l qualification--'mighty in the Scriptures.' The importance of
this is beautifully expressed by Witsius: 'Let the theologian ascend
from the lower school of natural study to the higher department of
Scripture, and sitting at the feet of God as his teacher, learn from His
mouth the hidden mysteries of salvation, _which eye hath not seen nor
ear heard, which none of the princes of this world knew_; which the most
accurate reason cannot search out; which the heavenly chorus of angels,
though always beholding the face of God, _desire to look into_. In the
hidden book of Scripture, and nowhere else, are opened the secrets of
the most sacred wisdom. Let the theologian delight in these sacred
Oracles; let him exercise himself in them day and night; let him
meditate in them; let him live in them; let him draw all his wisdom from
them; let him compare all his thoughts with them; let him embrace
nothing in religion which he does not find there. The attentive study of
the Scriptures has a sort of constraining power. It fills the mind with
the most splendid form of heavenly truth. It soothes the mind with an
inexpressible sweetness; it satisfies the sacred hunger and thirst for
knowledge; ... it imprints its own testimony so firmly on the mind, that
the believing soul rests on it with the same security as if it had been
carried up into the third heaven and heard it from God's own mouth; it
touches all the affections, and breathes the sweetest fragrance of
holiness upon the pious reader, even though he may not perhaps
comprehend the full extent of his reading.... We ought to draw our views
of divine truths immediately from the Scriptures themselves, and to
make no other use of human writings than as indices marking those chief
points of theology from which we may be instructed in the mind of the
Lord'" (pp. 79, 80, ed. 1830).

* * * * *

RIDLEY IN THE ORCHARD.

"In thy Orchard, Pembroke Hall," wrote Nicholas Ridley within a few days
of his fiery martyrdom, "(the wals, buts, and trees, if they could
speake, would beare me witnes), I learned without booke almost all
Paules epistles, yea, and I weene all the Canonicall epistles, save only
the Apocalyps. Of which study, although in time a great part did depart
from me, yet the sweete smell thereof I trust I shall cary with me into
heaven; for the profite thereof I thinke I have felt in all my lyfe tyme
ever after."

And so shall it be with us also, if