Truth

When Pilate proposed the illustrious prisoner the question , "what is truth?" he brought before him the most momentous subject which can engage the attention of a rational creature ; and if Christ refused to give an answer , his silence is to be accounted for by the captious or trifling spirit of the querist , and not by any insignificance in the question . Truth is the  most valuable thing in the universe , next to holiness. Take any branch of general science , be it what it may , and however valuable and important it may be considered , its most enthusiastic student and admirer cannot claim for it that supremacy which is implied in the expression , the truth . Who shall adjust the claims to this distinction of the various physical and moral sciences , and declare , in opposition to the false pretensions of usurpers , which is the rightful posessor of the throne ? Who? The God of truth himself ; and he has done it ; He has placed the Bible on the seat of majesty in the temple of truth , and has called on all systems of philosophy whatever to fall down and do it homage . This is our subject ; eternal immutable truth . Truth is given pure from its Divine Source, and bearing with it the evidence and impress of its own Omniscient Author . .....What is matter , inert or organized , however diversified , classified , or combined with its laws of necessity , compared with minds and souls , and the laws of moral truth by which their free actions are regulated ? What is nature , to the God of nature ? What the heavens and the earth , to the glorious mind that looks out upon them through the organ of vision , as from a window commanding the grand and boundless prospect ? What the fleeting term of man's existence upon earth , with its little cycles of care , sorrow and labour , compared to the eternal ages through which the soul holds her course of deathless existence . The works of creation are a dim and twilight manifestation of God's nature , compared with the grandeur and the more perfect medium of redemption . The person of the Lord Jesus Christ is itself a wonder and a mystery to which all other displays of Diety are darkness ; this is the shekinah in the holy of holies in the temple of God's creation , towards which all orders of created spirits , from the most distant parts of the universe , reverently turn and do homage to the great God our Saviour . This is the truth of God concerning Himself ; the truth of an incarnate Deity; the truth of man's redemption by the cross ; the truth of the moral law , the eternal standard of rectitude , the tree of knowledge of good and evil , the truth of the Gospel , the tree of life in the midst of the paradise of God ; the truth of immortality , of heaven and of hell . The truth couched under the symbols of the Levitical law , and the visions of the Jewish prophets , and fully exhibited in the gospels of the evangelists , and the inspired letters of the apostles . 

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