not merely mean that He sits on high, and looks down on earth and sees me, together with all other creatures. It means that He, in all the entirety of His Divine Being, is always where I am; is always looking at me, and seeing me perfectly; is always attending to me and all I do with as sleepless a vigilance and as undivided an attention as if there were no other creature in the universe-as if there were no universe—as if there were nothing in existence but God and Me. Awful thought! that I am always face to face with God, as if there were nothing but God and Me. "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good" (Prov. xv. 3). "Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord" (Jer. xxiii. 23, 24). "Thou God seest me" (Gen. xvi. 13). "O Lord, Thou hast searched me out and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up-rising; Thou understandest my thoughts long before. Thou art about my path and about my bed, and spiest out all my ways. For, lo, there is not a word in my tongue but Thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether" (Ps. cxxxix. 1-3).

CHAPTER IV.

GOD'S HOLINESS, BEAUTY, HAPPINESS, GOODNESS.

LET us especially magnify the HOLINESS of God. By holiness we mean perfect moral purity, that absolute rectitude, that entire absence of imperfection, which belong to God only, and cannot be declared of any, even the greatest and most glorious creature. "God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity." "He dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unto." "In His sight the very heavens are not clean, and He chargeth His angels with folly." God pointedly claims this attribute, "Be ye holy, for I am holy." Its ascription enters into the highest worship of angels and of men, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come," is the hymn of the seraphim about the throne, and the eucharistic hymn of the universal Church of Christ.

To us sinful men it is one of the most attractive, and at the same time one of the most awful, of the attributes of God. It is not so much the sense of His infinite power, or the splendour of His majesty, as the awfulness of His spotless purity, which seems to have overwhelmed the saints to whom He has made any special revelation of Himself. Job defended his own righteousness until he received the vision of God, and then he exclaimed, "I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee, wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." Isaiah said, "Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for mine

eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts" (Is. vi. 5). And St. Peter: "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord" (Luke v. 8).

THE HAPPINESS OF GOD.

When we come to think of the happiness, which is another great attribute of the Divine Being, we soon feel the necessity for defining what the word means; and a careful study of the question leads us at length to define happiness as that state of feeling which results from the perfect satisfaction of all the faculties of a sensitive being. The faculties themselves must be in a condition of perfectness, in harmony with one another, and must be surrounded by circumstances perfectly adapted to the perfect fulfilment of their functions. In short, happiness is the sense of satisfaction which is the result of healthy life. We know how when the body is in perfect health, the mind in peace, the circumstances favourable, mere existence is exquisite delight.

God, then, whose Being is infinitely perfect, whose circumstances, of His own creation, are in perfect adaptation to His Being, must, in the infinite fulness of His existence, find an infinite bliss,

We miss the testimony which Scripture bears to this by the fact that in most places where God's happiness is spoken of the word blessedness is used,* and then that we fail to see that the word is intended as an expression of the highest happiness; though we commonly use the word bliss in the sense of the most exquisite and refined delight. Thus we read, "The Creator who is blessed for ever" (Rom. i. 25). “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who is blessed for evermore" (2 Cor. xi. 31). "The glorious gospel of the

*"Happy

seems to regard the feeling of the person, "blessed" to

point to the source from which the feeling comes, viz., from God; so that it is highly correct to use the word blessed for the happiness of God, since it is a necessary attribute of His Being.

C

blessed God" (1 Sam i. 11). "The blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords" (1 Sam. vi. 15).

The study of God's works-ourselves the most perfect of them which are within reach of our study—is the source from which we derive much of our realisation of the being and life of God. Every feature which we see in His works is a reflection of something which is first in Himself. There are two characteristics of His works which ought not to be overlooked, viz., first their beauty. When we examine the works of God we find that, over and above the wonderful skill with which they are adapted to their purpose, they are moulded into shapes and painted with tints of exquisite beauty. Speaking in human language we should say that their maker was not only a most skilful mechanician, but that he had the most exquisite sense of beauty. Take the geometrical forms of crystals, the shapes of seeds, the tints of flowers, the bloom of fruits, the graceful lines of natural forms-for example, the way in which the human form of bone and muscle and tendon and vein and nerve has its mere utilitarian shape rounded off with adipose matter into the most beautiful forms, and the repulsive appearance of naked muscle and vein clothed with the beautiful texture and exquisite tints of the skin. Look at the loveliness of hill and valley, and the grander beauty of mountain and sea; watch the changing forms and tints of clouds in an autumn sunset; look up into the solemn loveliness of the midnight sky. Note how their odour gives the last possible touch of delightfulness to the flowers, and their motion to the foliage, and the waves and clouds, and living beings. How the coming and going of the wind is like the breathing of the world; and the mingled murmur of foliage and stream, and song of birds and caw of rooks, and bleating of flocks, and sounds of labour-flail and scythe and rhythmical ham

mer stroke, and voices of men, are like the low, sweet, mysterious voice of the world. How beautiful the world is a living beauty! It is an evidence of the love of the beautiful in Him who made it; it is a faint shadow of the infinite beauty of His own Divine Being.

And the other characteristic of God's works to which we alluded is their joyousness. In the sparkle and pleasantness of the ordinary intercourse of men, in the play of wit in which the wisest and best men delight to indulge in their hours of relaxation, in the affectionate playfulness which the gravest men exhibit among those they love, in the mirth of children, in the gambols of the young of all creatures, in the sporting of the very gnats in the sunshine, we see a joyousness, a light-heartedness, a gaiety pervading all creatures-even amidst all there is, in our fallen state, to sober and to sadden. The counterpart of this is recognised by all men even in inanimate nature, the bright sunshine, the "innumerable smile of ocean," the rippling of the brook, the rustling and murmuring of the foliage, the waving of the corn fields, all are instinctively and universally recognised as a reflection of the joyousness of animate nature. In all this, too, we recognise with reverence a shadow of something in God. It leads us to see that the happiness of God is not merely a deep, ineffable, Divine satisfaction, but is a glorious Divine joyousness also.

GOD'S GOODNESS.

We conclude the list of God's attributes, which we think it necessary to mention, with His goodness. By goodness we mean a disposition to desire and procure the happiness of others. The idea of goodness is naturally inseparable from the idea of God. The idea of a being of infinite power, who was not also of infinite goodness, would be horrible and monstrous.