purposes, and set the means against the end.  All, therefore, who sincerely love God, are students of His Word; they here, also accord in soul with the psalmist, and like him, can say, “O how I love thy word! in it is my meditation all the day:”  they eat it as food for their souls, and find it sweeter than honey.  They go to it as to an inexhaustible fountain, and drink from it streams of sacred light and joy.  A neglected Bible is too unambiguous a sign of an unsanctified heart; since that blest book can not fail to attract every one that loves its divine Author.  How is it possible to delight in God, and yet neglect that Word which alone reveals Him in His true and glorious character—­alone discovers the way by which He comes into unison with us, and condescends to pardon us, to love us, and to guide us through all this mysterious state of being?  It is observable that the only persons who are inattentive to their own sacred books are to be found among Christians.  Mohammedans commit large portions of the Koran to memory; the Jews regard the Old Testament with reverence; the Hindu Brahmans are enthusiastically attached to their Shastra; while Christians alone neglect their Bible.  And the reason is, that the Scriptures are so much more spiritual than the religious books received by others; they afford so little scope for mere amusement or self-complacency; they place the reader alone with God; they withdraw him from the things that are seen and temporal, and fix him among the things that are unseen and eternal; they disclose to his view at once the secret evils of his own condition, and the awful purity of that Being with whom he has to do.  No wonder the ungodly man hates their light, neither comes to their light, but retires from it farther and farther into the shades of guilty ignorance.  How melancholy the infatuation of such a character!

Estimate your character in respect to your love of God, by reflecting, with what sentiments you regard the people of God.  God has a people peculiarly His own:  they are not of that world to which they outwardly belong—­not conformed to it in the spirit of their mind; they stand apart, many of them at least, in conspicuous conformity to Jesus Christ, and in earnest expectation of the glory which He had promised.  How, then, do you regard these decided followers of God?  Do you shun their society with aversion and secret shame; or do you enjoy their communion as one of the most delightful among your Christian privileges?  Are you content merely to be the companion of those who “have a name to live, but are dead”:  or can you say with the psalmist, “My delight is in the excellent of the earth”? or, with the beloved disciple, “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren”? for, as he adds, “He that loveth him that begot, loveth him that is begotten”; if you do not love the image which you have seen, how can you love the unseen original?  If the features of holiness and grace