to shine forth at the close and the consum- | kindred and rejoicing element, than when mation of all things.

God is not in all his thoughts-that then it is, when, as broken loose from imprisonment, the heart revels in its own desires, and securely blesses its deliverance from the hateful presence of one who constrained and overawed it-that the creature should thus hide itself, as it were, from the Creator, and in virtue of his perpetual recoil from the Being who formed, and who upholds him, should so keep up a perpetual distance from God--that wholly given over to the idolatry of the things that are made, the Maker should, to him, be little better than a non

Now, most of these things you know, or profess to know. They are recognised by you as true propositions, and not to have them among the articles of your creed, would be deemed by you as monstrous and revolting infidelity. Most of you would shudder at the thought of an atheism, which could deny the existence of God, or of a blasphemy that could disown his government, or of a heresy that could profane his character by stripping it of its truth, and justice, and holiness. So dear, in fact, are your long-established notions of the Divini-entity, or a name; this is the marvel of the ty, that you could not bear them to be meddled with; and would hold that man to be the enemy of your repose, who should offer to violate them. So that, there do exist in your mind certain positions which regard a Deity, the affirmative of which carries your consent, and the denial of which would painfully be offensive to you-and thus far may you be said to know God, and to believe in him.

strange and wayward nature that belongs to us, and may well lead us to apprehend the visitation upon it of some sore leprosy, the shock of some great and total derangement.

mechanism of things, are not the random energies of Nature that is unconscious; but that one sitteth above, and wieldeth them all at his pleasure---that a powerful and a presiding intelligence hath originated all, and overrules all--and that while our only converse and concern are with the near and the visible, that are on every side of us, there is an unseen Spirit, to whom belongeth the mastery, and with whom alone it is that we have mainly and substantially to do?

Now, how is it that man practically responds to this real condition of his being? Tell me, from the intimate assurances of your own conscience, or tell ine, from the broad and palpable character that sits upon the doings of your acquaintances, whether God hath the ascendency over them. Is there, all the day long, a felt solemnity on your spirits, because of God, which follows

For what truth of weightier import to us all than simply that there is a God—that all the busy and unceasing movements around us are suspended on the will of a living Sovereign-that those mighty forces Now, as a proof how distinct this know-which constantly uphold the play and the ledge of God is from the consideration of him, I will venture to say, that even the first and simplest of all these propositions is, by many, unthought of for days and weeks together. The truth, that God is, which all here present would shudder to deny, is out of habitual regard, and habitual remembrance. It lies like a forgotten thing in some deep and latent depository; and as to its being brought forth of its hiding-place, for hourly use and meditation, this we never meet with, but among a saintly and selected few, who are indeed a very peculiar people. When God is acknowledged, we cannot lift the charge of theoretical atheism; but when, along with this, God is unminded, surely then may we lift the charge of practical atheism. Now this is the very charge that we prefer against the vast majority of our world. They have a knowledge of God; but this, so far from extenuating their thought-you whithersoever you go, and causes you lessness, brings upon it its most fearful ag- to walk with him in the world? Or, are gravation. It is just because they stand pre- you familiarized with the habit of submiteminent among the creatures of our world, ting your will to his will? Or, have you in the faculty of understanding God, that ever, for an hour together, looked upon they also stand pre-eminent in the crime of yourselves in the light of being the servants their ungodliness. It is for this, that they of another, and have accordingly run and suffer in the comparison with "the ox that laboured as at the bidding of that other? knoweth his owner, and the ass that know- Or, utter strangers to this, do you not walk eth his master's crib;" and what they have in the counsel of your own heart? Do you learned of God, or are capable of learning, not move as independently, as if in yourwill bring upon their heedlessness of him, self it was that you lived, and moved, and and of his ways, its severest condemnation. had your being? In the work that you It is, indeed, one of the most fearful mys-prosecute, and the comforts that you enjoy, teries of the human spirit, that a truth and even the obligations of which you acwhich, of all others, most intimately con- quit yourselves to relatives, and to friends, cerns us, should yet, of all others, be the is there any fear of God before your eyes? most gladly bidden away into oblivion----and is not the fear of disgrace from men, that, as rid of an unwelcome visitor, the a far more powerful check upon your licenmind of man is never more at case, or in its tiousness, than the fear of damnation from

him who is the judge and the discerner of that we so seldom think of him, and that men? The mind is ever crowded with he should be thus neglected and set at thoughts, and wishes, and purposes, that nought by his own offspring. And this inpass in busy succession, through its cham-consideration of ours, is matter of blame, bers of imagery, and minister the food of its just because it is a matter of wilfulness. unremitting contemplations. Tell me how Man has a voluntary control over his much of God and godliness there is in them thoughts. He can turn and transfer them all. Turn the inward survey upon your- from one object of mental contemplation to selves, and report to us how much of this another. He may think of God when he heavenly fruit groweth and flourisheth chooses. He may recal his scattered imthere. O you have but spied the nakedness aginations, and summon all that is within of the land---God is unto you a wilderness, him to an act of attendance upon God. He and your heart is to him a spiritual desola- may bid his mind cease from its rambles, tion! and its reveries, and lift itself up to the abode of the Eternal. He may lay an arrest on the processes of the inner man, and say to it, with authority, that now is the moment for an aspiration, or a solemn feeling towards God. He may repeat and multiply this effort into a habit of seriousness. It may mix itself in with his ordinary business. It may accompany him on his walk, even through the streets of the crowded city. It may season the hours of his social fellowship; and what, at first, is difficult, and irregular, and rare, may thus, by dint of perseverance, settle down into an habitual tendency. He may, at length, be familiarized to the thought of God, as his master and his owner; and, at length, putting on the attitude of a daily and hourly obedience, as the eye of a servant looketh towards his master, so may his eye be ever towards God. This is not the attitude of nature, but it may be tried and practised, and, at length, effectually learned. But you will never reach it, unless you begin; you will never succeed in it, unless you persevere. And, therefore, my plain advice to you is, that you now set to it in good earnest. Lay a mandate upon your thinking faculty, and send it heavenward to God. There is many a useless moment that may thus be turned to account-many an idle waste in our existence, that may thus be reclaimed to sacredness. This is true spiritual education

This emptiness of a man's heart as to the recognition of God, runs throughout the whole of his history. He is engrossed with what is visible and secondary, and he thinks no farther. The sense of a present and presiding Deity, is habitually absent from his soul; and just because he will not stir himself up to consideration, that he may lay hold of God, is he bounded, as if by an impassable limit, to earth and to earthliness. It needs a force of thought and of reflection, to bear him across this barrier, which, whether from indolence, or carnality, or a misgiving conscience, he does not choose to put into operation; and thus, does he live without God in the world. When he enjoys, it is without gratitude. When he labours, it is without the impulse of an obedient loyalty. When he admires, it is without carrying the sentiment upwardly unto heaven, whence all that is lovely on the face of our world, was strewn for its embellishment, and the delight of its beholders. And thus, may a traveller on his tour of recreation, through some goodly land, be carried forward from scene to scene, till the whole landscape of an empire shall have passed behind him like a shifting panorama—and, | as he eyes the beauteous succession of verdant fields, and massy foliage, and the many pictures of comfort or elegance in human habitations, and the rapid variety wherewith, in the speed and the turning of his movements, he is, at one time, closed upon by the limits of a sweet and sequestered valley, and, at another, breaks out in full and open perspective, on the glories of half a province; why, may all the ecstacy he feels be lavished on the spectacles before him, without one thought of that master hand, which spread out the whole of this magnificence, and poured the tide of lustre over it. No piety may mingle with this contemplation; and not for the want of knowledge, but the want of thought, may there be as little of God in the eye of this raptured enthusiast, as in the brute unconscious gaze of the creature that hath no understanding.

Now, this is God's controversy with man in the text. He there complains of our heedlessness. He feels himself slighted,

the practice of godliness, instead of the theory-the way of going about it-and by which the soul may, at length, be disciplined to the habit of setting God always before it.

It is the absence of this habit which constitutes the ungodliness of man. There cannot be a fouler provocation than that man should be satisfied to do without God; and this is the provocation inflicted by all who have other cares and other pleasures, which take up the whole of their hearts, and have no room there for God or for godliness. Each of you can best tell whether you fall under this description of habit and of character. Is it not the truth now, that God is scarcely in all your thoughts?—that you feel no encouragement in any of his promises, neither do you tremble under the fearfulness of his denunciations? that you

are otherwise employed than in the prose- | there an almost exclusive occupancy-whom cution of your interest with him? and are many a stout defender of the faith would busied with plans, and objects, and antici- rejoice in as his own, but in whom the pations of your own, wherewith his will, Author and the Finisher of faith, finds litand his glory, have nothing to do? This is tle of that love or that obedience which to your guilt. This, in the estimation of hea-him are the alone tests of discipleship-a ven's jurisprudence, is the very essence of people whom none can challenge for ignosinfulness. Quite consistent, we do admit, rance, but whose still unmortified tempers, with much to soften and much most ho- and still unabated worldliness, may prove, nourably to signalize you; but involving that though they do know, yet they do not you in the direct charge, that none of you consider. understandeth, and none of you seeketh after God.

It were well, if such people could be extricated from the strongholds of their yet impregnable Antinomianism. It were well to alarm their conscience with the saying, that no knowledge and no belief will give them justification, which does not give sanctification also. All their doctrinal acquirements are precisely of as little avail as is the knowledge of death, if they think not of dying-or, as their knowledge of a God, if they give no earnest heed to him. It is well that they know; but the blessing is turned into a condemnation and a curse, if, while they know, they do not consider.

IV. But the distinction between those who only know, and those who also consider, is never more strongly marked than in the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel. And fearful is the hazard, lest knowledge, and it alone, should satisfy the possessor; lest he should settle down into a treacherous complacency, because he has made a right adjustment of the articles of his creed; lest he count it enough, that he has acquiesced, at all points, in the orthodoxy of the question; and so come forth with a flaming Christianity, that lies more in dogmatism than in There are no topics on which there has devotion, more in a sturdy intolerance of been so much of controversy, or that has error, than in a true and tender sincerity given rise to so many an elaborate dissertaof heart. And the very controversies of the tion, as the person and offices of Christ. church have served to foster this delusion. And, doubtless, the scholarship has been The very quantity of debate and of argu- well employed, that rescued from the enment that has been expended on theology, tanglements of sophistry, the precious truth leads to a most hurtful misconceiving of this of the divinity of our Saviour. And well matter. You know, that the design of ar- may England rejoice in those lettered ecgument is to carry you onward to a set of clesiastics, who have put down, as far as just and accurate convictions. This, in argument could do it, the infidelity that fact, is the landing place to which it brings decried the truth of his high and heavenly you, and at which it leaves you; and the apostleship. And worthier far than all the danger is, that having brought you there, revenue of all her colleges, is the return of you go no further-and this place of arri- criticism and of demonstration that they val becomes your place of rest, and sta- have made in behalf of his great sacrifice, tionary residence. It is the pride, and am- and of his unchangeable and ever-during bition, and the zeal of every intellectual priesthood. Yet, let it not be disguised, combatant, to carry the understanding of that the knowledge of all these credentials his reader; and having done this, he is apt is one thing, and the serious, the practical to sit down and be satisfied with the tri-consideration of them, is another-that umphs of his gotten victory; and the scholar himself, seized with the very same infection, may sit down, too, as if he had attained an ultimate good, in which he may rejoice, and where he may now securely and fearlessly repose. And yet, the whole amount of his acquisition may be a mere notional Christianity—a list of doctrines that are settled and set by-that are as much within the grasp of his knowledge as many other articles of human speculation and science-but are just as little reiterated upon as they by a habit of frequent and feeling consideration. And hence a familiar exhibition to all who live in this our scholastic land, where a people, fresh from their catechisms, are primed and charged with orthodoxy, and all whose articles stand before you in wellmarshalled and metaphysical array-who have a religion in their heads, but that has

many a commentator has mastered the difficulties of the question, who has not been solemnized by the thought of its urgent and affecting realities-that stalled orthodoxy, with her clear understanding, but untouched heart, has often launched upon heresy her mighty fulminations, and manfully asserted the truth which she never felt-that the peasant may catch direct from his Bible, what the dignitary has gathered by wading through the erudition of distant centuries; and this veriest babe in literature may outstrip the literary giant, because he not only knows the truth, but wisely and duteously considers it.

Let us, in like manner, look unto Jesus with the eye of a plain Christian, instead of looking at him with the eye of a profound critic, or commentator. For this purpose, let us lay hold of things that are

palpably and unambiguously told of him, he did announce himself, and on satisfying and see whether, without learning of him credentials, to have been sent amongst us that which we do not know, much might from the upper paradise, with tidings that not be made by considering of him that he had to deliver, and on a work that had which we do know-and whether, out of been given him to do. And it ought, at such materials of thought as are within least, to make no difference, that now he reach of all, there might not a far more has returned to the place from whence he solemn impression come upon the heart, came. For he left behind him the records and a far more powerful influence upon the of his wondrous embassy--and the authencharacter, than are to be witnessed even tic and the authoritative voice of heaven among the most zealous and declared pro- still speaketh to us there-and with our fessors of our day. hands upon the Bible, we are in contact with the very materials of a communication from the Deity. In the breast of the Godhead, there was a motion and a desire towards our species, and here is the expression of it-the very transcript of that message which our Apostle brought, and which our Apostle left amongst us-the word that actually came from the secret place of the Eternal, and is fraught with those revealed things, which now belong to us and to our children. I declare not a novelty in your hearing. It is not a matter of which you are ignorant, and which you need to know. But it is a matter of which you are wofully heedless, and which you need to consider We do not need to teach you what is new. But we need to arrest you by the sense of what is old and forgotten. We charge your neglect of the Scriptures of our faith upon your neglect of that great Apostle, who is the Author and the Finisher of our faith. By your daily indifference to the word that is written, you inherit all the guilt, and will come under the very reckoning of those, who, in the days of the Saviour, treated with neglect and indifference, the word that was spoken. Our challenge against you is, that the Bible is to you a thing of insipidity—that it is not desired by you as the aliment of your souls-that though unread for days together, you miss no necessary food, you feel no vacancy, you are visited with no hunger, you can do very well without this nourishment of the spiritual life, and so give reason to fear, that within you there is no spiritual principle to sustain. And looking unto that of which this written document is the memorial, do we charge upon all who slight the perusal of it, that they trample into insignificance a formal embassy from heaven--that they treat with contumely the messenger who came thenceforth unto our world—that God by him has spoken, and they have disregarded--that the daily spectacle of the Bible before their eyes, is a daily solicitation on the part of Christ to be heard, and by their continued heedlessness to which, they, all their lives, set his character, as an Apostle, utterly to scorn.

First, then, he is the Apostle of our profession, or we profess him to be our Apostle. Let us consider him as such. Let us bethink ourselves of all which this title implies. It means one who is sent. The twelve were called apostles, because sent to preach the Gospel unto every creature. And, in like manner, he too is an Apostle, because sent by his Father into the world. He came to us from a place of deep and unknown mystery-he traversed that domain which separates the land of spirits from the peopled and familiar land in which we dwell-he burst upon our senses from a region where all is invisible-and far more wonderful than if he had been a visitor from another planet than our own, did he light upon our world from the dwellingplace of him who is the uncreated source of all worlds, from the very abode and sanctuary of the Eternal. How it ought to move us with awe at the approach of such a messenger, when we think of the glory and the sacredness of his former habitation! of those ineffable communions that he had with the Father before the world was --and deep insight into all those mysteries of God, that are to us unsearchable! How it ought to fasten upon it the gaze of every mortal eye, that on the shore of our world there has been an arrival from the dark and the shrouded infinity which lies beyond it -that, at length, out of realms which are afar, a traveller hath come; and that, though veiled from everlasting in the obscurity of a remote and lofty nature, he hath now stood revealed to the observation of human senses, and poured forth an utterance that can be taken up by human ears!

And what ought to fasten upon him a still more intense regard, he comes with a message to our world-he comes straight from the Divinity himself, and charged by him with a special communication-God had broken silence, and this great Apostle of our profession was the bearer of that voice which speaketh from heaven unto the children of men. It was a thing of mighty import, indeed, that there should have been an actual errand to us from the pavilion of the Almighty's residence-that one fa- The way to repair this treatment, is forthmiliarly acquainted there should have come with to give your diligence unto the book to tabernacle here, and to enter upon con----and to press upon your moral sense, as verse and companionship with men-that you open it, that now you are about to en

ter into converse with God-and thus to fix and solemnize your attention, while you read those words of which Christ may be called the Apostle or the messenger. The act of reading the Bible, is the act of holding conference with the Deity-and while this is what all know, this is what few consider.

most place in orthodoxy. It is reiterated in all our catechisms. It forms the burden and the argument of many a ponderous dissertation. And to the popular mind, too, is it fully as familiar as to the accomplished scholar in theology. Insomuch," that scarcely an individual can be met with, even in the humblest walks of society, who There is one topic which stands con- does not know, and who could not tell, that nected with the apostleship of Christ, and Christ died for the world. But as we have that stamps a most peculiar interest on the often said, there is a knowledge without visit which he made to us from on high. consideration. A truth may be acquired, He is God manifest in the flesh. In the and then, cast as it were into some hidden character of a man, hath he pictured forth corner of the mind, may it lie forgotten, as to us the attributes of the Divinity. He is in a dormitory. And thus it fares with the brightness of his Father's glory, and many a precious doctrine of the Bible. the express image of his person-yet, in We learn it most readily from the quesvirtue of the humanity wherewith he is in- tion-book. We give the vote to it of our vested, hath he offered, even to the eye of most prompt and zealous affirmative. We sense, a palpable representation of the God- enlist it among the articles of our creedhead. "He who hath seen me, hath seen and espousing it as our own belief, do we the Father," and we, by fastening our at- become partisans, or even advocates in its tentive regards upon his person and history, favour. And yet all this may consist with may gather the very aspect and lineaments an entire practical heedlessness--with a of the King invisible. That Being, who deep torpor and unconcern about that truth had been so long wrapt in profoundest se- which may have come to us most abuncrecy from our world-that Being, whom dantly in word, though not at all in power. none could apprehend, for no eye of mortal The soul may be habitually inadvertent to could carry him through that dark and un- that as a principle, which is most zealtrodden interval, by which the two regions ously professed, and even contended for as of sense and of spirit stand apart from each an opinion. And accordingly, we are told other-the Being, who ever since the en- by the apostle, of this very doctrine, that trance of sin, had laid his jealous interdict Christ died for our sins according to the on the approaches of our species, and with- Scriptures, how possible it is for men to drawn himself by a remote and lofty sepa- receive it, yet not to remember it-that ration away from us-he, at length, broke they may have once committed it to their out from this vail of deepest mystery, and understanding, as an article of faith, within the person of him who is at once his re-out having charged it upon their memory presentative and his Apostle, does he now as an article of hourly and habitual recurstand before us in visible manifestation. rence-that it may have been consented to And we, by considering this Apostle, learn of God. By looking unto him, we look unto the likeness of our Creator, and we become acquainted with him. In the purity, and the gentleness, and the simple majesty of Christ, do we read the characteristics of the Deity. And O how it con- And, therefore, would I again bid you cerns us to know, from this narrative of consider him who is the High Priest of unwearied well-doing, that there is so much your profession. I call upon you ever and of benevolence in heaven-that the Sove-anon to think of this sacrifice and to ward reign who sits in high authority there, is as off the legality of nature from your spirits, good as he is great-that there is a meek- by a constant habit of recurrence, upon ness to soften the majesty of his nature, your part, to the atonement that he hath and a compassionate longing after those made, and to the everlasting righteousness men whom the hand of justice was lifted that he hath brought in. Without this, the up to destroy-that even in the holy of mind is ever lapsing anon into alienation holies, there dwells a tenderness for our and distrust-and the habitual jealousy of degraded species---and could the securities guilt, when not met, at all times, by a sense of heaven's throne only be upholden, that of that blood which washes it away, will there were a good-will and a mercy on throw us back again to our wonted distance high, ready to burst forth upon our world from God-and instead of breathing the and to circulate at large over all its fa- free air of confidence in him, or rejoicing milies. in the sunshine of his reconciled counteBut this leads us to another topic of con-nance, there will be a flaw of suspicion in sideration, the priesthood of Christ. The all our intercourse, and instead of loving atonement that he made for sin has a fore-him as a friend, we shall still stand in

by the mind, without being dwelt upon by the mind-in which case, says Paul, you have believed in vain; and just because you keep not in memory, or, rather, consider not, and call not up to memory, that which I have preached unto you.