The Pre-eminence of the Bible in Producing Holiness and True Religion

We have just turned our attention to the influence of the Bible upon the extent and certainty of moral science. We advance this evening a step beyond speculations like these, however momentous. We look at man not as the creature of intellect and thought merely, but as the creature of feeling, of moral sensibility and affection: and we look at the Bible not merely as exerting an influence upon his intellectual, but upon his active and moral powers, and forming the only character by which he becomes fitted for the presence and enjoyment of God his Maker. We here take our leave of those happy influences which this wonderful book exerts upon the learning and literature of the world 5 upon its laws and liberties; upon its social institutions and moral virtues, as well as upon the mere intellectual sphere of religious truth. And may I not hope that God will indine your hearts to accompany me with the same interest with which you have accompanied me thus far, though it be in inquiries more spiritual than those which have hitherto occupied our attention? If the things of time alone absorb our thoughts 5 if the present is that alone in which we feel an interest while we are heedless of the future*, then do we ourselves present melancholy proof of that moral infatuation which has not yet learned to appreciate the Holy Scriptures. What does it profit a man, though “he have all knowledge,” and yet remain unacquainted with God? “What is he profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” It is the crown

AND glory of the BIBLE THAT IT IS THE ONLY MEANS OF HOLINESS AND TRUE RELIGION.

A moment’s reflection upon the nature and destinies of the human soul, will teach us that moral rectitude alone can raise it to its true greatness. Were it possible for this great perfection to be detached from the character of God himself 5 were that divine nature, now so glorious, to be stripped of the “beauties of holiness j” instead of being revered and loved, he would be the object of suspicion and fear, and could no longer be contemplated but with terror and dismay. The higher a being is in intellectual power, the more debased is he, and the more were he to be dreaded, were he destitute of holiness. Holiness constitutes the beauty, the amiableness, the loveliness of the intelligent nature, in whatever being, or whatever world it is found.

Man is not by nature the friend of God. He has no inherent moral dignity — no native innocence — no natural meetness for heaven. Under every form of human society, Pagan, Jewish, Mahometan and Christian, all are by nature the slaves of sin. There was a judicial connexion between the first offence of our progenitor and the sin and condemnation of his posterity. “By the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation.” It is a search too elevated for fallen men to acquaint themselves with God. There is no “contact of heart” between them and the great Father of spirits. No hours of leisure, no retirement of the closet, no silence of the dawn or evening witnesses their aspirations after the “first Fair and the first Good.” “God is not in all their thoughts,” but is excluded alike from their toil, their recreation, and their joys. Nay, even in the pensiveness and agony of their sorrows, how few are there who say, “Where is God my Maker, that giveth songs in the night?” How immense the distance, how deep the chasm between fallen man and the Holy One! The mind, the heart, the will, bound together by common bonds, acting and reacting upon one another by a thousand unseen and uncontrolled influences, all combined in the unhallowed, the treasonable revolt!

And how can such a being become holy? By what instrumentality is a creature thus apostate to be restored to the image of his Maker? By what agencies is he to be prepared for that world whose blessedness consists in deliverance from sin, and in the perfect and everlasting enjoyment of its Great Author and glory? What is the starting point, and what the impulse under which so degraded, benighted, depraved a being enters upon this new moral career? How shall he begin, in that growing transformation of character which in itself constitutes one of the chief elements of salvation, and one of the principal elements of the heaven where God dwells? Is it by the doctrines of human philosophy? Is it through the influence of good government? Is it by the power of false religion? Or is it only by the power of the, Bible?

The view we have already taken of the pagan world shows nothing more clearly than that men have never become holy by the mere culture of the intellect. “Where is the wise? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world V Nothing is more definitely asserted in the word of God, or more fully and abundantly illustrated in the history of man, than that “the world by wisdom, knew not God.” However the mind may be improved by culture, expanded and refined by science, and elevated by the moralizing influence which mere human agency may supply 5 there still remains a melancholy, nay, an invincible tendency to evil. The alienation of the heart, does not arise from intellectual imbecility, or intellectual ignorance. The love of science is not the love of God. Religion is indeed not a little indebted to the researches of human science j but unhappily it is no uncommon thing for men endued with the most splendid genius and the most liberal acquisition in human science, to be distinguished for depravity of heart. True religion is not a mere intellectual theory, a philosophic system 5 nor does a man become the disciple of Christ in the same way in which he becomes the disciple of Plato, or Newton. Never was a lesson more effectually taught by the experience of our race, than that intellectual culture cannot produce holiness. The learning of the Scribes and Pharisees did not prevent them from rejecting the Saviour 5 but rather qualified and tempted them to stand forth his malignant and infuriate opposers. The absurdities of a debased pagan ritual, were never confined to the ignorant and uninformed. Socrates and Seneca, Solon and Lycurgus bowed at the altars of Jupiter and Apollo. Idolatry erected her temples amid the groves of the Academy, and published her sanguinary and licentious code amid all the fight and learning of the Augustan age. No instance is to be found where a nation, or an individual, ever became the friend of God through the influences of mere intellectual cultivation. At the period when our blessed Lord. came into the world, intellect had made its highest efforts 5 philosophy had exhausted all her vigour and acuteness 5 Greece and Rome had furnished the most splendid examples of reasoning and eloquence — examples so splendid, that next to the Bible, they remain to the present day, the acknowledged standards of elegance and power 5 and yet they left the world “without God and without hope,” and full of that “unrighteousness and ungodliness of men,” against which “wrath is revealed from heaven.” What has intellectual culture done for modern Europe? What has it done for France — the glory of all lands for purely intellectual and philosophical research? There is not a combination of more learned or acute men on the earth, than the Royal Academy at Paris. Nor is there probably any where to be found a society of men more ignorant of God and holiness. Nor will the institutions of civil government make men holy. Civil government may restrain the out-breaking of human corruption 5 may prevent lawless aggressions upon the welfare of society 5 may deter the abandoned from injustice and oppression 5 and while it is “a terror to evil doers,” be “a praise to those who do well j” but it can never win back the heart of man to God. What civil government can do for men, it has done already. It does not make men holy in the best governed Christian States. It does not in Britain 5 it does not among ourselves. It did not in the best governed republics and empires of the pagan world. Not even Antoninus Pius could influence Rome to be either holy or virtuous. All the legislative science and political advancement which rendered Athens and Sparta the models of their age, could not rescue them from a

superstitious polytheism. Legislators as well as philosophers, have failed, and always will fail to regenerate the heart. No matter how wise and equal the laws 5 no matter what principles of government, or modes of legislation may be adopted and enforced 5 no matter with how much skill the affairs of princes are adjusted j none of these things convey the knowledge of holiness and salvation. It is an instructive fact, that while pagan nations were advancing from one degree of literary and civil refinement to another, their religious character sunk in progressive, if not in proportioned degeneracy. Not merely did it retain its uncultivated barbarism, but waxed worse with every accession of human wisdom. From the most exalted, or rather the least debasing system, that of siderial worship, it descended to “images, made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and to four-footed beasts, and to creeping things.” Never did it reach a lower abyss of degradation, than when heathen lands had attained their acme of civihzation and learning. And in a state thus abject did it continue “even under the Ptolemies in Egypt, and the Csesars in Rome,” till “• the fullness of time was come when God sent forth his Son.”

Have then men ever become holy through the influence o false religions? Not certainly by paganism, as we have already seen. The Persians and Mohammedans have, it must be confessed, made some advances in an apparent moral rectitude beyond the abject wickedness of purely pagan lands. The Persians were the descendants of Elam, the son of Shem 5 and with the rest of the nations early fell away in their apostacy from the worship of the true God. The purity of their faith was revived in the time of Abraham, but was corrupted again before the Babylonish captivity. It was revived by Zoroaster, who maintained that there is one supreme God, and a general resurrection and retribution to all according to their deeds. But while the Persian religion for centuries held its sway over a multitude of minds, it never made men holy. “The Persians,” says Sismondi in his history of the downfall of the Roman empire, “had laws emanating from despotic power, which preserve order, but which secure to a nation neither justice, nor happiness. They had that literary culture which feeds the imagination, but does not enlighten the understanding. Their religion and their aversion to idolatry, satisfied the reason, but did not purify the heart.” It is also worthy of remark, that for all that is venerable in antiquity and purity, the Persian religion was indebted to the Bible. By those who are best informed in oriental literature, Zoroaster is represented to have been “cotemporary with Daniel, and if not a Jew, yet perfectly acquainted with the Jewish Scriptures.”* Nor is

* Prideaux’s Connexions, and Graves on the Pentateuch. it less true that all that is valuable in the system of Mahomet was drawn from the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. Colonies of Jews were once scattered over Arabia, at a period when the reUgion of the Arabians was polytheism, and when there were three hundred and sixty idols in their principal temple at the Kaaba at Mecca. The character of Mahomet was austere; his imagination ardent 5 his temperance extreme 5 and he was disposed to religious meditations and lofty reveries. His chief thought at first was to fix his own belief, and purify it from the superstitions of his country. He recognized as God an eternal Spirit, omniscient, omnipresent, and incapable of being represented by any material image. He nourished this idea till the age of forty, when he resolved to become the reformer of his nation. He taught them the knowledge of the one God, but he called himself his Prophet. From the time he took this character, his life lost its purity, his temper its mildness, policy entered into his reHgion, and fraud into his conduct. He dictated the Koran, for he could not read or write, and the sublimity of its language is to Musselmen a proof of its inspired character. He admitted six revelations, — those of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Christ, and his own. The religion of Mahomet leaned toward fatalism, but did not deny the influence of the will in human actions. Nor did it consist in doctrines only, but in the practice of justice and charity. It considers alms-giving the most rigorous duty 5 and the Koran exacts from a tenth to a fifth of a believer’s income in charity. It enjoins prayer, ablution and fastings. Five times a day, a Musselman must pray. Fasts were so rigid, that during the month of Ramadam, one might neither eat, nor drink, nor enjoy any gratification from sunrise to sunset. Before the time of Mahomet, the Arabs enjoyed unbounded licence 5 and he forbade dissoluteness, only by reducing it within the bounds of expediency and law. The blood of their enemies was a sure passport to the Mohammedan Paradise. Every Musselman, indeed, however bad, was sure of Paradise, after expiating his sins a suitable time in purgatory, not to exceed five thousand years. The most favorable exhibition of the religion of Mahomet shows its perfect powerlessness to form any thing like a spiritual character. We have spoken of its immoral tendencies in a previous lecture 5 and it were the merest farce to claim for it any spiritual influence. We freely grant to these religions all they can claim. And the most that can be said of them is, that they are not idolatrous. And if they have effected something in supplanting the existence of idolatry, nothing is more obvious than that their influence in this- particular is to be attributed to the Bible. Wherever indeed, men have ceased to bow down to the sun, moon and stars 5 wherever they have ceased erecting pillars and statues on the tops of hills and mountains for the purpose of offering sacrifices to the host of heaven 5 wherever they have ceased erecting their temples, and their images, and offering their fruits to the light, the air, the wind, the fire, the water, the earth 5 wherever they have renounced the grovelhng superstition which led them to worship the darkness, the storm, the pestilence and the Furies 5 wherever they have no longer erected monuments to the memory of the dead, and worshipped creatures like themselves 5 where they have abandoned their homage of animals and reptiles, birds and beasts, plants and herbs 5 where the rivers and the woods are no longer peopled with imaginary deities j where each favoured city and family has no longer its peculiar guardian gods j where the power of magic is no longer recognized, and the

influence of oracles and augurs, of diviners and soothsayers has been renounced as idle and vain 5 where it is no longer a proof of wisdom to attempt to disclose future events by the flight of birds, the recollection of dreams, and the inspection of the entrails of beasts j we may say, without the fear of contradiction, that this change has been produced by the religion of the Bible. Reason has not done it. The institutions of civil government have not done it. Human science has not done it. The most fearful judgments have not done it. Nothing has done it but the Bible. But for the Bible, the vilest idolatry would at this hour hold its unbroken sway over the world.

Where then had been the interests of holiness without the Bible? Whatever estimate we may form of the value of other influences upon the human character, this alone is the means of holiness. I do not know but here and there an individual may be found, who may have become pious without the truths of the Bible 5 but I do not recollect any well authenticated instance. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.^’ The moral renovation which fits the soul for heaven is effected by means which correspond with its nature. “Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth.” The Bible alone exhibits those appropriate materials for thought which are the selected instruments of a renovated character. There is no wisdom more unerring, no justice more inflexible, no grace more tender, no authority more commanding, no entreaty more importunate, no instructions more convincing, and no motives more persuasive and powerful, than are these appointed means of man’s conversion — these weapons which are “mighty through God” — this sword by which the conscience is penetrated, “dividing asunder between the joints and the marrow, the soul and the spirit, and proving a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

There is one motive to hoUness which the Bible unfolds which constitutes its great and distinguishing peculiarity. It is the love of God in the gifl: of his Son. All the motives to holiness are concentrated and condensed here, and presented and enforced with a power of thought and feeling that leave the most obdurate without excuse. “We beseech you by the mercies of God.” — here lies the strength of the appeal. The love of God in Christ is the great expedient of winning the wayward heart. “Holy love from God to man is what the gospel reveals 5 holy love from man to God is what the gospel inspires.” The doctrines of the cross, in all their richness and variety, in all their peculiarity and tenderness, and in all their humbling and abasing influence, possess a marvellous adaptation to awaken the slumbering mind. They produce within it new and powerful associations. While in the most effective manner, they convince of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, they touch all the springs of feeling, and form the moral elements of the new man. No other truths so deeply affect the mind. “Nothing astonished me so much in all the gospel,” said a poor converted African, “as to hear that God is loveJ^^ A prouder and more obdurate offender than he, once said, “The love of Christ constraineth us.” It is the glory of the condescending Deity, that “He draws with the cords of love.” When you tell a world that lieth in wickedness, that the God they have offended is the God of pardons 5 when you show them the scenes of Gethsemane and Calvary, and tell them how the divine justice has been expiated by the death of his Son 5 while you give force and energy to every other truth, and draw around the conscience the cords of every other obligation, you make that appeal to gratitude, to hope which is peculiarly fitted to encourage the trembling and move the obdurate. Like the rod of Moses it rives the rocks of the desert. Until the intelligence reaches it that there is help in the mighty Saviour, the agitated mind in vain throws around its enquiring glance for a refuge, and is driven back to the chambers of its own desolation and despondency. “God reconciling the world to himself by Jesus Christ,” this is the glory of the Bible. This is the truth to which the Spirit of all grace has given such pre-eminence in disarming the hostile heart. Here is the concentrated light of God’s revelation. Amid the thousand studded gems which beautify and give such splendour to the moral firmament, this is the clear and bright constellation which is always above the horizon, and pointing high toward the gate of heaven. Here are those truths and motives which are the mediate causes of a spiritual mind, and between which and the operations of the Holy Spirit there is such a coincidence, that they become the aliment of a spiritual and divine life. He who knows the heart of man has selected this as the best method of access to the minds he has formed 5 and like every other appointment of the Deity, it is full of consummate wisdom. Every where the same, it is every where effectual in accomplishing the purposes of eternal mercy. Evidence enough there is in the world every day, to convince us of the superiority of the Bible as the great means of holiness and salvation. And better days are yet to dawn. Like the rain and the snow, it shall not return void. Like the sun when he rises upon the mists of the ocean, it is destined to exhale all clouds of error. Its heavenly light shall penetrate the dark corners of our globe; the report of its glad tidings, echoing from land to land, shall roll through the nations 5 while “the heavens shall pour down righteousness, and the earth bring forth salvation.” But there is a caution that is not out of place while speaking of the Bible as the

means of holiness. If it is not by the learning and wisdom of this world that the soul is fitted for heaven, no more is it by the mere learning and literature of the Bible. There is reason to fear the cases are not few, in which the Bible is regarded more as a volume to be described and eulogized, and as furnishing topics of intellectual research, than as a directory to heaven, and a guide to immortality. “The letter killeth.” Biblical learning is not piety. A man may be a profound critic, an acute controversialist, an able expositor j his enquiries and reasonings may discover an enlarged and comprehensive acquaintance with the sacred volume 5 Ihe may employ all his resources in the promotion of biblical knowledge 5 and yet be at heart a stranger to the sanctifying power of truth. In his cold walks of theoretical science, he may never once visit the Garden or the Cross. Or he might gaze upon them for half a century with his present vision, and never discover the great “mystery of godliness.” The truths of the Bible are comprehended by the heart. To be destitute of the “single eye,” is to be blind to its transforming glories. “He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love.” The gospel is a revelation of love. Christianity is love embodied in its purest form. And love can be comprehended only by love. I look upon no small portion of the biblical criticism of the present age as a curse to the Church. Such is all the Rationalism of Germany, and such is the modern Unitarianism of our own land. It is a cheerless region, where the Rose of Sharon never blooms 5 a bleak and wintry sky, where no ray from the Sun of righteousness visits the sterile soil. How can the branches flourish where not even a root is found but is artfully unclasped, or rudely torn from the Living Vine? As soon might you expect the feeblest infant to live and thrive cradled amid the mountain snows, as the genius of Christianity to flourish in such a cHme. I tremble a.t{ recommending the literature of the Bible, lest I should do it at the expense of its spirituality. I venerate the Scriptures for their historical research, for their literary merit, for their legal and political wisdom, and for their lofty principles of liberty and morality 5 but I venerate them unspeakably more because they are “the wisdom of God and the power of God to salvation.” Let others win the laurels to which human science may aspire 5 be it our’s to guide the wandering to the feet of the Saviour 5 to lead them to his cross; to strew the cypress over the tomb where he was laid 5 and there, on that hallowed spot, with them renew our faith and our devotion!

But what is the character of the religion of which the Scriptures are thus instrumental? There is a beauty and sublimity in its spirit which throw all other religions into the shade. If there is a system of truth which is most obviously intended and fitted to refine and exalt the human character, that system is to be found in the sacred Scriptures. When the God of heaven unfolded his purpose of forming a people to his praise, and giving them a character that should correspond with the elevated principles of his own spiritual Kingdom, he uttered his design in the following strong and emphatic language. “A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you.” What amazing truths lie concealed under such a design! The character which the Bible forms is formed upon the highest model. And what is that model? Is it the insensibility, the asperities, the anger, the pride, the egotism, the worldliness which are so natural to men? Is it the cold indifference of a Stoical philosophy? Is it the affected tranquillity and ungoverned voluptuousness of the disciples of Epicurus? Is it the rank, and wealth, and scepticism of the Academics? Is it the intellectual rashness and moral phantoms of the modern Philosophists of Europe? No, it is none of these.

These have had their day, and done what they could to exorcise the foul fiend from the human heart, and left it more corrupt and wicked than before. The Author of this great and venerated book, by this instrumentality, imparts to men his own spirit forms them in his own image communicates to them the elements of his own divine excellence. It is a character never understood by the world before, and one which none even of the princes of this world knew. The late celebrated Robert Hall, in a discourse of unrivalled excellence upon the influence of modern Infidelity remarks, that “infidelity robs the universe of all finished and consummate excellence, even in idea. The admiration of perfect wisdom and goodness for which we are formed, and which kindles such unspeakable rapture in the soul, finding in the regions of scepticism nothing to which it corresponds, droops and languishes. The idea of Deity is composed of the richest elements. In the character of a benevolent Parent and Almighty Ruler, it embraces whatever is venerable in wisdom, whatever is awful in authority, whatever is touching in goodness. Human excellence is blended with many imperfections, and seen under many limitations. It is beheld only in detached and separate portions, nor ever appears in any one character whole and entire. So that when in imitation of the Stoics, we wish to form out of these fragments the notion of a perfectly wise and good man, we know it is a mere fiction of the mind, without any real being in whom it is embodied and reaUzed. In the belief of a Deity, these conceptions are reduced to reality; the scattered rays of an ideal excellence are concentrated, and become the real attributes of that being with whom we stand in the nearest relation, who sits supreme at the head of the universe, and pervades all nature with his presence.” Although in nothing does man fallen and unregenerate now resemble this exalted portrait, yet is it the great design of the Bible to recover and restore him to this pristine integrity 5 to elevate him above his moral debasement, and re-invest him with the moral dignity, which shall ultimately make him “like unto the angels,” and “perfect as his Father in heaven is perfect.”

God is light. So is the religion of the Bible. It has no fellowship with darkness. Not one of its graces springs from stupidity, or ignorance, but all of them from the knowledge of God, and from a clear, connected, and comprehensive view of his truth. False religions are founded in darkness. The religion of the Bible, like its Author, dwells in light. Light is its element. God also is love. And so is the religion of the Bible. “He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him. He that loveth not, knoweth not God.” There is a love which extends itself to every sensitive nature within its knowledge and influence 5 which overlooks the limits of place, birth, and condition, and bestows its affections in accordance with the character, capacity, and importance of its objects 5 which seeketh not its own, and terminates on ends which leave out of sight every personal and individual interest: and such a spirit is the fragrance and perfume breathed every where through the Bible.

The views and spirit of this world are widely different from the views and spirit that are transfused into the soul by the Holy Scriptures. The spirit of the world is the spirit of pride and inordinate self-esteem. It is the pride of talent and beauty, the pride of wealth and accomplishments, and the pride of rank and office. It lives for the praise of men. In place of this, the Bible imparts the loveliest of all the graces, a heaven-born humility 5 a lowliness of mind 5 a deep sense of unworthiness in the sight of God 5 a modest estimate of one’s own worth, and an unassuming deportment before the world. It is a self-condemning, self-abasing spirit under the sentence of the divine law because we have sinned, and because there is mercy through Jesus Christ. It is a grace so resplendent, that even the unfallen might envy it. “Before honour is humility.” The Bible commends a humble religion. Its love is humble; its faith is humble; its repentance is humble 5 its hopes, its joys, its raptures are all humble. Its heaven is humble, and for nothing is it so happy or desirable as that it is a world of everlasting humility. True greatness is no where found on earth, except in an humble mind. And never is the archangel more elevated, more truly great, than when he bows his head low before the eternal throne. The spirit of the world is obduracy and self-will. It is invincible hardness of heart. It is impenitence that cannot be subdued. It is inflexible perseverance in sin. Truth cannot enlighten it 5 authority cannot control it; wrath cannot break, nor the tenderest mercy move or melt its persisting purpose. In place of this, the Bible imparts tenderness and contrition of mind. Under its soulsubduing influence, the spirit that never shrunk from danger, nor wept under suflering, turns pale at temptation, shrinks from sin, weeps over past follies, and looks on him whom men have pierced, and mourns. The spirit of the world is grasping and covetous. It is inordinately desirous of wealth, and excessively eager to obtain and possess the treasures of time. It is gay, or pensive, as secular prospects wax, or wane. It is stagnant and spiritless, only when it sees there is nothing to gain, or to lose by enterprise. Be it disappointed or gratified, the more vehement are its desires, and never is it so satisfied as to say. It is enough. In place of this, the Bible imparts a tranquil and happy confidence in the wisdom of Divine Providence, a grateful acknowledgment of the daily mercies which God bestows, a moderation in those desires which are directed to worldly enjoyments, and that lifted eye which no longer fastens on earth, but looks upward, where its resources are undiminished, its treasures never fade, and a crown of righteousness awaits all who love their Lord’s appearing. The spirit of the world is the spirit of ambition. It is the desire of power. The object that glitters, and enchants, and vanishes, is to be clothed in purple, to sway the sceptre, and wear the diadem. And the more this ambitious desire is gratified, the more is poison injected into the deadly plague. In place of this, the Bible imparts a deep impression of the vanity of all things beneath the sun j a conviction that the fashion of this world passeth away 5 that the yoke of Christ is rather to be desired than the proudest sceptre j and that it were better to be the servant of the king of kings, than the emperor of the world. The spirit of the world is the spirit of self-indulgence and guilty pleasure. The men of the world are lovers of pleasure more than the lovers of God. Like the prodigal son, they have wandered from their fathers’ house, to feed on the husks of the wilderness. They are eager for enjoyment, and find it in dissipation of thought, of feeling, and of

deportment, and amid the alternate servitude and liberty, pains and pleasures which constitute their varied adventures. Their senses are flattered by the fleeting illusion, and they can speak of nothing, and think of nothing, but pleasure. Though made up of so many pieces and scraps, that you wonder they are not wearied in gathering it up, yet have they no other desire and no other object. Lawless pleasure, in all the forms of novelty and excess, notwithstanding its shame, its infamy, its ruin, is the idol of their hearts and the law of their existence. In place of this, the Bible imparts the love of God and duty. Pleasures it reveals, but they are found in doing the will of God 5 in accomplishing the great end of human existence, and in those vivid hopes which light up the dawn, and noon-day, and setting sun of an ever brightening existence. Those who have drank into its spirit do not live for the pleasures of earth, but are carried forward by a sort of spiritual instinct, beyond this dense and earthly wall by which they are environed. The Bible presents a prospect as much brighter and wider than the pleasures of the worldhng, as are the pleasures of holy thought and feeling and expectation, superior to the day dreams, and grovelling pleasures of sense. The spirit of the world is the spirit of unbelief It is the spirit that rejects the truth of God 5 that has no confidence in his declarations, and distrusts his promises and faithfulness. It leans to self It has no wants, timidity, or despondency, which its own presumption cannot reheve. And not until corruptions have kept their ground so long as to be absolutely ruinous, and the day of hope so far spent as to be literally exhausted, does the soul that is under the dominion of unbelief, cry, and cry in vain, “Lord, save, or I perish!” In place of this, the Bible imparts faith in God and confidence in his word. It gives an affectionate, practical trust in the divine testimony as recorded on its own sacred pages. and that unshaken confidence in the divine character, government, and veracity, which becomes the great principle and impulse of action. It gives subsistence to hope and demonstration to evidence 5 and while it appropriates grace to help in every time of need, it anticipates blessings, which, though unseen by the eye, are enjoyed by the heart. The spirit of the world is an unforgiving and revengeful spirit. It seeks injury for injury, and blood for blood. What a mournful comment upon the character of man is the savage maxim, “Revenge is sweet!” In place of this, the Bible enjoins, “Love your enemies 5 bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you •, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.” This is a spirit so unnatural to man, that it has been reproached as unreasonable and absurd, and the ancients had not even a word to express it, or if they had, it represented it as a vice rather than a virtue. But how worthy of its Author! how sublime! how truly it bears the stamp of divinity! The wisest moralists of the wisest nations and ages represented revenge as a mark of a noble mind. But how different from the mind of Christ! and at what an infinite remove from the generous, exalted spirit of him who, as he was sinking upon the cross, prayed for his murderers! The religion of the Bible stands opposed to all the selfish and mercenary affections of the human heart, and just so far as it prevails, eradicates and destroys them. “If there be any virtue, and if there be any praise,” they are found in the lofty spirit and high moral virtues of a self-renouncing religion.

Such is the exalted spirit of the Bible, and such some of the great and distinguishing peculiarfes of the religion it inculcates and imparts. There is one exalted Personage, and only one, in whom the high dignity of the Christian character was fully and perfectly illustrated. The example of the man Christ Jesus perfectly accords with his doctrines and precepts. He copied out the religion of the Bible in his life. His spirit was known, and developed, and is perfectly understood. He was rich, and for our sakes became poor j happy, and for us became a man of sorrows and acquainted with griefs; the Prince of life, and died for us on the cross, that we might be rich, and honoured, and happy, and live with him. The only reward he sought was the reward which alone could gratify his benevolent mind: — diseases healed — sorrows soothed — tears wiped away — ignorance enlightened — the wayward counselled — the desponding encouraged — the unholy made pure — the guilty forgiven — the lost saved. This was his reward. When men could not ascend to him, he descended to them. When they neither deserved, nor sought his favour, he gave it undeserved and unsought. The abjectness, the sufferings, the sins of men were the magnet that drew him forth from his retirement and excited his commiseration. No toil could weary, no obstacles hinder, no opposition discourage, no delay interrupt, no cold and thankless insensibility dishearten him. From Bethlehem to Calvary, he went about doing good. The history of men furni#ies here and there a splendid illustration of active, self-denying, devoted piety j and we observe and remember it as a rare event. It is like a stream of water in a dry place — a green spot in the desert — an oasis amid Arabian sands. The life of Christ has no such inequalities. It does not strike us by its occasional and novel exhibitions, for they are uniform and constant. There is something greatly affecting in the Saviour’s spirit. It is more than human. It belongs not to earth. It was never found except in his own immaculate bosom.

Whatever there is of true religion in the world resembles such a piety as this, though it fails far short of it. And how unspeakably above the famed excellencies of heathen lands! It is piety altogether of an original character. The heathen genius never conceived it. It never entered the mind of this world’s philosophy to form such a character as that of Paul or Howard. Such developements of mind and heart never would have been made but for the Bible. It is not easy to conceive of a deeper, darker chasm than that which would be made by the absence of these principles which have formed thousands of characters assimilated to these, and given so high a direction to minds whose lofty movement is at such a distance from the low and abject spirit of this unbeheving and self-indulgent world.

Let it not be supposed that this is a light obligation under which the world is placed to a supernatural revelation. Holiness is the highest attainment of a rational creature. It is the greatest good which man ever can acquire. It is the greatest good in the universe. It is greater than wealth, greater than pleasure, than honour, than happiness. It is the only good that may be sought at all times, under all circumstances, and at every hazard. It is the only good that may be sought as an end and for its own sake. A man is not necessarily praiseworthy because he is happy, nor blameworthy because he is unhappy. Seek therefore, my young friends, not to be affluent and honourable, — no, nor mainly to be happy. Seek what is more sublimely excellent, seek to be virtuous and holy. Seek that your hearts may be subdued and won to God by the power of his own truth. No natural amiableness of disposition, no mere cultivation of intellect, no good name in the world, no unimpeached rectitude in your transactions with your fellow-men, no punctuahty in your attendance upon the ordinances of the sanctuary, and no external relation to the church of God can be a substitute for that internal holiness which is an indispensable preparation for the heavenly world. O, when will men understand and feel that nothing possesses importance compared with what relates to God and eternity!

Nothing within the range of human thought deserves consideration compared with this. Never was there stronger evidence of folly than that man presents, who chooses this world for his portion. If tears could quench the fires of that world of torment, those fires would be quenched at the remembrance of the folly that preferred this world to the salvation of the soul. And if tears should be ever shed in heaven, it will be at the remembrance of the supineness, the indifference with which those of you who have hope toward God are directing your way toward that “exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”

A few short years, if not before, and you and I shall descend to the tomb. Time passes swiftly over the head that rests beneath the clods of the valley. As sleep that overtakes us at night, leads us imperceptibly and gently through its long watches, and we neither number nor heed its hours, so will coming centuries revolve, and on the morning of a new world, we shall wake as from a dream to stand before the tribunal of the great Judge. To-day, we are upon the stream of time 5 to-morrow, we are floated forth upon the ocean of eternity. There is no intermediate state of being — no line of separation between this world and the next. Another step, and we have entered on the world of everlasting retribution. But what retribution is it to which we are destined? Momentous question! Is it to that world of peace and joy ) or is it to those regions of perturbation and pain? Is it to those calm skies where no tempest rages and no billows roll 5 or is it to the eternal agitations of that lake of fire? O, tell me, were it not a melancholy state of existence to be gliding down the stream of time under the awful uncertainty whether it will land you in the realms of bliss, or the regions of wo?