the course of nature, that virtually the personification is treated, if not regarded, as a person. As though nature were something apart from, and independent of, the God of nature; as though the laws which the Almighty Creator has chosen to impose upon his own universe had actually superseded himself! What is nature but the workmanship of God? What are the laws of nature but God's ordinary methods of working in creation ? What an outrage then on philosophy, yea, on common sense, to suppose that laws have any force without an administrator, or that machinery can act without a power to keep it in motion! If, therefore, the Creator were not also the Preserver; if the arm that built the universe did not ever uphold and govern it; if the hand that framed the complicated, exquisite, harmonious mechanism of nature were not always invisibly, but omnipotently working and regulating the whole, -creation would fall into chaos again, and death and desolation universally ensue. The universe is no more self-sustained than self-created: it owes its preservation as truly as its origination to the Almighty.

Never, my youthful auditors, let nature become to you a dark lantern, hiding the light within; but let it rather be a glorious crystal lustre, radiating and reflecting the light of God upon your souls. Turn not that into a thick curtain between you and your Maker which he designed to be a magnificent mirror, in which you might see imaged forth "the invisible things" of Him "whom no man hath seen nor can see." Then shall you look abroad serenely upon the storm as upon the calm, upon the earthquake as upon the smiling vale; you shall gaze on the beautiful garden and the rich landscape, the glorious mountain and the sublime ocean; you shall look with rapture, however poor, on the fair fields and gardens of others, enjoying them heartily, though you have neither the care nor the cost of them; and you shall exclaim, with peculiar propriety, "My Father made them all!" Nay, more, you shall

say, "My Father vivifies, my Father beautifies, my Father glorifies them all !”

Give me the simple faith that

Christian friends, is not this the life of faith, of wisdom, and of peace? How wretched that man's soul who sees in the dread universe nothing but laws without a legislator, action without an agent, a creation which does not shadow forth a glorious Creator, but was most likely the offspring of chance, as it is the sport of casualty. discerns the omnipotent Hand guiding, and the omniscient Eye overlooking all. Give me to walk by faith in an ever-present God; hearing the voice of his power in the thunder, the whisper of his goodness in the breeze, beholding his majesty mirrored on the ocean, his beauty beaming in the moon, his glory effulgent from the sun, who goeth forth "as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race." To my ear may all syllable his name and utter forth his praise, "for ever singing, as they shine, The hand that made us❞—yea, and the hand that sustains us—“ is Divine.”

There is yet a further leaven of infidel philosophy, which has been imported from Germany, and infused very largely into our English literature. It is what is styled Rationalism, or more commonly, in this country, Neology. By Rationalism is presumptuously meant making the Scriptures reasonable; not submitting reason to the Bible, but submitting the Bible to reason. This system—if such it can be called—aims at divesting revelation of all mystery, and explaining away, on natural principles, all its miracles; leaving nothing behind save a naked ordinary history of naked ordinary facts. Whilst thus it admits the general historical authenticity of the Bible, it strives to strip it of all that pre-eminently constitutes its revelation. For if the Bible were merely a chronicle of certain natural events cognisable, or even a record of certain doctrines discovered or discoverable by the human mind; if there were nothing in its pages transcending alike the grasp and the researches of reason,

nothing that demanded the direct interposition and manifestation of the Deity, then assuredly the volume would lack all that essentially designates and characterizes it as the Word of the living God. We glory, fellow-Christians, in the mysteries of Revelation. Had it no mysteries, we could hardly receive it as Divine. For can the Infinite reveal himself to the finite so as not to be past finding out? The sounding-line of human reason can never gauge the depths of Deity. Archangels themselves have in some sense to walk by faith, and so shall we even amid the noonday of heaven; for there will still be in Him "that inhabiteth eternity" mysteries unresolved, abysses unfathomed and unfathomable, insomuch that the sublime challenge may be everlastingly renewed, "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? Deeper than hell; what canst thou know?" Could rationalizers denude the Bible of its mysteries, levelling "those everlasting hills," because their brows are shrouded in thick clouds, bent upon bringing them down to the narrow range of mortal men, they would overthrow the very heights from whose Divine darkness come down those streams of waters of life which vivify and fructify the regions beneath. The life, the power, of that Gospel which is "the power of God unto salvation," lies in its mysteries. Take away, for instance, the mystery of the Trinity in Unity; take away the mystery of Immanuel, God manifest in the flesh; and you destroy the foundation of the sinner's hope. "Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness." We glory in its greatness; it is not a little mystery that could involve the reconciliation of the Infinite God to sinners of the human race. It is not a little mystery that could make Him just in justifying; vindicating the majesty of his moral law before the universe, whilst receiving the transgressors of that law into forgiveness and favour; accomplishing this in a way which manifests his justice more terribly than do the fires of hell, and

magnifies his goodness more impressively than do all the glories of heaven. God is revealed in the cross of Christ more awfully, and yet more graciously, than in all things beside.

And no less bold and unreasonable is it to explain away the miracles than the mysteries of Holy Scripture. It almost makes one tremble to repeat the wretched sophistry which has been used to strip miracles of everything miraculous. It has been said, for example, that certain winds prevail at certain seasons on the Red Sea, which might drive asunder its waters, so that people could pass across its channel on dry ground; and that Moses took advantage of such an opportunity to lead the thousands of Israel through its bed. German writers suggest that Moses kindled fires on Mount Sinai, in order to impress the people with a more awful sense of the majesty of the laws which he gave them. And his face having been heated, and shining from the reflection of the flame, he himself being unconscious of the cause, believed, and led the people to believe, that the brightness of his visage was occasioned by communion with God. What a pitiful paltering with things of such solemnity and truth! How beneath the dignity of a rational man to repute Moses to have been either such an utter idiot that he did not know how his face shone, or else such an arrant impostor that he dared so to play on the credulity of Israel, and indeed of the whole world, in a case so ineffably tremendous. Away with such horrible parodying of the Word of God! Would that these scorners would repudiate the Bible altogether, rather than attempt to adulterate it so shamefully! At least, let them deal with it in a fair and manly manner. Let them scout the miracles as impostures, or acknowledge them as literal facts. There is no alternative. If these miracles were unreal, the persons concerned in them must have been either the most egregious of deceivers or the most credulous of dupes. Whether the Bible be the work of impostors or the work of those who were themselves imposed

upon-one of which positions must be held by those who take such liberties with the blessed volume-it is not a work to command veneration, challenge faith, or enforce obedience, but rather to be denounced by all honest men. Let not infidels take hold of the Bible with the hand of pretended friendship, only the more effectually to try to stab it to the heart. Some have gone so far as to assert that a miracle is impossible; the laws of nature cannot be interrupted. What! cannot the Creator alter that which he made? Cannot God suspend his own laws? Has he not power over his own works? It is virtually to deny his being the Creator, to say that he is not able to interpose as he pleases. "But there must be an occasion worthy of his interposition." Could there be a grander occasion than to make God known, in all the fulness of his glory, to countless myriads of his creatures through the redemption of mankind; "to the intent that now, unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places, might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God."

Fearful of trenching too long on your attention at this late hour, we shall bring under your notice but one other theory of infidel philosophy-one of the most recent, as well as most daring; and, having done so, we shall hasten to the more delightful task of an extended practical application to the consciences and hearts of our youthful hearers.

Infidelity has assumed a new guise amongst us, in a translation of the Life of Jesus, by Strauss, a German writer, who has outstripped most of his predecessors in the boldness and arrogancy of his notions. To use an expression suggested by his writings, he seeks to mythologize the Bible; in other words, he represents it as a collection of what he styles "myths," by which he means allegories, after the fashion of the ancient heathen mythology, conveying moral instruction under the guise of story. In this way he would dissolve all the facts of revelation, or at least reduce them to a few simple points, which