the man that believes that the Bible is not the book of God. But what is a miracle? A miracle does not prove the book to be from God: it proves it to be supernatural; it is simply an arrest of the continuity or order of things, calling upon man to listen. The book itself may be from below, or it may be from above: it must be more than human if nature has been made to pause in order to hear what is said. Its divinity depends on its interior contents. But there is another proof besides miracles; I mean prophecy. The old deists used to say that prophecy was so obscure that they could not understand beginning or end of it; modern deists say it is so plain that it must have been written after ́the events took place. How contradictory are these philosophical sceptics, these freethinkers! One has only to look at ancient prophecy and compare it with modern history, to see how interesting and conclusive the evidence is. We find the descendants of Shem, Ham, Japheth, Ishmael, Babylon, Tyre, and Nineveh, not generally, but minutely testifying to the truth of the prophecies of God. The Jews sifted through every land, like seeds through a sieve, but taking root in and incorporated with none; Nineveh recently dug from its grave, (and Nahum said that God would lay it in its grave,) Tyre awakening from its ruins, Babylon emerging from its molten masses, the Seven Churches of Asia, the Arab in the desert, the Ishmaelite in the wild, the African on his burning sands, — are all standing demonstrations of the inspiration of the writers of Holy Scripture, and the traveller can see for himself that "holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." But of all arguments in favor of the truth of the Bible, it seems to me that the experimental one is the best; and he that reads it longest, studies it deepest, prays over it most earnestly, will have a conviction that the Bible is divine, that syllogisms will never shake, that superstition will never waste, and that infidelity will never laugh out of his mind. Let me show what I mean by experimental evidence. Suppose I send out my servant for a bottle of ink; the servant returns with a bottle of Morrell's best black ink. I ask, how do you know it is ink? The servant answers, "I asked for ink, and the shopman handed a bottle over the counter as ink, and Ink' is on the label outside." That would be external evidence. Not satisfied with this, I determine to have internal evidence; and I send the ink to a chemist, who analyzes a part of it, and he says it contains so much gall, so much water, so much lampblack, so much gum, so much vinegar, and other materials; and he says, these are the component parts of ink. But not satisfied with this, I dip my pen, and write a letter to the friend that I love, and I find that it writes beautifully, and the ink stands jet black and true; it remains days or years undestroyed, undiscolored in the least degree. This is experimental evidence. We have all these evidences for the book of God. You have historical or external evidence, in witnesses; you have the internal evidence, in the most sifting, searching tests and analysis; and you have the experimental evidence, that you never trusted a promise and that promise failed, you never sought for comfort and that comfort was withheld, you never asked for light and that light was not given you. Ask the peasant on the hills, and I have asked, amid the mountains of Braemar and Dee-side,- how do you know that the book is Divine, and that the religion you profess is true? You never read Paley? "No, I never heard of him." You have never read Butler? "No, I have never heard of him." Nor Chalmers? "No, I do not know him." You have never read any books on evidence? books." Then how do you "Know it! Tell me that the "No, I have read no such know this book is true? Dee, the Clunie, and the Garawalt, the streams at my feet, do not run; that the winds do not sigh amid the gorges of these blue hills; that the sun does not kindle the peaks of Loch-na-Gar; tell me my heart does not beat, and I will believe you; but do not tell me the Bible is not Divine. I have found its truth illuminating my footsteps; its consolations sustaining my heart. May my tongue cleave to my mouth's roof, and my right hand forget its cunning, if I ever deny what is my deepest inner experience, that this blessed book is the book of God." Let us cleave to the Bible, and suffer nothing to be a substitute for it, nothing to supersede it. The Church cannot be our Bible. The Fathers contradict each other, and they will not do. Let us cleave to our Bible, and hold it fast at all hazard; it is the anchorage ground of the Church. That Church will ride out the storms of coming ages whose anchorage ground is the word of God, and the word of God alone. Let us read this book, in the full light of every other portion of the book. I like exceedingly Bagster's Bible, in which he gives such a mass of references. One diamond best cuts another, and one text best explains another. We shall get immense light from reading the Bible in its own light alone. For instance, if you read one text, "God tempted Abraham;" do not stop there, but go and read another text, "No man is tempted of God;" then you ascertain the former to mean, that God tried Abraham as an experiment, that God tempts no man to sin. You read, in one part, "God repented that he had made man ;" to understand that, read another text, "God is not man that he should repent;" thus you understand that God changed his movement according to the prescriptions of his own wisdom, and not that he is moved with human passion. Read the verse, "Work out your salvation;" but do not stop there, or you will become a mere legalist, but read on, "for it is God that worketh in you to will and to do of his good pleasure." You will then rise to the standard of a real Christian. Read the Bible, in the next place, impartially. Some read the New Testament, and not the Old; some read the promises and not the precepts; some the precepts and not the promises. Read the whole book of God. Let us read it, in the next place, with special reference to our personal and practical improvement. Let us read our Bible as sinners seeking to be saved in the name of the Lord Jesus, with constant reference to our personal improvement. When the Israelites were dying in the wilderness, they did not care to try what brass the serpent was made of; they looked at it, and were healed. When their children were fed by manna in the desert, they did not set their wits chemically to analyze it; they ate it, and lived. And when we open our Bible, let us leave critics and commentators behind us, and study God's blessed word in the spirit of impartial investigation and fervent prayer; and He that wrote the book will lead us to the knowledge of the book, for, unlike the authors of other books, the Author of this is always near to explain himself. The Bible is a book for the times. It exposes all error as it emerges, and contains all seasonable truth. It finds the human race like a lost ship upon a stormy and unknown sea, it presents the light that leads them to heaven. It relights in the human bosom the lamp of truth, rekindles in the heart the love of God, restores to the individual the sabbath of the soul. It gives dignity to the meanest duty, and it tells us of forgiveness for the greatest sin. It sets obedience in the bosom of benedictions, and clothes its severest precepts in precious promises. To the grandeur of the man it adds the glory of the saint. It is a book not made by a people, but a book that made a people, and will people heaven with its noblest and best inhabitants. The Bible is the fountain of our asylums, our charities, our hospitals, and the thousands and thousands of means of benefiting the poor, the needy, and the destitute. How much are we indebted to that book! It consecrates our weddings, it furnishes names for our children, it hallows the green sod beneath which the ashes of our dead repose. Thousands upon thousands declare that to the Bible, under God, they are indebted for their richest and their deepest joys. I have no fear of the Bible perishing. Sickness will not let it go; sorrow will not let it go; affliction will not part with it. Man's aching heart will cling to the Bible as the only comforter, in a world in which there are such miserable comforters besides. Other books are popular for a day, but they are outstripped by the discoveries of man; but the Bible is as fresh to-day as it was when it was written. Time writes no wrinkles upon the brow of the word of God. In other books the discoveries of to-day render foolish the statements of yesterday. We are obliged to offer excuses for Shakspeare, and to say, it was the age that made him write so. We must offer apologies for Plato and for Cicero, arising from the circumstances in which they were placed. The Bible disdains apologies; it asks for none, it needs The age is behind it. never yet has got before it. From Jerusalem, as from a distant capital of the world, has gone forth a book that has been the delight of the wise, the joy of the wretched, the salvation of the guilty, the hope of the dying; the ornament, the dignity, the glory, of the human race. none. "Yon cottager who weaves at her own door, Pillow and bobbins all her little store, She, for her humble sphere by nature fit, Has little understanding, and no wit; Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true, — |