unto you, so that all who behold you may see of a truth that you have been with Jesus. You must be " his epistles" to an ungodly world : and so plain must be the characters written on your heart and life, that they may be " known and read of all men." Daily must this writing be more visible ; and daily shall the radiance around you increase, if you live near to the Lord, contemplating continually the wonders of his love : for, "if with unveiled face you behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, you shall be changed into the same image from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord'" ]
1 ver. 18.
2 Cor. iii. 15, 16. JEven unto this day, ivhen Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. Nevertheless, tohen it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken aioay^.
THERE is confessedly much obscurity in different parts of the sacred volume : even in St. Paul's writings there are, as St. Peter tells us, " some things hard to be understood." And this is no more than might well be expected, considering the depth of the sub- jects treated of, even all the hidden counsels of the Almighty, and the necessary ambiguity of prophetic language, in order to conceal the purposes of the Deity, till the prophecies should be unravelled by subsequent events. Other difficulties arise out of errors, which in the course of so many hundred years have, through the inadvertence of transcribers, crept into different copies of the Holy Scriptures. But, after all, the chief source of obscurity is, the veil that is on the heart of man, (the veil of prejudice, and ignorance, and unbelief,) which conceals from uncon- verted men even the plainest truths. To intimate the existence of such a veil, was one of the reasons for Moses putting a veil over his face when he came
a An equally good text for this would be, Exod. xxxiv. 33, 34. " Till Moses had done speaking to tltem, he put a veil on his face. But when Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he took the veil off until he came out."