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SELECT LECTURES.

IV.

The Literary Attractions of the Bible.

BY REV. JAMES HAMILTON, F. L. S.,

MINISTER OF THE SCOTCH CHURCH, REGENT SQUARE.

DELIVERED BEFORE THE

YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION,

IN EXETER HALL, LONDON.

NOVEMBER 27, 1849.

IV.

The Literary Attractions of the Bible.

GOD made the present earth as the home of man; but

had he meant it as a mere lodging, a world less beautiful would have served the purpose. There was no need for the carpet of verdure or the ceiling of blue; no need for the mountains, and cataracts, and forests; no need for the rainbow; no need for the flowers. A big, round island, half of it arable, and half of it pasture, with a clump of trees in one corner, and a magazine of fuel in another, might have held and fed ten millions of people; and a hundred islands, all made on the same pattern, big and round, might have held and fed the population of the globe. But man is something more than the animal which wants lodging and food. He has a spiritual nature, full of keen perceptions and deep sympathies. He has an eye for the sublime and the beautiful, and his kind Creator has provided man's abode with affluent materials for these nobler tastes. He has built Mont Blanc, and molten the lakes in which its shadow sleeps. He has intoned Niagara's thunder, and has breathed the zephyr which sweeps its spray. He has shagged the steep with its cedars, and besprent the meadow with its king-cups and daisies. He has made it a world of fragrance and music-a world of brightness and symmetry

a world where the grand and the graceful, the awful and the lovely, rejoice together. In fashioning the home of man, the Creator had an eye to something more than convenience, and built not a barrack, but a palace-not a Union-workhouse, but an Alhambra; something which should not only be very comfortable, but very splendid and very fair; something which should inspire the soul of its inhabitant, and even draw forth the "very good" of complacent Deity.

God also made the Bible as the guide and oracle of man; but had he meant it as a mere lesson-book of duty, a volume less various and less attractive would have answered every end. A few plain paragraphs, announc ing God's own character and his disposition toward us sinners here on earth, mentioning the provision which he has made for our future happiness, and indicating the different duties which he would have us perform-a few simple sentences would have sufficed to tell what God is, and what he would have us do. There was no need for the picturesque narrative and the majestic poem-no need for the proverb, the story, and the psalm. A chapter of theology, and another of morals; a short account of the incarnation and the great atonement, and a few pages of rules and directions for the Christian life, might have contained the practical essence of Scripture, and have supplied us with a Bible of simplest meaning and smallest size. And in that case the Bible would have been consulted only by those rare and wistful spirits to whom the great hereafter is a subject of anxietywho are really anxious to know what God is, and how themselves may please him. But in giving that Bible, its divine Author had regard to the mind of man. He knew that man has more curiosity than piety—more taste than sanctity; and that more persons are anxious to hear some new, or read some beauteous thing, than to

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