Elliott and Brainerd to the savages of the wilderness, and over broad continents and the islands of the sea it has kindled the pioneer watchfires of the millennial advent.

But, is this all? Nay, there is scarcely a great writer, or great thinker, or great actor of these last centuries, whose debt to the Bible, in a mere intellectual point of view, is not immense. It has quickened the life of nations, and given to enterprise a new, if not original, impulse. Milton studied its grandest lyrics before he penned his own immortal song. Bacon gathered its brightest gems to set in the frame of his own golden thought. Addison in every page betrays his obligation to its lofty morality as well as its majestic diction. Cowper suffused his lines with odors from the bruised flowers of Gethsemane, and who doubts that Washington was a braver and abler leader, and Wilberforce a more reliable statesman, and Chalmers a mightier thinker, through the power of this book?

Thus through literature, legislation, moral reform and all industrial enterprise its spirit has gone abroad. Not a sail unfurled upon the sea but owes something to its influence. Not a law on the statute book but has felt its shaping pressure. Not an iron wire that thrills with the mandate of a nation's will, or an iron track which bands a continent together, that exists independent of the impulse which the Bible has ministered.

And how endeared it is to millions of hearts! It is cherished with unutterable affection by those who would feel its loss like the blotting of the sun from heaven. They heard it read in early years by saintly lips now sealed in the silence of the grave. Its very words have that familiar yet solemn tone which distinguishes them from all others. They have been preached in the pulpit,

they have been paraphrased in song. The music of their speech has been heard at the bridal and at the burial, in the sanctuary and by the fireside. The volume itself was, perhaps, the very earliest memorial which affection bestowed, as hope gives the fond assurance that it shall be the last to fall from the trembling hand. A solemn awe, a reverential fear attended its first perusal, and every subsequent call to listen to its words has confirmed the impression that was then made. Its sentences are imbedded in the memory. Its promises are enshrined in the heart. What childhood repeated, age loves to rehearse, and graven on countless tombstones are traced the holy texts "that teach the rustic moralist to die," or speak the sacred hope of blessedness beyond the grave.

Thus highly is it prized. And is it all a mistake? Is this book the delusion of the soul? Is it a false guide? Is it a forged charter? We may, at least, presume not, so long as,

"What none can prove a forgery, may be true,

What none but bad men wish exploded, must."

XV.

TERMS OF THE LIFE ETERNAL.

"What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?"—MARK I. 17.

HAT a wonderful book the Bible is! The mar

WHAT a

vel of literature, the text-book of the world! Where is there anything like it in all the writings of men? It is the only book extant that can be called a book for all, or that is equally adapted to all. You put it into the child's hand, and he grows old reading it, but it has new charms to the last, and is unexhausted still. The hoary head bends over it-not less intent than the eyes that gleam out under the fair young browtracing lines that have been traced a hundred times, but which are still as fresh and bright as ever. Childish simplicity is taught the deepest truths, and readily apprehends them, while separate books or even chapters of the volume task the ingenuity and exhaust the learning of deep-read scholars. The peasant pores over it in his hovel and the nobleman in his palace, and it is alike a teacher for both. The thankful heart finds in it the language of praise, and the penitent heart adopts its forms of contrition. The soldier reads it in the camp, or in the intervals of battle, and the widow reads in it as she comes back from the new-made grave, "The Lord is thy husband." The patriarch of four-score reads it by his

fireside, and the lisping prattler on his knee is charmed by its stories from the old man's lips. How could you teach youth a simpler petition than our Lord's prayer, and how could the profoundest learning frame anything more comprehensive, appropriate or sublime?

Suppose you invited all the wisdom and genius of the world to-day to combine their energies to produce a textbook of morals and religion which should go alike to the Englishman's castle and the Hottentot's kraal, with Kane to the Polar Seas, and Livingston to African deserts, that the professor of law should tell his students to read for its style, and the very infidel should teach his child for its sublime morality-a book that should do more than the wisdom of all codes to shape the legislation of nations, and more than all science to overthrow the temples and the idols of pagan nations-a book that a mother should put in her boy's knapsack when he goes forth to the scenes of battle, and to which she turns herself for consolation when she learns that he sleeps with the untombed dead-a book that shall guide the footsteps of erring youth, and pillow the hope of the departing spirit -a book that shall cheer the prisoner in his cell, and that shall raise up Judsons for the heathen, and Howards for jails, and Wilberforces for the enslaved African-a book in which a Newton, a Herschel, a Brewster, and a Mitchel shall devoutly confess they discover truths more glorious than their telescopes reveal, and which shall have power to change the savage to a man-and does any one imagine that the ripest civilization of the nineteenth century, garnering up all the lore and experience of ages could produce such a book? Philosophers read Lord Bacon, and scholars study Plato, and in these men you find the ripest thought of centuries and of generations;

but what are they to the laborer or the school-boy-nay, how their brightest thoughts die out as a meteor-flash, when you read the wonderful parables of the man of Nazareth, or listen to the utterances of his Sermon on the Mount!

No wonder that the book is cherished. No wonder that precious memories of it are twined about the past, and that the brightest rainbow hues of the future are borrowed from the hopes it inspires. It is associated with all that is dearest to the human heart. The old family record grows almost sacred, interleaved with these pages. The dying parent goes to this fountain to find words of farewell counsel to those he leaves behind. Here is what we repeat at the bridal, here is what we read at the burial. Here is the chapter for family devotion, and here the text for the sanctuary. The richest bequest of parental piety comes from the teachings of this book, and with the last memorial of the departed we trace on the tombstone some "holy text" which it has enshrined.

What is the meaning of all this in connection with a book penned largely by shepherds and fishermen? There is but one answer. Here is God's text-book for the race, adapted to every capacity and to every lot. This tree of wisdom beneath whose shadow we gather to learn lessons beyond all that was taught in Platonic groves, is a tree of God's planting. It is rooted in the soil of the distant centuries. It spreads its fibres beneath Sinai and Calvary. The Spirit of God breathes through its whispering leaves, and the songs of prophets, and apostles, and martyrs yet wake living echoes beneath its branches. The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations, and its fruit is the fruit of the tree of life. Humanity itself pants for a place beneath its shade.