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النشر الإلكتروني

THE GUILT OF NEGLECTING THE BIBLE.

BUT amidst the unnumbered talents that are distributed on earth, there is one which, in point of real value, holds a pre-eminent and distinguished place. That talent is the Record of Heaven-the Gospel of the Son of God. It is by virtue of this talent we are taught the relative importance of every other one, and are brought to fix the paramount claims of the Divine Author of all our mercies. Awful, indeed, is the responsibility which this bestowment involves! It were better never to have been born, than to be guilty of abusing it. Salvation slighted, will issue in the final overthrow of our happiness-in the eternal ruin of our souls. The possession of this talent heightens the value, and augments the responsibility of every other one. It sheds light on all the relations of time, and exhibits them in their solemn connexion with eternity.

SHORT SENTENCES.

THE Scriptures teach us the best way of living, the noblest way of suffering, and the most comfortable way of dying.

God has given us four books:-the Book of Grace, the Book of Nature, the Book of the World, and the Book of Providence. Every occurrence is a leaf in one of these books. It does not become us to be negligent in the use of any of them.

ONE way of reading the Bible with advantage is to pay it great homage; so that when we come to any part which we cannot connect with other passages, we must conclude that this arises from our ignorance, but that the seeming contrarieties are in themselves quite reconcilable.

A sagacious discerner would think every letter of the Lamentations, and part of the prophecy of Jeremiah, written with a tear; every word, the sound of a breaking heart; and the writer a man of sorrows, who scarce ever breathed but in sighs, or spoke but in groans.

FAITH.

THE true faith of our religion is in that state of mind which a distinct apprehension of our present relations to God, and their future consequences, beyond all importance of worldly things, hath arrested and impressed. That the angry Almighty became a man, that Himself might be our Saviour from destruction, is the paramount relation, and on which the very present existence of the world depends; and, therefore, well may the faith of our religion be distinctively termed faith in Christ, the same impressed mind where the trembling and humility of men escaping from destruction, as the little bird flies low and coweringly and with a half chirrup of gladness from the hand of the fowler, are just passing into joy unbounded; where together, in the hope and fear of futurity, they become parts of the same love. And love is exalted,-an admiration, a gratitude,

-to the point, where, in all our actions, we would beware disregard to his injunctions who hath become our Redeemer; and more, would sacrifice all for his glory.

SELF-ESTIMATION REPROVED.

WE may walk forth with the beauty of earth beneath our feet, and the star of heaven in our eye; and our souls consent to the loveliness of organized nature; and our hearts overflow with silent worship of the Great Author;-but this is not enough; and there is neither power of instruction, nor example, nor hope, nor fear, sufficient, in such exercises of moral intellect, to raise the prostrate world from its debased conditions. There is a better calculation in Christianity for poor man, above the pity or contempt of vain intellects, or the generous efforts of the more truly wise. It waits for no conditions of wisdom or greatness. It takes not the bold speculator on the heights of natural religion first by the hand, nor hails him the greatest favourite of Heaven. It defies his calculations of merit. oversteps the control of circumstances. The dungeon and the lazar-house, and the purlieus of lowest humanity, it searches for the contrite heart; and raises it to a higher gratitude than of natural religion, and the capacity of a greater moral worth. A rainbow on the dim tears of the penitent, and an immortal hope in his heart;— he rises above the anxieties of low care and his former sins, a new man, more sublime, in his change, than Brutus of old when he threw aside his idiocy and disenthralled Rome. It is the re

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Temption of those who can least help themselves; of the most despised soul from the meanest pollution; and stripping it of its vile accompaniments, it purifies it more and more, and at last places it in the bright jewellery of the sainted heavens.

NOTHING ABOUT THE SOUL UNIMPORTANT.

THERE is, in the slightest motion of the meanest soul, something worthy of attention beyond all the aspects of the congregated stars, and more sublime a thousand fold; because, disregarded at present, it is part, causal or indicative, of an incalculable future magnitude,-a thing over which the great final judgment is to be held,-worthy of the approbation or formal denunciation of God and the consentaneous verdict of archangels, swelling in consequences of woe or joy through all eternity, when the planets, to which philosophers look more earnestly now, are extinguished or forgotten in their spheres. That over the being before us hangs an awful judgment, to himself and us uncertain whether of acquittal or condemnation, invests him with a sacred and solemn interest; and, as in the case of all criminals, denies him to a sneer. And who shall sneer? Not surely he who is going before the same tribunal for a participation in the same crimes? Eternity laughs at the little distinctions of earth; and long ere an eternity of woe could go by, the proudest intellects in its dark kingdom must find themselves but on a level with the meanest.

CHRISTIANITY FOUNDED ON FACTS.

WHEN the Almighty was pleased to introduce, by the advent of the Messiah, a more perfect and permanent economy of religion, he founded it entirely on facts, attested by the most unexceptionable evidence, and the most splendid miracles. The apostles were witnesses, who, by the signs and wonders they wrought, made that appeal to the senses of men, which had been previously made to their own, and the doctrines which they taught in their writings, were little more than natural consequences resulting from the undoubted truth of their testimony. If they wish to inculcate the doctrine of a resurrection and future judgment, they deem it sufficient to appeal to the fact of Christ's resurrection, and session at the right hand of God. They present no evidence of a future state, except what ultimately terminates in the person of the Saviour, as the first begotten from the dead; and most anxiously warn us against resting our hope of salvation on any other basis than that of a sensible sacrifice, "the offering of the body of Christ once for all." Thus whatever is sublime and consolatory in the Christian religion, originates in facts and events which appealed to the senses, and passed in this visible theatre, though their ultimate result is commensurate with eternity. In order to rescue us from the idolatry of the creature, and the dominion of the senses, he who is intimately acquainted with our frame, makes use of sensible appearances, and causes his Son to become flesh, and to pitch his tent amongst us, that by faith in his crucified humanity, we may ascend, as by a mystic ladder, to the abode of the Eternal.

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