Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: No. III. BMBLBM3 OF HOLINES1. It was, indeed, a. Poet who compared " the beauties of Holiness," to " the dew of the morning;" but the comparison is not a poetical license. It is poetry of the highest order: but it is also sober fact. The Harp of Juda breathed it in music: but an inspired hand swept the strings. David was a Prophet as well as a poet; and, therefore, we are both warranted and bound to say, when he predicts the number or the beauty of the Church, under the emblem of morning dew,—" The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man ; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." Thus it was the Eternal Spirit who suggested and sanctioned the comparison; and as he is both the author and finisher of all true i Holiness, we may be quite sure that dew is neither a false nor a fanciful emblem of its beauty. Besides, splendid as Old Testament emblems of Holiness are, they are not so splendid as those which occur in the New Testament. The Apostles go far beyond the Prophets, in emblazoning Holiness. They assert its sublimity, as well as its beauty. " We all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." Thus Paul represents growth in grace as growth in glory; or progressive sanctification on earth as akin to progressive glory in heaven. Neither the evening stars of the Angelic hierarchy, pressing upon the spheres of its morning stars ; nor the General Assembly of Time, rising to the stature and strength of the elder spirits of Eternity; nor, indeed, any ascent in the scale of heavenly perfection, could so dazzle him, or so eclipse the beauty of earthly holiness, as to make him ashamed to call its progress, a change " fromglory to glory....