Perhaps it is superfluous to occupy so much time in illustrating what is, in truth, so plain. Yet, as many overlook this plainness, it should be urged in line upon line, that if we would begin aright, we must begin at the heart, out of which flow the issues of life. One of the most earnest prayers in the Bible is, "Create in me a clean heart, O God,"[2] and one of its most emphatic or comprehensive promises is, "A new heart will I give you."[3] And would men learn that simple lesson, did they in their several places and relations as superiors, inferiors, or equals, seek to begin at the beginning, and have the heart right with God through the new-creating power of His Spirit, O how sweetly would the whole framework of society soon be adjusted! how surely would "all the building, fitly framed together, grow into an holy temple in the Lord!" The Church would be more pure. The world would not be so often cheered in its ungodly ways, by the example of men professing the truth, but holding it in unrighteousness, because they are destitute of Christianity in the heart, where it should ever reign as the unchallenged and unrivalled queen.--There are some ruins of ancient cities now buried deep under water. When the waves above them are calm, these ruins can still be seen, though centuries have rolled away since they were first submerged. Yet who would regard these waste places as the abodes of living men? Who would speak of them as the haunts of the happy? Nay, life has vanished from them; all that ever lived there have been for centuries destroyed. And, in the same way, the heart that is sunk in worldliness or saturated with what is earthly and sensual, is cut off from all communion with the living God; it is dead to holiness and Him. THE RELIGION OF THE HEART.