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"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.". 1 TIM. iii. 15, 16. "Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning." ROM. XV. 4.

WE have in the existing church what the Church before the Flood had not, a written rule of faith. This is an inestimable privilege. "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son." We have all that Adam, and Enoch, and Noah had, and very much more, far more clearly revealed. In this introductory chapter let me make some remarks on this precious Record.

The Bible is not a disquisition on astronomy, or philosophy, or geology, or other science. Man can wait the slow process of discovery in science, but he cannot wait a single moment for an answer to the question, "What must I do to

be saved?" because in that moment his soul may be required of him. It is, therefore, wisely and beneficently arranged, that the results of science shall be from slow discovery; and it is no less beneficently arranged that the disclosure of the way of salvation shall be instant and complete. The Bible, therefore, leaves the Copernican and the Ptolemaic systems of astronomy to settle their disputes, and replies primarily to the anxious question, "What must I do to be saved?" The Bible is not a discovery; it is a revelation. Between these two words there is a broad and important distinction. A discovery is that which man makes, and which man can enlarge; a revelation is that which God gives, and which God alone can add to. When Columbus found America, he made a discovery; and subsequent voyagers have left mankind better acquainted with that continent than he himself was: it was a discovery that man could make, and that man can still mend. But the Bible is not a discovery which has been reached by the soaring wing, or by the sustained and persevering industry of man; it is a revelation that comes down from heaven in all its beauty and in all its completeness, so much so, that he that attempts to add to it takes the place of God, and "shows himself as if he were God," professing to mend what is already perfect, and to add to that which God has pronounced complete.

The Bible is an eminently popular book; it is emphatically the book, not for the college, nor for the scientific hall, but for the people. The figures which it employs are drawn from the most familiar and every day experience; the coloring spread over it is, in the nineteenth century, fresh as it was when it was first given, and is still fitted to attract and arrest the multitude. Human works endure, and are popular, in proportion as they partake of this universality. The Bible has the great element of catho

licity in its bosom; it is a book not for a coterie, nor for a sect, nor for a party, but for all mankind. And while it speaks to all at once, it speaks to each separately, with not less distinctness and emphasis. The great congregation can listen to God's voice sounding in the Bible; the solitary man in his closet can hear its sweet chimes in his soul also; it provokes a resonant echo in the heart of the humblest listener. Like God's own omnipresence, the Bible reaches to the loftiest spirit, and prescribes the laws and the direction of his orbit; and it descends to the humblest artisan, and tells him at once, in its own majestic and paternal tones, how to be happy and holy for ever. All history, all criticism, all hermeneutics, (if I may use a long word,) all archæology, are not, and may not be, substitutes for the Bible, nor do they add to the Bible; they are meant simply to show the Bible in its own exclusive and dominant position. When the critic sits down to illustrate the Bible, he simply tries to put it before us just as it was put before the Corinthians, so that we may, from the standing point which the Corinthian Christian and the Roman Christian had, see the same glory sweep by, and hear the same voice speak from the heavens to our listening and obedient heart.

The Bible is composed of a great many books, and books that are cumulative (if I may use the expression) and progressive. Genesis gives the unity, the origin, the apostasy of our race, and the promise of a Saviour. Leviticus, Exodus, and Deuteronomy, are the outlines and shadows of the approaching Sun, seen by Levi, in some such way as the sun in the firmament is seen by the astronomer through a smoked lens: the eye of the one is not able to endure its intensity; the minds of the others were not prepared for the full blaze, the meridian splendor, of the Sun of righteousness. Job is a specimen of the

deep yearning and craving of the human heart, amid the waves and billows of sorrow and affliction, for a comforter and redeemer. Solomon is a manifestation of human wisdom in its loftiest discoveries, but of its unsatisfactoriness in them all. Ruth is for the genealogy of the Saviour -important, because it presents to us a beautiful link in that genealogy. Isaiah brings into the desolations of the Captivity the splendors of a glorious day. Ezekiel gives us visions of the future temple, the spread and triumphs of the kingdom of the Messiah. Haggai sees the temple. lighted up with a glory to which the first temple was a stranger. Malachi, like an early morning star, heralds in the approaching rays of the Sun, saying, "Unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness rise;" and, after four hundred years of silence, John the Baptist appears as if he were Malachi risen from the dead, responding to his prophecy, by saying, "Behold the Lamb. of God, that taketh away the sins of the world." The Gospels unfold the biography of the Son of God. The Acts of the Apostles carry into practical development the functions, the attributes, and powers with which they were invested; and the Apocalypse is the close of all the glories of the past, the prophetic dawn of all the splendors of the future, telling us in words, sure as rising and setting suns, that as the world began with paradise, the world shall close with paradise again.

In looking at the whole Bible we find the following data: It contains in all sixty-six books, by forty different writers. It presents history, biography, parable, letters, proverbs, poems, speeches. Some of them were written by kings, some by shepherds, some by herdsmen, some by vine-dressers, some by tent-makers, some by a physician. They were composed in different circumstances, in successive centuries, in various phases of joy, of sorrow, of affliction, and of tribulation.

Between the first writer in Genesis, and the last writer in the Apocalypse, fifteen hundred years intervened. Now, must we not conclude, in the exercise of common sense, that in men of so varying professions, placed in so varying circumstances, subject each to his peculiar and idiosyncratic trials, there is evidence of special inspiration, when we find that without collusion there is perfect concord, without preconcert perfect harmony, that without design or adjustment their notes, not from nearness but relation, should constitute the varied harmonies of heaven? Is it not evidence that there must have been struck, to guide and to develop them, one grand key-note, Christ, and him crucified? In one part of this wondrous book the scholar is addressed in language so exquisitely beautiful, in thoughts so freshly drawn from the depths of our human experience, that he listens, and admires as he listens. In another part, the weary artisan who has returned from his day's work, bears the voice of his Father, and finds that voice his noblest opiate and his sweetest lullaby. In one part the Bible speaks to babes; in another part it speaks to grown men. It draws its imagery from agriculture, from commerce, from politics, from poetry, from nature, and from art; so that there is not a human being, however strange and peculiar his taste, who shall not find in this wonderful book the common Christianity conveyed in those formulas and figures, and illustrated by those analogies which come home to his heart with the greatest emphasis, and convey most vividly the great truths that belong to his everlasting peace. If a shepherd wants to read his Bible, he will find allusions that will make it familiar to him as household words: if a king sits down on his throne to read the Bible, he will meet with illustrations there that are meet for the inmate of the largest and the most splendid palace; if the artisan, or the sailor, or the soldier, read the Bible,

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