meaning, unmodified by circumstances, or by the connection in which it stands. The whole complexion of a thought generally depends on the circumstances in which it is uttered, and the connection in which it occurs; and he who isolates a sentence from these connections and circumstances, may, without violating any rule of grammar or rhetoric, utterly pervert the author's meaning; and a really honest and sound mind which contemplates the sentence thus alone, may be entirely misled by it. Thus the apostle Paul says, "bodily exercise profiteth little," (1 Tim. 4: 8) a sentiment taken absolutely, utterly at variance with common sense and all experience. But when we look at the connection in which the phrase occurs, we find that by bodily exercise, the apostle designates the physical expression of religious emotion, such as rites, ceremonies, ascetic mortifications, tones and gestures, as contrasted with true inward godliness. And in this view of it, it is a sentiment which all experience confirms, and is one of those pregnant sayings of Paul, which show his deep knowledge of human nature, and his elevated conceptions of the nature of religion.

He, therefore, who reads the Bible disconnectedly, however closely he may attend to particular passages, is continually liable to misapprehension and mistake; and much the greater part of false reasoning in support of erroneous theology, is founded on perversions of this sort. There is great temptation for committed theologians to abuse the Bible in this way, and the unexpected turns which are thus sometimes given to a Biblical expression, by shrewd, untaught minds, help forward the same abuse.

A French Canadian peasant once asked me what I thought of that text where our Saviour told his disciples, when they went out to preach, not to take two coats with them. (Matt. 10: 10). I replied that the connection plainly showed that it meant to caution the disciples against anxiously providing for themselves food and clothing, but to depend for both on those to whom they ministered. "No," says the Canadian, "it must be something more spiritual than that; I reckon 'tis as much as if he had said to them, you must not go into one town and hold up the Calvinist doctrine, and then into another town and hold up the Universalist doctrine, just according to what is most popular."

6

One who would come to a correct knowledge of the truths of the Bible, must rigidly resist both the theological and the allegorical temptation to this species of abuse, and look as carefully at the whole connection of a piece as its single expressions; and for this purpose the chapters and verses into which it has been broken by translators and editors, must often be entirely disregarded.

3. They read without thinking.

This I apprehend is a very general fault. A person takes the Bible in his hand and opens it, his eye glances over the words, and

they are successively reflected from the curious little mirror in the back part of the eye-ball-and this is all that he does towards reading the Bible. No idea has been received, no thought awakened, no feeling excited; and if interrupted in his reading at any moment, it would be quite impossible for him to tell what he had been reading about the moment before. Do you expect that such sort of reading is to be of any service to you? It is utterly useless even for the purpose of teaching you the mechanical art of reading-it leaves the understanding as barren as if your eyes had been wandering with the fools to the ends of the earth-and your heart as unbenefitted as if your ears had been listening to the croaking of frogs. However you may pour contempt in this way on human authors, do not thus insult the. God of heaven. you take up what professes and what you admit to be a revelation from Him, let your mind at least be awake to what it communicates. Enter not the holy of holies to dose or fall asleep by the awful oracle which brings the voice of God from heaven to earth. 4. They read without expecting or trying to understand what they read.

When

We make no effort after that whose attainment we consider hopeless; and those who have often failed to understand, for the reasons already specified, acquire a habit of reading without understanding, which is fatal to their progress in knowledge. It is a habit exceedingly difficult to break when once formed, and it ́ ́ often steals upon us unawares, after strenuous efforts have been made to subdue it. It is a habit much encouraged by reading without discrimination or selection, the most difficult parts of the Bible as well as the easiest, in equal portions, with the same preparation and the same amount of time and thought devoted to them. In the early periods of the formation of this habit, the plainer parts of the Bible are read with some perception of their meaning; but the half-understood, and the entirely unintelligible occur so often, and are passed over with such entire indifference and so much as a matter of course, that the habit in time extends itself to all portions of the sacred word, and at length it obtains so complete a mastery, that the reader is rather surprised than otherwise, when a real thought happens by some accident to find lodgment. in his mind from the pages of the Bible. This habit is no less. reprehensible and fatal than the one mentioned just before; it is indeed but a continuation and completion of the habit of thoughtless reading. Always when you take up the Bible, expect benefit from its perusal—if there occur passages which you cannot understand entirely, at least make an effort to get all the light from them you can-the effort itself will do you good—and the darkest textsof the Bible will cheer you with gleamings and twinklings of light, if not with a full flood.

5. They read without distinguishing the different kinds of composition in the Bible, or the different character of its several writers.

The Bible was composed by more than 40 different writers, scattered through a period of 1600 years, possessing every diversity of character, and living under the influence of every different kind of climate, country, government and mode of education. Inspiration, so far from destroying does not even affect individuality of character; and there is the same kind of diversity in respect to style, manner, and mode of thought in the Bible, as we find in any equal number of English writers from the reign of Alfred to the present time. Isaiah is as different from John as Milton is from Cowper; and the style of Ezekiel is no more like that of Matthew than the style of Dr. Johnson is like that of Franklin or Cobbett. Since such great diversities exist, how can those writings be read intelligently without recognising these diversities? And how can one read the Bible understandingly, unless he carefully considers which of the Biblical authors it is that he is perusing, and what the characteristic peculiarities are of that author's style.

But there is not only diversity of authors, but great diversity in the different species of composition. There is plain historical narrative, close logical argumentation, bursts of impassioned eloquence, the highest flights of poetry, simple didactic maxims, statue-laws, allegories, prophetic visions, lively dramatic dialogues, grave continuous speeches, indeed all the varieties which can be found in any national literature, all compressed within the compass of a single volume, and that of not very large size. The reader's attention must be awake to those different species of composition, and he must be able to feel the difference when they occur, whether he can call them by their names or not, in order to read the Bible understandingly. What should we think of the intelligence of the reader, who could read a page of Edwards on the Will, pass directly to a hundred lines of Pope's Homer, and then take up one of Patrick Henry's speeches in Congress, and not once be aware that the mode of composition had undergone the slightest change? But in many parts of the Bible, you will find, in equally short compass, diversities quite as great as those. As examples I would refer you to the 14th and 15th chapters of Exodus, or to the 1st and 2d chapters of St. Luke's Gospel.

In order to understand the Bible, or derive benefit from its perusal, it is indispensable that the reader be able to recognise such diversities as these. It is not at all necessary that he should in all cases be able to call the different sorts of composition by their appropriate rhetorical names-he need not be able to say, this is narrative, and this is argument, this is poetry, and this is eloquence,

and this is drama; but his mind and his heart must be sufficiently awake to feel the diversities when they occur, whether he knows, their appropriate names or not.

6. They read without the necessary preparatory knowledge, and without the habit of comparing the statements of the Bible, with the other works of God in nature, and with the course of his Providence in the government of mankind.

The written word is not the only revelation which God has made of himself to man. The apostle Paul declares in respect to those who had never been favored with the teachings of inspiration, that God had not left them all without witness, in that he did. good, and gave rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, (Acts 14: 17), and that the invisible attributes of God are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead, (Rom. 1: 20). The course of Providence and the works of nature bear testimony of God, as well as the written word; and no one of these modes of revelation can be fully comprehended without the aid of the other; and no development made in any one of these will contradict any development made in either of the others. How would the inhabitants of another planet, who know nothing of earth, or of man, or of God's dealings with man, be able to comprehend the Bible, even if it were all placed before him in the plainest terms which his own language would afford? It would all be to him an inexplicable enigma, a tale of wonders as mysterious and unwarrantable as the visions of the Zend Avesta, or the appalling marvels of the old Egyptian priesthood, for want of that knowledge which the Bible every where takes for granted as already in the reader's possession.

We, then, cannot expect fully to comprehend the Bible, unless we are careful observers of what God has done in the stupendous works of nature, and attentive listeners to the voice of God in his dealings with mankind. The more extensive and accurate this observation is the better-but a sufficiency of it for the interpretation of the essential truths of the Bible, is within the reach of the 'most limited means.

In respect to us, also, the Bible was written at a remote period, in a remote land, and amid institutions, habits and customs altogether diverse from our own. To understand its allusions, therefore, and enter into its spirit, we must know something of the ages, and countries, and institutions amidst which it originated. Many passages, which interpreted by our own customs, seem inexplicable and absurd, are at once cleared of all obscurity, and appear with the utmost propriety when illustrated by the customs or history of the appropriate period. What more puerile, for example, than the earnest and repeated prohibitions in the Mosaic law,

under the severest penalties, against boiling a kid in its mother's milk, or weaving a garment of linen and woollen mixed. (Exod. 23: 19. Lev. 19: 19). But when we know that the former was designed to restrain the Israelites from all approach towards cruelty to animals, which then was carried to such a revolting extent in the religious rites of their pagan neighbors, who were accustomed to boil a living kid in its mother's milk, and sprinkle the liquid over their gardens, orchards, and vineyards to render them fruitful;and the latter was a preservative against the extravagance and idolatry which they had been so long accustomed to see and admire in Egypt, linen and woollen mixed being the material of which the most expensive robes of ceremony were then made, and wrought with gorgeous embroidery of the plants, and animals, and other symbols of their imposing and dark mythology-the statutes appear at once rational, and in the highest degree necessary. So of numberless other passages in the Bible, and some which have called down the heaviest denunciations of the unbelieving infidel.

But how shall teachers, and parents in common life, and even children, come in possession of this necessary preparatory knowledge? Thanks to Sunday Schools and to the friends of these most excellent institutions, this knowledge is no longer hidden in ponderous volumes locked up in dead languages, and to be seen in the libraries of the learned-it is transferred to the cheap and attractive volume made for the child's use, it can be found in every Sunday School depository, and it ought to be attainable in every Sunday School library.

7. They read without practical self-application.

The Bible is a storehouse of supplies for all the moral wants of man, but a storehouse is of little value unless its treasures be appropriated. Men seem much less selfish in regard to their moral than in regard to their physical wants. If God had provided a great storehouse for the physical wants of man, a place where dwellings and furniture, and clothing, and food, and especially money, were to be found ready prepared for them; we should probably see each one striving to help himself first, without giving himself much concern about his neighbor's supply. Nay, it would not be surprising, if one should happen to get there first, a good christian man too, one professing to love his neighbor as well as he loves himself, that he should grasp at all which he can possibly carry away, without troubling himself in the least with the disagreeable reflection that there will be little or nothing left for his poor neighbor who stands directly behind him, and whose claims and necessities are much greater than his own.

But in regard to their moral supplies men are far more generous. They usually help all their neighbors to an abundant share, before