himself, who, through negligence, or perhaps intentionally, has taken laudanum, and fallen into a stupor? I know not -he may, or he may not awake-I cannot tell. Just so of him who believes error to be truth. Perhaps he may one day come right, or, perhaps, he may go to the bar of Christ without it. Who shall say-who shall presume, that after God has given us a Revelation, which he thought support. ed by sufficient evidence-after he has taught us the doctrines of grace in a manner which he thought sufficiently clear, who, I say, dares presume, that He will make provisos and exceptions for every man who chooses to be. lieve something else, or nothing at all?

SERMON Χ.

"And searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so. Therefore many of them believed."

Acts, xvii. 11, 12.

It was the observation of a great Roman philosopher, that the mass of mankind derive their opinions of every sort from mere prejudice. Whether the remark be correct or not, in its entire dimensions, we need not now inquire. Certain it is, for who with his eyes open can doubt, that we often embrace sentiments on trust, and permit them to exercise undisputed dominion over the mind, while at the same time we remain ignorant of the reasoning, if there be any, to which they appeal for support. Against this kind of feeling, and against the positive and persecuting spirit which it always inspires, the apostle Paul was called incessantly to struggle. Look at him where we will, apart from the instance related in the text, and we find his preaching resisted from the outset; and why? Because he was not sheltered by the Bible? Because he ever swerved from that great statute-book, which, and which alone, he ought to have taught? No; none of this. The complaint always took another direction: he neglected the traditions of the elders; or he had some hard sayings who could hear them? or he made the words of truth and soberness ring rather too loudly over the slumbers of conscience. This was his crime: he opposed opinions of long standing, and peculiarly comfortable to impenitence, whether true or false nobody appeared to have asked; he opposed them, and he must be wrong. To this convenient and fashionable logic, I have already said there was one illustrious exception. When the apostle visited Berea, a town of Macedonia, he found the citizens disposed to be candid. They felt goaded, indeed, by his doctrines, but they took a manly and dignified course. They did themselves the justice to go and search the sacred Scriptures daily, whether those things were so; and the consequence was, one of the most natural consequences, too, in the world, that many of them believed. Now, the sentiment which the text first discloses, is one which sound philosophy and common sense conspire to confirm; and that is, that in the concerns of religion we ought ever to cherish a spirit of impartial and industrious inquiry for the truth. Indeed, we might go further, and say that a temper of this kind is essential to every investigation in which we embark; but it is peculiarly so on a subject which involves the destinies of eternal being, because there a willing ignorance cannot exculpate the mistakes it may harbor, nor does the conviction of error, if it arrive at too late a period, bring with it the certainty of effectual cure. I am aware that to intrust every man with his own conscience, and with his own opinions, has been pronounced the patronage of skepticism. But even in that case, it might become a very doubtful problem, whether any thing be gained in forcing a man to receive sentiments by compulsion, which he would renounce from choice; or, in other words, whether he had better be an infidel or a hypocrite, whether the duplicity of pretending to good principles be a desirable substitute for the candor of confessing he never had any. Be this as it may, the business of religion lies exclusively between conscience and its God. To pretend, therefore, that " the grace of God which bringeth salvation" hath not " appeared unto all men," and that all men have not equally the right of examining the credentials it bears, is a creed to which the world is either too old or too young to subscribe. "Ignorance is" no longer "the mother of devotion;" and how far soever such a maxim may have

suited the blindness of Pagan idolatry, or the brutality of Moslem fanaticism, or the derelictions of the Christian Church in the dark and dismal ages which gave it currency, we know, or ought to know, better. The Bible has no statute of limitation. It invites perusal-it requires scrutiny-it is going the rounds of the inhabited world, and knocking at every house, and hovel, and heart, for admittance. Singular indeed would it be that Inspiration itself has eulogised the Bereans for searching the sacred Scriptures daily, if they were not permitted to search them. Singular that the apostles, so far from claiming dominion over the faith of their brethren, should exhort them to "try the spirits," and to be thoroughly persuaded in their own minds, and to prove all things, that they might hold fast that which was good, and to be able to give to every one that inquired a ground of the hope that was in them, and to search the sacred Scriptures for the very best reasons to be imagined, because, that in them they thought they had eternal life. And if we go higher still, if we instance the Lord Jesus himself, in whom alone any consistent claim of infallibility can rest,-how strange does he appear in reasoning with the Jews, by an appeal to their own prophets,-in directing them carefully to consult the sacred volume, to see whether it testified of him, in stooping to the humblest capacity, to enlighten, and discipline, and instruct it, in comparing, explaining, and enforcing the evidence of the prophecies and miracles, and in predicating the condemnation of his enemies entirely on their voluntary ignorance, or their unreasonable opposition. How strange is all this, if the Bible be not the master to which every individual must stand or fall? I have no wish to erect a formal hostility to any ecclesiastical restrictions of the use of the Bible,-nor, on the other hand, am I conscious of any particular apprehensions from speaking as I think. But I do believe, that if any thing on earth be common property, it is the sacred Scriptures; and not only so, but to withhold from the meanest intellect its rightful access to them, is to exercise despotism over the mind; and, although it may ex. tenuate the guilt of sin in one quarter, it gives it redoubled aggravation in another. But, after all, this is saying but little. The text not only establishes the right, but enforces the duty, of reading the Bible. This, and this alone, is the volume which discloses our relations to the Almighty. The light of nature may do much, -" The Heavens may declare the glory of God, and the firmament show His handiwork," -but nothing short of a Revelation can depict Him in the attitude of dispensing the pardon of sin. Victims have bled-altars have smoked-the annals of every country have been crimsoned with the records of propitiatory death, -but all to no purpose. It is Inspiration alone which can safely say to the trembling suppliant, " Thy sins are forgiven thee." By how much, therefore, we are sinners, by just so much does the Bible become invested with an interest solemn and lasting as eternity. It comprises all the certainties of a future state-all the consistencies and adjustments of the Divine government-all the conditions on which sin may be pardoned, and all the hopes which such a pardon is calculated to inspire.

Now, my hearers, I do not wish to pry into the corners and crevices of every man's life, but I fear all of us might confess that our attention to the sacred Scriptures has been most deplorably disproportionate to the magnitude of the subjects on which they treat. If there be a book with which the mass of men are less acquainted than with any other of similar extent of circulation, it is not difficult to say what it is. Hundreds who have attained the age of manhood, and the dignity, besides, of the paternal relations, have not a Bible in their houses, or, if they have, it lies in