lated to kindle the love and gratitude of mankind. The intervention, however various, is directed to the accomplishment of one great and sublime purpose. The majesty of God is placed in conjunction with his goodness, and both are interposed with sublime and undeviating consistency. We contemplate here no craft of human policy, no fraud of earthly ambition, no scheme of worldly contrivance. The interposition, in its design and effects, appears to be worthy of the Providence to which it is attributed; and the powers of darkness and of sin, as they render up their dominion, and the mercies of salvation as they triumph, afford a splendid and affecting comment on the omnipotent wisdom of the divine government.

repre

II. Of the ordinary Providence of God the sentation in the Gospel is, perhaps, equally grand and striking. No inconsistency of purpose or of will, no variation of design, no accommodation to the abject schemes and vanities of men, are attributed to the Almighty. All is good in the plan and in the operation. We are left nothing to fear from celestial mutability or caprice. It is permitted to us to look up to God as the wise and gracious disposer of events, "whose throne is established for ever and ever, and whose thoughts shall endure through all generations." "He is not," as we are told, a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent." "That which he begins he shall surely perfect." "He is consistent and holy in all his ways;" and from hence is to be deduced the certainty of those promises which are the foundation of our trust and of our security, as immortal beings. "He is the same from everlasting to everlasting;" and from hence "flows the unchanging

tenor of those laws which, from age to age, regulate the conduct of mankind*." Before such a Being we may bend with reverence and with awe; but, if his majesty oppress our thoughts, his goodness, eternal and universal, kindles the emotions of gratitude and of love. Before such a Being we may tremble and be afraid, but, while we lay our hearts at his footstool, we exclaim-" Great and marvellous are all thy works, Lord God Almighty! Just and true are all thy ways, thou King of saints?"

In the Gospel we no where read of a principle of evil dividing the government of the world with the principle of good; or of demons and genii interposing, with fantastic levity, or resistless might, in the affairs of men. We hear, on the contrary, but the sublime annunciation of a Providence, which embraces, with unchanging goodness, the welfare of the universe, and under which there is no distinction of favour, but to vice and virtue, and no respect of persons, but in proportion as they exercise their means of knowledge in the performance of their duty. The Gentile is equally recognized with the disciple of the Gospel, as the subject and child of God; and so little reason has the Christian to hope for exclusive favour and protection, that he himself, "if he fall away," shall behold the virtuous heathen preferred before him †. Accordingly, the Gospel affords no sanction to the crime of the persecutor, and lends no authority to prostrate the

* Blair's Serm. Sermon iv. vol. 2. The sermon is eloquent, and every way worthy of its distinguished author.

+ Matt. ch. viii. 2. Luke ch. xiii. 28, &c.; and Whitby in

locis.

infidel at the feet of the believer. Man may teach, or may persuade. The Almighty alone is to execute the vengeance; and universal order, and, as far as shall be consistent with universal order, individual welfare, are to flow through all times, from the unfailing source of his justice, his wisdom, and his power.

And the Providence of God which is so exercised, is to become the stay and shelter of every man, the wicked excepted. The disciple of the Gospel, who has been instructed in the majesty of the universal, and the benignity of the particular, government of the Almighty, is no longer left to despond under the occurrences of life. Time and chance are to him but powerless and passing shadows; necessity and fate, impotent names. The events of one world are, as he is taught, indissolubly connected, in their tendencies and results, with the allotments of another. Whatever be the decree, he is authorized to consider it as equally gracious in the means and in the end; and he is permitted to trust that, if evil descend upon him, it is designed to advance the dignity and excellence of his nature, to call forth his virtues to salutary exercise, to admonish and humiliate the wilfulness of his heart, and to promote, by trial and discipline, his final attainment of celestial blessedness. Probation, therefore, becomes, in his estimation, a messenger from heaven, wise as a teacher, and benignant, though severe, as a friend. He is no longer to consider himself as the grovelling and ill-fated sufferer of the earth, but as the pupil of God, destined, under the divine government, to pass from the shadows and glooms of this transitory scene, to the glorious realities of an everlasting existence. With these conceptions, and this

trust, his passions are chastened, his hopes exalted, his resignation sustained, his views enlightened and enlarged; and, whatever be the vicissitudes of his life of trial, the cheering voice is heard within."The Lord is king, be the people never so unquiet. The Lord is king, and the multitude of the isles may be glad thereof!"

In other religions the Deity, however invested with perfect attributes and supreme beatitude, appears to exercise his powers with the levity and caprice of inferior beings. But, on the subject of the divine economy, the light of truth beams forth in the doctrines of evangelical wisdom, not with a fitful and occasional, but with a steady and unvarying lustre. Uniform and consistent is the whole plan. The majesty and glory of perfection which abide in the divinity, are displayed in correspondent design and operation. Is God omniscient? He is said to embrace, within the wide circle of his sovereignty, all existence and all times. Is he omnipotent? He is described as controuling and governing every thing from the mightiest to the least of beings. Is he illimitable in goodness? He diffuses, by the economy of his providence, boundless blessings over the universe. No whimsical fable intervenes to check the emotions which these just and magnificent descriptions excite; and the perfection is perpetually the same, whether it be described as abiding in the attribute, or ministring in the operation.

From the whole of this discussion the inference is important and obvious. The poet, the pontiff, and the philosopher, even in times the most favourable to the discovery of truth, appear to have discussed the subject of Providence, only to deceive the

addressed. But that which, with all their erudition and talents, they were utterly unable to supply, has been accomplished by the unlettered and unpretending simplicity of Christ and of his disciples. The question, therefore, may be again asked from whence had these men the wisdom which so far transcended the powers of the most applauded sages of the earth, and which at once contributes to illuminate and exalt, and perfectly harmonizes with, the unperverted reason of man?