thorough and constant prying into the deep things of God. It is not the work of an hour, or of a day, or of a few days of the year, but of a life-time. It is said that a man is known by the company he keeps. He will not long be unlike those with whom he daily associates. What, then, will be the influence upon the character of that man who habitually communes with such men as David, Isaiah, Paul, and John, and especially with him who "spake as never man spake." Will he not catch their spirit? Will he not feel his heart burn within him, as he listens to the words of those "whose conversation was in heaven"?

It is worth remembering that the Bible was written expressly to be searched. It is hardly supposable that a revelation would have been made, had it not been anticipated that man would make faithful use of it. The indifference toward it of some Protestants is equalled only by the interdiction of it by Roman Catholics. Yet God designed that his Word should be "the man of our counsel "—" a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path." "For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope." Woe to that man who, by inattention to the Word of God, or interdiction thereof, frustrates the benevolent purposes of heaven.

The Bible repeatedly urges the study of its own precepts. It is in earnest with man and carries proof of its divine authority in the momentous character of its demands. The solemn, sublime, and awful warnings, threatenings, and invitations of Scripture are to every earnest student thereof none other than the express yearnings of God himself for the well-being of his creatures. God never demands the homage of a man's intellect, or the devotion of his affections, without accompaning that demand with the highest and best evidences of its genuineness. Some of these evidences appear in the character of revealed truth. There is no trifling, no levity, no passages written for mere entertainment. It cries, "My son, keep my words and lay up my commandments with thee." "Bind them upon thy finger, write them upon the table of thine heart." With most earnest appeals it reiterates in the dull ear of our wayward race, "Now, therefore, hearken unto me, O yechildren, for blessed are they that keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise, and

refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors." Further on, amid the fullness of gospel light, it declares: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." Thus variously does the sacred word present its claims, now inviting, anon entreating, and again demanding attention, and always upon the ground of man's spiritual and eternal good.

In these times of derision and blasphemy it may be well to speak of the elevated character of Bible topics. Those who wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction by selecting some incidental but always faithful representation of fact or truth, and declaring it to be immodest and harmful, never stop to think that the Bible was written for all time, and for all the varied circumstances and conditions of human life. Nor do they pause to consider that never once does the Bible commend the low, the vulgar, the unseemly, but invariably condemns. Nor does it make prominent any trivial matter. What some falsely-modest skeptic might criticise as unworthy a place in the sacred annals, may have a most important bearing upon a fundamental truth of religion, which to the natural man is undiscoverable because it is spiritually discerned. In respect to the exaltation and purity of its teachings the Bible is absolutely and peculiarly beyond comparison. What can equal the sublimity of such themes as eternity, infinity, omnipotence, omniscience, boundless goodness? With such as these the Bible keeps the mind in constant contact. "How ennobling to the soul! how expanding to the intellect! how purifying to the affections! how transporting to the emotions!" It is told of an English barrister who was not himself a religious man, that he made a practice of training young law students in the study and analysis of the most difficult parts of Scripture. Being asked why he did so, he replied: "Because there is nothing else like it, in any language, for the development of mind and character." If this be so of the scientific use of Scripture language, how much more true is it of the spiritual mastery and application of God's Word. What can be more becoming to the Christian than a readiness to give, in Scripture

language, an answer to any question of skeptics or earnest seekers after truth! This was Christ's own method. His enemies besieged him with delicate questions; they tried to entangle him in his talk, and though he might have coined original answers that would have been equally conclusive, his almost invariable method was to appeal to the law and to the testimony. "What saith the Scriptures?" "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures;" "It is written;" "Moses and the prophets did write," etc. Jesus had only the Old Testament Scriptures to appeal to, but we have those of the New Testament also, and what an armory of defence for "meek and quiet spirits" is here.

"Thy Word is power and life,

It bids confusion cease,

And changes envy, hatred, strife,

To love, and joy and peace."

The doctrines we get from Scripture are not mere abstractions— dim guesses at truth; they are realities, in comparison with which all earthly things are shadows; realities with which we have to do, inevitably, intimately, forever. To ignore them is folly, to neglect them is ruin, to despise them is madness. What are the themes of mortal pens?—such as earthly pomp and glory, human genius, the achievements of warriors and statesmen, the agitations and parades of political squabbles-as compared with the truths which God puts before us for study! How paltry, how despicable are all these when contrasted with the grandeur of sacred themes. "Oh, the Bible is a wonderful book-wonderful in the nature of its revelations, and wonderful in its adaptation to the wants and circumstances of mankind. Its scenes are more startling than romance, its truths more strange than fiction, its annunciations and warnings more stirring than human eloquence, its descriptions and imagery more vivid than human poetry: and yet it is all reality."

"We were once scated in a family circle," observes one whose own mind had been enlarged by the study of the Word, "when that circle had assembled for evening devotion. It was at the close of a Sabbath in which the house of God, from which a short time before we had all come, had been hallowed by the peculiar manifestations and

:

pervading presence of the Spirit. As the father took his seat in that circle, it was evident that he had come from the depths of communion with the Eternal One, in the retirement of the closet. He opened the blessed word, and read, with a slow, tender and solemn tone, the twentieth chapter of John, the chapter containing the description of the scenes which immediately succeeded the resurrection—the visit of Peter and John to the sepulchre, the revelation to the weeping Mary, to the ten disciples on the subsequent evening, and to unbelieving Thomas eight days afterward. The reader made no observations that we recollect, but the tone and manner showed clearly that every element of the different scenes presented in the chapter were touching, with a most tender and melting power, the cords of feeling in the centre of his heart, and were stirring up the fountains of emotion in the depths of his soul. At length he came to the following passage: "Thomas, reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side and be not faithless, but believing.' His voice faltered. Tears followed, and for some time he was unable to proceed. All hearts were deeply moved. A little daughter some five or six years of age, who had been standing by the father's side, and following him in another Bible, as he read, closed her own book, took her seat in his lap, and, burying her face in his handkerchief, wept profusely. We wish that we could disclose to the reader the scenes revealed in that chapter as they then presented themselves to our minds. It was all as a present reality to us-as if with the two disciples we had visited the empty, silent sepulchre-had stood with weeping Mary, and had seen her 'darkness turned to day,' as Jesus made a revelation of himself to her-had been among the ten on that memorable evening, when the Saviour stood revealed among them, and with them were glad when we saw the Lord.' But when we came to the passage above cited, it seemed as if, 'to the eye of faith,' Jesus had visibly presented himself, and we were 'thrusting our own hand into his side,' that in that sacred body unbelief might find its eternal sepulchre, and that from henceforth the lives which we live in the flesh might be by the faith of the Son of God, who loved us, and gave himself for us.' We bowed in prayer. Heaven did not seem far from us then. Since that time it seems as if Jesus was

dearer to our hearts than ever before. We then 'beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.""

PRAYER AND ITS ANSWER.

If a man believes in the existence of a personal God he will pray unto him. No number of scientific difficulties or denials, no amount of philosophical speculation as to the uselessness of prayer, and the impossibility of its being answered, will prevent the finite from calling upon the infinite, especially in time of distress and trouble.

Probably no human being ever lived without praying. Prayer is the urgency of poverty, and who is not poor? It is the outcry of helplessness, and who is not weak? Prayer is desire, not words; it is earnestness, not eloquence; it is the felt want of the heart, not the expressed opinions of the head.

Man can be placed in no circumstances under which he cannot pray. The sailor, as the last plank gives way, may call upon the great Spirit of the deep; the soldier, as the bullet pierces him, may commend his soul to the God of battles. Fuller says ejaculations are short prayers darted up to God on emergent occasions. Montgomery says better:

"Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,

Uttered or unexpressed;

The motion of a hidden fire

That trembles in the breast."

I speak not now of acceptable prayer, but of the natural ability and disposition of the human heart to confess its dependence upon the Creator, thereby laying the groundwork for rightful and efficacious supplication.

No just conception of true prayer can be formed without a knowledge of self, and of the nature of God as revealed in the Scripture, of our relation to him and his gracious favor toward us. One cause of the powerlessness of many in prayer is their slight acquaintance with the sacred volume, and their utter want of that spiritual sympathy with its teachings which gives both a clear