One commanding subject pervades the Scriptures, and rises to view on every page: this recurring theme, towards which all instructions and histories tend, is the great and anxious question of condemnation or acquittal at the bar of God, when the irreversible sentence shall come to be pronounced. "How shall man be just with God?" is the inquiry ever and again urged upon the conscience of him who reads the Bible with a humble and teachable desire to find therein the way of life. In subserviency to this leading intention, the themes which run through the sacred writings, and which distinguish those writings by an immense dissimilarity from all the remains of polytheistic literature, are those of guilt, shame, contrition, love, joy, gratitude, and affectionate obedience. And moreover, in conformity with this same intention, the Divine Being is revealed—if not exclusively, yet chiefly—as the party in the great controversy which sin has occasioned. The intercourse, therefore, which is opened between heaven and earth is almost confined to the momentous transactions of reconciliation and renewed friendship. When the Hearer of prayer invites interlocution with man, it is not, as perhaps in Eden, for the purposes of free and discursive converse, but for conference on a special business. "Come now, let us reason together, saith the Almighty, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." The same speciality of purpose and limitation of subject is plainly implied in the appointment of a Mediator and Advocate; for although the establishment of this happy medium of approach authorizes and encourages even a boldness of access to the throne of the heavenly grace, it not less evidently imposes a restriction or peculiarity upon the intercourse between God and man. As the Intercessor exercises his office to obtain the bestowment of the benefits secured to mankind by his vicarious sufferings, the suppliant must surely have those benefits especially in view. The work and office of the Mediator, and the desires and petitions of the client, are correlatives. "No man," said the Saviour, "cometh unto the Father but by me." It follows then, naturally, that those who thus come to the Father should keep in constant remembrance the great intention of the mediatorial scheme, which is nothing else than to reconcile transgressors to the offended Majesty of heaven. But this unalterable condition of all devotional services contains a manifest and efficacious provision against enthusiastical excitements; for the emotions of shame and penitence, and of joy in receiving the assurance of pardon, are not of the class with which the imagination has near affinity, and, in a well-ordered mind, they may rise to their highest pitch without either disturbing the powers of reason, or infringing the most perfect inward serenity, or outward decorum. In a word, it may be