Do not come to the examination of this great question with the idea that you must clear away all mysteries connected with the gospel before you believe it.  The world in which you live is full of mysteries.  One would think that if any thing could be fully comprehended, it must be the acts of which we are ourselves the authors.  By a volition you raise your hand to your head; but how is the act performed?  True, there is in your body an apparatus of nerves, muscles, joints, and the like; but in what way does the human will have power over this apparatus?  No man can answer this question:  it is wrapped in deep mystery.  Why be offended, then, because the way of salvation revealed in the Bible has like mysteries—­mysteries concerning not your duty, but God’s secret and inscrutable methods of acting?

And since the question now before you is not one of mere speculation, but one that concerns your immediate duty, be on your guard against the seductive influence of sinful passion and sinful habit.  There is a deep and solemn meaning in the words of Jesus:  “Every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.”  Corrupt feeling in the heart and corrupt practice in the life have a terrible power to blind the mind.  The man who comes to the examination of the Bible with a determination to persist in doing what he knows to be wrong, or in omitting what he knows to be right, will certainly err from the truth; for he is not in a proper state of mind to love it and welcome it to his soul.

Remember also that it is not the grosser passions and forms of vice alone that darken the understanding and alienate the heart from the truth.  Pride, vanity, ambition, avarice—­in a word, the spirit of self-seeking and self-exaltation in every form—­will effectually hinder the man in whose bosom they bear sway from coming to the knowledge of the truth; for they will incline him to seek a religion which flatters him and promises him impunity in sin, and will fatally prejudice him against a system of doctrines and duties so holy and humbling as that contained in the Bible.  Take, as a comprehensive rule for the investigation of this weighty question, the words of the Saviour:  “If any man will do his will”—­the will of God—­“he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.”  So far as you already know the will of God, do it; do it sincerely, earnestly, and prayerfully, and God will give you more light.  He loves the truth, and sympathizes with all earnest and sincere inquirers after it.  He never leaves to fatal error and delusion any but those who love falsehood rather than truth, because they have pleasure in unrighteousness.  Open your heart to the light of heaven, and God will shine into it from above; so that, in the beautiful words of our Saviour, “the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.”