'RUTH.

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THE SAVING EFFICACY OF TRUTH.

MAN was created perfect-without a single discord to interrupt the harmony of his faculties, and with a spirit modelled after that of the Creator himself. There was no room for doubt, since that would have implied an imperfection of judgment; there was no interruption of the full and direct intercourse of mind with its Maker; much less was there an ascendency of the sensuous nature over the intellectual, or of the intellectual over the moral. The moral was then the religious; and we may add that the sensuous and the intellectual were also the religious. But the fall wrought a mournful change. The imagination rebelled against the reason; the judgment against both; truth was no longer appreciated and received as soon as perceived; and a war of man's three natures, too sad and destructive to be contemplated without shuddering, succeeded the state of peace and love in Eden.

It is the part of knowledge, true knowledge, that which is from above-to calm and subdue the passions, to bring man's imagination into subjection to his reason, and his reason into subjection to the will of God. The truth sets us free. Before it ignorance, superstition, bigotry, and intolerance are compelled to yield. It is the bright morning star which announces the reign of peace and righteousness in the soul of man. Those who neglect or reject it are emphatically the enemies of that reign; "for," says the Scripture, "this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil." This was the sin of

the Jewish nation. It shut its eyes to the light of prophecy and of evidence, and for that sin lost the inestimable privilege of being God's chosen nation; and such, we may add, is the sin of all those in our own day who shut their eyes to the light, and continue to grope in the darkness of prejudice and bigotry. We insert upon this subject the following excellent remarks of an anonymous writer.

Truth is at once refreshing and purifying to the mind, and it is only by obtaining it that spiritual languor and defilement can be avoided. It is ordained by the Lord that man can elevate his understanding and thoughts into the light of heaven, while his will and affections remain immersed in depravity and corruption.

The affections of the unregenerate man are depraved, and would lead him chiefly to desire those things which gratify the sensual part of his nature. In order that he may counteract these inclinations, he is endowed with an understanding receptive of truth, and thence a judgment which approves or condemns every act of his life, and every thought and feeling of his soul. It is his duty to bring his passions into subjection to his intellect, and to discard every thought, and desist from every action, which his judgment disapproves. By acting thus his life becomes more and more in accordance with the dictates of sound reason, which is the voice of God guiding him from within.

When man applies all the knowledge which he has obtained to useful purposes, his purer life raises him above many prejudices, and he is enabled to take more comprehensive views. He sees that some practice which he had once thought innocent is an opposing barrier in his progress towards goodness, and this too he sacrifices. He wills to be perfect as his Father in heaven is perfect. He strives after truth in order to obtain goodness, and that Being whose only object in creation was to make man a finite image of his own infinite perfections, infuses new truths into his creature's mind, in order that the