with him affection's kindest tokens; and be satisfied with the

sufficiency of his grace; and let the strength of his Spirit be our refuge, his all-sufficient strength our buckler and our trust!

Then, stirred up through all her powers, and awakened from the deep sleep of Nature and oblivion of God, which among visible things she indulgeth, our soul will come forth from the communion of the Word full of divine energy and ardour, prepared to run upon this world's theatre the race of duty for the prize of life eternal. She will erect herself beyond the measures and approbation of men, into the measures and approbation of God, and become like the saints of old, who, strengthened by such repasts of faith, "subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, and turned to flight the armies of the aliens."

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