It is true that the young mind is interested in reading the New Testament as well as the Old; for this has its wonderful things as well as that. Indeed, there is in the New Testament, taken separately, the same gradual advancement from the simple to the profound, which marks the Scriptures throughout as a whole-first, the wonderful personal biography of Jesus, then the wider history of the Apostles, next the profound epistles, and then the sublime prophesies of the Apocalypse; each preparing the way for its successor, and each adapted to maturer years and a larger knowledge in the reader. You will find, however, that the mind of a child will be mostly attracted by precisely those parts of the New Testament-the biographical and historical, which contain the "signs and wonders," and in which it resembles the Old; such, for example, as the apparition of angels, voices from heaven, the mighty works of Jesus, the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of the Son of God.

As

Now, if there be truth in these remarks, you see at once, what an important place the Scriptures, both of the Old Testament and the New, hold in the education of our children. a book of education, no part of the Bible has become, or ever can become obsolete. The whole Bible, from first to last, is inspired of God and wisely arranged, so as to meet the wants. of the human mind, in its aspirations after knowledge and happiness, in every stage of its development from infancy to old age. And this is more than can be claimed for any other book in the world.

We believe the study of the Bible, with all its wonderful history and biography-its kings and statesmen, its women and children, its heroes and sages, its bards and prophets, its patriarchs and apostles, its orators and jurists-to be just as needful

now, in the education of our youth, as it ever was in any former period. We believe the Bible to be a complete and perfect text-book of instruction. We hold it to be, not only the best book which has ever existed, but for all purposes of education, the best which could have been made out of such materials as this world's history has thus far afforded. We have no idea, that any man or set of men, however wise and learned, could now frame, out of all the existing materials in the world outside of the Bible, any book which could be compared with this, in its admirable adaptation, as a book of education, to the youth of all generations and all lands, and which, at the same time, should be none the less adapted to all other periods of human life. No such collectanea could be formed out of all that remains of the classical learning of Greece and Rome. The terature of all modern times, excepting that which has been modelled after the Bible, could not furnish such a compend of universal instruction. This, indeed, is one among the many wondrous characteristics of the Bible-its vast combination of different elements, its amazing comprehensiveness, adapting it to each class and each individual in particular, and to all

alike..

We grant you, there are portions of it which no child can understand; which no man, no philosopher, can fully understand. There are many things in it which we see, as through a glass, darkly; which we must be content to know only in part; just as there are many barren rocks, and trackless desert wastes, and vast ice-fields on the earth's surface, whose utility we cannot perceive, and which a modern philosopher would probably have left out, had he been consulted in the making of a world. There is just as little reason to think, that human philosophy would have made the world as it is, or have governed

it as it is governed, as that it would have made just such a Bible as God has given us. In either case, his ways are not as our ways. But is it any impeachment of the Divine wisdom, or proof that the world was not made by God, that we find in it a Scylla and Charybdis, a Cape Hatteras, a frozen ocean, or a Sahara desert? No more is it an argument against the Divine origin or excellence of the Scriptures, that they contain whole chapters of genealogy, and ceremonial laws, and unknown prophecies, which we may not be able to bring within the compass of our views of utility. If there are things in the Bible hard to be understood, deep things of God which have not yet given up their secrets to any human explorer; things that, from the first, were intended for the reading of future ages; let us not forget that the same is true of universal nature; there are more things in heaven and earth than are known to our p lósophy." Let us bear in mind that a time is coming, when we shall see, eye to eye, and face to face; shall know even as we are known. A future day shall bring to light what is now hidden from our vision; and if not the day of this life at any rate the night of death. For both, in material and in spiritual things, it stands true, that "darkness shows us worlds

never saw by day." We may rest assured that a Bible without mysteries, and a world without wonders, would be no improvement of either, as it regards the great purpose for which they were intended. Our modern rationalist would strike out all that is miraculous in the Bible. He would reject, as fabulous, all the accounts of a world created out of nothing, the origin and unity of our race, the temptation and fall of Adam, the longevity-of the patriarchs, the Ark and Deluge of Noah, the tower of Babel, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the plagues of Egypt, the passage of the Red Sea, the pillar of

cloud and fire, the trumpets of Sinai, the waters of the smitten rock, the burning bush, the manna of the wilderness, the crossing of Jordan, the falling of the walls of Jericho, the stopping of the sun, the vision of angels, the fire from heaven, the raising of the dead, the fiery furnace, and the den of lions at Babylon, the fish of Jonah, the translation of Enoch, the ascension of Elijah, the transfiguration and all the stupendous miracles of Christ. But, without these, what would the Bible be, more than any other book, to childhood and youth? Did God make the Bible, any more than he did this wondrous world before us, only for the accommodation of a few rationalists and infidel philosophers! If all the infidels, who have ever lived, had believed in it, their whole number would be but as a drop in the bucket, compared with the millions upon millions, who have believed in it as it is, without their aid, and despite their opposition. In fact, it is by these very things, that the Bible is so admirably adapted to the young. It is by the attraction of these Divine wonders, that it has gained and held its mastery over the children and the adult population of every civilized country in the world. Truly, "Thy testimonies are wonderful."

IV. THE BIBLE IN THE SCHOOL AND COLLEGE.

From all that has been said in favor of the Bible, as a classic, and as a book adapted to childhood and youth, it follows as a legitimate inference of great practical importance, that it ought, in variably, to form a part of the regular course of instruction in all our schools and colleges. In every system of classical, col legiate education, it ought to be studied in its original tongues,

Just as our youth study the Greek and Latin authors. We see no reason why, as models of beauty, or as exercises of mental culture, the language and literature of Rome or of Athens should be preferred to that of Jerusalem. On the single ground of taste and genius, we believe that Moses and the Prophets, in their venerable Hebrew, are fully equal to Homer and Virgil, Herodotus and Livy. And, accordingly, an acquaintance with them in the original, ought to be regarded as an essential part of a liberal, accomplished, collegiate education.

But the Bible has much wider claims than these. Few comparatively, can ever study it in its original tongues. Every man, every child at school, may study it in English. And it is chiefly as an English classic, the best and most important in our language, that we advocate its claims. No school ought to be found without the Bible. No course of education ought to be considered complete without it. No individual ought to be regarded as adequately educated without a knowledge of it. If there is any one book which deserves to be held as indispensable in every school, and in every course of education, it is the Bible. As an English classic, and a text-book of daily instruction, it ought to hold the same foremost place in all our schools, which we know a part of it did hold as a Hebrew classic, and that by Divine commandment, in all the schools of the Jews' for thousands of years; and which, indeed it does still hold amongst the remnants of the chosen people throughout the world.

It is in no spirit of dogmatism, that we set up this claim for the Bible as a book of education at school. Argument could be given, if any argument were needed, except the bare statement of the case. Does it require any argument to show that the book, which has caused all our learning, as well as our reli