ing for your soul's profit, or your mind's pleasure, you will continually exclaim, with Tertullian: "I adore the fulness of the scriptures."

I remain, my dearest

Yours,

LETTER III.

,

I COME now, my dearest to speak of the bible as the book of God. If it is the wonder of Heaven to be independent of that book, it is the glory of earth to possess it.

"

If the spirits of the just made perfect" are admitted to behold the face of God, we, through the medium of the scriptures, may even here, understand somewhat of his character. If they are received into his glory, we may be led by his counsel.

But, alas! who, beholding the gross neglect, or wandering attention the scriptures generally receive, would imagine that their possession was any privilege! that they contained the revelation of "the mystery hid from ages and generations," and still withheld

from many nations and people! that they, and they only, made known to us "the way of peace!"

And yet, as far as our species is concerned, we may say, one sun! one bible! Shut that awfully glorious book, blot from the human memory all we have learnt from its pages, and it is as though you quenched the dayspring!-the whole world lieth in darkness! To guilty miserable man there remains no God!-no heaven!-no guide in life!—no support in affliction !-no victory over death! the grave becomes a fathomless abyss, and eternity spreads round him like the ocean, dark, illimitable, fearful! Open the bible again, the sun is restored, and with it, life, . glory, gladness, and strength! If all the minds now on earth could be concentrated into one, and that one applied the whole of its stupendous energies to the study of this single book, it would never apprehend its doctrines in all their divine purity; its promises in their overpowering fulness; its precepts in all their searching extent ;—even that glorious mind sufficient to exhaust the uni

verse, would only discover that the scriptures were inexhaustible. It is sad to contrast our indifference towards the sacred volume, with the ardent love manifested by the Old Testament saints, who had but a little portion of it, and that little closely veiled. We may perhaps think with envy of the visions vouchsafed to them, forgetful, that Abraham, who was called the friend of God, Jacob, who beheld heaven opened and the angels ascending and descending, Moses enveloped in the majesty of Mount Sinai,knew the plan of redemption less perfectly than the poorest Christian, who, with the spirit of grace in his heart, has the whole bible in his hand. Abraham rejoiced to see Christ's day, but he saw it through the dimness and the distance of two thousand years. Moses knew by the law, that the Lord was merciful, gracious, and long-suffering, but he knew not the plenitude of "grace and truth" revealed by Jesus Christ. Jacob recognized him as "the angel who delivered him from all evil," but not in his emphatic character—“ a propitiation for the sins of the whole world.”

The prophets were doubtless filled with believing, and magnificent ideas concerning "the glory to be revealed;"-but they saw not as we see, every separate ray merged in one radiant centre; every type, and every prophecy fulfilled in "the Lamb of God;" every single and scattered lineament united in the person of Christ. The gospel they had, but not like ourselves, "without spot or wrinkle;" a sun shining in its strength-a chain complete in every link-a whole perfect in every part! It was not to them that steady light, which casting its rays backwards, illumines the vista from Revelation to Genesis, which enables man to read the mind of God throughout the past, and thereby to read it for the future. They had not Christ visibly crucified before them, that great mystery which explains all others.

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And yet, incomplete as was their bible,

behold, how they loved it." And how should their stedfast faithfulness in the few things committed to them, confound us "upon whom the ends of the world are come;" the younger born, yet possessors of the more