THE WORD OF GOD.

The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Ephes. vi. 17.

The Holy Scriptures are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

2 Tim. iii. 15.

THE FULNESS OF THE BIBLE.

The Bible has God for its Author, salvation for its end, and truth without any admixture of error for its author. It is all pure, all sincere, nothing too much, nothing wanting.

Locke.

There is often as much in the silence of Scripture, as in its Unknown.

utterances.

Have you a heart that loves God's Word? If not, you cannot understand it. The Bible differs from every other book. Every other book can be compassed by reading, by study, by intellect merely. The Bible cannot. It can only be understood by the loving heart. Its wondrous depths are revealed only to love. The intellect may skim the surface, and may admire or condemn, but the knowledge of that Word can only be had by the loving heart. Love makes us search. Love gives us

wondrous light. The heart that loves has a sight of its ownthe gift of the Holy Ghost. It sees marvellous things there. It cannot cavil. It cannot see the discrepancies. The sunshine of Heaven so pervades every part, that every apparent discrepancy is lost sight of in the light of glory which surrounds it. Passages it has read hundreds of times over are suddenly filled with new meaning. A passage of mere history, or of genealogy, that to the natural eye is commonplace, rises before the soul with a fulness of meaning and a radiance of glory it never possessed before. All deep things are hidden. Everything of value in the intellectual, or moral, or scientific world, has had to be searched out to be brought out to light from the deep. The Bible is the same. Christ is hidden. The Christian is a hidden man; his joys hidden; his peace hidden; His hopes are hidden. So the Bible is a hidden book; its truths must be searched out. Its glories shine on the loving, earnest, prayerful soul. When these are seen, all the wonders of the natural world pale before them.

Oh! call not the Word obsolete or antiquated. Love it; get your heart into it; search it out; there is that in it which will yield the mightiest intellect-matter for thought, wonder, and delight, for hours and hours together. But if you have not the loving heart, we marvel not at your rationalism. We wonder not that the discrepancies and mistakes are so large before the mind. But go as a little child to it; go with the Spirit of God in your heart, and with the love of Christ there too; go from prayer. That book will then be to you what no other book has ever been, or ever can be. You will then clasp it to your bosom as one of the choicest treasures of Heaven. F. Whitfield.

Set not thy watch by the town clock-(the way of the world) -but by the dial of Scripture, because that never faileth of going by the Sun of Righteousness. Swinnock.

ON STUDYING THE SCRIPTURES.

Do the Scriptures really promote thy communion with God, and, on that account, are they daily more thy study and thy delight? Never think of hearing or reading them without praying for the teaching of the Holy Spirit, that they may be the means of keeping up thy fellowship with thy Father in Jesus. For this end they were revealed, and if this end be not answered, they profit thee nothing. Make it, then, thy constant practice, before hearing, to pray for a spiritual appetite, that as new-born babes desire milk, so thou mayest hunger and thirst for the good Word of Life; in hearing, beg of God that thou mayest feed upon the Word and digest it, and thine inward man may be nourished up in the Word of faith and of good doctrine; after hearing, pray for a sanctified memory to treasure up for use what thou hast learnt, that, as occasion shall serve, it may be realised and brought into practice, thy life and conversation being cast into the mould of the Word. With the same dependence on the Divine Teacher, read as well as hear the Scriptures. Meditate on them, expecting to find them able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus, and, as thy faith in Him increases, able to bring in richer experience of thy Father's love in Him. Romaine.

The study of God's Word may be concentrated, deep, constant, like searching for a vein of gold; and memory may marvellously retain and bring forth what study has discovered. But meditation is not the discovery of more or of new things, but a calm sitting down with God to enrich itself with what study has discovered, and feeding with Him upon the stores which memory has laid up. Unknown.

The Bible is a stream where alike the elephant may swim, and the lamb may wade.

Gregory the Great.

THE BIBLE THE CHRISTIAN'S BULWARK.

The Christian faith has been, and is still, very fiercely and obstinately attacked. How many efforts have been and are still made; how many books, serious or frivolous, able or silly, have been and are spread incessantly, in order to destroy it in men's minds! Where has this redoubtable struggle been supported with the greatest energy and success? and where has Christian faith been best defended? There, where the reading of the Sacred Books is a general and assiduous part of public worship; there, where it takes place in the interior of families, and in solitary meditation. It is the Bible, the Bible itself, which combats and triumphs most efficaciously in the war between incredulity and belief. Guizot.

Jesus must keep the memory of His great deliverance fresh in His true child's heart. Ever and anon He must reproduce, in vivid outline before our eyes, the entrance to the place of woe, if He would send us still onwards as soul-gatherers. He must, at short intervals, be taking us aside to have the very letters of His imperishable written Word burnt into our hearts by the fires of His pardoning, heart-searching love. He has magnified His Word above all His name. He held aloft no other banner in the wilderness, on the mountain-top, on the temple pinnacle, fighting in His Father's name and ours, till the devil was foiled. He conquered Satan with the Old Testament Scripture, and, having honoured it to the uttermost, He bound up with it, for us, the New, as the Testament of His living, His dying, and His risen love. Let us steep our souls daily in it, before we go forth to meet the adversary. Let us present our hearts like a blank sheet to receive the impress of the whole Word. Let us not keep by favourite portions, but allow the Divine Spirit to write the ten commandments, the doctrines, the precepts, the promises, the prophecies, upon our memories, our understandings, our affections, our inmost souls.

Satan knows the value of a whole Bible. He gains something if he can make us cast any part of it into the shade. He cheats us somewhat if he can make us give precedence to any part. He is trying this in the Church, to subdivide her divisions. He is doing it unhindered in the world, and while it speculates, it perishes. Let us keep guard around our Tree of Life with its everlasting roots; its Jewish stem, its Christian flowers; and eat of all the refreshing fruits it bears till our warfare ends. Satan is sending up his hosts in varied garb, and by how many names, to shake the faith of Britain in the written Word. He knows that each converted man, be he peasant, philosopher, or peer, finds on the spot where he finds Jesus, such a mass of internal evidence of the Bible's truth as will enable him to convince many others also. And so the enemy will draw attention elsewhere. He will attack the Scripture; he will unbind it, sever book from book in value and authority. The Old and the New Testament must be parted. The geologist must go forth with his hammer, the antiquary with his lore, to see how many stones can be shaken off the Rock on which the Faith has stood. And will not Rome come up over all the land to offer refuge and sanctuary to those who would escape from the responsibility of judging? Satan stands—all but visibly-saying in the ear of her whose ships have carried the Bible in myriads through the world, YEA, HATH GOD SAID? Will there not be silence in Heaven to hear her answer?

The enemy is everywhere; his time is short. He could not, perhaps, say now to Jesus, "Art thou come to torment us before the time?" His time is running out; his desires will multiply. Do we not hear them again erecting the cross on which Christianity, like her Head of old, shall yet be publicly dishonoured and slain? The veil is not yet withdrawn for us to see the manner of her martyrdom. Surely the kiss of betrayal is being given, for every error of the most opposite kind is set forth in the name of Christ, spangled over with gold. dust stolen from the King's treasury.