A great many people profess to believe the Scriptures are true, and that they present the plain and only way to infinite and eternal blessedness, and yet they neglect the study of the Scriptures. How is this? If there was a book revealing a plain and easy way for all men to become rich and enjoy health and pleasure and this world's happiness, would it not be studied by all men? And why is it that the Bible is not studied by the masses and regarded more? Why are so many professors of religion negligent in this matter? May it not be because they prefer all other business and pleasures before this? If professors of religion throughout christendom heartily believed the Scriptures even as they profess, they would be more diligently studied, and in many instances treated with greater respect. The faith of many is undoubtedly very weak. If the laws of our country provided a plain way of escape from temporal death for the benefit of the condemned criminal, as plain and pointed as the great commission given to the apostles of Christ, would any condemned criminal hesitate to obey or treat the stipulations of law as men are constantly treating the precepts of the gospel of Christ? When a man believes the Bible contains _the facts and truths_ which concern us infinitely more than all earthly matters, his care and diligence should be, _to some extent_, in harmony with his persuasion. At this point men _seem to be_ most strangely careless and grossly negligent. How few people do, or will, understand that the terms of salvation are written as with the beams of the sun? Is the trouble a low degree of faith, approximating unbelief? The shadows are always the longest when the sun is lowest. Is the sun of righteousness low in your spiritual heavens? Or have you given him the uppermost seat in your affections? What think you of Christ? Whose son is he?