To help on these results, then, we would now try to bring sound doctrine into actual contact with men's souls, that it may produce sound practice. "The form of sound words" is to be prized above every earthly thing, but unless these words lead to right actions, they leave us still in the condition of Chorazin and Bethsaida of old. We would therefore try to take the truth of God in our hand; we would go under its escort, to the places of daily business or daily toil, there to apply the simple but often searching maxims which came from heaven to guide men through life on earth to glory.--We need expect no permanent amelioration for man except through the power and the prevalence of truth, and every attempt to elevate his nature to its true dignity by any other means, is either the effort of an empiric or the deception of an impostor. The simple theory of human progression, the only and exclusive means of purifying man, is to make him like-minded with God again. THE LABOURS OF SISYPHUS. Now, as the mind of God can be learned only from his Word, everything but that will prove as unavailing as the labours of Sisyphus-- "Up the high hill he heaves the huge round stone;" but it recoils in spite of all his toil, and so will every effort to elevate fallen man apart from the truth of God. We decline no fair ally. Nay, we would invoke the aid of all that is salutary either for mind or body. But unless the truth sit at the helm, and preside over all; unless the mind of God become the mind of man, man is still a degraded being; he is ignorant alike of his chief end and his chief good. In short, permanently to benefit man either for time or eternity without the knowledge of God, is a task as hopeless as that of Adam when he tried to hide among the trees of the garden. --Along the mountain-sides of some districts in this land we see traces of the culture of former generations at much higher levels than cultivation now reaches; but, deserted now as unproductive, these patches are re-claimed by the heath or the furze: they furnish no food at least for the use of man; and are not these significant emblems of the attempts to cultivate man without the knowledge of his God? The sepulchre may be white-washed, or sin covered over and concealed; but all is impurity, all is moral deformity still, in the eye of Him who judges righteous judgment. THE SOVEREIGN PANACEA. We therefore take the Word of God as the grand rule, the sovereign panacea in our hand. We try to apply the system of mingled holiness, and mercy, and truth, and love, which is there disclosed, to guide the lives of mortals; and in prosecuting this design, the following is our plan. We try to show-- I. Christianity in the /Heart/; for, unless it is found there, we need not expect to find it anywhere besides.