is in the Shasters; the religion of Turkey is in the Koran; the religion of our country is in the Bible. We have no religion in this land, and can have none, which is not in the Bible. Throughout the length and breadth of this great nation there is not an altar erected to an idol-god; nor in all our history has a molten image been cast, or a carved block received the homage of an American citizen. Not a temple has been reared in honour of a pagan divinity, nor is the knee bent anywhere to adore the hosts of heaven. It is a remarkable, but indisputable fact, that they who reject the Bible in our country have no altar; no temple; no worship; no religion. They offer no sacrifice; they have no incense; they have no books of praise or of prayer-no hymn-book, and no liturgy; they are emphatically living without God in the world. No religion will be sustained in this land which does not appeal to the Bible; and if that is driven away, we shall be a people without any religion. The religion of this nation is to be the Christian religion or none; and when an American is asked what is his religion, he can only refer to the Bible.

We have, indeed, our different opinions. We are divided into sects and denominations, with peculiar views and modes of worship, yet with a good degree of common sympathy and of fraternal feeling; and we all harmonize in the sentiment, that whatever religion there is in this land is in the Bible, and that that is the rule of faith and practice. Our religion is not in creeds and confessions; in catechisms and symbols; in tradition and the decrees of synods and councils; it is IN THE BIBLE. To that, as a common standard, we all appeal; and around that we all rally. Much as Christians differ from each other, all would rush to the defence of that Book when attacked, and all regard it as the fountain of their opinions and the source of their hopes.

There is, moreover, among Christians in this country a growing conviction that the standard of all religion is the Bible. There is less and less confidence in the deductions of reason; less reliance on creeds and confessions and tradition; less dependence on the judgment of man, and a more simple dependence on the word of God. It is, and it is to be, a great principle in this nation, that the Bible contains our religion.

Now, if this be so, then the reasons why the Bible should be studied are very obvious. One is, that any man must be destitute of a very essential part of valuable knowledge if he is ignorant of the foundation of the religion of his own country. Its institutions he can never understand, nor can he ever be fully

prepared. to discharge his duty in any calling in this country without an acquaintance with the sacred Scriptures. As connected with the history and institutions of his country, and as here destined to exert a controlling influence over millions of the most free minds on the earth, it demands his profound attention. I confess I feel a deep interest in the Koran, though I never expect to be subject in any way to the laws of that book; and though I have never been able to read it though, often as I have resolved I would read it, and have attempted to do it. But I feel an interest in any book that has power to hold one hundred and twenty millions of the human race in subjection, and to mould the institutions and laws of so large a portion of mankind. I feel far more interest in that than I can in the power of Alexander, who subdued the world by arms; or of the Autocrat of the Russias, who rules a vast empire by hereditary might; or even of Napoleon, who held nations in subjection by a most potent and active will. For in such cases there is living power, and there are vast armies, and frowning bulwarks, and long lines of open-mouthed cannon prepared to pour sheets of flame on all who dare oppose. But the dominion of the Koran is THE DOMINION OF A BOOKa silent, still, speechless thing, that has no will, no armies, no living energies, no chain-shot, no cannons;—and yet it exerts a power which the monarch and the conqueror never wields. It lives, too, when monarchs and conquerors have died. It meets advancing generations, and subdues their wills too. It moulds their opinions, leads them to the temples of worship, and controls their passions with a power which monarchs never knew. So it is with the BIBLE. That, too, is a book-a silent, speechless book. But in our own land, twenty millions acknowledge its right to give laws; and in other lands, one hundred millions confess its power; and in past times, many thousand millions have been moulded by its precepts, and I would not be ignorant of that which exerts a control so near Omnipotence over so many human minds.

6

Again: No man should be a stranger to the religion of his country. At some future period of life, and that not far distant, these questions may be asked of some young man here, for aught you know, on the shores of India, or in the islands of the Pacific, or in the heart of the Celestial Empire:- What is the religion of the United States? On what is it based? What are the doctrines of the Book which is the acknowledged authority there? By whom, and when, and where was it written? And why is it there received as of Divine origin ?' How many a young American may have been asked these questions, who was as unable

to answer them as he would be similar inquiries respecting the Koran or the Shasters! How strange to an intelligent foreigner would it seem that one from a land like this could give no account of the religion of his own country!

There is another thought here, which I wish to express with as much deference for the elevated classes in our land as possible. Some who read these pages may possibly yet occupy places of influence and power in the councils of the nation, or be called as professional men to appear in conspicuous stations before their countrymen. Now the idea which I wish to express is, that the uses which are made of the Bible, and the allusions to it, by men in public life, are sometimes such as may admonish those who are coming on to the stage of action to become familiar with it, and such as are anything but commendatory of the knowledge which they have of the one Book which, more than any other, controls this nation. Shakspeare shall not be inaccurately quoted; and Byron and Burns, and Homer and Virgil shall be referred to with classic elegance; but a quotation from the Bible shall show that with whatever other learning the orator may be endowed, his familiarity has not been with the inspired records of the religion of his country; and the words of David, Isaiah, and Paul, and even of the Redeemer, shall be miserably mangled, and made almost unintelligible. Many a young man now entering on life will yet be placed in circumstances where it will be discreditable to him not to be acquainted with the Bible. No one can be placed in circumstances where that knowledge would be disreputable or injurious.

There is one other thought under this head. It is this:-The Bible has gone deeply into our institutions, customs, and laws, and no one can understand the history of this country who does not understand the Bible. It has made us, directly or indirectly, what we are. Our own ancestors, in our father-land, once were wild barbarians, and sacrificed human beings to idols. The oaken groves of England witnessed many a Druid superstition ; many a now well-cultivated spot in that land was a place where men, woven in wicker-work, were consumed as an offering to the gods! I need not say that the change in that country from what it was to what it is, was brought about by the influence of the religion which is taught in the Bible. That religion banished superstition and idolatry; raised Christian temples in the places where stood the groves of the Druids; introduced civilization, intelligence, and social order; made immortal Alfred what he was; laid the foundations of Cambridge and of Oxford; and moulded the literature and the laws of our ancestors.

Still more directly has it gone into our own institutions. We have derived our origin in great part from the Puritans, a people to whom Hume said was to be traced whatever of civil liberty there was in England. I need not recall any of the events of our early history. I need only remind you that with the Puritan, the axe was not a more needful or inseparable companion than the Bible. It went with him into the deep forest; comforted him when the war-whoop of the savage sounded in his ears; prompted him to build the church, the school-house, and the college; entered into his literature, and constituted his laws; was the foundation of his civil rights, and the platform of his views of government. It contained the lessons which he taught to his children; and his parting counsel to them, when he lay on a bed of death, was, that they should always love it. Phidias so wrought his own name into the shield of the statue of Minerva at Athens, that it could not be removed without destroying the statue. So the precepts and truths of the Bible have been inwrought into all our institutions. They are not interwoven-as if they were separate warp and woof. They are not laid on-as plates of gold may be on a carved image. They are fused in-intermingled-and run together as the gold and silver and brass of Corinth were in the great fire which burnt down its statues of silver and gold and brass-forming the much-valued compound of antiquity, the Corinthian brass. They cannot be separated; and it is too late to trace their independent proportions and influence. We have no institutions, no laws, no social habits, that are worth anything, and no learning, no literature of any kind, no liberty, which have not been moulded and modified by the Bible. No man can write our history who is a stranger to the Bible; and you will NEVER understand it, if you are ignorant of that Book. The man who enters on public life ignorant of the influence of this book in our history, is liable to perpetual mistakes and blunders in regard to the institutions of his own country. He will perpetually come in contact with opinions and habits which he cannot understand. He will never be acquainted with the public mind in this nation. He will be mistaken in regard to the course which the popular feeling will take on any subject. He will run counter to what he will esteem mere prejudice, but what in fact is conscience; and he will suppose that he meets mere popular feeling, when he encounters that which enters into every principle of our liberty. There is nothing on which foreigners who come among us are more liable to misunderstand us than on this point; and nothing which to them appears more

Inexplicable than that religion is propagated and maintained by voluntary efforts, and without an alliance with the State. The secret of the whole is, the hold which the Bible has on the public mind, and the fact that that Book is allowed to influence so extensively the opinions, the laws, and the customs of the land. It is now in almost every family, and we intend it shall be in every family. It is read every day by millions; and hundreds of thousands of children and youth are taught every week in the Sabbath-school to reverence it. A great National Society is in existence whose business it is to see that that Book is placed and kept in every family in the land; and though the press teems with novels, and romances, and poems, and books of science, yet the book that is most frequently printed, and on which the art of the printer and the binder is most abundantly lavished still, as a private enterprise, is the Bible. And in reference to our own most interesting history as a people, and to the nature of our institutions, civil and religious, as well as in reference to all the past, the Bible is the only certain "lamp unto our feet, and light unto our path."

III. A third consideration is, that the Bible has such evidences of Divine origin as to claim your attention. I do not assume that it is given by inspiration-for my purpose now does not require this, nor am I about to detain you with any proofs on that point. But I would show you that there are such presumptive proofs of its being a revelation from God, as to demand study and inquiry; such that it is ill-becoming the young man, or any man, to neglect it; and such that to reject it without examination, is no mark of an elevated understanding, or of true manliness of sentiment. The considerations which I would suggest under this head are these:

(1.) The friends of the Bible have been among the most sober, calm, and thoughtful of mankind. They have been such men as are accustomed to look at evidence, and to weigh arguments before they embrace them. That some of its neglectors and adversaries have had this character I have no occasion to deny ; but that the mass of them have been of this stamp no one will venture to affirm. But a book which has commended itself to the faith of millions of thinking and intelligent men as of Divine origin, is not to be treated with contempt, or rejected without a hearing. No man recommends his own intelligence or wisdom by a contemptuous rejection of such a book.

(2.) Again, a considerable part of those who have embraced the Bible as of Divine origin, have done it as the result of examination. I admit that all have not done it from this cause.