tion-the only, and the sufficient rule of faith and practice, is, and must be false.

We close this chapter with the language of the great and venerable Wesley. "I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God; just hovering over the gulf; till a few moments hence, I am no more seen! I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing,—the way to heaven; how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way; for this very end he came down from heaven. He hath written it down in a book! O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it; here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be 'homo unius libri.'"*

Most wondrous book! Bright candle of the Lord!
Star of eternity! the only star

By which the bark of man can navigate

The sea of life, and gain the coast of bliss

Securely; only star which rose on time
And on its dark and troubled billows, still,
As generation drifting swiftly by

Succeeds generation, throws a ray

Of heaven's own light, and to the hills of God,
The eternal hills, points the sinner's eye.--POLLOK.

*A man of one book.

CHAPTER IV.

TRUE RELIGION IN HARMONY WITH THE DIVINE NATURE. IT IS INFINITE--INTELLIGENT--BENEVOLENT-LOVE-JUST-HOLY-UN

CHANGEABLE-SPIRITUAL.--ITS RELATION TO THE TRINITY.-CUI

BONO OF THE TRINITY.-TAYLOR.-NEANDER.

"The hand of God

Has written legibly that man may know
The glory of the Maker."-WARE.

"The depth

Of glory in the attributes of God,
Will measure the capacities of mind:
And as the angels differ, will the ken

Of gifted spirits glorify Him more."-WILLIS.

As true religion is founded on the doctrine of divine existence, and by special arrangement is revealed to the world, and sustains a necessary relation to revelation as it does to God, so it must also harmonize with the revealed nature of God. There must be no incongruity here: religion must be a true exponent of the character of its author.

God is an infinite being. A religion arising from his nature and revealed by him must partake of the infinity of its source. Being divine in its

origin, divine in its nature, and intended to display his glory under an infinite and eternal administration, it must embrace propositions, motives and influences which share the grandeur and mystery of infinity. Were it not so, it would not be worthy of God, nor adapted to the constitution of immortal beings made in the image of God. Religion is not a created existence; creation had a beginning and may have an end; but religion, springing from the very essence of Jehovah, is like its glorious author, infinite and eternal. Without this trait, it would not, nay, could not, be what it is designed to be by the Deity, and what it is expected to be by his creatures,—an infinite good to holy and immortal intelligences. Without this trait, it must eventually cease to interest the exalted, and still improving intellects who shall dwell in God's presence and forever circle his throne. The minds of men, even, are adapted to the investigation of infinite and eternal subjects. To answer its declared purposes, religion must furnish the minds it is intended to make blissful with themes of eternal thought and contemplation. God reveals himself as the highest source of interest and happiness in the whole universe. It is religion that binds moral beings

to God, and derives from him to them the bliss for which they were created. God is the fountain, religion is the stream. As the fountain is infinite, so must be the stream that flows from it. As the happiness of God's moral subjects will consist with no abatement of interest in the religion he has given them, there is a necessity that its elements be divine, and that in their combination they form an infinite whole.

Again, God is an intelligent being, and in this respect also religion is conformed to the divine nature. It has an intellect as well as a heart. The character which some people seem fond of giving to religion is a degradation of the subject. They resolve it all into sympathy, or a sickly sentimentalism which can see little or no difference between vice and virtue. In the estimation of such the most wilful and incorrigible offenders are only "erring children," and the greatest crimes are regarded in the light of mere misfortunes, which may excite pity, but must call into exercise no sterner virtue. True, religion has a heart, but it is not all heart. It is benevolent, but not blindly so; a benevolence without eyes or ears, without sense or reason, is unworthy of religion as it is of God. Were such the chief character

istic of religion, it would indeed be, as is unjustly supposed by certain who are inflated with intellectual pride, only fit to occupy the attention of children and old women.

We insist upon it, there is no less of the intellectual than the emotional in this great subject. God is the highest and most perfect intelligence. He reveals himself to the intelligence of the universe. His laws are highly intellectual, embodying in a few well-selected words the most consummate wisdom,-they are "the brightest efflux of his essential wisdom-the visible beauty of the Most High."* The motives of his word are addressed to the intellect. True, they aim to excite our love and awaken our fears, but this is done only through our intellectual perceptions of their nature and force. Love and fear without an intellectual basis, are no part of true religion. They are rather the incipient states of two false systems, one of superstition, the other of fanaticism. Frames and feelings, joys and ecstacies, sympathy and love, accompany religion, and as elements or fruits sustain important relations to it, but the foundation of the whole is intelligence and principle. Where there is a corresponding * Wesley.