images of the Bible the charm of originality, the impress of the highest gifts, and the force of an endless life."

Sir William Jones, from his vast knowledge of Oriental literature, says: “I have regularly and attentively perused the Holy Scriptures, and am of the opinion that this volume, independently of its divine origin, contains more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more important history, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence, than can be collected from all other books in whatever age or language they may have been written." And even Rousseau, to the disgust of his fellow-unbelievers, felt himself obliged to say: "The majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration. The works of our philosophers, with all their pomp of diction, how mean, how contemptible, in comparison !"

It is also the most potential and creative book in the world. It is a greater power than any earthly king, conqueror, or dominion ever was. For a thousand years it has been the manual of Faith and Life, of supreme authority, to the best and most widely extended society existing among men. It has been the handmaid of the most salutary revolutions that have occurred in history. It has been the chief conduit of the grace which has begotten the noblest faith, the purest virtue, the sub

limest manhood, the most loving charity, the tenderest kindness, and the worthiest human saintship that ever adorned the earth.

Nor is there another book which has awakened so much interest and attention through the course of the ages, or that has exerted, or is now exerting, so much influence on the opinions, beliefs, hearts, wills, deeds, persuasions, and aspirations of mankind. There is not another book of which so many myriads of copies, in all tongues, have been, and still are being, issued, read, and studied by high and low, learned and unlearned, rich and poor, old and young, civilized and uncivilized. There is not another book so vastly and incessantly preached, commented on, expounded, treated of, attacked, and vindicated.

Full half the literature, study, and oratory of the whole earth stands in some relation to this book, and owes to it its creation or its preservation. There is no other book that has gathered around it an interest or love so intense, that has been so fiercely fought, that has been so earnestly and voluminously defended-no other book for which such multitudes of people have contended, suffered, and died, or would cheerfully die to-day, rather than consent to have it stricken from existence. Few of those who prize it most esteem and use it as they should; but, taking the facts as they are, there is no book at all

to be compared with this book in the interest, attention, and studious reverence it commands, or in its sway over the conscience, condition, soul, and activities of man. It stands out among all other books like a giant in a world of pigmies, like the sun among the planets of the solar system.*

Yea, above all books it is the charter of our dearest hopes and the spring of our most precious spiritual consolations. It tells of God and of His blessed Son, of earthly duties and of heavenly rest. But

"This collection of books has taken such hold of the world as no other. The literature of Greece, which goes up like incense from that land of temples and heroic deeds, has not half the influence of this book from a nation despised alike in ancient and modern times. It is read in all the ten thousand pulpits of our land. In all the temples of Christendom is its voice lifted up week by week. The sun never sets on its glowing page. It goes equally to the cottage of the plain man and the palace of the king. It is woven into the literature of the scholar and colors the talk of the street. It enters men's closets, mingles in all the grief and cheerfulness of life. The Bible attends men in sickness when the fever of the world is on them. The aching head finds a softer pillow when the Bible lies beneath. The mariner, escaping from shipwreck, seizes it the first of his treasures and keeps it sacred to God. It blesses us when we are born, gives names to half Christendom, rejoices with us, has sympathy for our mourning, tempers our grief to finer issues. It is the better part of our sermons. It lifts man above himself. Our best of uttered prayers are from its storied speech, wherewith our fathers and the patriarchs prayed. The timid man, about to wake from his dream of life, looks through the glass of Scripture and his eye grows bright; he does not fear to stand alone, to tread the way unknown and distant, to take the death-angel by the hand and bid farewell to wife and babes and home."-Theo. Parker's Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion, pp. 239 seq.

for what we have in it we should be like the Ephesians before Paul came to make known to them a higher God and a nobler Saviour than their “great Diana -even "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world." Without this we are only mysterious waifs of being, not knowing whence we came, what we are, for what purposes we are here, to whom we belong, or whither we are going-lost travellers in a world of doubt, dreaming of home and truth and God, but never finding either-denizens of a universe of mindless and inexorable laws, struggling with irresistible forces, haunted by ghostly imaginings, and ever in danger of being crushed to nothingness in a dread machine worn by the dust of its own grinding! There must be mind and heart and soul and wisdom and saving religion in the Bible, or such millions of people could not possibly find in it their lawgiver, prophet, friend, and dearest companion of life. Some of earth's greatest institutions are built on it, and such things cannot stand on chaff. Nothing but the most solid mountain-rock can sustain what rests on this immortal book.

And when the heavy hours of sorrow and bereavement come, and we hear afar the monotonous footfall of approaching Death, what is there outside the

teachings of this book to calm and comfort and soothe us? Not the discoveries of science, not the schemes of a godless philosophy, not even the sublime visions of a Dante or the lordly eloquence of a Milton, nor anything that this world's orators have uttered or this world's poets sung, can serve to compose the soul or light its passage out of this fading life. But when the melody of lyric songs has lost its charms, and the music of memory and her siren. daughters has been brought low, and every other voice becomes a mockery, then it is that the treasures with which this book is freighted-the Beatitudes which Jesus spake to the multitudes as they sat listening with breathless interest among the mountainlilies, and the words He uttered as He approached His final agony, and the sweet promises He left as His legacy to His sorrowing followers, and the precious story of His love unto death and victory over it for those who put their trust in Him, and His everlasting covenant never to leave nor forsake us,come to us as blessed evangels of peace which alone have power to compose our departing spirits, shine away from them the ugliness of death, and bear them on angelic arms to the waiting Paradise of God.

"Most wondrous Book! Bright candle of the Lord!

Star of eternity! Only star

By which the bark of man can navigate