striking manifestation of Jehovah's power, it is because you have no piety, and never felt any genuine filial gratitude toward the Giver of all the mercies which sustain you; but you should not scorn those who have.

Oh, every line of that inspired page is sweet, or reproving, or grand, or instructive, or cheering; but men love darkness rather than light, and the learned are too ignorant to understand the plainest words that ever were written, provided those words come from heaven!

CHAPTER XVI.

SCOFFERS OF THF LAST DAYS ARE WILFULLY IGNORANT OF BIBLE LANGUAGE.

"And the daughter of Zion is left as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers."

There was a man who had read Xenophon and Longinus, Cicero, and the Latin poets. He was applauded by his friends for what they called his mind. The pas sage quoted above, (and hundreds like it,) he said, appeared to him not only unmeaning, but weak, puerile, and inelegant. In process of time he was led by the notes of modern travellers, (seemingly by accident,) to remember that these little lodges are built for the habitation of one watcher, to preserve from the ravages of birds, &c., those oriental gardens. We are told that if we sail on the bosom of that gentle river, and look to the slope where the quiet sunshine rests on those lonely and solitary dwellings, during the stillness of evening, nothing on earth is more calculated to bring into the bosom a feeling

of desertion and desolation, than that image from the prophet's pen, picturing the decay of Jerusalem.

This self-important man afterwards confesssed that the deficiencies were in his own stupid soul, and that the language of the Bible was indeed the style of heaven.*

* Perhaps one confession ought to be made to the infidel world. It is, that Christians should not b: too loud in their voice of condemnation, so long as they practice the same sin which they reprove.

Christians believe that their heavenly Father has sent them a long, kind letter from heaven; that they owe it to him to read every line of it to their children, and make them acquainted with all interesting concomitant facts. For want of knowledge, half the youth of our nation have heretofore grown up scoffers. Rather than risk this, encounter any trouble or expense; better have a professor at college for every book in the Bible; better recite a morning lesson on every line in the book; better endanger the loss of all other knowledge. How is the actual practice of the church in these things? The sons of disciples, elders, and grayheaded ministers, are sent to school. Does the parent send word to the teacher, "Whatever else you may omit, see that you teach him of the ancient literature connected with the Bible?" No, this is not his charge, and this is not his expectation. He knows that his son will be taught daily, laboriously, and invariably, Virgil, Horace, &c. &c., hea then nonsense and filthy songs, which, if plainly translated before a company of brothel frequenters, many of them would turn away with a feeling of semishame! But if a college has a rule that the Bible is to be part of the course, it is an unpopular rule, and weakly observed, and the teachers are themselves ignorant of Bible facts and Bible language, We know that college officers used to tell the student, "Pass over this passage, it is too obscene;" but this charge would be the very cause of its being read in private, above all others. The haters of God have exclaimed, "the college is no place to learn religion ;" and this weak dogma Christians have obeyed scrupulously, and Bible facts and Bible language form no part of the nation's study. Books on these points (Lardner, Grotius, Shackford, Prideaux, &c. &c.) are almost out of print; they may be found in a preacher's library, but not always there,

CHAPTER XVII.

MEN HAVE LOVED DARKNESS RATHER THAN LIGHT.

We have endeavoured to hold up to view that strange tendency and natural leaning towards falsehood (in matters of religion) which we possess, without being aware of it. We will endeavour to illustrate this same truth by another process. It should be presented in another attitude. We think the weakness of props on which opposers rest gives a full exhibition of this truth. If men build a fabric of their eternal expectations on decayed weeds, whilst an enduring rock is close at hand, there is some strange reason for such a choice. There is something defective in his heart or in his head, who is content to cast away the Book of God, and venture all the terrors of the judgment day upon some one feeble cavil, which is annihilated as soon as a few facts are presented.

Out of many we must select a few (of such as we have heard urged most frequently) for samples.

Case 1.—An amiable lawyer, after pushing his toilsome but successful course for many years, at last won a seat in Congress. On his way to the meeting of that assembly he was taken with a disease which at first did not seem alarming. A physician, with whom he was on terms of intimacy, went to see him. This physician was one who thought the soul of great value. He believed the disease one of those which flatter but destroy. He felt impelled to tell his friend so, and to ask after his preparation for crossing the river of death. The lawyer answered him that he could not believe in Christianity. The doctor asked if he had ever investigated the matter? He

replied, that he had read such and such books on the subject, (naming over some five or six infidel authors,) and that he deemed this a sufficient research. Being asked if he had never read any thing on the other side, he confessed he never had. His friend told him that he deemed this a strange investigation, but would wish to hear the argument of his strongest confidence, that on which his hope leaned with the most quiet security? His answer was substantially as follows: "I can never believe in the darkness said to prevail over the land at the crucifixion of Christ. The strange silence of all writers, except the evangelists, disproves the statement, particularly the elder Pliny, who devoted a whole chapter to the enumeration of eclipses and strange things, would surely have told us of this occurrence had it been true." His friend the physician answered him with the following facts:—

"My dear friend, permit me to tell you where you obtained that statement concerning the silence of cotemporary authors, and the chapter of Pliny devoted to eclipses. You read it in the second volume of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. There would be some degree of force in the statement, were it not for one individual circumstance; that is, it is not true! A tree painted on paper may resemble an oak, but it is not an oak. There is not a word of truth in Mr. Gibbon's account, although the falsehood is polished. That which he calls a distinct chapter of Pliny devoted to eclipses seems to have taken your full credence. Pliny has no such chapter! It is only a sentence, an incidental remark as it were. It consists of eighteen words. I will repeat them to you, if you wish to hear them. The import of the remark is, that eclipses are sometimes very long, like that after Casr's death,

A man hears Pliny does and so does

when the sun was pale almost a year. of many things which he does not write. not mention the darkness, but Celsus does, Thallus and Phlegon, Origen, Eusebeas, Tertullian, and others, some of them Christians and some of them pagans." (The rea 'er can see Horn's Introduction, 1 vol., chap. ii.) "I am sorry you took the word of that author, splendid as were his talents, for he sometimes penned falsehood without scruple, if religion was his topic."

The sick man was silent-fell into a long deep revery― after a few days he said to a relation, "If what I read in youth gave my mind a wrong bias, I suppose I must abide the consequences, for I cannot investigate now." He fell into convulsions and died.

Reflections.-Poor man! The truths of the Gospel and the history of the Testament were presented to him, and he turned away. He read a statement against the Bible, made by a modern historian who hated Christianity, and he received it at once, without asking further! He took hold on a falsehood without one moment's delay or hesitation, relied upon it, and continued to believe it for twenty years, never asking after further testimony! Surely men love darkness rather than light. Ten thousand truthful facts were before him and around him, on the page of history-they favoured Christianity, and he did not observe or remember them. The first historic lie he met, satisfied him. It seemed opposed to revelation.