imagery, its reasoning, or any of those accidental ornaments which may be examined with respect to other books; but it comes to us as the word of our Master, the only, and the essential revelation of his will. It is in this view that it is unspeakably august: it is the oracle of God. And therefore St. Paul, when he speaks of the reception which his doctrine met with among the Thessalonians, says, "For this cause thank we God without ceasing, because when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of man, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh in you that believe." It is that body of knowledge which the infinitely wise God has deemed essential for us to be acquainted with. He has given us all that he knew to be best, and nothing more; so that it is precisely the knowledge contained in this volume which God has selected for his service. It is the wisdom that has descended from above, it is a knowledge essential, and in the comparison of which, all other knowledge, however valuable, appears insignificant. It is this book, and this book alone, which has revealed to us God,-which assures us of his gracious, great, and awful attributes. It has revealed to us his will, his government, his promises, the favour with which he regards the righteous, and the punishment that awaits those who are obstinately rebellious against his will. He has unfolded to us, in this book, his heaven, and that eternity to which we are hastening. No where else could we discover such things: we discover them all here. By this he has revealed to us most distinctly our duty, which otherwise we could never have known; he has determined exactly the rule of right and wrong, and which will be found adequate to guide us in all the emergencies of our earthly course. Not content with that, the Almighty has revealed to us in this book the most powerful motives to urge us to fulfil that duty; and then because he knew our weakness, has assured us how we may find succour to discharge it. And since all this would be difficult for such earthly and feeble creatures as we are, he has revealed to us in this book, above all, that great method of salvation, worthy of a God and suitable to sinners, by which the fallen might be restored and the perishing rescued: he has told us how we may obtain an interest in that great salvation, and he has further unfolded to us all those blessings to which it leads, that present and that eternal happiness for which Christ Jesus came into the world, and all those precious promises by which his people might be sustained before they reached that promised bliss. Without this revelation of God's will we should be in utter ignorance of that which it most concerns us to know; and with it we know that which may make us wise unto salvation, that which may guide us honourably through this world and bring us to a peaceful death, and then conduct us without fear into the presence of our Maker. It is said of those truths which this book reveals (and which this book alone reveals) that they are eternal life; and it has this peculiar advantage, that it does not address those truths to us in the way of reasoning, they are not the deductions from certain premises that we have laboriously collected from what is around us in the world, but it comes to us with a direct authority from our Maker, in the simplest and shortest forms and sentences, full of truth and full of glory; it tells us all that it concerns us to know. There may be many things obscure in this book; they were intentionally left so; but all this of which I have spoken is absolutely plain, so plain that any one may understand it. There may be many things in this book which are beyond our comprehension, but all this is level to that comprehension, and is calculated to instruct and edify even the understanding of a child. There may be many things wanting as far as some would capriciously and ignorantly imagine, but at least they cannot deny that all this is enough to guide the ignorant and corrupt sinner to eternal happiness, if only it be obeyed. It is this, then, my brethren, (and it must be repeated perpetually to the mind,) which constitutes the value of the book, that it is the revelation from God; that which our Maker has revealed as the rule by which man is to act, as containing all the advice we require to fulfil our duty, and as the means by which, as wretched sinners, we may be eternally saved. Having considered this book as the revelation of God's will, let us next look at its usefulness, and its tendency to secure those blessings which it reveals. The apostle classes it here in the very first word above the means of improvement we possess. "What advantage, then, hath the Jew; or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way, chiefly because that unto them were committed the oracles of God." As compared with the heathen, they had various great advantages, but of all their advantages this was the principal, that they possessed the Scriptures. It is clear that that advantage is increased by the reading of the New Testament, the plainest and the fullest part of the revelation of God. And if they possessed such an immense advantage over the heathen, in the fact of the Old Testament being put into their keeping, how much is our advantage above the heathen increased by the fact that we have the whole canon of Scripture, the complete revelation of God's will? If this passage is to be useful, it is obvious its influence depends much on the state of mind in which it is cited. When some one spake to our Lord of the blessedness of his earthly brethren from that close and intimate fellowship which they would have with him in his earthly ministry, our Lord said to that person, " Yea, blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it." Whatever advantage we possess in having the Scriptures in our hands, they will ultimately be of no service to us unless they lead us to obey them. We must constantly bear in mind that the Scriptures is a practical book; that they are given to us that we should heartily receive each one of the truths therein, meditate upon them till we love the truth, and that love should lead us to the consecration of our being to our Maker; that it should lead us to serve him in all the detail of our earthly life; and unless it does this, and leads us to obey him, eventually the possession of the Scriptures will be no blessing at all, but our blessing will then have been our curse. In order, then, to derive ultimately a blessing from Scripture, we must be sincere, dutiful, and candid; we must compare one part of Scripture with another, and endeavour honestly to ascertain the mind of God in reading it; and we must have a full resolution that what we read in his word shall be reduced to practice by his help. -- And then consider, in the next place, it is absolutely necessary, if the Scriptures are to be eventually of any service to us, that God the Spirit should become our teacher. This was the promise which was made to the Church of Christ, in the 54th chapter of Isaiah, "All thy children shall be taught of the Lord," a passage which does not refer to the gift of revelation, which might be truly called the revelation of the Lord, but which is employed by our Saviour to mark the difference between his disciples and others, where both had the gift of revelation. It therefore speaks of a personal teaching by the Almighty to his people. It speaks of that instruction which does not merely reach the understanding, but penetrates the heart; it is that instruction which is effectual, and which all the children of God enjoy: " All thy children shall be taught of the Lord." Unless he prepares the mind of man to welcome these truths, they are uniformly repelled. Our hearts being vitally turned away from God are indisposed to receive the truth, are indisposed to view, much less to follow, our duty. Unless God the Spirit prepares the heart of man, the Scriptures are uniformly repelled; either they are neglected, and a person will not read them, or he reads them with that prejudice on the mind which prevents his reception of the truth; he endeavours to avoid every fair inference from the truth he receives; he endeavours to buoy up his mind in confidence that he has understood the truth, while it has not led to its proper results; while that very knowledge he acquires, without obedience, will only, in the end, accumulate his guilt, and add to his condemnation. Yet many a man satisfies himself with the fact, that those truths rejected by others have been received by him, the truths which one seems to misunderstand have by him been comprehended, and thus the Scriptures, utterly abused, utterly neglected as to their true purpose, may eventually prove no blessing at all to his soul. This our blessed Lord has distinctly told us, when he says, "Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man who built his house upon the sand." That is, the hope of a person, clear in his knowledge of the Scriptures, and in that theoretical reception of the Gospel, which has not led to a change of heart and life, who has a foundation built on sand, altogether delusive; and when the test comes of the divine scrutiny at the last day, the whole fabric of his expectation and hope will be swept away without any possibility of its being reconstructed. Then it is necessary that God the Spirit should make this instruction effectual, and should prepare our minds to receive what God has revealed, that it might be the means of conversion and of obedience. Yet still the word of God has not been given in vain, nor is it the will of our Father in Heaven, that it should be read by sinners without profit. Though it must always be accompanied by the operation of the Holy Spirit on the heart, that operation does, in fact, accompany the serious reading of God's word, so that it may be properly classed among the most powerful of all the means of grace. The Psalmist speaks of it as the proper instrument for the conversion of sinners. When in the 19th psalm, and the 7th verse, he says, "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul." That is its first tendency; its intention and tendency is to convert the soul of the sinner who seriously investigates it :- "the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul." And this tendency it has beyond any other means which we possess. When our Lord constructed the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, he sufficiently intimated it, when at the close of that parable, he thus represents Abraham, as saying to the rich man, "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." That is, whatever means of arresting the attention you could imagine likely to produce that effect, there is none so powerful as those Scriptures which God has put into the sinner's hands. "If they hear not Moses and the prophets," if they will not attend to the revelation of the will of God by those who come to them with such credentials, and with instructions so plain, then there is no conceivable means which would have the same |