Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 1.djvu/111

Rh Very much help, both for pastors and people, both for giving and receiving instruction, may be gathered, (if the writer deceive himself not concerning the results of his own experience,) by attending to this hint yearly, as the varying Psalms and Second Lessons come successively into conjunction with the unvarying First Lessons, Epistles, and Gospels. To note and collect the scattered lights will be found in itself a most engaging and interesting task, and it will serve in no slight degree to impress considerate minds, from time to time, more deeply with the fulness, the harmony, the condescension, of the Word of Life.

These reasons are respectfully addressed to those, who, in their anxiety for immediate visible edification, appear somehow to overlook the fact, that the Church Lessons are a series, arranged according to certain general principles. Scruples, and feelings of different kinds, occurring to this or that person as to the use of particular passages, must be met, of course, on their own grounds; except so far as they ought to be silenced by the overpowering advantage, which may appear to arise by adhering to the general principle of selection.

At any rate, it is much to be wished, that very free talking, and very cheap publishing, in behalf of such changes, were carefully avoided. Is there not something even cruel, in raising scruples and niceties, and unpleasant associations of various kinds, among those who as yet happily have never dreamed of criticising the Bible? If change is wanted, let proper reasons be quietly submitted to competent authorities. But let us not appeal lightly, and at random, to the sense of an irreverent presumptuous age, on one of the most sacred of all subjects.