"The light of the Lord" streams upon us from His Word (Ps. cxix. 105). The knowledge of God and of His holy will which the Bible imparts to us is the meridian sun which casts his rays on the cold scenes of our earthly career. +I. The religion of the Bible illumines.+ Into how many errors did unaided human reason fall, when the nature of God and of His operations was the subject of its inquiries![1] Did not the wisest grope in darkness? Did they not conceive absurdities, even when man and his fate were the subject of their inquiries?[2] How full, clear, and steady is the light which the Scriptures cast upon these and other great subjects of human thought! +II. The religion of the Bible warms.+ That God is great and all-powerful some philosophers imagined before the divine light of inspired truth shone forth; but the human heart remained cold, and felt in itself no point of contact and union with so exalted a Being. Until God said, "I am your Father," we were as orphans in a strange land; but then at once the world became to us as a parent's dwelling, and our heart began to warm with love towards God and man. +III. The religion of the Bible vivifies.+ It animates and restores the weary, the dying! +IV. The religion of the Bible blesses+--now,[3] and for ever (1 Tim. iv. 8).--_G. Salomon, Twelve Sermons,_ pp. 1-24. FOOTNOTES: [1] Men who seek God by reason and natural strength (though we do not deny common notions and general impressions of a sovereign power) are like mariners who voyaged before the invention of the compass, who were but coasters, and unwillingly left the sight of the land. Such are they who would arrive at God by this world, and contemplate Him only in His creatures and seeming demonstration. Certainly every creature shows God, as a glass; but glimmeringly and transitorily, by the frailty both of the receiver and beholder; ourselves have His image, as medals, permanently and preciously delivered. But by these meditations we get no further than to know what He doth, not what He is.--_Donne,_ 1573-1631. None but the true God can discover [make known] what the true worship of God is. As that glorious eye of heaven is not to be seen but by its own proper light,--a million of torches cannot show us the sun: so it is not all the natural reason in the world that can either discover what God is, or what worship He expects, without Divine and supernatural revelation from Himself.--_Arrowsmith,_ 1602-1659.