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30. Why the World Should Have the Bible,

There are a great many reasons why the world should have the Bible. The reasons are so numerous, substantial and urgent, that I wonder any should have doubts about it. And I wonder that we who have the Bible, and think so much of it, and have such means of multiplying and circulating copies of it, do not resolve at once to attempt, within a reasonable period, to give it to the world, since the world can only have it by the gift of those in whose possession it now is. If it is time that they had it-high time, as I suppose no one will deny, it is time we had at least resolved to try to let them have it. I wonder the great national Societies hesitate to resolve to try to fill the world with Bibles within a given period. No individual or society knows what it can do till a trial is made; we can never foresee our ability to accomplish a great enterprise. They must always be undertaken in faith. I consider it quite as hazardous to predict that the world God has created and upholds cannot be put in possession of his Word in some twenty or thirty years, as to predict that it can. This may seem a short time for us to fill the world with Bibles, but it is a long time for them to be without Bibles. I think it is always best to resolve on that which ought to be done, and which greatly needs to be done, especially when one knows that the thing

is to be done within some period, and when the resolution is but to make the attempt, and even that is done only in reliance on divine help. A man may resolve on a great deal, when he is authorized to rely, and does actually rely on God to aid him in executing it. He may take on him a great weight of responsibility when he has such support. One can do all things through Christ strengthening him; and cannot some hundreds of thousands of Christians fill the world with Bibles through the same?

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Why should not the efforts of the friends of Christ extend as far as do those of the foes of Christ? There is Satan and his associates. They go for the whole world. When the Lord asked Satan whence he he answered, "From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it." He had been over the whole ground. And shall not we go over the whole ground? Shall we not go as far seeking whom we may save, as he "seeking whom he may devour ?" I know that he is a very powerful being, and we are weak; but he is not almighty, whereas, though we are not, our glorious Ally is.

I know too that the foes of Christ are united, and herein have a great advantage; while the friends of Christ are any thing but united. That desire which the Savior expressed, "that they all may be one," remains to be accomplished: and while that is the case, no wonder the world does not believe that God

has sent him. John 17: 21. Christ does not seem to have expected that the world would believe, until his disciples were one. Now, they are not one, nor even two, but many. These friends have so many disputes to settle among themselves, that I do not know when they will be ready to proceed against the common foe. No other being ever had such divided friends as Christ. I do not say that all their controversies are unimportant, but I say they are none of them as important as the Lord's controversy with the earth.

But there is another more touching reason why the whole world should have the Bible as soon as possible. My mind has recently laid great stress upon it, and it was for the sake of presenting it that I undertook this article. Every part of earth is a vale of tears, and man is universally a mourner. Afflic tion is, or is to be, the lot of all. "Man is born to trouble," and no one can alienate this birthright. Now the Bible is the mourner's own and only book. There is nothing will do for him but this. Other books have been tried and found wanting. They do not go to the heart like God's. They don't wipe away a tear. But the Bible tells us of a hand that wipes away all tears from our eyes. And it is the very hand that made us. What a picture the Bible presents! One everlasting arm underneath a man to support him, and the hand of the other wiping away his tears as they flow! Was ever any thing like it?

That picture ought to be exhibited every where. I have read what Howe, and Watts, and Flavel, and Baxter and Cecil, and I do not know how many others, have written for mourners, and it is all very well; but what is it all to what I have read in the Lamentations of Jeremiah, “HE DOTH NOT AFFLICT WILLINGLY?" Ah, there is more than half the human race that think he does afflict willingly. The cholera is regarded by the Hindoos as the cruel sport of one of their goddesses. O how it would lighten the sorrows of these mourners, did they but know that it is no one of a plurality of gods, but the Lord that afflicts them, and that he does it not willingly! Can we not in a quarter of a century give them this information? But this is only one of I know not how many similar passages. There is another that goes even beyond this? "In all their afflictions He was afflicted!" Here is sympathy for you-divine sympathy. Dost thou feel? He feels too. Does not the pitier always suffer as well as the pitied? Well, "like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth." Such ideas as these never crossed a pagan mind. It never even occurred to him that God is a father.

I have thought how one of us in our affliction would like to be without the Bible, and what we would not give under such circumstances to obtain it; whether we would not give more to have it for ourselves, than we now give that the other members

of the great family of mourners may have it. I think we should increase our subscription to the Bible Society. We would not like to go along the vale of tears, and through the valley of the shadow of death, into which the former sometimes so suddenlly sinks, without the 23d Psalm in our possession

31. Mrs. M. L. Nevins.

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Will you allow a friend, in his affliction, to occupy a little space in your valuable paper, ubject deeply interesting to himself and to a few of your readers. Other readers can pass it by as destitute of general interest, and when their turn of bereavement comes, let them be indulged the like privilege of consecrating their private griefs on the public page.

The following notice was inserted in the secular newspapers of Baltimore, of November 12.

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Died, on Saturday, November 8, 1834, after a short illness, Mrs. Mary Lloyd, wife of the Rev. W. Nevins, aged 33 years. Though she fell a victim to the dreadful pestilence, yet she suffered no pain, and felt no terror, but with sweet submission to the divine will-with perfect confidence in the merits of

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