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nature fell. The stars have never given any assurance to the nations that "the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." The stars have never hinted, what the scriptures say so plainly, "believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." Of course none of these articles enter into the creed of stellar christianity. "No man is saved by proxy," is said to be their lesson. Behold then, we repeat it, a broad foundation for liberality! strike out from the blessed gospels what man cannot fathom, and what nature does not teach, and all men and all religions become pretty much alike. The most errant miscreant may be called a christian, if he dwells in christian lands; as the most brutal monster may be called a pagan if he reside in pagan climes. Every man is soothed with the hope of immortality, though he take not up his cross and follow Jesus Christ. Every man is liberal, who has the boldness and impiety to relax the obligations of the law of God.-O precious hope! O glorious fruit of deliverance from all mystery! People of every character, nations "of every hope," may rest in peace with Socrates, that mighty "man of God," that martyr for God's unity, who gave commandment with his dying breath that a chicken should be sacrificed to the God Æsculapius, and thus perished with the stain of the most gross idolatry, or, if he knew better, of the most abandoned hypocrisy, yet moist upon his lips. God, the God of truth has said it, that all who worship graven images shall be confounded. The "omnipresent" Deity has said it, "the wicked shall be turned into hell, with all the nations that forget God.” But he too seems fond of my steries. He has filled creation with them. Rational theologians, liberal minded men, have better news to tell s. Let them then admit that there is at least one thing

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incomprehensible,-their stupendous assurance in usurp. ing the name of christians! From such intelligible christianity the good Lord deliver us!!

But we have other and far more interesting reflections to offer you in relation to this great truth.

II. God is every where: all things live and move in him. Will not this consideration put to silence the objections so often marshaled against the doctrine of a particular providence? You repeatedly hear it said that man, and the affairs of our little world, are by far too insignificant to occupy or even attract the attention of so august a Being. Let him wield worlds, say they: let him guide the hosts of heaven: let him muster and control the elements of nature: let him dispense his blessings to the nations, by sending "rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons:" and let him interpose to punish or destroy whole continents at a swoop. These would be magnificent manifestations of his providence. But in little matters let nature operate according to her established laws. That God should stoop to every individual; that he should take care of reptiles, that his agency should be interposed to deck "the lilies of the field,"--these are ideas too degrading to be admitted for a moment.-And we have known some who, with greater boldness, and certainly with equal consistency, carried out these magnificent conceptions, as they supposed them. They would not admit that God exerts any influence over the movements or destinies of the visible creation. And they have pointed, with triumph, to the workmanship of Even he can shape his mechanism to move without his interference. By weights, or springs, or other moving causes, he can put into operation many a machine, then leave it to go on without his further care. And if

man.

man can do such things, to an extent however limited, may not God, who is Almighty, so adjust the powers and frame the laws of nature as to set his worlds afloat, then leave them to themselves?

It might be sufficient to reply to the first class of objectors, that their conception of what is dignified and becom ing in their Creator, can be correct only upon the assumption that he is as vain and unfeeling as themselves. It is your little minds that think little things beneath them. God who framed creation, and peopled it with innumerable beings so dependent and so exquisitely susceptible of pleasure and of pain-what would he be if he took no further notice of them? Dignified you say. Yes, dignified indeed.—And your mechanical philosopher might be required to tell us what the ingenuity of man had to do with the essence of that matter which he shaped into springs and pullies, or with the gravity or elasticity that constitute the moving principle. He does not uphold matter by the word of his power, or by the sleight of his hand; he communicated to it no part of the laws by which it In God every atom of that machine has its being. His power sustains it, his energies still impress the laws of matter on it: therefore it exists and moves obedient to those laws. But prove to me that he does not "uphold" as he at first created "all things by the word of his power:" prove that one atom, or that the universe could exist a moment, if his hand were withdrawn from either: prove that matter is susceptible of receiving and retaining any quality or tendency, apart from his immediate and all-controling energies: and then you will have quoted a case in point. But if all things "move in God," as the scriptures say they do; if all things are "upheld by the word of his

moves.

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power," as the scriptures say they are; it is absurd to talk of worlds floating round without his care, and of bountiful nature performing her own functions, according to fixed laws, and independently of him.

But this question is entitled to more intimate attention. It cannot have escaped the notice of any well informed and observant mind that the objections leveled against scriptural doctrines generally, and against the doctrine of an all-directing providence in particular, and declaredly founded upon a sense of the propriety and fitness of things,it cannot, we say, have escaped the notice of such minds as we have named, that these objections are bottomed upon a sophism the most gross and flagrant. Men do not take the God of the bible, as he is there delineated, and examine the fitness of the principles and purposes and procedure imputed to him in scripture, with a reference to that delineation of himself. But they assume that they know his character, and comprehend his nature, sufficiently, by the lights of their own intelligence. They frame to themselves a creature of the fancy: they divest this figment of many of the most important features of the Deity, or rather they are ignorant that such features are any where imputed to him: and then, they apply to this mutilated image, the characters and agencies which the scriptures ascribe to God. Is it any wonder that they find them most unsuitable! Is it strange to hear them say, I disbelieve in God's providence, for it is irreconcileable with his character! I discard the doctrine of redemption, for it is irreconcileable with my ideas of his supremacy and benignity! I give to the winds an hundred other scriptural dogmas; their propriety or their usefulness I cannot comprehend. What God? Whose character? Whose supremacy? Whose.

benignity?—Not the God of the bible! for surely if he be every where, and all things live in him; a particular providence is not unsuitable to his character. Not the God of the bible! for if he be invariably just, immutably true and unutterably merciful; the redemption of the cross may well be attributed to him. Not the God of the bible! for if his principles and feelings and purposes and whole character be well and truly depicted in the scriptures, they do not state one thing which is unsuitable to him! May not every one see that it is not Jehovah, the God of the bible, to whom men ascribe those attributes and agencies which they find so very inapplicable!! At whose door, then, lies the charge of inconsistency? Let them correct their apprehensions of the Deity himself. Let them KNOW him; and then tell us if the bible makes one statement irreconcileable with the character of the bible God.

It is no new device to disrobe the Deity of the glory of his omnipresence, to think of him like the pagans thought of their great Jupiter,-as a being all human, except in the greatness of his qualities; a being who sat removed at a distance from his creatures, and could fix or withdraw his attention at will. "Is not God, in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars, how high they are! How doth God know? can be judge through the dark cloud? Thick clouds are a covering to him that he seeth not, and he walketh in the circuit of heaven." Thus men often talk, said that Eliphaz of Teman who came to share the sorrows of the suffering Job. So, it seems, they chattered during the age before the flood. "Hast thou marked," he continues, "the old way which wicked men have trodden; which were cut down out of time; whose foundation was overthrown with a flood; which said unto