w begin to seek after God with earnest prayer. Some
of you have been working for years and years for the support of your
families. Have you given one half day to the working out of your
salvation with fear and trembling? You came here this morning with an
earnest purpose, I take it, as I have come hither with an earnest
purpose, and we meet face to face, and I tell you, first of all, if
you want to find the Lord, you must pray, and pray, and pray.

I remark again, you must seek the Lord through Bible study. The Bible
is the newest book in the world. "Oh," you say, "it was made hundreds
of years ago, and the learned men of King James translated it hundreds
of years ago." I confute that idea by telling you it is not five
minutes old, when God, by His blessed Spirit, retranslates it into the
heart. If you will, in the seeking of the way of life through
Scripture study, implore God's light to fall upon the page, you will
find that these promises are not one second old, and that they drop
straight from the throne of God into your heart.

There are many people to whom the Bible does not amount to much. If
they merely look at the outside beauty, why it will no more lead them
to Christ than Washington's farewell address or the Koran of Mohammed
or the Shaster of the Hindoos. It is the inward light of God's Word
you must get or die. I went up to the church of the Madeleine, in
Paris, and looked at the doors which were the most wonderfully
constructed I ever saw, and I could have stayed there for a whole
week; but I had only a little time, so, having glanced at the
wonderful carving on the doors, I passed in and looked at the radiant
altars, and the sculptured dome. Alas, that so many stop at the
outside door of God's Holy Word, looking at the rhetorical beauties,
instead of going in and looking at the altars of sacrifice and the
dome of God's mercy and salvation that hovers over penitent and
believing souls!

O my friends! if you merely want to study the laws of language, do not
go to the Bible. It was not made for that. Take "Howe's Elements of
Criticism"--it will be better than the Bible for that. If you want to
study metaphysics, better than the Bible will be the writings of
William Hamilton. But if you want to know how to have sin pardoned,
and at last to gain the blessedness of Heaven, search the Scriptures,
"for in them ye have eternal life."

When people are anxious about their souls--and there are some such
here to-