IIe dictated the Koran, for he could not read or write, and the sublimity of its language is to Mussulmans a proof of its inspired character. He admitted six revelations, those of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Christ, and his own. The religion of Mahomet leaned toward fatalism, but did not deny the influence of the will in human actions. Nor did it consist in doctrines only, but in the practice of justice and charity. It considers alms-giving the most rigorous duty; and the Koran exacts from a tenth to a fifth of a believer's income in charity. It enjoins prayer, ablution and fastings. Five times a day, a Mussulman must pray. Fasts were so rigid, that during the month of Ramadan, one might neither eat, nor drink, nor enjoy any gratification from sunrise to sunset. Before the time of Mahomet, the Arabs enjoyed unbounded license; and he forbade dissoluteness, only by reducing it within the bounds of expediency and law. The blood of their enemies was a sure passport to the Mohammedan Paradise. Every Mussulman, indeed, however bad, was sure of Paradise, after expiating his sins a suitable time in purgatory, not to exceed five thousand years. The most favourable exhibition of the religion of Mahomet shows its perfect powerlessness to form any thing like a spiritual character. We have spoken of its immoral tendencies in a previous lecture; and it were the merest farce to claim for it any spiritual influence. We freely grant to these religions all they can claim; and the most that can be said of them is, that they are not idolatrous. And if they have effected something in supplanting the existence of idolatry, nothing is more obvious than that their influence in this particular is to be attributed to the Bible. Wherever indeed, men have ceased to bow down to the sun, moon and stars; wherever they have ceased erecting

pillars and statues on the tops of hills and mountains for the purpose of offering sacrifices to the host of heaven; wherever they have ceased erecting their temples, and their images, and offering their fruits to the light, the air, the wind, the fire, the water, the earth; wherever they have renounced the grovelling superstition which led them to worship the darkness, the storm, the pestilence and the furies; wherever they have no longer erected monuments to the memory of the dead, and worshipped creatures like themselves; where they have abandoned their homage of animals and reptiles, birds and beasts, plants and herbs; where the rivers and the woods are no longer peopled with imaginary deities; where each favoured city and family has no longer its peculiar guardian gods; where the power of magic is no longer recognized, and the influence of oracles and augurs, of diviners and soothsayers has been renounced as idle and vain; where it is no longer a proof of wisdom to attempt to disclose future events by the flight of birds, the recollection of dreams, and the inspection of the entrails of beasts; we may say, without the fear of contradiction, that this change has been produced by the religion of the Bible. Reason has not done it. The institutions of civil government have not done it. Human science has not done it. The most fearful judgments have not done it. Nothing has done it but the Bible. But for the Bible, the vilest idolatry would at this hour hold its unbroken sway over the world.

Where then had been the interests of holiness without the Bible? Whatever estimate we may form of the value of other influences upon the human character, this alone is the means of holiness. I do not know but here and there an individual may be found, who may have become pious without the truths of the

Bible; but I do not recollect any well authenticated instance. "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." The moral renovation which fits the soul for heaven is effected by means which correspond with its nature. "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth." The Bible alone exhibits those appropriate materials for thought which are the selected instruments of a renovated character. There is no wisdom more unerring, no justice more inflexible, no grace more tender, no authority more commanding, no entreaty more importunate, no instructions more convincing, and no motives more persuasive and powerful, than are these appointed means of man's conversion- these weapons which are "mighty through God"-this sword by which the conscience is penetrated, "dividing asunder between the joints and the marrow, the soul and the spirit, and proving a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."

There is one motive to holiness which the Bible unfolds which constitutes its great and distinguishing peculiarity. It is the love of God in the gift of his Son. All the motives to holiness are concentrated and condensed here, and presented and enforced with a power of thought and feeling that leave the most obdurate without excuse. "We beseech you by the mercies of God." Here lies the strength of the appeal. The love of God in Christ is the great expedient of winning the wayward heart. "Holy love from God to man is what the gospel reveals; holy love from man to God is what the gospel inspires." The doctrines of the cross, in all their richness and variety, in all their peculiarity and tenderness, and in all their humbling and abasing influence, possess a marvellous adaptation to awaken the slumbering mind. They produce within it new and powerful associations.

While in the most effective manner, they convince of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, they touch all the springs of feeling, and form the moral elements of the new man. No other truths so deeply affect the mind. "Nothing astonished me so much in all the gospel," said a poor converted African, "as to hear that God is love." A prouder and more obdurate offender than he, once said, "The love of Christ constraineth us." It is the glory of the condescending Deity, that "He draws with the cords of love." When you tell a world that lieth in wickedness, that the God they have offended is the God of pardons ; when you show them the scenes of Gethsemane and Calvary, and tell them how the divine justice has been expiated by the death of his Son; while you give force and energy to every other truth, and draw around the conscience the cords of every other obligation, you make that appeal to gratitude, to hope, which is peculiarly fitted to encourage the trembling and move the obdurate. Like the rod of Moses it rives the rocks of the desert. Until the intelligence reaches it that there is help in the mighty Saviour, the agitated mind in vain throws around its enquiring glance for a refuge, and is driven back to the chambers of its own desolation and despondency. "God reconciling the world to himself by Jesus Christ," this is the glory of the Bible. This is the truth to which the Spirit of all grace has given such pre-eminence in disarming the hostile heart. Here is the concentrated light of God's revelation. Amid the thousand studded gems which beautify and give such splendour to the moral firmament, this is the clear and bright constellation which is always above the horizon, and pointing high toward the gate of heaven. Here are those truths and motives which are the mediate causes of a spiritual mind, and between which and the operations of the Holy Spirit

there is such a coincidence, that they become the aliment of a spiritual and divine life. He who knows the heart of man has selected this as the best method of access to the minds he has formed; and like every other appointment of the Deity, it is full of consummate wisdom. Every where the same, it is every where effectual in accomplishing the purposes of eternal mercy. Evidence enough there is in the world. every day, to convince us of the superiority of the Bible as the great means of holiness and salvation. And better days are yet to dawn. the snow, it shall not return void.

Like the rain and Like the sun when

he rises upon the mists of the ocean, it is destined to exhale all clouds of error. Its heavenly light shall penetrate the dark corners of our globe; the report of its glad tidings, echoing from land to land, shall roll through the nations; while "the heavens shall pour down righteousness, and the earth bring forth salvation."

But there is a caution that is not out of place while speaking of the Bible as the means of holiness. If it is not by the learning and wisdom of this world that the soul is fitted for heaven, no more is it by the mere learning and literature of the Bible. There is reason to fear the cases are not few, in which the Bible is regarded more as a volume to be described and eulogized, and as furnishing topics of intellectual research, than as a directory to heaven, and a guide to immortality. "The letter killeth." Biblical learning is not piety. A man may be a profound critic, an acute controversialist, an able expositor; his enquiries and reasonings may discover an enlarged and comprehensive acquaintance with the sacred volume; he may employ all his resources in the promotion of biblical knowledge; and yet be at heart a stranger to the sanctifying power of truth. In his cold walks of theo