to answer them as he would be similar inquiries respecting the Koran or the Shasters! How strange to an intelligent foreigner would it seem that one from a land like this could give no account of the religion of his own country!

There is another thought here, which I wish to express with as much deference for the elevated classes in our land as possible. Some who read these pages may possibly yet occupy places of influence and power in the councils of the nation, or be called as professional men to appear in conspicuous stations before their countrymen. Now the idea which I wish to express is, that the uses which are made of the Bible, and the allusions to it, by men in public life, are sometimes such as may admonish those who are coming on to the stage of action to become familiar with it, and such as are anything but commendatory of the knowledge which they have of the one Book which, more than any other, controls this nation. Shakspeare shall not be inaccurately quoted; and Byron and Burns, and Homer and Virgil shall be referred to with classic elegance; but a quotation from the Bible shall show that with whatever other learning the orator may be endowed, his familiarity has not been with the inspired records of the religion of his country; and the words of David, Isaiah, and Paul, and even of the Redeemer, shall be miserably mangled, and made almost unintelligible. Many a young man now entering on life will yet be placed in circumstances where it will be discreditable to him not to be acquainted with the Bible. No one can be placed in circumstances where that knowledge would be disreputable or injurious.

There is one other thought under this head. It is this:—The Bible has gone deeply into our institutions, customs, and laws, and no one can understand the history of this country who does not understand the Bible. It has made us, directly or indirectly, what we are. Our own ancestors, in our father-land, once were wild barbarians, and sacrificed human beings to idols. The oaken groves of England witnessed many a Druid superstition; many a now well-cultivated spot in that land was a place where men, woven in wicker-work, were consumed as an offering to the gods! I need not say that the change in that country from what it was to what it is, was brought about by the influence of the religion which is taught in the Bible. That religion banished superstition and idolatry; raised Christian temples in the places where stood the groves of the Druids; introduced civilization, intelligence, and social order; made immortal Alfred what he was; laid the foundations of Cambridge and of Oxford; and moulded the literature and the laws of our ancestors.

Still more directly has it gone into our own institutions. We have derived our origin in great part from the Puritans, a people to whom Hume said was to be traced whatever of civil liberty there was in England. I need not recall any of the events of our early history. I need only remind you that with the Puritan, the axe was not a more needful or inseparable companion than the Bible. It went with him into the deep forest; comforted him when the war-whoop of the savage sounded in his ears; prompted him to build the church, the school-house, and the college; entered into his literature, and constituted his laws; was the foundation of his civil rights, and the platform of his views of government. It contained the lessons which he taught to his children; and his parting counsel to them, when he lay on a bed of death, was, that they should always love it. Phidias so wrought his own name into the shield of the statue of Minerva at Athens, that it could not be removed without destroying the statue. So the precepts and truths of the Bible have been inwrought into all our institutions. They are not interwoven-as if they were separate warp and woof. They are not laid on-as plates of gold may be on a carved image. They are fused in-intermingled-and run together as the gold and silver and brass of Corinth were in the great fire which burnt down its statues of silver and gold and brass-forming the much-valued compound of antiquity, the Corinthian brass. They cannot be separated; and it is too late to trace their independent proportions and influence. We have no institutions, no laws, no social habits, that are worth anything, and no learning, no literature of any kind, no liberty, which have not been moulded and modified by the Bible. No man can write our history who is a stranger to the Bible; and you will NEVER understand it, if you are ignorant of that Book. The man who enters on public life ignorant of the influence of this book in our history, is liable to perpetual mistakes and blunders in regard to the institutions of his own country. He will perpetually come in contact with opinions and habits which he cannot understand. He will never be acquainted with the public mind in this nation. He will be mistaken in regard to the course which the popular feeling will take on any subject. He will run counter to what he will esteem mere prejudice, but what in fact is conscience; and he will suppose that he meets mere popular feeling, when he encounters that which enters into every principle of our liberty. There is nothing on which foreigners who come among us are more liable to misunderstand us than on this point; and nothing which to them appears more

Inexplicable than that religion is propagated and maintained by voluntary efforts, and without an alliance with the State. The secret of the whole is, the hold which the Bible has on the public mind, and the fact that that Book is allowed to influence so extensively the opinions, the laws, and the customs of the land. It is now in almost every family, and we intend it shall be in every family. It is read every day by millions; and hundreds of thousands of children and youth are taught every week in the Sabbath-school to reverence it. A great National Society is in existence whose business it is to see that that Book is placed and kept in every family in the land; and though the press teems with novels, and romances, and poems, and books of science, yet the book that is most frequently printed, and on which the art of the printer and the binder is most abundantly lavished still, as a private enterprise, is the Bible. And in reference to our own most interesting history as a people, and to the nature of our institutions, civil and religious, as well as in reference to all the past, the Bible is the only certain " lamp unto our feet, and light unto our path."

III. A third consideration is, that the Bible has such evidences of Divine origin as to claim your attention. I do not assume that it is given by inspiration—for my purpose now does not require this, nor am I about to detain you with any proofs on that point. But I would show you that there are such presumptive proofs of its being a revelation from God, as to demand study and inquiry; such that it is ill-becoming the young man, or any man, to neglect it; and such that to reject it without examination, is no mark of an elevated understanding, or of true manliness of sentiment. The considerations which I would suggest under this head are these:

(1.) The friends of the Bible have been among the most sober, calm, and thoughtful of mankind. They have been such men as are accustomed to look at evidence, and to weigh arguments before they embrace them. That some of its neglectors and adversaries have had this character I have no occasion to deny ; but that the mass of them have been of this stamp no one will venture to affirm. But a book which has commended itself to the faith of millions of thinking and intelligent men as of Divine origin, is not to be treated with contempt, or rejected without a hearing. No man recommends his own intelligence or wisdom by a contemptuous rejection of such a book.

(2.) Again, a considerable part of those who have embraced the Bible as of Divine origin, have done it as the result of examination. I admit that all have not done it from this cause.

Many have been trained up in its belief, and have never doubted of its Divine origin; but a considerable portion even of this class, when they have arrived at mature age, have instituted an examination on the subject, and have satisfied their own minds that it is from God. But many an hereditary infidel has yielded his opposition to the Bible by the force of evidence, and embraced it as true; many a scoffer has become a believer by the force of the argument, and admitted that it was from God. Meantime all its friends, whether hereditary friends-if I may so call them or the friends made such by argument, have been willing to submit the evidence of the Divine origin of the Scriptures to the sober reason of mankind. They have asked them to examine the question. They hold themselves ready at any moment to give the book to any man who will examine it. They invite discussion, and they always consider it a point gained, and a very probable indication of the conversion of an infidel, if he can from any motive be induced to examine the Divine origin of the Scriptures. And so scoffers and infidels feel when one of their own number is induced, from any cause, to read the Bible. From the moment when he takes the book in his hands, they regard his conversion to Christianity as more than half certain. They anticipate, almost as a matter of course, that if he is led to investigate this question he is lost to their cause. And so all feel. Many a man is deterred from reading the Bible, and from examining its claims, under a belief that, if he does it, he will become a Christian. Yet what a state of mind is this! And what a tribute is thus unwittingly paid to the Bible! And how clear is it, that, if this be the case, the Bible has such evidence of a Divine origin as to demand your attention!

(3.) Again, its effects on the world are such as to show that it has sufficient claims to a Divine origin to demand attention. As a mere matter of curiosity, if there were no better motive, one would suppose that an interest would be felt in the Book which displaced the ancient systems of philosophy; which changed the whole form of religion in the Roman empire-overturning altars, closing temples, disrobing priests, and revolutionizing laws; which abolished slavery in all the ancient world; which has elevated the female sex from the deepest degradation; which has everywhere been the promoter of good morals; which banished the barbarous sports of the amphitheatre; which has led to the foundation of colleges, and the erection of hospitals, and the diffusion of universal education; which has curbed the tiger-passions of many a man, and made him like a lamb; and which has transformed the intemperate, the licentious, and the

profane, in millions of instances, and made them pure and holy men. Now a book which can do this has such claims of a Divine origin as to demand attention, and to be worthy of perusal.

(4.) And again, the class of men whom it has satisfied of its Divine origin is such as to show the same thing. They have been, in many instances, men most eminent in all departments of science and learning, and who stand, by common consent, at the head of the race. I need not tell you who they are. In our most rich English literature there is scarcely a man of eminence who has not bowed to the authority of the sacred Scriptures. Who, in teaching the laws of morals, was superior to Johnson? Who better understood the beauties of the English tongue than Addison? Who was a sweeter poet than Cowper? Who more majestic and grand than Milton ? Who has controlled more human minds by stating its laws than Locke? Who has seen farther into the distant heavens than Newton? What individual

of our race is by common consent at the head of any department of learning, who has not acknowledged the Divine authority of the Bible? I by no means say that this proves that it is of Divine origin. I say only, that it demonstrates that there are claims to such an origin which demand examination. I add one other thought under this head

(5.) That the same thing is shown by the fact that the Bible has outlived all the attacks which have been made on it, and has nearly or quite weathered out the storm of conflict. It was penned in a remote age; in a little corner of the world; among a people without science, and without any other literature; when the rules of poetry and history were unwritten, and when the human mind was comparatively in its infancy. That a book so written, and with such pretensions, should be attacked was not wonderful. Accordingly, every science, I believe, has been made the occasion of an assault on the Bible. Astronomy, and history, and antiquities, and geology, and chemistry, all have had their turn; and all have in their turn alarmed the friends of revelation. But the war from these quarters has nearly ceased to rage. Every gun has been spiked, or turned on the foe-except in the matter of geology—and the friends of revelation may safely leave that until the geologist will tell us precisely what his own settled opinion is. In the year 1806 the French Institute counted more than eighty theories in geology hostile to the Scripture history, not one of which has lived to the present time (Lyell). The argument from astronomy was demolished by Chalmers. The argument from the high antiquity of the sacred books, and the history of India, has been abandoned