existed. Every mineralogist might point out to him rich recondite sources of incalculable wealth, couched beneath spots he had an hundred times traversed, seeing nothing but turf or flowers; or wearied, perhaps, with an apparent blank and barren waste. Just so it is with the Word of God: we may have travelled over every part, and yet have remained in profound ignorance of its most precious truths; or we may have satisfied the first necessities of spiritual hunger, without having elicited any of the boundless treasures opened by a deep experience, or an assiduous comparison of its various passages. As a man would be a fool in temporal things, who seeing, for example, the rarefaction of the air over a brickkiln, should yet deny its power, under certain modifications, to produce the amazing effects when actuated by gunpowder: and as he would be an idiot, who, contented to observe the exhalations over a lake, should yet deny the increased power of the same means in a steam engine: so that person is a spiritual fool, who denies the resources and increased force afforded by fresh combinations of spiritual truths. And the person who is so absurd as to imagine that the supposition of various strata of divine truth lying beneath his own, must necessarily be false and fanatical,

is as ridiculous, spiritually, as that man would be temporally, who, plucking his flowers from his garden in Cornwall, denies the possibility of marble, of tin, or of silver lying beneath and as, temporally, no one man can be acquainted with all the treasures of the material universe already discovered by human industry; but that the utmost powers of one individual can only grasp a very small part-so there must be a division of spiritual labour; for no individual can take in but a very little; and as, after all human effort, the terra incognita far exceeds the terra cognita of human science, so in spiritual research, after the united effort of all the generations of those who seek God's face, how little comparatively do they know of the unsearchable riches of Christ, contained in the inexhaustible mine of Scripture! Hence the formation of the Bible, the Word of God, is precisely on the same plan as the earth, the work of God; even the exterior is full of beauty and utility: those who only cultivate its surface, will find themselves amply repaid; yet the deeper they go, the more valuable the treasure becomes; and its most valuable riches ever lie at great depths from the surface, though the waters of life ever roll along some grains of the gold, even to the most superficial who taste of its wave.

Again; the Bible might be compared to the earth, because the light of the sun shining on the earth produces heat; as the light of the Sun of Righteousness shining on the Scriptures, causes them to give forth their inspiring warmth to those on whom he shines.

To return; the parabolic composition of Scripture is then the mode of constitution by which it receives that wonderful property of offering to each person, in every passage, that degree of truth which is suited to his own necessities: never puzzling and burdening the conscience of the uninformed mind, by pressing upon it that which it is not arrived at. Thus has it been said by one of the fathers of the Christian church, that the Scriptures are as a river of life, in which the lamb may wade without danger, and the elephant may swim without finding any bottom.

The Scripture, by this miraculous mode of construction, is indeed not simply rendered a treasury of complete Christian instruction, adapted to the wants of believers in every stage; but we may likewise add, that this structure is in another respect most important, because it renders the Scripture a perpetually new feast. The book of God is the book to be read always. But man requires constant variety, and constant exercise of mind and heart. Now this want is,

by the mode of construction alluded to, amply provided for. Every advance in the Christian life throws a new light on the whole Scripture, and discovers a fresh stratum of divine truth; every change of situation or circumstance throws to the child of God, fresh streams of light on particular parts. Hence the Bible, as well as the believer, may be said to renew its youth like the eagles; and were a man to live to ten times Methuselah's age, he would say at last, like Jeremiah, “Ah Lord God, for I am but a child.” Thus the Bible becomes to the believer not a mere dead letter, like the works of man, but a constant living reciprocal action from God, and his own heart and mind.

There exists another most important use of the parabolic mode of writing.

The Bible is the revelation of God, addressed emphatically to MAN. It must then, as to its substance, contain all the truths of God; but, as to the mode of setting them forth, it must be calculated for their intended recipient, man. Now man is never happy unless all his faculties are called into alternate activity. It is, therefore, obvious that the revelation of God must be made in such a mode as to address itself to all the human faculties, and to afford scope to all the human propensities. Every branch of

the human intelligences must there find its appropriate object; and every class of human impulses must there find an object, a motive, and a sphere for full exertion and activity.

For, were this not the case, there would always remain some unevangelized, intellectual, or moral faculties, which would be perpetually disturbing and distracting the councils of the mind; or some refractory, unchristianized propensities, which would be perpetually snapping the reins of her control, and starting aside from that course which the mind could (in that case) possess no appropriate motives to urge them to maintain. In the first case, the man would resemble an equipage, the charioteers of which were in a perpetual contest as to which road to drive their steeds. In the second case, he would be in the same trouble as the driver who should have two or three unbroken horses yoked in with an otherwise well appointed team. Now, the human vehicle can never go on well, unless the moral and intellectual faculties, (the drivers,) and the inferior propensities, (the steeds to be driven,) are all in perfect accordance; that is, every faculty and every propensity has its own peculiar and distinctive object; consequently each one has it own appropriate class of motives, of which any other faculty and propensity is