in the natural world, soften, penetrate, and fertilize. The hardest heart yields to this sacred power. The will is changed; the importance of truth is perceived; the mind is directed with a strong self-application to the consideration of the doctrines it had before passed over; the emotions of fear, alarm, remorse, penitence, are awakened; the soul becomes contrite. In such a heart, as in a genial and fruitful soil, faith quickly grows up. The man who had been exercising the natural capacity of believing on human testimony all his life, and had always been roused, directed, animated, consoled, alarmed by it, according to the matter of that testimony; whilst he had never exerted that capacity upon divine Revelation, nor once yielded his heart and conscience to its discoveries; this man begins to come to himself, to act as a reasonable being, to repose on the word of the eternal God that faith which he had been previously refusing to do.

All is now hopeful; life appears; he now earnestly prays for the grace and assistance of which he feels deeply the need; he seizes his Bible; he reads it with new eyes; it seems to speak to him individually; he receives with the simplicity and affection of a child all that his heavenly Father declares; he applies truth to its proper purposes. The first is to lay him low in contrition for sin; the next is to fix his eye on the meritorious cross of his Saviour; the third is to produce peace of conscience, by the forgiveness of sins. The following steps of love, gratitude, obedience, separation from the world, holy mortification of sin, follow.

Go on, then, in this course. Implore daily the aids of grace to repair a decayed, and succor a trembling, and confirm a feeble faith. Faith is a constant victory over interposing doubts. It is a conflict, in one form or other, with the objections and fallacies which we considered in our last Lectures." It is a conquest over the dictates of mere human wisdom and the conclusions of mere external perception. It unites us with Christ, takes up the cross, endures as seeing him who is invisible, realises eternal and

(u) Lectures xxi, xxii.

future blessings-and looks not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.▾

and

You must, therefore, continually depend on the succors of grace to strengthen in you the HABIT OF FAITH, preserve it in life and vigor; to give you the impression of its REASONABLENESS, after having once admitted the truth of Christianity; and to lead you to exercise it to all the EXTENT which the nature of the case demands, and apply it to every part of Scripture.

Thus will you grow in faith more and more; interposing doubts and objections will less annoy you; the temptations of Satan will less prevail; nay, the SHIELD OF FAITH WILL QUENCH THE FIERY DARTS OF THE DEVIL.W

III. And in this progress, you will learn ever to RETAIN THAT HUMILITY OF MIND, which the highest degrees of faith are the best calculated to produce. For this most peculiarly becomes us in a state of discipline and comparative darkness, like that in which we now are. The divisions of the church have much arisen from a want of the due union of humility with faith. And yet the very nature of this grace should, and will, in proportion as it is genuine, produce lowliness of mind.

Humility is the very handmaid of true faith; the only soil where it will flourish. While pride, and presumption, and unholy curiosity engage the heart, doubts prevail, objections retain their force, faith cannot enter. And if these evils ever regain their influence after they have been dethroned, faith languishes, doubts thicken, objections recur; the strength of the soul is gone; eternal realities fade from the view; temporal interests assume a false magnitude; Satan, the great adversary, gains an advantage over us; and sensual passions are at hand, as instruments of his

snares.

Let us, then, walk in humility of heart. This is the lesson of the entire revelation of the Gospel; and more especially of the subject to which we have been now attending. We should be thankful, indeed, for the sure testimony of God, and for the least measure of true faith in it. This (w) Eph. vi. 16.

(v) 1 Cor. iii.

blessing is incalculable. Compared with the darkness of nature, Revelation is a blazing light; the Saviour is the Sun of Righteousness; the gospel a day of illumination and joy. But still, as respects our own imperfect apprehension of these blessings, our dangers from our spiritual adversaries, and the brighter discoveries of eternity, we are in an obscure and confused state. We walk by faith, not by sight. We see through a glass darkly,'-in an enigma-we speak only as children; we know partially. We are making our way through the night of this world; faith is only as a lamp glimmering in a sepulchre, sufficient to guide our lowly path, but never intended to administer to our self-confidence and pride. It has its best effect when it leads us to repose on the sure word of prophecy, and thereunto to take heed, as unto a light shining in a dark place, till the day dawn, and the daystar arise in our hearts.z

(x) 2 Cor. v. 7.

(y) 1 Cor. xiii. 12.

(z) 2 Pet i. 19.

LECTURE XXIV.

THE SOUND INTERPRETATION OF THE RECORDS OF REVELATION.

2 TIM. ii. 15.

Rightly dividing the word of truth.

HAVING considered the faith with which the divine records of Christianity are to be received, it is necessary, in the next place, to offer some remarks on the just method of interpreting the meaning of those records which such a faith implies.

For, in an age of literary innovation and intellectual daring, men may admit, generally, the Christian religion, and even pass over, without remark, the description of a true faith; and yet may evade the whole design of Christianity, by a false system of interpretation. For as in the dark ages an excessive superstition bowed to the mere authority of the church; so, in the present day, a bold and hazardous licentiousness may throw all the peculiar doctrines of the Bible into doubt and uncertainty. We have now the corruptions of eighteen hundred years flowing together. We have a secret infidelity, under the name of Christianity. It is important, therefore, to consider what clue we may find in the principles laid down in our former Lectures, to guide us on our way.

a

Now, the observations already offered on the nature, reasonableness, and extent of faith, imply all, and more than all, that we can require. Indeed, we might throw ourselves back upon the Lectures on Inspiration, where we found. that every thing was simple, human, ordinary, as to the manner in which the sacred writers conveyed to us those instructions which were inspired and superintended by the Divine Spirit. But the class of young persons, whom I have especially in my eye in these discourses, require details.

Let us, therefore, consider the right method of interpreting Scripture, as SPRINGING DIRECTLY FROM A TRUE FATIH;

as AIDED BY COMMON SENSE AND THE ORDINARY LAWS OF

HUMAN LANGUAGE; and AS SUGGESTED AND AMPLIFIED

THE PARTICULAR CHARACTER OF AN INSPIRED BOOK.

BY

I. Let us consider how a right method of interpreting Scripture SPRINGS DIRECTLY FROM A TRUE FAITH.

1. For such a faith implies an HONEST APPLICATION of our NATURAL UNDERSTANDING to the sacred scriptures as a revelation from Almighty God. The key to all sound interpretation, is a due reverence for the divine writings, in opposition to levity, to human fancies, to a scornful spirit, to attempts to force a meaning on the holy word. The very essence of faith is submission to the testimony of God. Reason closes her reign, as to the matter before her, when she opens the book of God, and faith ascends the throneleaving to reason her proper province, the subordinate ministration of arranging and expounding the new and majestic truths thus brought before her.

Faith in Christianity, is nothing more nor less than faith in the things of which Christianity consists-faith in the matter of Revelation-that is, in the real and honest meaning of the words and sentences, conveying these matters to reasonable and accountable beings. This speaks for itself. Is faith merely a pretence, which allows, generally, a submission to divine Revelation, and then rejects, by piecemeal, the particulars of which that Revelation consists? Is that faith? Or, is it faith, to pretend plausibly to receive the Bible as the unerring word of God, and then to

(a) Lect. xii. and xiii.