Africa and Asia, and Europe and America, presenting the rapturous spectacle of the prophet's strain upon a world's lips—a chorus, every chord in which is joy, every heart in which is love, every utterance in which is deep and glorious harmony. We move to that blessed land-our march is amid the music of the redeemed. Onward, fellow-Christian, in your sublime career! and so, amid crashing scepters, and crumbling dynasties, and exploding thrones, and the earth moved and the mountains reeling, and the waves of the sea roaring, and men's hearts failing them for fear of the things that are coming upon the earth, lift up your hearts and sing, "God is our refuge and our strength," as old Luther did in trouble; for this tolling of the funeral knell of successive kingdoms shall be soon changed in your hearing into a joyous marriagepeal of bells, sounding over sea and land, "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh, and the Bride hath made herself ready!" SELECT LECTURES. IV. The Literary Attractions of the Bible. BY REV. JAMES HAMILTON, F. L. S., MINISTER OF THE SCOTCH CHURCH, REGENT SQUARE. DELIVERED BEFORE THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION, IN EXETER HALL, LONDON. NOVEMBER 27, 1849. IV. The Literary Attractions of the Bible. GOD OD made the present earth as the home of man; but had he meant it as a mere lodging, a world less beautiful would have served the purpose. There was no need for the carpet of verdure or the ceiling of blue; no need for the mountains, and cataracts, and forests; no need for the rainbow; no need for the flowers. A big, round island, half of it arable, and half of it pasture, with a clump of trees in one corner, and a magazine of fuel in another, might have held and fed ten millions of people; and a hundred islands, all made on the same pattern, big and round, might have held and fed the population of the globe. But man is something more than the animal which wants lodging and food. He has a spiritual nature, full of keen perceptions and deep sympathies. He has an eye for the sublime and the beautiful, and his kind Creator has provided man's abode with affluent materials for these nobler tastes. He has built Mont Blanc, and molten the lakes in which its shadow sleeps. He has intoned Niagara's thunder, and has breathed the zephyr which sweeps its spray. He has shagged the steep with its cedars, and besprent the meadow with its king-cups and daisies. He has made it a world of fragrance and music-a world of brightness and symmetry— |