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 as a perversion of the truth: for He who is the TRUTH ITSELF, has given to us the condition of securing eternal life by keeping the commandments. "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you," are His own divine words. What need, then, is there of controversy? The word of the Saviour is, "If ye will enter into life, keep the commandments." While obedience to the divine commands is always productive of peace and tranquillity within, it, at the same time, is sure to increase the sum of our blessings, although these blessings may not be always seen in an increase of temporal prosperity, or freedom from worldly trial or bodily suffering.

The great sower is our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; and the ground into which the seed is thrown is the heart of man. It is the duty of man to exercise a constant watchfulness over his affections, and to bring them under the divine government. That he might not plead ignorance of this duty, the divine commandments were given in the most plain and obvious language; and yet so framed, that while, as a natural man, he became obedient to them in the sense of the letter, they should lead him graduaily to a more interior obedience—from the love of Him who gave them—and continue to unfold and disclose the spiritual reasons why obedience should be yielded. It is obedience that keeps the mind open for the reception of truth, and truth is the rain which descends upon and fertilizes it; and when, by the reception of truth, the heart is explored, evil detected, contended against, and cast out, and goodness is admitted, and loved for its own pure sake, and a life is led in conformity therewith, then the fruits of holiness and vir-