the mere man of the world; all that fills his imagination and fires his passions, is as false as the heart from which it springs, or the happiness it inspires. Truth is not the first suggestion of a mind left to itself; but it is those second thoughts which, as the proverb says, are always best. You might as well expect wheat from an unsown field, as to expect truth in the natural operations of a sensual and unsanctified mind.

Truth, in religion, is that which almost always at first sight gives pain. It is a discovery of our meanness, our wretchedness, our guilt and our dependence in the sight of God. Analyze human happiness, and you will find a great part of it is founded on delusion. What Swift said, in his favorite tone of sarcasm, is more true in sober reality, than perhaps he imagined. Human happiness (that is happiness without piety) is the possession of being perpetually well deceived. Man overrates his abilities and overrates his virtues. Divine truth lets in its blasting light and humbles him in the dust before God.

Truth, in religion, is that which at first sight always gives pain; not because error in itself is more congenial to our faculties than truth; but because religious truth is peculiar; revealing secrets about his heart and condition, which man has no wish to know.

Truth is the daughter of reflection. She is the angel that meets and blesses that man, who seeks her in his closet, looking into his soul, before his God, in view of eternity. Truth is the result of holding the

balance with a trembling hand which weighs interest and duty; pleasure and conscience; the present and the future; life and death; heaven and hell. Reflection is a very serious thing; it differs from reasoning. The number of those who reason, compared with those who do not, is very small; and yet for one that reflects there are thousands who reason. See Psalm iv. 4.

Truth in spiritual things, is not, as one of the fathers expresses it, the result of geometrical necessities. A man may make definitions and form inferences, and yet not reach the truth. I never yet saw a demonstration, even of the existence of God, which did not seem to me to weaken the conclusion. The Lord is in his temple and we must behold him there.

Truth is the fruit of prayer. He that never groaned out in the noontide and midnight hour-Oh Lord, open thou mine eyes that I may see wondrous things out of thy law, never yet found the truth.

To possess the truth, we must buy it; and a purchase implies a price. The price of truth is, what men are slow to resign, their indolence, their interest, (i. e. earthly interest,) and their pride.

In one word, truth is that which distresses or rejoices the soul. It is the fruit of many an anxious struggle; many a serious thought; many an earnest look to the fountain of light. Truth, spiritual truth, clearly seen and deeply felt, must either fill us with consolation or plunge us in despair.

THE PURITAN.

No. 51.

A law is a rule prescribed. Because a bare resolution confined in the breast of the legislator, without manifesting it by some external sign, can never be properly a law. It is requisite that this resolution be notified to the people who are to obey it. But the manner in which this notification is to be made, is a matter of very great indifference. It may be notified by universal tradition and long practice, which supposes a previous publication, and is the case of the common law of England. It may be notified viva voce, by officers appointed for that purpose, as is done with regard to proclamations, and such acts of parliament as are appointed to be publicly read in churches and other assemblies. It may, lastly, be notified by writing, printing, or the like; which is the general course taken with all our acts of parliament. Yet, whatever way is made use of, it is incumbent on the promulgators, to do it in the most public and perspicuous manner; not like Caligula, who (according to Dio Cassius) wrote his laws in a very small character, and hung them up on high pillars, the more effectually to ensnare the people.

Blackstone's Commentaries, page 46, vol. I.

THE BIBLE.

THE foundation of all duty is obedience to the will of God; for however philosophers and theologians may have disputed respecting the nature of virtue and the sources of moral obligation, it will always remain

true, that the human mind, in its most vigorous excursions, never can rest on any satisfactory reason for obedience, but the simple fact, that God has commanded it. That great Being, that made us, knows all connections and all possible causes; and therefore, we have reason to believe, that his laws are founded on all the collected reasons, that can be present to an all-wise and all-knowing mind. When it is asked, therefore, what is the foundation of man's duty, the proper answer is, obedience to the will of God.

It is true there have been writers, who have attempted to give us some other reasons for our obedience. But they remind us of some of the solutions of the old philosophy, which Dr. Watts has so pleasantly ridiculed in his logic. "If I were asked," says Dr. Watts," why a Jack roasts meat; and, if instead of showing the chains, the weight and the wheels, (such as the old meat Jacks formerly had,) and showing how they operated, I were to say it is owing to the ustorious or meat roasting quality of the Jack, I believe I should give very little information." The question still returns, what is this ustorious or meatroasting quality? So when Dr. Paley tells us, that virtue is founded on utility, as it is that which promotes general happiness; he solves the question by setting before us one of the darkest speculations that can meet the human mind. What is utility? Is man to judge in all cases what will promote the comprehensive happiness of a boundless universe, and

that too, through the boundless ages of eternity? Surely, of such a writer, we may say, the more we think of his speculations the less we understand him; and therefore the thoughtful and the pious mind in all ages, has taken refuge from the darkness and agitation of human speculation, under the clear obligement of the divine will.

But the power of the divine will, considered as a rule of duty, depends upon our having some clear revelation. This is the corner-stone on which the whole of the Christian theory is built. We believe that true religion, as existing in the heart, consists in a strong desire and fixed determination to believe what God has spoken as a motive to obey what God has required. Our religion is founded on faith. But faith must have an object. That object is, the commands, the instructions, the ordinances, the laws, or whatever you please to call them, of God. Faith as much supposes a revealed rule by which it regulates its conclusions, as the use of the eye supposes a sun. Our eyes would have been in vain if God had given no light, and our faith would have been in vain if God had given no revelation.

It is these considerations that make it so vastly important, not only to believe that the Bihle came from God, but that it is in the strictest sense inspired. The will of God is the rule of duty, and that sacred book is the sole certain medium through which we find his will. The full inspiration of the Scriptures therefore,