O my friends! if you merely want to study the laws of language, do not go to the Bible.  It was not made for that.  Take “Howe’s Elements of Criticism”—­it will be better than the Bible for that.  If you want to study metaphysics, better than the Bible will be the writings of William Hamilton.  But if you want to know how to have sin pardoned, and at last to gain the blessedness of Heaven, search the Scriptures, “for in them ye have eternal life.”

When people are anxious about their souls—­and there are some such here to-day—­there are those who recommend good books.  That is all right.  But I want to tell you that the Bible is the best book under such circumstances.  Baxter wrote “A Call to the Unconverted,” but the Bible is the best call to the unconverted.  Philip Doddridge wrote “The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul,” but the Bible is the best rise and progress.  John Angell James wrote “Advice to the Anxious Inquirer,” but the Bible is the best advice to the anxious inquirer.

O, the Bible is the very book you need, anxious and inquiring soul!  A dying soldier said to his mate:  “Comrade, give me a drop!” The comrade shook up the canteen, and said:  “There isn’t a drop of water in the canteen.”  “Oh,” said the dying soldier, “that’s not what I want; feel in my knapsack for my Bible,” and his comrade found the Bible, and read him a few of the gracious promises, and the dying soldier said:  “Ah, that’s what I want.  There isn’t anything like the Bible for a dying soldier, is there, my comrade?” O blessed book while we live!  Blessed book when we die!

I remark, again, we must seek God through church ordinances.  “What,” say you, “can’t a man be saved without going to church?” I reply, there are men, I suppose, in glory, who have never seen a church:  but the church is the ordained means by which we are to be brought to God; and if truth affects us when we are alone, it affects us more mightily when we are in the assembly—­the feelings of others emphasizing our own feelings.  The great law of sympathy comes into play, and a truth that would take hold only with the grasp of a sick man, beats mightily against the soul with a thousand heart-throbs.

When you come into the religious circle, come only with one notion, and only for one purpose—­to find the way to Christ.  When I see people critical about sermons, and critical about tones of voice, and critical about sermonic delivery, they make me think of a man in prison.  He is condemned to death, but an officer of the government brings a pardon and puts it through the wicket of the prison, and says:  “Here is your pardon.  Come and get it.”  “What!  Do you expect me to take that pardon offered with such a voice as you have, with such an awkward manner as you have?  I would rather die than so compromise my rhetorical notions!” Ah, the man does not say that; he takes it!  It is his life.  He does not care how it is handed to him.  And if, this morning, that pardon from the throne of God is offered to our souls, should we not seize it, regardless of all criticism, feeling that it is a matter of heaven or hell?