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and lets his light shine, numerous false guides appear and proffer their services. While he was stumbling along in darkness and in ignorance, the devil gave himself no concern about him. Now he is very much interested in his welfare. He sends his fervants to put the poor man right. One of these endeavours to dissuade him from ufing the Bible, for, says he, "it is full of mystery; it is impoffible to understand it. I, for one, will never believe what I cannot understand. Follow reason, that is the surest guide." "Indeed, friend," replies the enlightened man, "it was by following reason that I was led into the possession of the Bible, and my Bible has led me to God. I acknowledge it is mysterious, wonderfully fo; yet it has led me right hitherto, and I am determined to follow it. The nature of its fecret influence over my foul, I cannot tell. The nature of the power by which it guides aright, under all circumstances of life, I know not. Neither does the mariner understand the power by which the compass operates so beneficially under all circumftances; of storm and calm, light and darkness, heat and cold. It is ever a sure guide. He believes in it, he follows it. Were the failor no more to weigh anchor and spread the flowing fail, until he understands the mysteries of the compass, verily he would have to learn another trade, for ships would rot in harbour, commerce would cease, and intercourse between nations come to an end. And what is worthy of remark, the common failor-boy understands just as much

of the practical use of the compass, as the captain; cease then to perfuade me further. The Bible is my compass, my sure guide, I will follow it."

Other false directors, of different names, but all of them having the fame end in view, viz., to make him diftrust his guide, and turn him out of the way, offer to them their services; some press the matter one way, and fome another. His reply to all is, "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way, but by taking heed thereto according to thy word."

Thus he believes in it practically, follows its directions implicitly, and it guides him fafely by every flough of despond, over every mountain of difficulty, through every strait of distress, and every storm of tribulation, and conducts him at last in triumph to the home of the blessed.

"Take from the world the Bible, and you have taken the moral chart by which alone its population can be guided. Ignorant of the nature of God, and only gueffing at their own immortality, the tens of thousands would be as mariners, tossed on a wide ocean, without a pole star and without a compass. The blue lights of the stormfiend would burn ever in the shrouds; and when the tornado of death rushed across the waters, there would be heard nothing but the shriek of the terrified, and the groan of the defpairing. It were to mantle the earth with a more than Egyptian darkness; it were to dry up the fountain of human happiness; it were to take the tides from our waters, and leave them stagnant, and the stars from our heavens, and leave them in fackcloth; and the verdure from our valleys, and leave them in barrenness; it were to make the present all recklessness, and the future all hopelessness; the maniac's revelry, and then the fiend's imprifonment; if you could annihilate the precious volume which tells us of God and of Christ, and unveils immortality, and instructs in duty, and wooes to glory. Such is the Bible. Prize ye it, and study it more and more. Prize it, as ye are immortal beings, for it guides to the New Jerufalem. Prize it, as ye are intellectual beings, for it "giveth light to the fimple."

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"Above all these things put on charity." - COL. iii. 14 is the fulfilling of the law."-Rom. xiii. 10. love."-I JOHN iv. 8.

CHARITY, OR LOVE.

"Love "God is

The feraph Charity from heaven descends,
And o'er the world on shining pinions bends;
Round mourning mortals tender as a dove,
She spreads her wing and foothes in tones of love;

Pours living balm into the wounded breast,
And aids the beggar though in tatters dreft;
The orphan's plaint she heeds, and widow's sigh,
And fmiles away the tear from forrow's eye.
Like some fair fount that through the defert flows,
Fringed with the myrtle and the Perfian rose,
She scatters blessings all along her track,
And hope and joy to want and woe brings back,
And when the last faint fob is heard no more,
Up to her native bowers again she'll foar.

BEHOLD here a being of heavenly appearance. The light of love irradiates her brow; her eyes melt with tenderness; her countenance wears the aspect of benevolence; her heart bleeds with sympathy; her hands are strong to save; the commiferating Angel has come from a far distant part; on the wings of love and compaffion she has come; she has left all to fuccour and to fave the helpless, the wretched, and the loft.

See her at her Godlike work. In the foreground she is raising a miferable being in rags and tatters from a pit of mire and filth. With her right hand she is pouring the balm of life into the wounds of the dying. Look behind her; fee the widow and the fatherless. They have come to bless her; with hearts gushing with grateful emotion they follow her with their praise, she has rescued them from the gripe of the oppreffor; they were hungry, and she fed them; naked, and she clothed them; and their prayers, like a cloud of incenfe, go up to heaven in behalf of their compaffionate friend. Before she leaves the district of pain, want, and wretchedness, CHARITY,

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