my saying that I have "the witness in myself?" Only, dear brethren, remember that, as all assurance is the fruit of God's Spirit, it must be darkened and weakened by any indulgence in sin. Alas! if the believer be not diligent in mortifying corrupt passions, and waging war with the world and the flesh, he will have "the witness in himself;" but it will be a witness to the melancholy truth that God's Spirit may be grieved, and that, when grieved, there happens what the Psalmist has so pathetically described, "Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and a horrible dread hath overwhelmed me."

LECTURE V.

The Apocrypha.

2 PETER i. 21.

"Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."

THE Church, during this portion of the year, appoints that the first lessons for her daily service should be selected from the Apocrypha. It is not usual to take texts from the Apocrypha, and therefore we do not attempt to follow the public service in choosing our subjects of discourse. We say "not usual," though in the printed volumes of many of our eminent divines you will find sermons on texts in the Apocrypha, so that we should not be without precedent if we addressed you on passages from these uncanonical books. Though our Church differs widely from the Roman Catholic in regard of the Apocrypha, refusing wholly to recognise these books as inspired, she does not authorize their being treated with that neglect which they now commonly experience from Protestants. These books are appointed to be publicly read: but then, to prevent its being on this account supposed, that they are to be accounted of equal authority with the canonical, you find it expressly stated in the Articles, that "the

Church doth read them for example of life, and instruction of manners, but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine."

Yet if texts from the Apocrypha may not be used to establish any doctrine, they may often be subservient to the instruction and comfort of the Christian. How curious and how interesting is what is related of himself by a man as great in genius as in godliness, John Bunyan, the author of the "Pilgrim's Progress." "I was now," "I was now," says he

spiritual darkness, “I

when describing a season of great was now quite giving up the ghost of all my hopes of ever attaining life, when that sentence fell with weight upon my spirit, 'Look at the generations of old, and see; did ever any trust in God, and were confounded?" The words enlightened and encouraged him: he went home; he searched his Bible; but they were no where to be found; he asked first this good man, and then another; but they could give him no information. "At this," says he, "I wondered that such a sentence should so suddenly, and with such comfort and strength, seize upon my heart, and yet that none could find it; for I doubted not but that it was in the holy Scriptures. Thus I continued above a year, and could not find the place: but at last, casting my eye upon the Apocryphal books, I found it in Ecclesiasticus, 'Look at the generations of old, and see; did ever any trust in the Lord, and was confounded? or did

any abide in his fear, and was forsaken? or whom did he ever despise that called upon him?" Bunyan describes himself as at first somewhat daunted at finding that words which had been so useful to him were only in the Apocrypha. But this feeling wore off, "especially," as he

says, "when I considered that, though it was not in those texts that we call holy and canonical, yet forasmuch as this sentence was the sum and substance of many of the promises, it was my duty to take the comfort of it; and I bless God for that word, for it was of good to me; that word doth still ofttimes shine before my face."

Yet whilst arguing from this instance that the Christian may, at times and most lawfully, derive comfort from the Apocrypha, it will not often happen to him to confound, as did Bunyan, the Apocrypha with the canonical Scriptures, or to suppose that what was quoted from the one might be found in the other. There is generally no mistaking the Apocrypha for the inspired word of God. They are so distinguished that you can tell at once, on first hearing, which is which. And this is the first fact on which we mean to speak to you to-day-the sameness which there is throughout the Bible, and at the same time the marked difference which there is between the Bible and every other book. The text which we have taken from St. Peter will account for this, though nothing else will. The writers of the Bible, "holy men of God," 'spake as they were moved," not by their own disposition or ability, but "as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" -there may well be sameness, if there were but one But when this shall have been done, we should like to show you in some particular instances, of what use and worth the Apocryphal books may be, so that you may accord them that measure of respect which is prescribed by the Church. Such, then, is the plan of the remainder of our discourse. We wish to show you that there are advantages to be derived from reading the Apocrypha;

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mover.

but we must first show you how broad a separation there is between the Apocryphal books and the Canonical, and how such a separation is to be accounted for by the fact, that we may apply to the one, though we cannot to the other, the words of St. Peter in our text, "Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."

Now we may venture to assert of the Bible—that is, of what you commonly mean by the Bible, the Canonical Books of the Old and New Testaments,-we may venture to assert of the Bible, that, though its several parts were composed in different ages, and therefore also by different writers, it is an uniform book, presenting throughout the same truths, though with great variety of exhibition, and marked throughout by a surprising similarity of style. What does this prove, but that the Bible must throughout have had the same author, however that author may have employed various scribes? It is, we think, one of the most beautiful of contemplations, this of the sameness of authorship which may be traced in Holy Writ. That men, separated from each other by long intervals of time, should have taken up successively the lofty topic of our Redemption, and, whether in the effusions of poetry, or the enactments of legislation, or the anticipations of Prophecy, or the narrations of history, should have told the same truths, and announced the same mercies-and this in a manner so peculiarly their own, that you cannot meet with a page of their writings, from the Book of Genesis downward to the Book of Revelation, and not instantly recognise it as a page of the Bible-we say of this, that it can be accounted for on no supposition, but that of each having been moved by the same divine Spirit, so that to