d, his maker, who has so amply provided for his
physical wants, and formed this world so beautifully and so perfect,
should have neglected supplying the wants of his spiritual part--by far
the most important--with what it so greatly requires, guidance and
direction; and above all things, what it so yearns after, a knowledge of
Him who formed it. Now those who really study the book (which professes
to be given by God) according to the way He in it points out,--namely,
in a humble spirit,--with prayer for enlightenment--invariably find that
want fully supplied; and making due allowance for the various
constitutions of the human mind, they are entirely agreed on all
cardinal points regarding the Bible, while its opponents, who profess to
be guided by the light of reason alone, differ in every possible way,
their theories being almost countless; while they agree only in denying
the authority of a book, of the Divine nature of which they have no
experimental knowledge, declining, in their pride, to follow the
directions it gives them for obtaining that knowledge. Then, when we
take a glance round the heathen world, past and present, we find men
following courses, with habits and customs destructive to human
happiness, and abhorrent to the conscience which God has given man when
uncontaminated by them. Contrast the result which the theories of
philosophers and the heathen systems produced, with that which the mild
loving faith Christ taught, if universally adopted, would bring about in
the world, and who would hesitate between the two? And then when, in
addition, we remember that Christ ensures to His followers eternal
happiness, greater even than the mind of man can comprehend, what
madness is it in those who hesitate to accept His offers! True, there
are mysteries which even the Bible does not explain, such as the
existence of Satan; but it does explain why Satan has power over man,
and why sin and misery and death came into the world. This was the
reason that man was disobedient, that man refused to trust to his Maker
and listened to Satan. Man, in the pride of youth, health, and
strength, and mental powers, may look with contempt on the Gospel, but
God, in His loving mercy brings down those He loves, by poverty,
suffering, and loss of friends, and then they feel their weakness and
the vanity of all human systems, and are led to turn to Him who alone
can lift them up and give them comfort, and a promise of a better li