Word of God is not darkness to the Christian : all its literal truths are to him, the clouds of heaven, in which the spiritual man can always discern the presence of the Lord coming with power and glory. But to the wicked, to those who are in states of opposition, who love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil, to such the Word in its literal form is darkness; for they can discern nothing of that light which shines through the letter from the Divine brightness within. Yet notwithstanding their blindness and opposition, their contempt of all sacred things, the Lord's presence in his Word is preeminently full and complete-the Spirit of God pervades the whole, and his life sustains every jot and tittle. This universal presence of the Lord in his Word, which gives life and spirit to the whole, is finely described by the psalmist in these words, "He rode upon a cherub and did fly; yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies." (Psal. xviii. 10, 11.) These expressions, the dark waters and thick clouds, which form the

Divine pavilion, are expressive of those appearances of truth in the literal sense, by which the Divine brightness is as it were obscured by those perversions of the natural and carnal mind, which are here called dark waters and thick clouds. The truth of these remarks is experienced in every-day life and abundantly borne out by the madness of those atheistical comments upon Scripture, which are daily issuing forth from the school of materialism and infidelity. They are made by persons whose only object is to throw obloquy and contempt upon a book, the contents of which they do not understand. They act as if they had neither eyes to see its glory, nor hearts to feel its power. They would fain have us believe that the Bible is a worthless and even immoral book, invented in the dark ages by ignorance and priestcraft; but to these gratuitous and unproved charges, we reply that the dim sight of the owl is not sufficiently strong and quick to look upon the sun in its brightness. Surely these dark waters and thick clouds, which rise up from their perverted minds, obscure the genuine light of truth. They follow their own will-with-a-wisp, and

are led into innumerable doubts and errors, because they have no wish to know the Scriptures nor the power of God.

The Divine brightness within the letter of the Word, when fully received, accomplishes in man full and perfect regeneration. It is therefore said, that "At the brightness that was before him, his thick clouds passed, hailstones and coals of fire." (Psalm xviii. 12.) It will be seen at once that these thick clouds, hailstones, and coals of fire, cannot stand before the Divine brightness-they passed away! These words show the order which the Divine Truth, as the brightness of Jehovah, pursues in freeing man from all falsehood and evil, and saving the soul alive. This brightness is the spiritual truth of God infilled with the warmth of celestial love. Wherever this goes forth, into whatever mind it enters, the first things to be dispersed, are the thick clouds, then the hailstones, and lastly the coals of fire. The thick clouds are here put to denote those false and perverted notions which rise up as mists from the carnal mind, and which obscure the light of heaven: but these will certainly pass away, when the man,

with a true energy of soul, begins to contemplate the truth of heaven. The spiritual brightness of Revelation will penetrate his thick clouds, and open to his mind a new and glorious scene. This brightness will also cause the hailstones to pass away. Hailstones, literally, are frozen drops of rain, congealed into hard lumps, in consequence of the absence of heat. They descend to the earth in a destructive, not in a productive capacity. As hailstones they are of no use whatever in fertilizing the land; before they can be rendered beneficial to the soil, they must, by the application of heat, be turned into a liquid; then, and not till then, are they made useful. So in a spiritual sense, all those doctrines of religion which are professed by the lips, which exist in the understanding as so many cold and frozen speculations, but which regard not the life, are not animated by the fire of heaven, and in which the celestial warmth of love and devotion is not-these are the hailstones, which, in religion, are destructive and worthless. But no sooner does the Divine brightness appear than the hailstones pass away. When the warmth of love and purity of life is

pass away.

found to mingle with the doctrines we professwhen every doctrine is seen to regard the life, and that the life of religion is to do good; then our hailstones pass away, our frozen drops of speculation are melted and changed to the fertilizing waters of life. Then, too, though last, yet greatest in importance, will the coals of fire These are the true emblems of all those lusts, concupiscences, and depraved desires, which, if suffered to remain in the natural mind, will, like coals of unhallowed fire, burn up and destroy every vestige of the heavenly state in the soul of man. But these, at the Divine brightness will retire, and leave the man in full possession of light and peace, and every joy.

In the further explanation of the nature of correspondence, as well as of its use as a key to unlock the sacred cabinet of Divine Revelation, we may observe that, in this material world the forms of things only meet our corporeal vision. By our bodily sight we can look upon and examine minutely the form, construction, and organization of all bodies, whether mineral, vegetable, or animal; but the essence