Nahum, Chapter ii. "They shall justle one against another, in the broad ways: he shall recount his worthies: they stumble in their walks; they shall make haste to the wall thereof, and the defence shall be prepared: the gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved."

Suppose this scoffer had condescended to inquire. He might have read this chapter with tears of wonder and of joy.

Before the invention of cannon, the walls of Nineveh, so famous for their height and their width, were trusted in as impregnable by those proud enemies of Jehovah's people. Perhaps to many of them, the opening of the gates of the rivers, was as unintelligible as it is now to modern mockers; but the Lord taught them its import with fearful accuracy. Ancient history informs us that during the siege, in after days, there arose one inundation of the Tigris; unparallelled, as far as we can learn, in previous ages, or in succeeding centuries. It swept down that boasted wall, on the top of which three chariots used to drive abreast, by furlongs. Through these awful gates the river entered and melted down their palaces, and their piles of bricks, showing to them and to us, that God's word, however strange and unlikely, will always be fulfilled! If man keeps himself in such ignorance, that he cannot understand, or be profited by these glorious flashes of heavenly light who will finally bear the shame? The Book of Light, or the uninformed mocker? You may spread a table of pure and wholesome food, which the perverted appetite of the sated epicure will not receive, but his feelings of disgust do not change the existing nature of those really desirable viands. There is no passage, no fraction of a passage

within the covers of that blessed book, which is not rich with treasures of instructive truth, or full of music and oflight; but it is an old fact, that men may close their eyes and stop their ears until they cannot judge of, or even perceive sight or sound.

CHAPTER XV.

THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.

In how many instances every day does it happen, that the Bible is cast away with indignant scorn, after some one, wise in his own estimation, has read a sentence resembling that which follows: Isaiah, lxiv. "Oh, that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence; as when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters to boil; to make thy name known to thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at thy presence."

If we were to address a scoffer who says, "I cannot understand this book," after reading such a page, we might make to him two several statements:

1. Fellow-worm, if you will place yourself at the foot of that volcanic precipice, at the time when the broad, deep and dreadful torrent of melted ore flows down its side, whilst the boiling ocean retires before this red tributary; if you will gaze at the electric flash, and hear the subterranean thunder, you will confess, unless you have stupified your soul with sin until you cannot feel, that no spectacle toward which mortal eye could be directed, is more calculated to awaken in us a recollection

of the grandeur, the power, and the dreadfulness of the awful One.

2. If you never have, like the prophet, felt so pained by the wickedness, the blasphemy, ingratitude, and daring insults of rebellious man, that you longed to see them overawed and stilled into obedience, by some striking manifestation of Jehovah's power, it is because you have no piety, and never felt any genuine filial gratitude toward the Giver of all the mercies which sustain you; but you should not scorn those who have.

Oh, every line of that inspired page is sweet, or reproving, or grand, or instructive, or cheering; but men love darkness rather then light, and the learned are too ignorant to understand the plainest words that ever were written, provided those words come from heaven!

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.

"And the daughter of Zion is left as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers."

There was a man who had read Xenophon and Longinus, Cicero, and the Latin poets. He was applauded by his friends for what they called his mind. The passage quoted above, (and hundreds like it,) he said, appeared to him not only unmeaning, but weak, puerile, and inelegant. In process of time he was led by the notes of modern travellers, (seemingly by accident,) to remember that these little lodges are built for the habitation of one watcher, to preserve from the ravages of birds, &c., those oriental gardens. We are told that if we sail on

the bosom of that gentle river, and look to the slope where the quiet sunshine rests on those lonely and solitary dwellings during the stillness of evening, nothing on earth is more calculated to bring into the bosom a feeling of desertion and desolation, than this image from the prophet's pen, picturing the decay of Jerusalem.

This self-important man afterwards confessed that the deficiencies were in his own stupid soul, and that the language of the Bible was indeed the style of heaven.*

* Perhaps one confession ought to be made to the infidel world. It is, that Christians should not be too loud in their voice of condemnation, so long as they practise the same sin which they reprove.

Christians believe that their heavenly Father has sent them a long kind letter from heaven; that they owe it to him to read every line of it to their children, and make them acquainted with all interesting concomitant facts. For want of this knowledge, many of the youth of our nation have grown up scoffers. Rather than risk this, encounter any trouble and expense; better have a professor at college for every book in the Bible; better recite a morning lesson on every line in the book; better endanger the loss of all other knowledge. How is the actual practice of the church in these things? When the Christian parent places his son in the academy or college, does he say to the teacher, "Whatever else you may omit, see that you teach him the ancient literature connected with the Bible?" No, this is not his charge, this is not his expectation. He knows that his son will be taught daily, laboriously, and invariably, Virgil, Horace, and other heathen authors, containing many most exceptionable passages. But if a college has a rule that the Bible is to be part of the course, it is an unpopular rule, and often the teachers are themselves ignorant of Bible facts and Bible language. The haters of God have

CHAPTER XVII.

MEN HAVE LOVED DARKNESS RATHER THAN LIGHT.

We have endeavoured to hold up to view that strange tendency and natural leaning towards falsehood (in matters of religion) which we possess without being aware of it. We will endeavour to illustrate this same truth by another process. It should be presented in another attitude. We think the weakness of props on which opposers rest gives a full exhibition of this truth. If men base a fabric of their eternal expectations on decayed weeds, whilst an enduring rock is close at hand, there is some strange reason for such a choice. There is something defective in his heart or in his head, who is content to cast away the Book of God, and venture all the terrors of the judgment day upon some one feeble cavil, which is annihilated as soon as a few facts are presented.

Out of many we must select a few, and such as we have heard urged most frequently.

Case 1.-An amiable lawyer, after urging his toilsome but successful course for many years, at last won a seat in Congress. On his way to the meeting of that

exclaimed, "the college is no place to learn religion ;" and this weak dogma Christians have obeyed scrupulously, and Bible facts and Bible language form no part of the nation's study. Books on these points, (Lardner, Grotius, Shuckford, Prideaux, &c. &c.) are almost out of print; they may be found in a preacher's library, but even there will, in many cases, be sought in vain.