M

w

A
SERIES OF
DISCOURSES ON
THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION,
VIEWED
IN CONNECTION WITH
THE MODERN ASTRONOMY.
BY
THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D.
MINISTER OF THE TOON CHURCH, GLASGOW.
THIRD EDITION.

GLASGOW:
PRINTED FOE JOHN SMITH AND SON, GLASGOW;
WILLIAM WHYTE, EDINBURGH ;
LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN,
JOHN HATCHART/, GALE AND FENNER, THOMAS HAMILTON,
ATSM& OGLE, DUNCAN, AND COQHRANE,
LONDON.

1817.

PREFACE.

The astronomical, objection against the truth of
the Gospel, does not occupy a very prominent
place in any of our Treatises of Infidelity. It
is often, however, met with in conversation —
and we have known it to be ttie cause of serious
perplexity and alarm in minds 'anxious for the
solid establishment of their religious faith.
¦i'id ¦
There is an imposing splendour in the science
of astronomy; and it is not to be wondered at,
if the. light it throws, or appears to throw, over
other tracks of speculation than those which
are properly its own, should at times dazzle and
mislead an inquirer. On this account, we think
it were a service to what we deem a true and a
righteous cause, could we succeed in dissipating
this illusion; and in stripping Infidelity of those
A 3

6
pretensions to enlargement, and to a certain air
of philosophical greatness, by which it has often
become so destructively alluring to the young,
and the ardent, and the ambitious.
In my first Discourse, I have attempted a
sketch of the Modern Astronomy — nor have I
wished to throw any disguise over that compara
tive littleness which belongs to our planet, and
which .gives* to the argument of Freethinkers all
its plausibility.
This argument involves in it an assertion and
an inference. The assertion is, that Christianity
is a religion which professes to be designed for
the single benefit of our world ; and the infer
ence is, that God cannot be the author of this
religion, for he would not lavish on so insignifi
cant afield, such peculiar and such distinguish
ing attentions, as are ascribed to him in the Old
and New Testament.
Christianity makes no such profession. That
it is designed for the single benefit of ouf- world,
is altogether a presumption of the Infidel him-

self— -and feeling that this is not the only ex
ample of temerity which can be charged on the
enemies of our faith, I have allotted my second
Discourse to the attempt of demonstrating the
utter repugnance of such a spirit with the cau
tious and enlightened philosophy of modern
times. In the course of this Sermon I have offered
a tribute of acknowledgement to the theology
of Sir Isaac Newton ; and in such terms, as if
not further explained, may be liable to miscon
struction. The grand circumstance of applause
in the character of this great man, is, that un-
seduced by all the magnificence of his own
discoveries, he had a solidity of mind which
could resist their fascination ; and keep him in
steady attachment to that book, whose general
evidences stamped upon it the impress of a real
communication from heaven. This was the sole
attribute of his theology which I had in my eye
when I presumed to eulogise it. I do not
think, that, amid the distraction and the en
grossment of his other pursuits, he has at all
times succeeded in his interpretation of the
A 4

8
book; else he would never, in my apprehension,
have abetted the leading doctrine of a sect or a
system j which has now nearly dwindled away
from public observation.
In my third Discourse I am silent as to the
assertion, and attempt to combat the inference
that is founded on it. I insist, that upon all
the analogies of nature and of providence, we
can lay no limit on the condescension of God,
or on the multiplicity of his regards even to the
very humblest departments of creation; and
that it is not for us, who see the evidences of
divine wisdom and care spread in such exhaust-
less profusion around us, to say, that the Deity
would not lavish all the wealth of his wondrous
attributes on the salvation even of our solitary
species. At this paint of the argument I trust that the
intelligent reader may be enabled t,o perceive
in the adversaries of the Gospel, a twofold de
reliction from the maxims of the Baconian phi
losophy: that, in the first instance, the assertion
which forms the groundwork of their argument,
3

9
is gratuitously fetched out of an unknown region
where they are utterly abandoned by the light
of experience; and that, in the second instance^
the inference they urge from it* is in the face
of manifold and undeniable truths, all lying
within the safe and accessible field of human
observation. In my subsequent Discourses, I proceed to
the informations of the record. The Infidel
objection, drawn from astronomy, may be con
sidered as by this time disposed of; and if we
have succeeded in clearing it away, so as to
deliver the Christian testimony from all discredit
upon this ground, then may we submit, on the
strength of other evidences, to be guided by
its, information; We shall thus learn, that
Christianity has a far more extensive bearing
on the other orders of creation, than the Infidel
is disposed to allow ; and, whether he will own
the authority of this information or notj he will,
at least, be forced to admit, that the subject
matter of the Bible itself is not chargeable with
that objection which he has attempted to fasten
upon it.

10
Thus, had my only object been the refutation
of the Infidel argument, I might have spared
the last Discourses of the Volume altogether.
But the tracks of Scriptural information to which
they ' directed me, I considered as worthy of
prosecution on their own account — and I do
think, that much may be gathered from these
less observed portions of the field of revelation,
to cheer, and to elevate, and to guide the be
liever. But, in the management of such a discussion
as this, though, for a great degr fee of this effect,
it would require to be conducted in a far higher
style than I am able to sustain, the taste of the
human mind maybe regaled; and its under
standing put into a state of the most agreeable
exercise. Now, this is quite distinct from the
conscience being made to feel the force of a
personal application ; nor could I either bring
this argument to its close in the pulpit, or offer
it to the general notice of the world, without
adverting, in the last Discourse, to a delusion,
which, I fear, is carrying forward thousands,
and tens of thousands, to an undone eternity.

11
I have closed the Volume with an Appendix
of Scriptural Authorities. I found that I could
not easily interweave them in the texture of the
Work, and have, therefore, thought fit to pre
sent them in a separate form. I look for a two
fold benefit from this exhibition — first, on those
more general readers, who are ignorant of the
Scriptures, and of the richness and variety
which abound in them — and, secondly, on those
narrow and intolerant professors, who take an
alarm at the very sound! and semblance of phi
losophy; and feel as if there was an utter ir-
reconcileable antipathy between its lessons on
the one hand, and the soundness and piety of
the Bible on the other. It were well, I con
ceive, for our cause, that the latter could be
come a little more indulgent on this subject;
that they gave up a portion of those ancient
and hereditary prepossessions, which go so far
to cramp and enthral them; that they would
suffer theology to take that wide range of argu
ment and of illustration which belongs to her;
and that, less sensitively jealous of any desecra
tion being brought upon the Sabbath, or the
pulpit, they would suffer her freely to announce

12
all those truths, which either serve to protect
Christianity from the contempt of science; or to
protect the teachers of Christianity from those
invasions, which are practised both on the
sacredness of the office, and on the solitude of
its devotional and intellectual labours.
I shall only add, for the information of readers
at a distance, that these Discourses were chiefly
delivered on the occasion of the week-day
sermon that is preached in rotation by the
Ministers of Glasgow.

CONTENTS.

DISCOURSE I.
A SKETCH OF THE MODERN ASTRONOMY.
Page
<¦<¦ When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man that thou art mindful of him? and the
sen of man, that thou visitest him?" — Psal. viii. 3, 4. 17

DISCOURSE II.
THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE.
" And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he
knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know." — 1 Cor.
viii. 2.  .56

14

DISCOURSE III.
w
ON THE EXTENT OF THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION.
Page
'< Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on
high. Who humbleth himself to behold the things
that are in heaven, and in the earth!" — Psal. cxiii.
5,6  94
DISCOURSE IV.
ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S MORAL HISTORY I»
THE DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION.
" Which things the angels desire to look into." — 1 Pet.
i. 12  126
DISCOURSE V.
ON THE SYMPATHY THAT IS FELT FOR MAN IN THE
DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION.
" I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven
over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety
and nine just persons, which need no repentance." 
Luke xv. 7  J60

15

DISCOURSE VI.
ON THE CONTEST FOR AN ASCENDENCY OVER MAN,
AMONGST THE HIGHER ORDERS OF INTELLIGENCE.
Page
" And having spoiled principalities and powers, he
made a show of them openly, triumphing over them
in it." — Col. ii. 15  189

DISCOURSE VII.
ON THE SLENDER INFLUENCE OF MERE TASTE AND
SENSIBILITY, IN MATTERS OF RELIGION.
" And lo! thou art unto them as a very lovely song of
one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on
an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do
them not." — Ezek. xxxiii. 32  216
Appendix,  257

DISCOURSE I.

A SKETCH OF THE MODERN ASTRONOMY.

" When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the
moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man,
that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou
visitest him?" — Psalm viii. 3, 4.
In the reasonings of the Apostle Paul, we
cannot fail to observe, how studiously he ac
commodates his arguments to the pursuits or
principles or prejudices of the people whom he
was addressing. He often made a favourite
opinion of their own the starting point of his
explanation ; and educing a dexterous but irre
sistible train of argument from some principle
upon which each of the parties had a common
understanding, did he force them out of all their
opposition, by a weapon of their own choosing —
£

18
nor did he scruple to avail himself of a Jewish
peculiarity, or a heathen superstition, or a quo
tation from Greek poetry, by which he might
gain the attention of those whom he laboured.
to convince, and by the skilful application of
which, he might " shut them up unto the faith."
Now, when Paul was thus addressing one
class of an assembly, or congregation, another,
class might, for the time, have been shut out
of all direct benefit and application from his
arguments. When he wrote an Epistle to a
mixed assembly of Christianised Jews and
Gentiles, he had often to direct such a process
of argument to the former, as the latter would
neither require nor comprehend. Now, what
should have been the conduct of the Gentiles
at the reading of that part of the Epistle which
bore almost an exclusive reference to the Jews?
Should it be impatience at the hearing of some
thing for which they had no relish or under
standing? Should it be a fretful disappointment,
because every thing that was said, was not said
for their edification? Should it be angry discon
tent with the Apostle, because, leaving them in

19
the dark, he had brought forward nothing for
them, through the whole extent of so many suc
cessive chapters? Some of them may have felt in
this way ; but surely it would have been vastly
more Christian tp have sat with meek and
unfeigned patience, and to have rejoiced that
the great apostle had undertaken the manage-,
ment of thoserobstinate prejudices-, which kept
back so man/: human beings from the participa
tion of the Gospel. And should Paul have had
reason to rejoice^ that, by the success of his
arguments, he had reconciled one or any
number of Jews to Christianity, then it was the
part of these Gentiles, though receiving no
direct or personal benefit from the arguments,
to have blessed God, and rejoiced along with
him. Conceive that Paul were at this moment alive,
and zealously engaged in the work of pressing
the Christian religion on the acceptance of the
various classes of society. Should *he not still
have acted on the principle of being all things
to all men? Should he not have accommodated
his discussion to the prevailing taste, and litera-
B2

20
ture, and philosophy of the times ? Should he
not have closed with the people, whom he was
addressing, on some favourite principle of their
own; and, in the prosecution of this principle,
might he not have got completely beyond the
comprehension of a numerous class of zealous,
humble, and devoted Christians? Now, the
question is not, how these would eonduct them
selves in such circumstances? but, how should
they do it? Would it be right in them to sit
with impatience, because the.argument of the
Apostle contained in it nothing in the way of
comfort or edification to themselves? Should
not the benevolence of the Gospel give a dif
ferent .direction to their feelings? And, instead
of that narrow, exclusive, and monopolising
spirit, which I fear is too characteristic of the
more declared professors of the truth as it is in
Jesus, ought they not to be patient and to
rejoice; when to philosophers, and to men of
literary accomplishment, and to those who
have the direction of the public taste among
the upper walks of society, such arguments are
addressed as may bring home to their acceptance
also, " the words of this life?" It is under the
5

21
impulse of these considerations, that I have, with
some hesitation, prevailed upon myself to at
tempt an argument which I think fitted to
soften and subdue those prejudices which lie at
the bottom of what may be called the infidelity
of natural science ; if possible to bring over
to the humility of the Gospel, those who expa
tiate with delight on the wonders and the sub
limities of creation ; and to convince them that
a loftier wisdom still than that even of their
high and honourable acquirements, is the wis
dom of him who is resolved to know nothing
but Jesus Christ and him crucified.
It is truly a most Christian exercise, to extract
a sentiment of piety from the works and the
appearances of nature. It has the authority of
the Sacred Writers upon its side, and even our
Saviour himself gives it the weight and the
solemnity of his example. " Behold the lilies
of the field ; they toil not, neither do they spin,
yet your heavenly Father careth for them."
He expatiates on the beauty of a single flower,
and draws from it the delightful argument of
confidence in God. He gives us to see that
B 3

22
taste may be combined with piety, and that the
same heart may be occupied with all that is se*
rious in the contemplations of religion, and be
at the same time alive to the charms and the
loveliness of nature.
The Psalmist takes a still loftier flight. He
leaves this world, and lifts his imagination to
that mighty expanse which spreads above it and
around it. He wings his way through space,
and wanders in thought over its immeasurable
regions: Instead of a dark and unpeopled soli
tude, he sees it crowded with splendour, and
filled with the energy of the Divine presence.
Creation rises in its immensity before him, and
the world, with all which it inherits, shrinks into
littleness at a contemplation so vast and so over
powering. He wonders tha"t he is not overlooked
amid the grandeur and the variety which are on
every side of him, and passing upward from the
majesty of nature to the majesty of nature#s
Architect, he exclaims, " What is man that thou
art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou
shouldest deign to visit him ?"

23
It is not for us to say, whether inspiration
revealed to the Psalmist the wonders of the
modern astronomy. But even though the mind
be a perfect stranger to the science of these
enlightened times, the heavens present a great
and an elevating spectacle, — an immense con
cave reposing upon the circular boundary of the
world, and the innumerable lights which are sus
pended from on high, moving with solemn regu
larity along its surface. It seems to have been
at night that the piety of the Psalmist was awak
ened by this contemplation, when the moon and
the stars were visible ; and, not when the sun had
risen .in his strength, and thrown a splendour
around him, which bore down and eclipsed all
the lesser glories of the firmament. And there
is much in the scenery of a nocturnal sky, to lift
the soul to pious contemplation. That moon,
and these stars, what are they? They are de
tached from the world, and they lift you above
it. You feel withdrawn from the earth, and
rise in lofty abstraction above this little theatre
of human passions and human anxieties. The
mind abandons itself to reverie, and is transfer
red in the ecstacy of its thoughts, to distant and
B 4

24
unexplored regions. It sees nature in the sim
plicity of her great elements, and it sees the
God of nature invested with the high attributes
of wisdom and majesty.
But what can these lights be? The curiosity of
the human mind is insatiable, and the mechanism
of these wonderful heavens, has, in all ages,
been its subject and its employment. It has
been reserved for these latter times, to resolve
this great and interesting question. The sub-
limest powers of philosophy have been called to
the exercise, and astronomy may now be looked
upon as the most certain and best established
of the sciences.
We all know that every visible object appears
less in magnitude as it recedes from the eye.
The lofty vessel, as it retires from the coast,
shrinks into littleness, and at last appears in the
form of a small speck on the verge of the hori
zon. The eagle with its expanded wings, is a
noble object; but when it takes its flight into
the upper regions of the air, it becomes less to
the eye, and is seen like a dark spot upon the

25
vault of heaven. The same is true of all mag
nitude. The heavenly bodies appear small to
the eye of an inhabitant of this earth, only from
the immensity of their distance. When we talk
of hundreds of millions of miles, it is not to be
listened to as incredible. For remember that
we are talking of those bodies which are scat
tered over the immensity of space, and that
space knows no termination. The conception
is great and difficult, but the truth is unques
tionable. By a process of measurement which
it is unnecessary at present to explain, we have
ascertained first the distance, and then the mag
nitude of some of those bodies which roll in the
firmament; that the sun which presents itself to
the eye under so diminutive a form, is really a
globe, exceeding, by many thousands of times,
the dimensions of the earth which we inhabit;
that the moon itself has the magnitude of a world;
and that even a few of those stars, which appear
like so many lucid points to the unassisted eye
of the observer, expand into large circles upon
the application of the telescope, and are some
of them much larger than the ball which we

26
tread upon, and to which we proudly apply the
denomination of the universe.
Now, what is the fair and obvious presump
tion? The world in which we live, is a round
ball of a determined magnitude, and occupies its
own place in the firmament. But, when we ex
plore the unlimited tracts of that space which
is every where around us, we meet with other
balls of equal or superior magnitude ; and from
which our earth would either be invisible, or
appear as small as any of those twinkling stars
which are seen on the canopy of heaven. Why
then suppose that this little, spot, little at least
in the immensity which surrounds it, should be
the exclusive abode of life and of intelligence?
What reason to think that those mightier globes
which roll in other parts of creation, and which
we have discovered to be worlds in magnitude,
are not also worlds in use and in dignity? Why
should we think that the great Architect of
nature, supreme in wisdom as he is in power,
would call these stately mansions into existence
and leave them unoccupied? When we cast
our eye over the broad sea, and look at the

27
country on the other side, we see nothing but
the blue land stretching obscurely over the
distant horizon. We are too far away -to per
ceive the richness of its scenery, or to hear the
sound of its population. Why not extend this
principle to the still more distant parts of the
universe? What though, from this remote
point of observation, we can see nothing but
the naked roundness of yon planetary orbs?
Are we therefore to say, that they are so many
vast and unpeopled solitudes ; that desolation
reigns in every part of the universe but ours ;
that the whole energy of the divine attributes
is expended on one insignificant corner of these
mighty works; and that to this earth alone,
belongs the bloom of vegetation, or the blessed
ness of life, or the dignity of rational and im
mortal existence?
But this is not all. We have something more
than the mere magnitude of the planets to allege,
in favour of the idea that they are inhabited.
We know that this earth turns round upon
itself; and we observe that all those celestial
bodies, which are accessible to such an observa-

28
tion, have the same movement. .We know
that the earth performs a yearly revolution
round the sun ; and we can detect in all the
planets which compose our system, a revolution
of the same kind, and under the same circum
stances. They have the same succession of day
and night. They have the same agreeable
vicissitude of the seasons. To them, light and
darkness succeed each other ; and the gaiety of
summer is followed by the dreariness, of winter.
To each of them the heavens present as varied
and 'magnificent a spectacle ; and this earth,
the encompassing of which would require the
labour of years from one of its puny inhabi
tants, is but one of the lesser lights which
sparkle in their firmament. To them, as well
as to us, has God divided the light from the
darkness, and he has called the light day, and
the darkness he has called night. He has said,
let there be lights in the firmament of their
heaven, to divide the day from the night ; and
let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for
days, and for years ; and let them be for lights
in the firmament of heaven, to give lights upon
their earth ; and it was so. And God has also

29
made to them great lights. To all of them he
has given the sun to rule the day ; and to many
of them has he given moons to rule the night.
To whom he has made the stars also. And God
has set them in the firmament of heaven, to
give light upon their earth ; and to rule over
the day, and over the night, and to divide the
light from the darkness ; and God has seen that
it was good.
In all these greater arrangements of divine
wisdom, we can see that God has done the
same things for the accommodation of the planets
that he has done for the earth which we in
habit. And shall we say, that the resemblance
stops here, because we are not in a situation to
observe it? Shall we say, that this scene of
magnificence has been called into being merely
for the amusement of a few astronomers ? Shall
we measure the counsels of heaven by the nar
row impotence of the human faculties ? or con
ceive, that silence and solitude reign throughout
the mighty empire of nature ; that the greater
part of creation is an empty parade ; and that
not a worshipper pf the Divinity is to be found

30
through the wide extent of yon vast and im
measurable regions ?
It lends a delightful confirmation to the argu
ment, when, from the growing perfection of our
instruments, we can discover a new point of
resemblance between our Earth and the other
bodies of the planetary system. It is now as
certained, not merely that all of them have their
day and night, and that^all of them have their
vicissitudes of seasons,! $r!d£hat some of them
have their moons to rule their night and alleviate
the daritness of it. We can see of one, that its
surface rises into inequalities, that it swells into
mountains and stretches into vallies ; of another,
that it is surrounded by an atmosphere which
may support the respiration of animals ; .of a
third, that clouds are formed and suspended over
it, which may minister to it all the bloom and
luxuriance of vegetation ; and of a fourth, that a
white colour spreads over its northern regions,
as its winter advances, and that on the approach
of summer this whiteness is dissipated-— giving
room to suppose, that the element of water a-
bounds in it, that it rises by evaporation into its

31
atmosphere, that it freezes upon the application
of cold, that it is precipitated in the form of
snow, that it covers the ground with a fleecy
mantle, which melts away from the heat of a
more vertical sun ; and that other worlds bear
a resemblance to our own, in the same yearly
round of beneficent and interesting changes.
Who shall assign a limit to the discoveries of
future ages? Who can prescribe to science her
boundaries, or restrain the active and insatiable
curiosity of man within the circle of his present
acquirements? We may guess with plausibility
what we cannot anticipate with confidence. The
day may yet be coming, when our instruments
of observation shall be inconceivably more
powerful. They may ascertain still more deci
sive points of resemblance. They may resolve
the same question by the evidence of sense
which is now so abundantly convincing by the
evidence of analogy. They may lay open to
us the unquestionable vestiges of art, and in
dustry, and intelligence. We may see summer
throwing its green mantle over these mighty
tracts, and we may see them left naked and

32
colourless after the flush of vegetation has dis
appeared. In the progress of years or of cen
turies, we may trace the hand of cultivation
spreading a new aspect over some portion of a
planetary surface. Perhaps some large city,
the metropolis of a mighty empire, may expand
into a visible spot by the powers of some future
telescope. Perhaps the glass of some observer,
in a distant age, may enable him to construct
the map of another world, and to lay down
the surface of it in all its minute and topical
varieties. But there is no end of conjecture,
and to the men of other times we leave the full
assurance of what we can assert with the highest
probability, that yon planetary orbs are so many
worlds, that they teem with life, and that the
mighty Being who presides in high authority
over this scene of grandeur and astonishment
has there planted the worshippers of his glory.
Did the discoveries of science stop here, we
have enough to justify the exclamation of the
Psalmist, " What is man that thou art mindful
of him, or the son of man that thou shouldest
deign to visit him?" They widen the empire of

33
creation far beyond the limits which were for
merly assigned to it. They give us to see that
yon sun, throned in the centre of his planetary
system, gives light and warmth, and the vicissi
tude of seasons, to an extent of surface, several
hundreds of times greater than that of the earth
which we inhabit. They lay open to us a
number of worlds, rolling in their respective
circles around this vast luminary— and prove
that the ball which we tread upon, with all its
mighty burden of oceans and continents, instead
of being distinguished from the others, is among
the least of them ; and, from some of the more
distant planets, would not occupy a visible
point in the concave of their firmament. They
let us know, that though this mighty earth, with
all its myriads of people, were to sink into
annihilation, there are some worlds where an
event so awful to us would be unnoticed and
unknown, and others where it would be nothing
more than the disappearance of a little star
which had ceased from its twinkling. We
should feel a sentiment of modesty at this hu
miliating but just representation. We should
learn not to look on our earth as the universe
c

34
of God, but as one paltry and insignificant por
tion of it; that it is only one of the many man
sions which the Supreme Being has created for
the accommodation of his worshippers, and only
one of the many worlds rolling in that flood of
light which the sun pours around him to the
outer limits of the planetary system.
But. is there nothing beyond these limits ?¦
The planetary system, has its boundary, but
space has none; 'and if we wing our fancy
there, do we only travel through dark and un
occupied regions? There are only five, or at
most six, of the planetary orbs: visible to the
naked eye. What, then, is that multitude of
other lights which sparkle in our firmament,
and fill the whole concave of heaven with in
numerable splendours? The planets are all.
attached to the sun; and, in circling around
him, they do homage to that, : influence which
binds them to perpetual attendance on this
great luminary. But the other stars do not
own his dominion. They do not circle around
him. To all common observation, they remain
immoveable; and each, like the independent

35
sovereign of his own territory, appears to oc
cupy the same inflexible position in the regions
of immensity. What can we make of them?
Shall we take our adventurous flight to explore
these dark and untravelled dominions ? What
mean these innumerable fires lighted up in
distant parts of the universe ? Are they only
made to shed a feeble glimmering over this
little spot in the kingdom of nature? or do 'they
serve a purpose worthier of themselves, to light
up other worlds, and give animation to other
systems? The first thing which strikes a scientific ob
server of the fixed stars, is their immeasurable
distance. If the whole planetary system were
lighted up into a globe of fire, it would exceed,
by many millions of times, the magnitude of
this world, and yet only appear a small lucid
point from the nearest of them. If a body were
projected from the sun with the velocity of a
cannon-ball, it would take hundreds of thousands
of years before it described that mighty interval
which separates the nearest of the fixed stars
from our sun and from our system. If this
C 2

36
earth, which moves at more than the incon
ceivable velocity of a million and a half miles
a-day, were to be hurried from its orbit, and to
take the same rapid flight over this immense
tract, it would not have arrived at the termina
tion of its journey, after taking all the time
which has elapsed since the creation of the
world. These are great numbers, and great
calculations, and the mind feels its own impo-
tency in attempting to grasp them. We can
state them in words. We caft exhibit them in
figures. We can demonstrate them by the powers
of a most rigid and infallible geometry. But
no human fancy can summon up a lively or an
adequate conception— can roam in its ideal flight
over this immeasurable largeness— can take in
this mighty space in all its grandeur, and in all
its immensity— can sweep the outer boundaries
of such a creation— or lift itself up to the majesty
of that great and invisible arm, on which all is
suspended. But what can those stars be which are seated
so far beyond the limits of our planetary system?
They must be masses of immense magnitude, or

37
they could not be seen at the distance of place
which they occupy. The light which they give
must proceed from themselves, for the feeble
reflection of light from some other quarter,
would not carry through such mighty tracts to
the eye of an observer. A body may be visible
in . two ways. It may be visible from its own
light, as the flame of a candle, or the brightness
&£ a fire, or the brilliancy of yonder glorious sun
which lightens all below, and is the lamp of the
world. Or it may be visible from the light
which falls upon it, as the hody which receives
its light from the taper that falls upon it — or the
whole assemblage of objects on the surface of
the earth, which appear only when the light of
day rests upon them — or the moon, which, in
that part of it that is towards the sun, gives out
a silvery whiteness to the eye of the observer,
while the other part forms a black and invisible
space in the firmament — or as the planets, which
shine only because the sun shines upon them,
and which, each of them, present the appear
ance of a dark spot on the side that is turned
away from it. Now apply this question to the
fixed stars. Are they luminous of themselves,
c 3

38
or do they derive their light from the sun,v like
the bodies of our planetary system? Think of
their immense distance, and the solution of this
question becomes evident. The sun, like any
other body, must dwindle into a less apparent
magnitude as you retire from it. At the pro
digious distance even of the very nearest of the
fixed stars, it must have shrunk into a small in
divisible point. In short, it must have become
a star itself, and could shed no more light than
a single individual of those glimmering myriads,
the whole assemblage of which cannot dissipate,
and can scarcely alleviate, the midnight darkness
of our world. These stars are visible to us, not
because the sun shines upon them, but because
they shine of themselves ; because they are so
many luminous bodies scattered over the tracts
of immensity- — in a word, because they are so
many suns, each throned in the centre of his
own dominions, and pouring a flood of light
over his own portion of these iinlimitable
regions. At such an immense distance for observation,
it is not to be supposed, that we can collect

39
many points of resemblance between the fixed
stars, and the solar star which forms the centre
of our planetary system. There is one point of
resemblance, however, which has not escaped
the penetration of our astronomers. We know
that our sun turns round upon himself, in a
regular period of time. We also know, that
there are dark spots scattered over his surface,
which, though invisible to the naked eye, are
perfectly noticeable by our instruments. If
these spots existed in greater quantity upon one
side than upon another, it would have the ge
neral effect of making that side darker, and the
revolution of the sun must, in such a case, give
^us a brighter and a fainter side, by, regular al
ternations. Now, there are some of the fixed
stars which present.. this appearance. They
present us with periodical variations of light.
From the splendour of a star of the first or
second magnitude, they fade away into some of
the inferior magnitudes — and one, by becoming
invisible, might give reason to apprehend that we
had lost him altogether — but we can still recog
nise him by the telescope, till at length he re
appears inhisown place, and, after a regular lapse
C 4

40
of so many days and hours, recovers his original
brightness. Now, the fair inference from this,
is, that the fixed stars, as they resemble our sun
in being so many luminous masses of immense
magnitude, they resemble him in this also, that
each of them turns round upon his own axis; so
that if any of them should have an inequality in
the brightness of their sides, this revolution is
rendered evident, by the regular variations in
the degree of light which it undergoes.
Shall we say, then, of these vast luminaries,
that they were created in vain? Were they called
into existence for no other purpose than to throw
a tide of useless splendour over the solitudes of
immensity? Our sun is only one of these lumi
naries, and we know that he has worlds in his
train. Why should we strip the rest of this
princely attendance? Why may not each of
them be the centre of his own system, and give
light to his own worlds? It is true that we see
' them not; but could the eye of man take its flight
into those distant regions, it should lose sight
of our little world, before it reached the outer
limits of our system— the greater planets should

41
disappear in their turn — before it had described
a small portion of that abyss which separates us
from the fixed stars, the sun should decline into
a little spot, and all its splendid retinue of worlds
be lost in the obscurity of distance — he should,
at last, shrink" into a small indivisible atom,
and all that could be seen of this magnificent
system, should be reduced to the glimmering of
a little star. Why resist any longer the grand
and interesting conclusion? Each of these stars
may be the token of a system as vast and as
splendid as the one which we inhabit. Worlds
roll in these distant regions; and these worlds
must be the mansions of life and of intelligence.
In yon gilded canopy of heaven, we see the
broad aspect of the universe, where each shining
point presents us with a sun, and each sun with a
system of worlds-— where the Divinity reigns in
all the grandeur of his high attributes — where he
peoples immensity with his wonders; and travels
in the greatness of his strength through the
dominions of one vast and unlimited monarchy.
The contemplation has no limits. If we ask
the number of suns and of systems — the un-

42
assisted eye of man can take in a thousand, and
the best telescope which the genius of man has
constructed can take in eighty millions. But
why subject the dominions of the universe
to the eye of man, or to the powers of his
genius? Fartcy may take its flight far beyond
the ken of eye or of telescope. It may expa
tiate on the outer regions of all that is visible —
and shall we have the boldness to say, that there
is nothing there? that the wonders of the Al
mighty are at an end, because we can no longer
trace his footsteps? that his omnipotence, is ex
hausted, because human art can no longer follow
him? that the creative energy of God has suifk
into repose, because the imagination is enfeebled
by the magnitude of its efforts, and can keep
no longeron the wing through those mighty
.tracts, which shoot far beyond what eye hath
seen, or the heart of man hath conceived —
which sweep endlessly along, and merge into
an awful and mysterious infinity?
Before bringing to a close this rapid and im
perfect sketch of our modern astronomy, it may
be rigjit to advert to two points of interesting

43
speculation, both of which serve to magnify our
conceptions of the universe, and, of course, to
give us a more affecting sense of the comparative
insignificance of this our world. The first is sug
gested by the consideration, that, if a body be
struck in the direction of its centre, it obtains,
from this course, a progressive motion, but
without any movement of revolution being at
the same time impressed upon it. It simply
goes forward, but does not turn round upon
itself. But, again, should the stroke not be in
the direction of the centre— should the line
which joins the point of percussion to the
centre, make an angle with that line in which
the impulse was communicated, then the body
is both made to go forward in space, and also
to wheel upon its axis. In this way, each of
our planets may have had their compound
motion communicated to it by one single
impulse ; and, on the other hand, if ever the,
rotatory motion be communicated by one blow,
then the progressive motion must go along. with
it. In order to have the first motion without
the second, there must he a twofold force ap
plied to the body in opposite directions. It

44
must be set agoing in the same way as a spin
ning-top, so as to revolve about an axis, and to
keep unchanged its situation in space. The
planets have both motions; and, therefore, may
have received them by one and the same im
pulse. The sun, we are certain, has one of
these motions. He has a movement of revolu*
tion. If spun round his axis by two opposite
forces, one on each side of him, he may have
this movement, and retain an inflexible position
in space. But, if this movement was given him
by one stroke, he must have a progressive mo
tion, along with a whirling motion; or, in other
words, he is moving forward; he is describing
a tract in space; and, in so doing, he carries all
his planets and all their secondaries along with
him. But, at this stage of the argument, the matter
only remains a conjectural point of specula
tion. The sun may have had his rotation
impressed upon him by a spinning impulse; or,
without recurring to secondary causes at all,
this movement may be coeval with his being,
and he may have derived both the one and the

45
other from an immediate fiat of the Creator.
But, there is an actually observed phenomenon
of the heavens, which advances the conjecture
into a probability. In the course of ages, the
stars in one quarter of the celestial sphere are
apparently receding from each other; and, in
the opposite quarter, they are apparently drawing
nearer to each other. If the sun be approaching
the former quarter, and receding from the latter,
this phenomenon admits of an easy explanation,
and we are furnished with a magnificent step
in the scale of the Creator's workmanship. In
the same manner as the planets, with their
satellites, revolve round the sun, may the sun,
with all his tributaries, be moving, in common
with other stars, around some distant centre,
from which there emanates an influence to bind
and to subordinate them all. They may be
kept from approaching each other, by a centri
fugal force; without which, the laws of attrac
tion might consoffdate, into one stupendous
mass, all the distinct globes, of which the uni
verse is composed. Our sun may, therefore, be
only one member of a higher family — taking
his part, along with millions of others, in some

46
loftier system of mechanism, by which they are
all subjected to one law, and to one arrange
ment-— describing the sweep of such an orbit in
space, and completing the mighty revolution in
such a period of time, as to reduce our planetary
seasons, and our planetary movements, to a
very humble and fractionary rank in the scale
of a higher astronomy. There is room for all
this in immensity; arid there is even argument
for all this, in the records of actual observation;
and, from the whole of this speculation, do we
gather a new emphasis to the lesson, how minute
is the place, and howseeondary is the importance
of our world, amid the glories of such a sur
rounding magnificence.
But, there is still another very interesting
tract of speculation, which has been opened up
to us by the more recent observations of astro
nomy. What we allude to is the discovery of the
nebuUe. We allow that it i?»but a dim and in
distinct light which this discovery has thrown
upon the structure of the universe; but still it
has spread before the eye of the mind a field of
very wide and lofty contemplation. Anterior

47
to this discovery, the universe might appear to
have been composed of an indefinite number of
suns, about equi-distant from each other, uni
formly scattered over space, and each encompass
ed by such a planetary attendance as takes place
in our own system. But, we have now reason
to think, that, instead of lying uniformly, and
in a state of equi-distance from each other, they
are arranged into distinct clusters— that, in the
same manner as the distance of the nearest
fixed stars so inconceivably superior to that of
our planets from each other, marks the separa
tion of the solar systems ; so the distance of two
contiguous clusters may be so inconceivably
superior to the reciprocal distance of , those
fixed stars which belong to the same cluster, as
to mark an equally, distinct .separation of the
clusters, and to constitute each of them an in
dividual member .of some higher and more ex
tended arrangement. This carries us upwards
through another ascending step in the scale of
magnificence, and there leaves us wildering in
the uncertainty, whether even. here the won-
• derful progression is ended ; and, at all events,
fixes the assured conclusion in our minds, that,

48
to an eye which could spread itself over the
whole, the mansion which accommodates our
species might be so very small as to lie wrapped
in microscopical concealment; and, in reference
to the only Being who possesses this universal
eye, well might we say, " What is man that
thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that
thou shouldest deign to visit him ?"
And, after all, though it be a mighty and
difficult conception, yet who can question it ?
What is seen may be nothing to what is unseen;
for what is seen is limited by the range of our
instruments. What is unseen has no limit;
and, though all which the eye of man can take
in, or his tency can grasp at, were swept
away, there might still remain as ample a field,.
over which the Divinity may expatiate, and
which he may have peopled with innumerable
worlds. If the whole visible creation were to dis
appear, it would leave a solitude behind it— but
to the infinite Mind, that can take in the whole
system of nature, this solitude might be nothing;
a small unoccupied point in that immensity
which surrounds it, and which he may have filled

49
with the wonders of his omnipotence. Though
this earth were to be burned up, though the
trumpet of its dissolution were sounded, though
yon sky were to pass away as a scroll, and
every visible glory, which the finger of the
Divinity has inscribed on it, were to be put out
for ever — an event, so awful to us, and to every
world in our vicinity, by which so many suns
would be extinguished, and sp many ^.varied
scenes of life and of population would rush
into forgetfulness — :what is it in the high sealed
of the Almighty's workmanship? a mere shred,
which, though scattered into nothing*, would
leave the universe of God one entire scene of
greatness and of majesty. Though this earthy
arid these heavens, were to disappear,, there are
other worlds, which roll afar; the light of other
sijins shines upon them; and the^sky which
m&ntles-them, is garnished with other stars. Is
it presumption to say, that the moral world
extends to these distant and unknown regions?
that they, are occupied with people? that the
charities of home and of neighbourhood flourish
there? that the praises of God are there lifted
up, and his goodness rejoiced in? that piety ha§
B

50
its temples and its offerings? and the richness
of the divine attributes is there felt and admired
by intelligent worshippers?
And what is this world in the immensity
which teems with them — and what are they
who occupy it? The universe at large would
suffer as little; in its splendour and variety* by
the destruction of our planet, as the verdure
and sublime magnitude of a forest would suffer
by the fall of a single leaf. The leaf quivers
on the branch which supports it. It lies at the
mercy of the slightest accident. A breath of
wind tears it from its stem, and' it lights- on the
stream of water which passes underneath. In
a moment of time, the life, which we know, by
the microscope; it teems with, is extinguished ;
and, an occurrence so insignificant in the eye of
man, and on the scale of his observation, carries
in it, to the myriads which people this little
leaf, an event as terrible and as decisive as the
destruction of a world. Now, on the grand
scale of the universe, we, the occupiers of this
ball, which performs its little round among the
suns and the systems that astronomy has un-

51
folded — we may feel the same littleness, and
the same insecurity. We differ from the leaf
only -in this circumstance, that it would require
the operation of greater elements to destroy us.
But these elements exist. The fire which rages
within, may lift its devouring energy to the
surface of our planet, and transform it into one
wide and wasting volcano. The sudden for
mation of elastic matter in the bowels . of the
earth — and it lies within the agency of known
substances to accomplish this — may explode it
into fragments. The exhalation of noxious air
from below, may impart a virulence to the air
that is around us; it may affect the delicate
proportion of its ingredients; and the whole
of animated nature may wither and die under
the malignity of a tainted atmosphere. A blaz
ing comet may cross this fated planet in its
orbit, and realise all the terrors which supersti
tion has conceived of it. We cannot anticipate
with precision the consequences of an event
which every astronomer must know to lie within
the limits of chance and probability. It may
hurry our globe towards the sun — or drag it to
the outer regions of the planetary system — or
D 2

52
give it a new axis of revolution — and the effect,
which I shall simply announce,; without ex
plaining it, would be to change the place of
the ocean, and bring another mighty flood upon
our islands and continents. These are changes
which may happen in a single instant . of time,
and against which uothing known in the present
system of things provides, us with any security.
They might not annihilate the earth, but they
would unpeople it; and we. who tread its surface
with such firm and assured footsteps, are at the
mercy of devouring elements, which, if let loose
upon us by the hand of. the Almighty, would
spread solitude, and silence, and death, over the
dominions of the world.
Now, it is this littleness, and this insecurity,
which make the protection of the Almighty so
dear to us,- and bring, with such emphasis* to
every pious bosom, the holy lessons of humility
and gratitude. _ The God who sitteth above, and
presides in high; authority over alj worlds,. is
mindful of man; and, though at this moment
his energy is felt in .the remotest provinces of
creation, we may feel the same security in his

53
providence, as if we were the objects of his
undivided care. It is not for us to bring
our minds up to this mysterious agency. But,
such is the incomprehensible fact, that the same
Being, whose eye is abroad over the whole uni
verse, gives vegetation to every blade of grass,
and motion to every particle of blood which
circulates through the veins of the minutest
animal ; that, though his mind takes into its
comprehensive grasp, immensity and all its
wonders* I am as much known to him as if I
were the single object of his attention,- that he
marks all my thoughts; that he gives birth to
every feeling and every movement within me;
and that, with an exercise of powtr which I
can neither describe nor comprehend, the same
God who sits in the highest heaven, and reigns
over the glories of the firmament, is at my right
hand, to give me every breath which I draw,
and every comfort which I enjoy.
But this very reflection has been appropriated
to the use of Infidelity, and the very language
of the text has been made to bear an application
of hostility to the faith. " What is man, that
D 3

54
God should be mindful of him, or the son of
man, that he should deign to visit him?" Is it
likely, says the Infidel, that God would send his
eternal Son to die for the puny occUpiers of so
insignificant a province in the mighty field of
his creation ? Are we the befitting objects of so
great and so signal an interposition ? Does not
the largeness of that field which astronomy lays
open to the view of modern science, throw a
suspicion over the truth of the gospel history;
and how shall we reconcile the greatness of that
wonderful movement which was made in heaven
for the redemption of fallen man, with the com
parative meanness and obscurity of our species ?
I '
This is a popular argument against Christian^
ity, not much dwelt upon in books ; but we be
lieve, a good deal insinuated in conversation,
and having no small influence on the amateurs of
a superficialphilosophy. At all events, it is right
that every such argument should be met, and
manfully confronted ; nor do we know a more
discreditable surrender of our religion, than to
act as if she had any thing to fear from the in
genuity of her most accomplished, adversaries.

55
The author of the following Discourses, engages
in his present undertaking, under the full impress
sion, that a something may be found with which
to combat Infidelity in all its forms; that the
truth of God and of his message, admits of a
noble and decisive manifestation, through every
mist which the pride, or the prejudice, or the
sophistry of man may throw around it; and
elevated as the wisdom of him may be, who has
ascended the heights of science, and poured the
light of demonstration over the most wondrous
of nature's mysteries, that even out of his own
principles, it may be proved how much more
elevated is the wisdom of him who sits with the
docility of a little child, to his Bible, and casts
down to its authority, all his lofty imaginations.

D 4

56

DISCOURSE II.

THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE.

',< And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he know-
. . eih nothing yet as h# ought to know."— 7 1 Cp-R. viii, % , i
; :-¦- '?"!'¦ , i-uwi< ' ' ¦':
There is much profound and important wisdom
in that proverb of Solomon, where it is said,
that the heart knoweth its own bitterness. It
forms part of a truth still more comprehensive,
that every man knoWeth his own peculiar feel
ings, and difficulties, and trials, far better than
he can get any of his neighbours to perceive
them. It is natural to us all, that we should
desire to engross, to the uttermost, the sympathy
of others with what is most painful to the sensi
bilities of our own bosom, and with what is
most aggravating in the hardships of our own

57
situation. But, labour it as we may, we cannot,
with every power of expression, make an ade
quate conveyance, as it were, of all our sensa
tions, and of all our circumstances, into another
understanding. There is a something in the
intimacy of a man's own experience, which he
cannot make to pass entire into the heart and
mind even of his most familiar companion —
and thus it is, that he is so often defeated in his
attempts to obtain a full and a cordial possession
of his sympathy. He is mortified, and he won
ders at the obtuseness of the people around
him — and how he cannot get them to enter into
the justness of his complainings— nor to feel
the point upon which turn the truth and the
reason of his remonstrances — nor to give their
interested attention to the case of his peculiari
ties and of his wrongs — nor to kindle, in ge
nerous resentment, along with him, when he
starts the topic of his indignation. He does
not reflect, all the while; that, with every
human being he addresses, there is an inner
man, which forms a theatre of passions, and of
interests, as busy, as crowded, and as fitted as
his own to engross the anxious and the exercised

58
feelings of a heart, which can alone understand
its own bitterness, and lay a correct estimate on
the burden of its own visitations. Every man
we meet, carries about with him, in the unper-
ceived solitude of his bosom, a little world of his
own — and we are just as blind, and as insensible,
and as dull, both of perception and of sympathy,
about his engrossing objects, as he is about ours;
and, did we suffer this observation to have all
its weight upon us, it might serve to make us
more candid, and more considerate , of others.
It might serve to abate the monopolizing selfish
ness of our nature. It might serve to soften
down all the malignity which comes out of those
envious contemplations that we are so apt to
cast on the fancied ease and prosperity which
are around us. It might serve to reconcile
every man to his own lot, and dispose him to
bear, with thankfulness, his own burden; and
sure I am, if this train of sentiment were prose
cuted with firmness, and calmness, and impar
tiality, it would lead to the conclusion, that
each profession in life has its own peculiar pains,
and its own besetting inconveniences— that,
from the very bottom of society, up to the

59
golden pinnacle which blazons upon its summit,
there is much in the shape of care and of suf
fering to be found— that, throughout all the
conceivable varieties of human condition, there
are trials, which can neither be adequately told
on the one side, nor fully understood on the
other— that the ways of God to man are as equal
in this, as in every department of his adminis
tration—and that, go to whatever quarter of hu
man experience we may, we shall find how he
has provided enough to exercise the patience,
and to accomplish the purposes of a wise and a
salutary discipline upon all his children.
~r" I have brought forward this, observation, that
it may prepare the way for a second. There
are perhaps no two sets of human beings, who
comprehend less the movements, and enter less
into the cares and concerns, of each other, than
the wide and busy public on the one hand;
and, on the other, those men of close and stu
dious retirement, whom the world never hears
of, save when, from their thoughtful solitude,
there issues forth some splendid discovery, to
set the world on a gaze of admiration. Then

60
will the brilliancy of a superior genius draw
every eye towards it — and the homage paid to
intellectual superiority, will place its idol on a
loftier eminence than all wealth or than all titles-
can bestow — and the name of the successful-
philosopher will circulate, in his own age, over
the whole extent of civilised society, and be
borne down to posterity in the characters of
ever-during remembrance — and thus it is, that,
when we look back on the days of Newton, we
annex a kind of mysterious greatness to him,
who, by the pure force of his understanding,
rose to such a gigantic elevation above the
level of ordinary men — and the kings and war
riors of other days sink into insignificance
around him — and he, at this momenta, stands
forth to the public eye, in a prouder array of .
glory than circles the memory of all the men
of former generations — and, while all the vulgar
grandeur of other days is now mouldering in
forgetfulness, the achievements of our great
astronomer are still fresh in the veneration of
his countrymen, and they carry him forward
on the stream of time, with a reputation ever
gathering, and the triumphs of a distinction
that will never die.

61
Now, the point that I want to impress upon
you is, that the same public, who are so dazzled
and overborne by the lustre of all this sifperior-
ity, are utterly in the dark as to what that is
which confers its chief merit on the philosophy
of Newton. They see the result of his labours,
but they know not how to appreciate the diffi
culty or the extent of them. They look on the
stately edifice he has reared, but they know not
what he had to do in settling the foundation
which gives to it all its stability — nor are they
aware what painful encounters he had to make,
both with the natural predilections of his own
heart, and with the prejudices of others, when
employed on the work of laying together its
unperishing materials. They have never heard
of the controversies which this man, of peaceful
unambitious modesty, had to sustain, with all
that was proud, and all that was intolerant in
the philosophy of the age. They have never,
in thought, entered that closet which was the
scene of his patient and profound exercises—
nor have they gone along with. him, as he gave
his silent hours to the labours of the midnight
oil, and plied that unwearied task, to which the

62
charm of lofty contemplation had allured him —
nor have they accompanied him through all the
workr^s of that wonderful mind, from which,
as from the recesses of a laboratory, there came
forth such gleams and processes of thought as
shed an effulgency over the whole amplitude of
nature. All this, the public have not done; for
of this the great majority, even of the reading
and cultivated public, are utterly incapable;
and, therefore, is it, that they need to be told
what that is, in which the main distinction of
his philosophy lies; that,* when labouring in
other fields of investigation, they may know
how to borrow from his safe example," and how
to profit by that superior wisdom which marked
the whole conduct of his understanding.
Let it be understood, then, that they are the
positive discoveries of Newton, which; in the
eye of a superficial public, confer upon him all
his reputation. He discovered the mechanism
of the planetary system. He discovered the
composition of light. He discovered the cause
of those alternate movements which take place
on the waters of the ocean. These form his

63
actual and his visible achievements. These are
what the world look at as the monuments of
his greatness. These are the doctrines bjjFhich
he has enriched the field of philosophy; and
thus it is, that the whole of his merit is supposed
to lie in having had the sagacity to perceive,
and the vigour to lay hold of the proofs, which
conferred upon these doctrines all the establish
ment of a most rigid and conclusive demon
stration. But, while he gets all his* credit, and all hie
admiration for those articles of science which
he has added to the creed of philosophers; he
deserves as much credit and admiration for
those articles which he kept out of this^preed,
as for those which he introduced into it. It
Was the property of his mind, that it kept a
tenacious hold of every one position which had
proof to substantiate it— but it forms a property
equally characteristic, and which, in fact, gives
its leading peculiarity to the whole spirit and
style of his investigations, that he put a most
determined exclusion on every one^ position
that was destitute of such proof. - He would

64
not admit the astronomical theories of those
who went before him, because they had no
prooi^pHe would not give in to their notions.
about the planets wheeling their rounds in
whirlpools of ether — for he did not see this
ether — he had no proof of its existence— and*
besides, even supposing it to exist, it. would;
not have impressed, on the heavenly bodies,
such movements as met his observation. He
would not submit his judgement to the reigning
systems of the day — for, though they had au
thority to recommend them, they had no proof;
and thus it is, that he evinced the strength and
the soundness of his philosophy, as much by
his decisions upon .those doctrines of science
whichhe rejected, as by his demonstration of
those doctrines of science which he was the first
to propose, and which now stand put to the
eye pf posterity as the only monuments to the
force and superiority of his understanding.
He wanted no other recommendation for any
one article of science, than, the recommenda
tion of evidence— and, with this recommenda
tion, he opened to it the chamber qf his mind,

65
though authority scowled upon it, and taste was
disgusted by it, and fashion was ashamed^of it,
and all the beauteous speculation of former days
was cruelly broken up by this new announce
ment of the better philosophy,' and scattered
like the fragments of an aerial vision, over
which the past generations of the world had
been slumbering their profound and their pleas
ing reverie. But, on the other hand, should
the article of science want the recommenda
tion of evidence, he shut against it all the
avenues of his understanding — aye, and though
all antiquity lent their suffrages to it, and all
eloquence had thrown around it the most
attractive brilliancy, and all habit had incor
porated it with every system of every s semi
nary in Europe, and all fancy had arrayed it in
graces of the most tempting solicitation; yet
was the steady and inflexible mind of Newton
proof against this whole weight of authority
and allurement, and, Casting his cold and
unwelcome look at the specious plausibility,
he rebuked it from his presence. The strength
of his philosophy lay as much in refusing admit
tance to that which wanted evidence, as in
E

66
giving a place, and an occupancy to that which
possessed it. In that march of intellect, which
led him on wards, through the rich and magnifi**
cent field of his discoveries, he pondered every
step; and, while he advanced. with a firm and as
sured movement, wherever the light of evidence?
carried him, he never suffered any glare of
imagination or of prejudice to seduce him from
his path.7!*:
Sure I am, that, in the prosecution of his
wonderful career, he found himself on a way
beset with temptation upon every side of him.
It was not merely that he had the reigning
taste and philosophy of the times to contend
with. But, he expatiated on a lofty region,
where, in all the giddiness of success, he might
have met with much to solicit his fancy, and
tempt him to some devious speculation. Had
he been like the majority of other men, he
would have broken free 'from the fetters of a
sober and chastised understanding, and, giving
wing to his imagination, had done what philoso
phers had done after him— been carried away:
by some meteor of their own forming, or found

67
their amusement in some of their own intel
lectual pictures, or palmed some loose and con
fident plausibilities of their own upon the world.
But, Newton stood true to his principle, that
he would take up with nothing which wanted
evidence, and he kept by his demonstrations,
and his measurements, and his proofs; and, if
it be true that he who ruleth his own spirit is
greater than he who taketh a .city, there was
won, in the solitude of his chamber, many a
repeated victory over himself, which should
give a brighter lustre to his name than all the
conquests he has made on the field of discovery,
or than all the splendour of his positive achieve
ments. I trust you understand, how, though it be
one of the maxims of the true philosophy, never
to shrink from a doctrine which has evidence
on its side; it is another maxim, equally essen
tial to it, never to harbour any doctrine when
this evidence is wanting. Take these two
maxims along with you, and you will be at
no loss to explain the peculiarity, which, more
than any other, goes both to characterise and
E 2

68
to ennoble the philosophy of Newton. What
I allude to, is,' the precious combination of its
strength and of its modesty. On the one hartd^
what greater evidence of strength than the
fulfilment of that mighty enterprise, by which
the heavens have been made its own, and the
mechanism of unnumbered worlds has been
brought within the grasp of the human under
standing? Now, it was by walking in the light of
sound and competent evidence, that all this was
accomplished. It was by the patient, the stre
nuous, the unfaltering application of the legi
timate instruments of discovery. It was by
touching that which was tangible, and looking
to that which was visible, and computing that
which was measurable, and, in one word, by
making a right and a reasonable use of all that
proof which the field of nature around us has
brought within the limit of sensible observa
tion. This is < the arena on which the modern
philosophy has won all her victories, and fulfilled
all her wondrous achievements, and reared all
her proud and enduring monuments, and gather
ed all her magnificent trophies to that power- of
intellect with which the hand of a bounteous

69
heaven lias so richly gifted the constitution of
our species.
But, on the other* hand, go beyond the
limits of sensible observation, and, from that
moment, the genuine disciples of this enlight
ened school cast all their confidence and all
their intrepidity away from them- Keep them
on the firm ground of experiment, and none
more bold and more decisive in their announce
ments of all that they have evidence for — but,
off this ground, none more humble, or more
cautious of any thing like positive announce
ments, than they. They choose neither to know,
nor to believe, nor to assert, where evidence
is wanting; and they will sit, with all the pa
tience of a scholar to his task, till they have found
it. They are utter strangers to that haughty
confidence with which some philosophers of the
day sport the plausibilities of unauthorised spe
culation; and by. which, unmindful of the limit
that separates the region of sense from the
region of conjecture, they make their blind and
their impetuous inroads into a province which
does not belong to them. There is no one
E3

70
object to which the exercised mind of a true
Newtonian disciple is more familiarised than this
limit1; and it serves as a boundary by which he
shapes, and bounds, and regulates, all the enter
prises of his philosophy. All the space which lies
within this limit, he cultivates to the uttermost ;
and it is by such successive labours, that every
year which rolls over the world, is witnessing
some new contribution to experimental science,
and adding to the solidity and aggrandisement
of this wonderful fabric- But, if true to their
own principle, then, in reference to the for
bidden ground which lies without this limit,
those very men, who, on the field of warranted
exertion, evinced all the hardihood and vigour
of a full grown understanding, show, on every
subject where the light of evidence is withheld
from them, all the modesty of children. They
give you positive Opinion only when they have
indisputable proof— but,' when they have no
such proof, then they have no such opinion.
The single principle of their respect to truth,
secures their homage for every one position,
where the evidence of truth is present ; and at
the same time, begets an entire diffidence about

71
every one position, from which this evidence
is disjoined- And thus you may understand,
how the first man in the accomplishments of
philosophy, which the world ever saw, sat at
the book .of nature in the humble attitude of its
interpreter and its pupil— how all the docility
of conscious ignorance threw a sweet and soft
ening lustre around the radiance even of his
most splendid discoveries-— and, while the flip
pancy of a few superficial acquirements, is
enough to place a .philosopher of the day on
the pedestal of his fancied ; elevation, and .to
vest him with an' assumed lordship over' the
whole domain of natural and revealed know
ledge; I cannot forbear to do honour to, the un
pretending greatness of Newton, than whom
I know not if there ever lighted on the face of
our world, one in the character of whose ad
mirable genius so much force and so much
humility were more attractively blended.
I now purpose to carry you forward, by a few
simple, illustrations, to the argument of this day.
All the sublime truths of the modern astronomy
lie within the field. of actual observation, and
E4

72
have the firm evidence to rest upon of all that
information; which is conveyed to us by the
avenue of the senses. Sir Isaac Newton never
went beyond this field, without a reverential
impression upon his mind, of the precariousness
of the ground on which he was standing. On
this ground, he never ventured a positive affir
mation — but, resigning the lofty tone of demon
stration, and putting on the modesty of con
scious ignorance, he brought forward all he had
to say in the humble form of a doubt, or a con
jecture, or a question. But, what he had not
confidence to do, Other philosophers have done
after him — and they have winged their auda
cious way into forbidden regions— and they
have crossed that circle by which the field of
observation is enclosed — and there have they
debated and dogmatised with all the pride of a
most intolerant assurance.
Now, though the case be imaginary, let us
conceive, for the sake of illustration, that one
of these philosophers made so extravagant a de
parture from the sobriety of experimental science
as to pass on from the astronomy of the different

73
planets, and to attempt the natural history of
their animal and vegetable kingdoms. He might
get hold of some vague and general analogies, to
throw an air of plausibility around his specula
tion. He might pass from the botany of the
different regions of the globe that we inhabit ;
and make his loose and confident applications
to each of . the other planets, according to its
distance from the sun, and the inclination of its
axis to the plane of its annual revolution; and
out of some such slender materials, he may
work up an amusing philosophical romance, full
of ingenuity, and having, withal,, the colour of
truth and of consistency spread over it.
I can conceive how a superficial public might
be delighted by the eloquence of such a com
position, and even be impressed by its argu
ments ; but were I asked, which is the man of
all the ages and countries in the world, who
would have the least respect for this treatise
upon the plants which grow on the surface of
Jupiter, I should be at no loss, to answer the
question. I should say, that it would be he
who had computed the motions of Jupiter— that

74
it would be he who .had. measured the bulk and
the density of Jupiter— that it would belie who
had estimated .the ; periods of Jupiter — that it
would be he whose. observant eye and patiently
calculating mind,' had traced the satellites of
Jupiter through all . the rounds of their mazy
circulation,: and unravelled the intricacy of all
their movements. He would see at once that
the subject lay at a hopeless distance beyond
the field of legitimate, observation.. It would
be quite enough for him, that it was beyond
the range of his telescope. On this ground,
and on this ground only, would he reject it as
one of the puniest imbecilities of childhood,
As to any character of truth or of importance,
it would have no more effect on such a mind as
that of Newton, than any illusion of poetry;
and, from the eminence of his intellectual
throne, would he cast a penetrating glance at
the whole speculation, and bid, its gaudy insigr
nificance away from him. .
But let us pass onward to another case, which
though as imaginary as the former, may stijl
serve the. purpose of illustration.

75
This same adventurous philosopher may be
conceived to shift his speculation from the
plants of another world, to the character of its
inhabitants. He may avail himself of some
slender correspondencies between the > heat of
the sun and the moral temperarnent of the peo
ple it shines upon. He may work up a theory,
which carries on the front of it some of 'the
characters of plausibility; but surely it does
not require the philosophy of Newton to de
monstrate the folly of such, an enterprise.
There is not a man of plain understanding, who
does not perceive that this "said ambitious in
quirer has got without his reach — that he has
stepped beyond the field of experience, and is
now expatiating on the field of imagination —
that he has ventured on a dark unknown, where
the wisest of all philosophy, is the philosophy
of silence, and a profession ofignoftanasLig the
best evidence of a solid understanding— that if
he thinksne knows any thing on such a subject
as this, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to
know. He knows not what Newton knew, and
what he kept a steady eye upon throughout the
•whole march of his sublime investigations. He

76
knows not the limit of his own faculties. He
has overleaped the barrier which hems in all the
possibilities of human attainment. He has wan
tonly flung himself off from the safe and firm
field of observation ; and got on that undiscover-
able ground,- where, by every step he takes, he
widens his distance from; the true philosophy,
and by every affirmation he utters; he rebels
against the authority of all its maxims.
I can conceive it the feeling of every one of
you, that I have hitherto indulged in a vain ex
pense of argument, and it is most natural, for
you to put the question, " What is the precise
point of convergence to which I am directing
all the light of this abundant and seemingly
superfluous illustration?"
In the astronomicalobjection which; Infidelity
has proposed against .the truth of the Christian
revelation, there is first an assertion, and then
an argument. The assertion is, that Christianity
is set up for the exclusive benefit of our minute
and solitary world. The argument is, that God
would not layish such a quantity of attention on

77
so insignificant a field. Even though the asser
tion were admitted, I should have a quarrel
with the argument. But the futility of the ob*
jection is not laid open in all its extent, Unless
we expose the utter want of all essential evi
dence even for the truth of the assertion. How
do infidels know that Christianity is set up for
the single benefit of this earth and its inhabi
tants'? How are they able to tell us, that if you
go to other planets, the person and the religion
of Jesus are there unknown to them? We chal
lenge' them to the proof of this said positive an
nouncement of theirs. We see in this objection
the same rash and gratuitous procedure, which
was so apparent in the two cases that we have
already advanced for the purpose of illustration.
We see in it the same glaring transgression on
the spirit and the maxims of that very philoso
phy which they profess to idolize. They have
made their argument against us, out of an asser
tion which has positively no feet to rest upon —
an assertion which they have no means what
ever of verifying — an assertion, the truth or the
falsehood of which can only be gathered out of
some supernatural message, for it lies completely

78
beyond the range of human observation.' It is
willingly admitted, that by an attempt at the
botany of other worlds, the true method of phi
losophising is trampled on; for this is a subject
that lies beyond the range of actual observation ;
and every performance upon it must be made
up of assertions without proofs. It is also will
ingly admitted, that an attempt at the civil and
political history of their people, would be an
equally extravagant departure from the spirit of
the true philosophy; for this alsta lies beyond'
the field of actual observation; and all that
could possibly be mustered up on such a subject
as this, would still be assertions without proofs.
Now, the theology of these planets is/ in every
way, as inaccessible a subject: as their politics or
their natural history; and therefore it is, that
the objection, grounded on the confident as
sumption of those infidel astronomers^ who as
sert Christianity to be the religion of this one
world, or that the religion of these other worlds ;
is not our very Christianity, can have no influ
ence on a mind that has derived its habits of
thinking, from the pure and rigorous school of
Newton; for the whole of this assertion is just

79
as glaringly destitute, as in the two former in
stances, of proof.
The man who could embark in an enterprise
so foolish and so fanciful, as to theorise it on
the details of the botany of another world, or
to theorise it on the natural and moral history
of its people, is just making as outrageous a
departure -from all sense, and all science, and
all sobriety,; when he presumes to speculate, or
to, assert on^th^details'o'r theimetbods 'of God's
administration 'among its rational 'and account-
able inhabitants. He wings his fancy to as
hazardous a region, and vainly strives a pene
trating vision through the mantle of as deep an
obscurity. All the elements of such a -specula
tion are hidden from him. For any thing he
can tell, sin has found its way into these other
worlds. For any thing he can tell, their people
have banished themselves from communion With
God. For any thing he can tell, many a visit
has been made to each of them, orir the subject
of our common Christianity, by commissioned
messengers from the throne of the Eternal.
For any thing he can tell, the redemption pro-

80
claimed to us is not one solitary instance, or not
the whole of that redemption which is by the
Son of God— but only our part in a plan of
mercy, equal in magnificence to all that astro
nomy has brought Within the range of human
contemplation. For any thing he can tell,
the moral pestilence, which walks abroad over
¦the face of our world, may have spread its
desolation over all the planets of all the
systems, which the telescope has made known
to us. For any thing he can tell, some mighty
redemption has been devised in heaven, to meet
this disaster in the whole extent and malignity
of its visitations* For any thing he can tell^
the wonder-working God, who has strewed the
field of immensity with so many worlds, and
-spread the shelter .of his omnipotence over
them, may have sent a message of loveto eacfe^
and re-assured the hearts of its despairing peo
ple by some overpowering manifestation of ten
derness. For any thing he can tell, angels
from paradise may have sped to every planet
their delegated way; and sung, from each
azure canopy, a joyful annunciation ; and said,
" Peace be to this residence, and good will to

81
all its families, and glory to Him in the highest,
who, from the eminency of his throne, has
issued an act of grace so magnificent, as to
carry the tidings of life and of acceptance to
the unnumbered orbs of a sinful creation."' For
any thing he can tell, the Eternal Son, of whom
it is said, that by him the worlds were created,
may have had the government of many sinful
worlds laid upon his shoulders; and by" the
power of his mysterious word, have awoke them
all from that spiritual > death, to which they had
sunk in lethargy as profound as the slumbers of
non-existence. For any thing he can tell, the
one Spirit who moved on the facet of the waters,
and whose presiding influence it was that hushed
the wild war of nature's elementsj and , made a
beauteous system emerge out of its disjointed
materials, may now be working with the frag
ments of another chaos ; and educing order, and
obedience, and harmony, out of, the wrecks of
a moral rebellion, which reaches through all
these spheres, and spreads disorder to the utter-
most limits of our astronomy*
But, here I stop — nor shall I attempt to
F

82
grope my dark and fatiguing way, by another
inch, among such sublime and mysterious se
crecies. It is not I who am offering to lift this
curtain. It is not I who am pitching my ad
venturous flight to the secret things, which
belong to God, away from the things that are
revealed, and which belong to me and to my
children. It is the champion of that very In
fidelity which I am now combating. It is he
who props his unchristian argument, by pre
sumptions fetched, out of those untravelled
obscurities, which Ue on the other side of a
barrier that I pronounce to be impassable*
It is he who transgresses the limits which,
Newton forbore to enter; because, with a just
ness which reigns throughout all his inquiries,
he saw the limit of his own understanding, nor
would he venture himself beyond it. It is he.
who has borrowed from the philosophy of this
wondrous man, a few dazzling conceptions,
which have only served to bewilder him — while,
an utter stranger to the spirit of this philosophy,
he has carried a daring and an ignorant specu
lation far beyond the boundary of its prescribed
and allowable enterprises. It is he who has
5

83
mustered against the truths of the Gospel,
resting, as it does, on evidence within the reach
of his faculties, an objection, for the truth of
which he has no evidence whatever. It is he
who puts away from him a doctrine, for which
he has the substantial and the familiar proof of
human testimony; and substitutes in its place,
a doctrine, for which he can get no other sup
port than from a reverie of his own imagina
tion. It is he who turns aside from all that safe
and certain argument, that is supplied by the
history of this world, of which he knows some
thing; and who loses himself in the work of
theorising after other worlds, of the moral and
theological history of which he positively knows
nothing. Upon him, and not upon us, lies the
folly of launching his impetuous way beyond
the province of observation— of letting his fancy
afloat among the unknown of distant and mys
terious regions-— and, by an act of daring, as
impious as it is unphilosophical, of trying to
unwrap that shroud, which, till drawn aside by
the hand of a messenger from heaven, will ever
veil, from human eye, the purposes of the
Eternal. F2

84
If you have gone along with me in the preced
ing observations, you will perceive how they are
calculated to disarm of all its point, and of all
its energy, that flippancy of Voltaire; when in
the examples he gives, of the dotage of the hu
man understanding, he tells us of Bacon having
believed in witchcraft, and Sir Isaac Newton
having written a Commentary, on the Book of
Eevelation. The former instance we shall not
undertake to vindicate; but in the latter in
stance we perceive what this brilliant and spe
cious, but withal superficial apostle of Infidelity,
either did not see, or refused to acknowledge.
We see in this intellectual labour of oUr great
philosopher, the working of the very same prin
ciples Which carried him through the profound-
est and the most successful of his'investigations;
and how he kept most sacredly arid most con
sistently" by those very maxims, the authority of
which, he, even in the full vigour and manhood
of his faculties, ever recognised. We see in
the theology of Newton, the very spirit and
principle which gave all its stability, and all its
Sureness, to the philosophy of Newton. We
see the same tenacious adherence to every one

85
ddctrine, that had such valid proof to uphold it,
as could be gathered from the field of human
experience; and we see the same firm resist
ance of every one argument, that had nothing
to recommend it, but such plausibilities as could
easily be devised by the genius of man, when
he expatiated abroad on those fields of creation
which the eye never witnessed, and from which
no messenger ever came to us With any credible
information; Now, it was on the former of
these two principles that Newton clUng so
determinedly to his Bible, as the record of an
actual annunciation from God, to the inhabi
tants of this world. When he turned his atten
tion to this book, he came to it with a mind
tutored, to the philosophy of facts — and, when
he looked at its credentials, he saw the stamp
and the impress of this philosophy on every one
of them. He saw the fact of Christ being a
messenger from heaven, in the audible language
by which it was conveyed from heaven's canopy
to human ears. He saw the fact of his being
an approved ambassador of God, in those
miracles which carried their own resistless
evidence along with them to human eyes. He
F3

86
saw the truth of this whole history brought
home to his own conviction, by a sound and
substantial vehicle of human testimony. He
saw the reality of that supernatural light, which
inspired the prophecies he himself illustrated^
by such an agreement with the events of a
various and distant futurity as could be taken
cognisance > of by human observation. He saw
the wisdom of God pervading the whole sub-.
stance of the written message, in such manifold;
adaptations to the circumstances of man, and
to the whole secrecy of his thoughts, and his
affections, and his spiritual wants, and his moral
sensibilities, as even in the mind of an ordinary
and unlettered peasant, can be attested by hu
man consciousness. These formed the solid
materials of the basis on which our experimen
tal philosopher stood; and there was nothing in
the whole compass of his own astronomy, to
dazzle him away from it; and he was too well
aware of the limit between what he knew, and
what he did not know, to be seduced from the
ground he had taken, by any of those brillian
cies, which have since led so many of his hum
bler successors into the track of Infidelity. He

87
had measured the distances of these planets.
He had calculated their periods. He had esti
mated their figures, and their bulk, and their
densities, and he had subordinated the whole
intricacy of their movements to the simple and
sublime agency of one commanding principle.
But he. had too much of the ballast of a sub
stantial understanding about him, to be thrown
afloat by all this success among the plausibilities
of wanton and unauthorised speculation. He
knew the boundary which hemmed him. He
knew that he had not thrown one particle of
light on the moral or religious history of these
planetary regions.- He had not ascertained what
visits of communication they received from the
God who upholds them. But he knew that the
fact of a real visit made to this planet, had such
evidence to rest upon, that it was not to be dis-
posted by any aerial imagination. And- when I
look at the steady and unmoved Christianity of
this wonderful man; so far from seeing any
symptom of dotage and imbecility, or any for-
getfulness of those principles on which the fa
bric of his philosophy is reared; do I see, that
in sitting down to the work of a Bible Commen-
F4

88
tator, he hath given us the most beautiful and
most consistent exemplification.
I did not anticipate such a length of time,
and of illustration; in this stage of my argument*
But I will not regret it, if I have familiarised
the minds of any of my readers to the reigning
principle of this Discburse. We are strongly
disposed to think, 4hat it is a principle which,
might be made to apply to every argument of
every unbeliever — and so to serve not merely
as an antidote against the infidelity of astrono
mers, but to serve as an antidote against all
Infidelity. We are well aware of. the diversity
of complexion which Infidelity puts on. It
looks one thing in the man of science and of
liberal accomplishment. It looks another thing
in the refined voluptuary. Itlooks still another
thing in the common-place railer against the
artifices of priestly domination. It looks another
thing in the dark and unsettled spirit of him,
whose every reflection is tinctured with gall,
and who casts his envious and malignant scowl
at all that stands associated with the established
order of society. It looks another thing in the

89
prosperous man of business, who has neither
time nor patience for the details of the Christian
evidence — but who, amid the hurry of his other
occupations, has gathered as many of the lighter
petulancies of the infidel writers, and caught,
from the perusal of them, as contemptuous a
tone towards the religion of the New Testament,
as to set him at large from all the decencies of
religious observation, and to give him the disdain
of an elevated complacency over all the follies
of what. he counts a vulgar, superstition. And,
lastly, for Infidelity has now got down amongst
us to the humblest walks of life; may it occa
sionally be seen louring on the forehead of the
resolute and hardy artificer, who can lift his
menacing voice against the priesthood, and,
looking on the Bible as a jugglery of theirs,
can bid stout defiance to all its denunciations.
Now, under all these varieties, we think that
there might be detected the one and universal
principle which we have attempted to expose.
The something, whatever it is, which has dis
possessed all these people of their Christianity,
exists in their minds, in the shape of a position,
which they hold to be true, but which, by.na

90
legitimate evidence, they have ever realised —
and a position, which lodges within them as a
wilful fancy or presumption of their own, but
which could not stand the touchstone of that
wise and solid principle, in virtue of which*
the followers of Newton give to observation
the precedence over theory. It is a principle
altogether worthy of being laboured — as, if
carried round in faithful and consistent applica-.
tion amongst these numerous varieties, it is able
to break up all the existing Infidelity of the
world. But, there is one other most important con
clusion, to which it carries us. It carries us,
with all the docility of children, to the Bible ;
and puts us down into the attitude of an unre
served surrender of thought and understanding,
to its. authoritative information. Without the tes
timony of an authentic messenger from heaven,
I know nothing of heaven's counsels. I never
heard of any moral telescope that can bring to
my observation, the doings or the deliberations
which are taking place in the sanctuary of the
\Eternal. I may put into the registers of my be-

91
lief, all that comes home to me through' the
senses of the outer man, or by the conscious
ness of the inner man. But neither the one
nor the other can tell me of the purposes of
God; can tell me of the transactions or the de
signs of his sublime monarchy ; can tell me of
the goings forth of Him who is from everlast
ing unto everlasting; can tell me of the march
and the movements of that great administration
which embraces all worlds, and takes into its
wide and comprehensive survey, the mighty roll
of innumerable ages. It is true that my fancy
may break its impetuous way into this lofty and
inaccessible field; and through the devices of
my heart, which are many, the visions of an
ever-shifting theology may take their alternate
sway over me; but the counsel of the Lord,1it
shall stand. And I repeat it; that if true to the
leading principle of that philosophy, which has
poured such a flood of light over the mysteries
of nature, we shall dismiss every self-formed
conception of our own, and wait in all the hu
mility of conscious ignorance, till the Lord
himself shall break his silence, and make his
counsel known, by an act of communication.

92
And now, that a professed communication is
before me, and that it has all the solidity of the
experimental evidence on its side, and nothing
but the reveries of a daring speculation to op-
pdse it; what is the consistent, what is the ra
tional, what is the philosophical use that should
be made of this document, but to set me down
like a school-boy, to the work of turning its
pages, and conning its lessons, and submitting
the every exercise of my judgement to its in
formation and its testimony? We know that
there is a superficial philosophy, which casts the
glare of a most seducing brilliancy around it;
and spurns the Bible, With all the doctrine, and
all the piety of the Bible, away from it; and
has infused the spirit of Antichrist into many
of the literary establishments of the age; but it
is not the solid, the profound, the cautious spirit
of that philosophy, Which has done so much to
ennoble the modern period of our world: for the
more that this spirit is cultivated and Under
stood, the more will it be found in alliance
With that spirit, in virtue of which all that
exalteth itself against the knowledge of God,

93

is humbled, and all lofty imaginations are
cast down, and every thought of the heart is
brought into the captivity of the obedience of
Christ.

94

DISCOURSE III.

ON THE EXTENT OF THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION.

" Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on
high. Who humbleth himself to behold the things that
are in heaven, and in the earth !" — Psalm cxiii. 5, 6.
In our last Discourse, we attempted to expose
the total want of evidence for the assertion of
the Infidel astronomer — and this reduces the
whole of our remaining controversy with him,
to the business of arguing against a mere possi
bility. Still, however, the answer is not so
complete as it might be, till the soundness of
the argument be attended to, as well as the
credibility of the assertion — or in other words,7
let us admit the assertion, and take a view of
the reasoning which has been constructed
upon it.

95
We have already attempted to lay before you,
the wonderful extent of that space, teeming
with unnumbered worlds, which modern, science
has brought within the circle of its discoveries.
We even ventured to expatiate on those tracks
of infinity, which lie on the other side of all
that eye or that telescope hath made known to
us — to shoot far into those ulterior regions,
which are beyond the limits of our astronomy —
to impress you with the rashness of the imagina
tion, that the creative energy of God had sunk
exhausted by the magnitude of its efforts, at
that very line, through which the art of man,
lavished as it has been on the work of perfecting
the instruments of vision, has not yet been able
to penetrate ; and upon all this we hazarded the
assertion, that though all these visible heavens
were to rush into annihilation, and the besom
of the Almighty's wrath were to sweep from
the face of the universe, those millions, and
millions more of suns and of systems, which lie
within the grasp of our actual observation — that
this event, which, to our eye, would leave so
wide and so dismal a solitude behind it, might
be nothing in the eye of Him who could take

Q6

in the whole, but the disappearance of a little
speck from that field of j created things, which
the hand of his omnipotence had thrown around
him. But to press home the sentiment of the text,
it is not necessary to stretch the imagination
beyond the, limit of our actual discoveries. It
is enough: to strike our minds with the insignift
cance of this world, and of all who inhabit it,
to bring it into measurement with that mighty
assemblage of worlds, which lie open to the eye
of man, aided as it has been by the inventions
of his genius. When we told you of the eighty
millions of suns, each occupying his own in
dependent territory in space, and dispensing* his
oWn influences over a cluster of tributary worlds;
this world jcould not ; fail to sink into littleness
in the eye of him, who looked- to all. the rnagii§>
rude and variety which are around it. We gave
you but a feeble image of our comparative in
significance, when we said that the glories of an
extended forest,, would suffer no more from the
fall of a single leaf* than the glories of this ex
tended universe would suffer, though the globe

97
we tread upon, " and all that it inherit, should
dissolve." And when we lift our conceptions to
Him who has peopled immensity with all these
wonders — who sits enthroned on the magnifi
cence of his own works, and by one sublime
idea can embrace the whole extent of that
boundless amplitude, which he has filled with
the trophies of his divinity; we cannot but re- >
sign our whole heart to the Psalmist's exclama
tion of " What is man, that thou art mindful of
him, or the son of man, that thou shouldest
deign to visit him!"
Now mark the use to which all this has been
turned by the genius of Infidelity. Such a
humble portion of the universe as ours, could
never have been the object of such high ana1
distinguishing attentions as Christianity has1 as
signed to it. God would not have manifested
himself in the flesh for the salvation of so pal
try a world. The monarch of a whole conti
nent, would never move from his capital; and
lay aside the splendour of royalty; and subject
himself for months, or for years, to perils, and
poverty, and persecution; and take up his
G

98
abode in some small islet of his dominions,
which,, though swallowed by an earthquake,
could not be missed amid the glories of so
wide an empire; and all this to regain the lost
affections of a few families upon its surface.
And neither would the eternal Son of God— he
who is revealed to us as having made all worlds**
and as holding an empire, amid the splendours
of which, the globe that we inherit is shaded in
insignificance ; neither would he strip himself
of the glory he had with the Father before the
world was, and light on this lower scene, for
the purpose imputed to him in the New Testa-,
ment. Impossible, that the concerns of this
puny ball, which, floats its little round among
an infinity of larger worlds, should be of such
mighty account in the plans of the Eternal; or
should have given birth , in heaven to so won
derful a movement, as the Son of God putting
on the form of our degraded species, and so
journing amongst us, and sharing in all our in
firmities, and crowning, the whole scene of -hu
miliation, by the disgrace and the agonies of a
cruel martyrdom.

99
This has been started as a difficulty in the
way of the Christian Revelation; and it is the
boast of many of our philosophical Infidels,
that by the light of modern discovery, the light
of the New Testament is eclipsed and over
borne; and the mischief is not confined to
philosophers, for the argument has got into
other hands, and the popular illustrations that
are now given to the sublimest truths of science,
have widely disseminated all the Deism that
has been grafted upon it; and the high tone of
a decided contempt for the Gospel, is now asso
ciated with the flippancy of superficial acquire
ments ; and, while the venerable Newton, whose
genius threw open those mighty fields of con
templation, found a fit exercise for his powers
in the interpretation of the Bible, — there are
thousands and tens of thousands, who, though
walking in the light which he holds but to them,
are seduced by a complacency which he never
felt, and inflated by a pride which never en
tered into his pious "and philosophical' bosom,
and whose only notice of the Bible,- is to depre
ciate, and to deride, and to disown it.
G 2

100
Before entering into what we conceive to be
the riglit answer to this objection, let us previ
ously observe, that it goes to str^p the Deity of
an attribute, which forms a wonderful addition
to the glories of his incomprehensible character.
Jt is indeed a mighty eviden.ce of the strength
of his arm, that so many millions of worlds are
suspended on it; but it would surely make the,
high attribute of his power more illustrious— -if,
while it expatiated at large among the suns and
the systems of astronomy, it could, at the very
same instant, be impressing a movement and a
direction on all the minuter wheels of that ma*
chinery, which is working incessantly around,
us. It forms a noble demonstration of his wis-.
dom, that he gives unremitting operation to
those laws which uphold the stability of this
great universe; but it would go to heighten
that wisdom inconceivably — if, wftile equaj to
the magnificent task of maintaining the order
and harmony of tiie spheres, it was lavishing its
inexhaustible resources on the beauties, and
varieties, and arrangements, of every one scene*.
however humble, of every one field, howevej
narrow, of the creation he had formed. It is

101
a cheering evidence of the delight he takes
in communicating happiness, that the whole
of immensity should be so strewed with the
habitations of life and of intelligence; but it
would surely bring home the evidence, with a
nearer and a more affecting impression, to every
bosom— did we know, that at the very time his
benignant regard took in the mighty circle of
created beings, there was not a single family
overlooked by him, and that every individual
in every corner of his dominions, was as effec
tually seen to, as if the object of an exclusive
and undivided care. It is our imperfection,
that we cannot give our attention to more than
one object, at one and the same instant of time;
but surely it would elevate our every idea of
the perfections of God — did we know, that while
his comprehensive mind could grasp the whole
amplitude of nature, to the very outermost of
its boundaries, he had an attentive eye fastened
on the very humblest of its objects, and pon.
dered every thought of my heart*, and noticed
every footstep of my goings, and treasured up
in his remembrance every turn and every move
ment of my history. G3

102
And, lastly, to apply this train of sentiment
to the matter before us; let us suppose that one
among the countless myriads of worlds, should
be visited by a moral pestilence, which spread
through all its people, and brought them under
the doom of a law,, whose sanctions were un
relenting and immutable; it were no disparage
ment to God, should he, by, an act of righteous
indignation, sweep this offence away from the
universe . which it deformed — nor should we
wonder, though, among the multitude of other
worlds, from which the ear of the Almighty
was . regaled with the songs of praise, and the
incense of. a pure adoration ascended to his
throne, he should leave the strayed and solitary
world to perish in the guilt of. its rebellion.
But, tell me, oh ! tell me, would it not throw
the softening of a most exquisite tenderness
over the character of God, should we see him.
putting forth his every expedient to reclaim to
himself those children whb had wandered away
from him — and, few as they were when com
pared with the host of his obedient worshippers,
would it not just impart to his attribute of com
passion the infinity of the Godhead, that, rather

103
than lose the single world which had turned to
its own way, he should send the messengers of
peace to woo and to welcome.it back again; and,
if justice demanded so mighty a sacrifice, and it
behoved the law to be so magnified and made
honourable, tell me whether it would not throw
a moral sublime over the. goodness of .the Deity,
should he lay upon his own Son the burden of
its atonement, that he might again smile upon
the world, and hold out the sceptre of invitation
to: all its families?
We avow It, therefore, that this infidel, argu
ment goes to expunge a perfection from the
character of God. The more we know of the
extent of nature, should not we have the loftier
conception of him who sits in high authority
over the concerns of so wide a universe? But,
is it not adding to the bright catalogue of his
other attributes, to say, that, while magnitude
does not overpower him, minuteness cannot
escape him, and variety cannot bewilder him;
and that, at the very time while the mind of
the Deity is abroad over the whole vastness of
creation, there is not one particle of matter,
G 4

104
there is not one individual principle of rational
or of animal existence, there is not one single
world in that expanse which teems with them,
that his eye does not discern as constantly, and
bis hand does not guide as unerringly, and his
spirit does not watch and care for as vigilantly,
as if it formed the one and exclusive object
of his attention.
The thing is inconceivable to us, whose minds
are so easily distracted by a number of objects*
and this is the secret principle of the whole In-,
fidelity I am now alluding , to. , To bring God
to thelevel of our own comprehension, we would
clothe him in the impotency of a man. We would
transfer to his wonderful mind all the imperfec
tion of our own faculties. When we are taught
by astronomy » that he has millions of worlds to
look after, and thus add in one direction to the
glories of his character; we take away from
them in another, by saying, that each of these'
worlds; must be looked after imperfectly. The
use that we make of a discovery, which should
heighten our every conception of God, and
humble us into the sentiment, that a Being of

105
such mysterious elevation is to us unfathom
able, is to sit in judgement over him, aye, and
to pronounce such a judgement as degrades him,
and keeps him down to the standard of our own
paltry imagination! We are introduced by mo
dern science to a multitude of other suns and
of other systems ; and the perverse interpreta
tion we put upon the fact, that God can diffuse
the benefits of his power and of his goodness over
such a variety of worlds, is, that he cannot, or
will not, bestow so much goodness on one of
those worlds, as a professed revelation from
Heaven has announced to us. While we en
large the provinces of his empire, we tarnish all
the glory of this enlargement, by saying, he
has so much to care for, that the care of every
one province must be less complete, and less
vigilant, and less effectual, than it would other
wise have been. By the discoveries of modern
science, we multiply the places of the, creation;
but along with this, we would impair the attri
bute of his eye being in every place to behold
the evil and the good ; and thus, while we mag
nify one of his perfections, we do it at the ex
pense of another ; and to bring him within the

106
grasp of our feeble capacity, we would deface
one of the glories of that character, which it is
our part to adore, as higher than all thought,
and as greater than all comprehension.
The objection we are discussing, I shall state
again in a single sentence. Since astronomy has
unfolded to us such a number of worlds, it is
not likely that God would pay so much atten
tion to this one world, and set up such won
derful provisions for its benefit, as are an
nounced to us in the Christian Revelation.
This objection will have received its answer, if
we can meet it by the following position: — that
God, in addition to the bare faculty, of dwelling
on a multiplicity of objects atone and the same
time, has this faculty in such wonderful perfec
tion, that he can attend as fully, and provide as
richly, and manifest all his attributes as illus
triously, on every one of these objects, as if the
rest had, no existence, and no place whatever in
his government or in his thoughts.
For the evidence of this position, we appeal,
in the first place, to the personal history of each

107
individual among you. Only grant us, that
God never loses sight of any one thing he has
created, and that no created thing can continue
either to be, or to act independently of him;
and then, even upon the face of this world,
humble as it is on tlie great scale of astronomy,
how widely diversified, and how multiplied into
many thousand distinct exercises, is the atten
tion of God! His eye is upon every hour of
my existence. His Spirit is intimately present
with every thought of my heart. His inspira
tion gives birth to every purpose within me.
His hand impresses a direction on every foot
step of my goings. Every breath I inhale, is
drawn by an energy which God deals out to me.
This .body, which, upon the slightest derange
ment, would become the prey of death, or of
woeful suffering, is now at. ease, because he at
this moment is warding off from me a thousand
dangers, and upholding . the thousand move
ments of its complex and delicate machinery.
His presiding influence keeps; by . me through
the whole current of my restless and ever-
changing history. When I walk by the way
side, he is along with me. When I enter into

108
eompany, amid all my forgetfulness of him, he
never forgets me. In the silent watches of the
night, when my eyelids have closed, and my
spirit has sunk into unconsciousness* the ob
servant eye of him who never slumbers, is upon
me. I cannot fly from his presence. Go where
I will, he tends me, and watches me, and cares
for me; and the same Being who is now at
work in the remotest domains of Nature and of
Providence, is also at my right hand to eke out
to me every moment of my being, and to up
hold me in the exercise of all my feelings, and
of ail my faculties.
Now, what God is doing with me, he is doing
with every distinct individual of this world's
population. The intimacy of his presence, and
attention, and care, reaches to one and to all
of them. With a mind unburdened by the
vastness of all its other concerns, he can pro
secute, without distraction, the government and
guardianship of every one son and daughter of
the species.— And is it for us, in the face of all
this experience, ungratefully to draw a limit
around the perfections of God— to aver, that

109
the multitude of other Worlds has withdrawn
any portion of his benevolence from the one
we occupy — or that he, whose eye is upon
every separate family of the earth, would not
lavish all the riches of his unsearchable attri
butes on some high plan of pardon and immor
tality, in behalf of its countless generations?
But, secondly, were the mind of God so
fatigued, and so occupied with the care of
other worlds, as the objection presumes him
to be, should we not see some traces of neglect,
or of carelessness, in his management of ours?
Should we not behold, in many a field of obser
vation, the evidence of its master being over
crowded with the variety of his other engage
ments? A man oppressed by a multitude of
business, would simplify and reduce the work
of any new concern that was devolved upon
him* Now, point out a single mark of God
being thus oppressed. Astronomy has laid
open to us so many realms of creation, which
were before unheard of, that the world we in
habit, shrinks into one remote and solitary pro
vince of this wide monarchy. Tell me, then,

110
if, in any one field of this province, which man
has access to, you witness a single indication of
God sparing himself — of God reduced to lan
guor by the weight of his other employments—
of God sinking under the burden of that vast
superintendence which lies upon him — of God
being exhausted, as one of ourselves would be,
by any number, of concerns, however great, by
any variety of them, however manifold; and
do you not perceive, in that mighty profusion
of wisdom and of goodness, which is scattered
every where around us, that the thoughts of
this unsearchable Being are not as our thoughts, '
nor his ways as our ways ?
My time does not suffer me to dwell on this
topic^ because, before' I conclude, I must hasten
to another illustration. But, when I look abroad*
on the wondrous scene that is immediately be
fore me — and see, that in every direction, it
is a scene of the most various and unwearied
activity— and expatiate on all the beauties of
that garniture by which it is adorned, and on '
all1 the prints of design and of benevolence
which abound in it— and think, that the same

Ill
God, who holds the universe, with its. every
system, in the hollow of his hand, pencils
every flower, and gives nourishment to every
blade of grass, and actuates the movements of
every living thing, and is not disabled, by the
weight of his other cares, from enriching the
humble department of nature I occupy, with
charms and accommodations of the most un
bounded variety — then, surely, if a message,
bearing every mark of authenticity, should pro
fess to come to me from God, and inform me
of his mighty doings for the happiness of our
species, it is not for me, in the face of all this
evidence, to reject it as a tale of imposture,
because astronomers have told me that he has
so many other worlds and other orders of beings
to attend to — and, when I think that it were a
deposition of him from his supremacy over the
creatures he has formed, should a single sparrow
fall to the ground without his appointment, then
let science and sophistry try to cheat me of my
comfort as they may — I will not let go the
anchor of my confidence in God — I will not
be afraid, for I am of more value than many
sparrows.

112
But, thirdly, it was the telescope, that, by
piercing the obscurity which lies between us
and distant worlds, put Infidelity in possession
of the argument, against which we are now
contending. But, about the time of its inven
tion, another instrument was formed, which
laid open a scene no less wonderful, and re
warded the inquisitive spirit of man with a dis-1
covery, which serves to neutralise the whole of
this argument. This was the microscope. The
one led me to see a system in every star. The
other leads me toJ see a world in every atom.
The one taught me, that this mighty globe,
with the whole burden of its people, and of its
countries, is but a grain of sand on the high1
field of immensity. The other teaches me,
that every grain of sand may harbour within it
the tribes and the families of a busy population.
The one told me of the insignificance of the
world I tread upon. The other redeems it
from all its insignificance; for it tells me that
in the leaves'of every forest, and in the flowers
of every garden, and in the waters of every
rivulet, there are worlds teeming with life, and
numberless as are the glories of the firmament.

113
The one has suggested to me, that beyond and
above all that is visible to man, there may Ue
fields of creation which sweep immeasurably
along, and carry the impress of the Almighty's
hand to the remotest scenes of the universe.
The other suggests to me, that within and be
neath all that minuteness which the aided eye
of man has, been able to explore, there may lie
a region of invisibles ; and that could we draw
aside the mysterious curtain which shrouds it
from our senses, we might there see a theatre of
as many wonders as astronomy has unfolded,
a universe within the compass of a point so
small, as to elude all the powers of the micro
scope, but where the wonder-working God finds
room for the exercise of all his attributes, where
he can raise another mechanism of worlds, and
fill and animate them all with the evidences of
his glory.
Now, mark how all this may be made to meet
the argument of our Infidel astronomer. By
the telescope they have discovered, that no
magnitude, however vast, is beyond the grasp
of the Divinity. But by the microscope, we
H

114
have also discovered that no minuteness how
ever shrunk from the notice of the human eye,
is beneath the condescension of his regard.
Every addition to the powers of the one instru
ment, extends the limit of his visible dominions.
But, by every addition to the powers of the
other instrument, we see each part of them
more crowded « than before, with the wonders
of his unwearying hand. The one is constantly
widening the circle of his territory. The other,
is as constantly filling up its separate portions,
with all that is rich, and various, and exquisite.
In a word, by the one I am told that the ; Alj
mighty is; now at .work in regions more distant
than geometry has ever measured, and among
worlds more manifold than numbers have ever
reached. But, .by the other, I am also told,
that, with a mind to comprehend the whole, in
the vast compass of its generality, he has also
a mind to concentrate a close and a separate
attention on each and on all of its. particulars ;
and that the same God, who sends forth, an up
holding influence among the orbs and the move
ments of astronomy, can fill the: recesses of
every single atom with the intimacy of his

115
presence, and travail, in all the greatness of his
unimpaired attributes, upon every one spot and
corner of the universe he has formed.
They, therefore, Who think that God will not
put forth such a power, and such a goodness,
and such a condescension, in behalf of this
world, as are ascribed to him in the New Testa
ment, because he has so many other worlds to
attend to, think of him as a man. They con-
fine-their view to the informations of the tele
scope, and forget altogether the informations
of the other instrument. They only find room
in their minds for his one attribute of a large
and general superintendence, and keep out of
their remembrance the equally impressive proofs
we have for his other attribute of a minute and
multiplied attention to all that diversity of
operations, where it is he that worketh all in
all. And when I think, that, as one of the
instruments of philosophy has heightened our
every impression of the first of these attributes,
so another instrument has no less heightened
our impression of the second of them — then
I can no longer resist the conclusion, that it
H 2

116
would be a transgression of sound argument,
as well as a daring of impiety, to draw a limit
around the doings of this unsearchable God—
and, should a professed revelation from heaven,
tell me of an act of condescension, in behalf
of some separate world, so wonderful, that
angels desired to look into it, and the Eternal
Son had to move from his seat of glory to
carry it into accomplishment, all I ask is the
evidence of such a revelation; fbr, let it tell me
as much as it may of God letting himself down
for the benefit of one single province of his
dominions, this is ho more than what I see
lying scattered, in numberless examples, before
me; and running through the whole line of my
recollections; and meeting me in every walk
of observation to which I can betake myself;
and, now that the microscope has unveiled
the wonders of another region, I see strewed
around me, with a profusion which baffles my
every attempt to comprehend it, the evidence
that there is no one portion of the universe of
God top minute for his notice, nor too humble
for the visitations of his care.
5

117
,,As the end of all these illustrations, let me
bestow a single paragraph on what I conceive
to be the precise state of this argument.
It is a wonderful thing that God should be
so unencumbered by the concerns of a whole
universe, that he can give a constant attention
to every moment of every individual in this
world's population. But, wonderful as it is, you
do not hesitate to admit it as true, on the evi
dence of your own recollections. It is a won
derful thing that he whose eye is at every
instant on so many worlds, should have peopled
the world we inhabit with all the traces of the
varied design and benevolence which abound in
it. But, great as the wonder is, you do not
allow so much as the shadow of improbability
to darken it, for its reality is what you actually
witness, and you never think of questioning the
evidence of observation. It is wonderful, it is
passing wonderful, that the same God, whose
presence is diffused through immensity, and
who spreads the ample canopy of his adminis
tration over all its dwelling-places, should, with
an energy as fresh and as unexpended as if he
H3

118
had only begun the work of creation, turn him
to the neighbourhood around us, and lavish, on
its every hand-breadth, all the exuberance of
his goodness, and crowd it with the many
thousand varieties of conscious existence. But,
be the wonder incomprehensible as it may, you
do not suffer in your mind the burden of a
single doubt to lie upon it, because you do not
question the report of the microscope. You do
not refuse its information, nor turn away from
it as an incompetent channel of evidence. But
to bring it still nearer to the point at issue,
there are , many who never looked through a
microscope, but who rest an implicit faith in all
its revelations; and upon what evidence I would
ask? Upon the evidence of testimony — upon
the credit they give to the authors of the books
they have read, and the belief they put in the
record of their observations. Now, at this
point I make my stand. It is wonderful that
God should be so interested in the redemption
of a single world, as to send forth his well-be
loved Son upon the errand, and he, to accom
plish it, should, mighty to save, put forth all his
strength, and travail in the greatness of it. But

119
such wonders as these have already multiplied
upon you ; and when evidence is given of their
truth, you" have resigned your every judgement
of the unsearchable God, and rested in the faith
of them. I demand in the name of sound and
consistent philosophy, that you do the same in
the matter before us — and take it up as a ques
tion of evidence — and examine that medium of
testimony through which the miracles and in
formations of the Gospel have come to your
door — and go not to admit as argument here,
what would not be admitted as argument in
any of the analogies of nature and observation
— and take along with you in this field of in
quiry, a lesson which you should have learned
upon other fields — even thei depth of the riches
both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God,
that his judgements are unsearchable, and his
ways are past finding out.
I do not enter at all into the positive evi
dence for the truth of the Christian Revelation
my single aim at present being to dispose of
one of the objections which is conceived to
stand in the way of it. Let me suppose then
H 4

120
that this is done to the satisfaction of a philo
sophical inquirer; and that the evidence is sus
tained; and that the same mind that is familiar
ised to all the sublimities of natural science,
and has been in the habit of contemplating God
in association with all the magnificence which
is around him, shall be brought to submit its
thoughts to the captivity of the doctrine of
Christ. Oh! with what veneration, and grati
tude, and wonder,, should he look on the de
scent of him into this lower world, who made
all these things, and without whom was not
any thing made that was made. What a gran
deur does it throw over every step in the re
demption of a fallen world, to think of its being
done by him who unrobed him of the glories of
so wide a monarchy; and came to this humblest
of its provinces, in the disguise of a servant;
and took upon him the form of our degraded
species; and let himself down to sorrows, and to
sufferings, and to death, for us. In this love of
an expiring Saviour to those for whom in
agony he poured out his soul, there is a height,
and a depth, and a length, and a breadth, more
than I can comprehend; and let me never never

121
from this moment neglect so great a salvation,
or lose my hold of an atonement, made sure by
him who cried, that it was finished, and brought
in an everlasting righteousness. It was not the
visit of an empty parade that he made to us.
It was for the accomplishment of some substan-
. tial purpose; and, if that purpose is announced,
and stated to consist in his dying, the just for
the unjust, that he might bring us unto God,
let us never doubt of our acceptance in that
Way of communication "with our Father in hea
ven, which he hath opened and made, known
to us. In taking to that way, let us follow his
every direction with that humility which a sense
of all this wonderful condescension is fitted to
inspire. Let us forsake all that be bids us for
sake. Let us do all that he bids us do. Let
us give ourselves up to his guidance with the
docility of children, overpowered by a kindness
that we never merited, and a love that is un-
quelled by all the perverseness and all the in
gratitude of our stubborn nature-— for what shall
we render unto him for such mysterious bene
fits — to him who has thus been mindful of us —
to him who thus has deigned to visit us ?

122
But the whole of this argument is not yet ex
hausted. We have scarcely entered on the de
fence that is commonly made against the plea
which Infidelity rests on the wonderful extent
of the universe of God, and the insignificancy
of our assigned portion of it. The way in
which we have attempted to dispose of this plea,
is by insisting on the evidence that is every
where around us, of God combining with the
largeness of a vast and mighty superintendence,
which reaches the outskirts of creation, and
spreads over all its amplitudes — the faculty of
bestowing as much attention, and exercising as
complete and manifold a wisdom, and lavishing
as profuse and inexhaustible a goodness, on
each of its humblest departments^ as if it formed
the whole extent of his territory.
In the whole of this argument we have looked
upon the earth as isolated from the rest of the
universe altogether. But according to the way
in which the astronomical objection is com
monly met, the earth is not viewed as in a state
of detachment from the other worlds, and the
other orders of being which God has called

123
into existence. It is looked upon as the mem
ber of a more extended system. It is associated
with the magnificence of a moral empire, as
wide as the kingdom of nature. It is not
merely asserted, what in our last Discourse has
been already done, that for any thing we can
know by reason, the plan of redemption may
have its influences and its bearings on those
creatures of God who people other regions, and
occupy other fields in the immensity of his do
minions; that to argue, therefore, on this plan
being instituted for the ' single benefit of the
world we live in, and of the species to which
we belong, is a mere presumption of the Infidel
himself; and that the objection he rears on it,
must fall to the ground, when the: vanity of the
presumption is exposed. The Christian apolo
gist thinks he can go farther than this — that he
can not merely expose the utter baseness of
the Infidel assertion, but that he has positive
ground for erecting an opposite and a confront
ing assertion in its place — and that after having
neutralised their position, by showing the entire
absence of all observation in its behalf, he can

124
pass on to the distinct and affirmative testimony
of the Bible.
We do think that this lays open a very in
teresting track, not of wild and fanciful, but of
most legitimate and sober-minded speculation.
And anxious as we are to put every, thing that
bears upon the Christian argument, into all its
lights; and fearless as we feel for the result of a
most thorough sifting of it ; and thinking as we
do think it, the foulest scorn that any pigmy
philosopher of the day should mince his am
biguous scepticism to a set of giddy and ignor
ant admirers, or that a half-learned and super
ficial public should associate with the Christian
priesthood, the blindness and the bigotry of a
sinking cause— with these feelings, we are not
disposed to blink a single question that may be
started on the subject of the Christian evidences.
There is not one of its parts or bearings which
needs the shelter of a disguise thrown over it.
Let the priests of another faith ply their pru
dential expedients, and look so wise and so wary
in the execution of them. But Christianity

125
stands in a higher and firmer attitude. The
defensive armour of a shrinking or timid policy
does not suit her. Hers is the naked majesty
of truth; and with all the grandeur of age, but
with none of its infirmities, has she come down
to us, and gathered new strength from the bat
tles she has won in the many controversies of
many generations. With such a religion as this
there is nothing to hide. All should be above
boards. And the broadest light of day should
be made fully and freely to circulate throughout
all her secrecies. But secrets she has none. To
her belong the frankness and the simplicity of
conscious greatness; and whether she grapple
it with the pride of philosophy, or stand in
fronted opposition to the prejudices of the mul
titude, she does it upon her own strength, and
spurns all the props and all the auxiliaries of
superstition away from her.

126

DISCOURSE IV.

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S MORAL HISTOEY IN
THE DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION.

" Which things the angels desire to look into."
1 Peter i. 12.
There is a limit, across which man cannot
carry any one of his perceptions, and from the
ulterior of which he cannot gather a single
observation to guide or to inform him. While
he keeps by the objects which are near, he can
get the knowledge of them conveyed to his
mind through the ministry of several of the
senses. He can feel a substance that is within
reach of .his hand. He can smell a flower that
is presented to him. He can taste the food
that is before him. He can hear a sound of
certain pitch and intensity; and, so much does

127
this sense of hearing widen his intercourse with
external nature, that, from the distance of miles,
it can bring him in an occasional intimation.
But of all the tracks of conveyance which
God has been pleased to open up between the
mind of man, and the theatre by which he is
surrounded, there is none by which he* so mul
tiplies his acquaintance with the rich and the
varied creation on every side of him, than
by the organ of the eye. It is this which
gives to man his loftiest command over the
scenery of nature. It is this by which so broad
a range of observation is submitted to him. It
is this which enables him by the act of a single
moment, to send an exploring look over the
surface of an ample territory, to crowd his mind
with the whole assembly of its objects, and to
fill his vision with those countless hues which
diversify and adorn it. It is this which carries
him abroad over all that is sublime in the im
mensity of distance; which sets him as it were
on an elevated platform, from whence he may
cast a surveying glance over the arena of in
numerable worlds; which spreads before him so

128
mighty a province of contemplations that the
earth he inhabits, only appears to furnish him
with the pedestal on which he may stand, and
from which he may descry the wonders of all
that magnificence, which the Divinity has
poured so abundantly around him. It is by
the narrow outlet of the eye, that the mind of
man takes its excursive flight over those golden,
tracks, where, in all the exhaustlessness of crea
tive wealth, lie scattered the suns and the sys
tems of astronomy. But oh! how good a thing
it is, and how becoming well, for the philoso
pher to be humble even amid the proudest
march of human discovery, and the sublimest
triumphs of the human understanding, when he
thinks of that unsealed barrier, beyond which
no power either of eye or of telescope, shall
ever carry him; when he thinks that on the
other side of it, there is a height, and a depth,
and a length, and a breadth, to which the whole
of this concave and visible firmament, dwindles
into the insignificancy of an atom— and above
all, how ready should he be to cast his every
lofty imagination away from him, when he
thinks of the God, who, on the simple founda-

129
tion of his word, has reared the whole of this
Stately architecture, and by the force of his
preserving hand, continues to uphold it; aye,
and should the word again come out from him,
that this eartb shall pass away, and a portion of
the heavens which are around it, shall again
fall back into the annihilation from which he at
first summoned them — what an impressive re
buke does it bring on the swelling vanity of
science, to think that the whole field of its most
ambitious enterprises may be swept away alto
gether; and there remain before the eye of him
who sitteth on the throne, an untravelled im
mensity, which he hath filled With innumerable
splendours, and over the whole face of which
he hath inscribed the evidence of his high at
tributes, in all their might, and in all their
manifestation. But man has a great deal more to keep him
humble of his understanding, than a mere sense
of that boundary which skirts and which ter
minates the material field of his contemplations.
He ought also to feel, how within that boun
dary, the vast majority of things is mysterious
I

130
and unknown to him; that even in the inner
chamber of his own consciousness, where so
much lies hidden from the observation of others,
there is also to himself a little world of in com-'
prehensibles ; that if stepping beyond the limits
of this familiar home, he look no farther than to
the members of his family, there is much in the
cast and the colour of every mind that is above
his powers of divination; that in proportion as
he recedes from the centre of his own personal
experience, there is a cloud of ignorance and
secrecy, which spreads, and thickens, and throws
a deep and impenetrable veil over the intricacies
of every one department of human contempla
tion ; that of all around him, his knowledge is
naked and superficial, and confined to a few of
those more conspicuous lineaments which strike
upon his senses ; that the whole face, both of
nature and of society, presents him with ques
tions which he cannot unriddle, and tells him
how beneath the surface of all that the eye can
rest upon, there lies the profoundness of a most
unsearchable latency; aye, and should he, in
some lofty enterprise of thought, leave this
world, and shoot afar into those tracks of spe*

131
culation which astronomy has opened; should he,
baffled by the mysteries which beset his every
footstep upon earth, attempt an ambitious flight
toward the mysteries of heaven— let him go,
but let the justness of a pious and philosophical
modesty go along with him — let him forget not,
that from the moment his mind has taken its
ascending way for a few little miles above the
world he treads upon, his every sense abandons
him but one — that number, and motion, rand
magnitude, and figure, make up all the bareness
of its elementary informations — that these orbs
have sent him scarce another message than told,
by their feeble glimmering upon his eye, the
simple fact of their existence — that he sees not
the landscape of other worlds — that he knows
not the moral system of any one of them — nor
athwart the long and trackless vacancy which
lies between, does there fall upon his listening
ear, the hum of their mighty populations.
But the knowledge which he cannot fetch up
himself from the obscurity of this wondrous but
untravelled scene, by the exercise of any one
of his own senses, might be fetched to him by
12

132
the testimony of a competent messenger. Con
ceive a native of one of these planetary man
sions to light upon our world; and all we should
require, would be, to be satisfied of his credent
rials* that we may tack our faith to every pokt
of information he had to offer us. With the
solitary exception of what we have been enabled
to gather by the instruments of astronomy,.
there is not one of his communications about
the place he came from, on which we possess
any means at all of confronting him; and,
therefore, could he only appear before us in
vested with the characters of truth, we should
never think of any thing else than taking up
the whole matter of his testimony just as he
brought it to us.
It were well had a sound philosophy schooled
its professing disciples to the same kind of ac
quiescence in another message, which has ac
tually come to the world; and has told us of
matters still more remote from every power of
unaided observation; and has been sent from a
more sublime and mysterious distance, even
from that God of whom it is said, that « clouds

133
and darkness are the habitation of his throne;"
and treating of a theme so lofty and so inacces
sible, as the counsels of that Eternal Spirit,
" whose goings forth are of old, even from
everlasting," challenges of man that he should
submit his every thought to the authority of
this high communication. Oh! had the philo
sophers of the day known as well as their great
Master, how to draw the vigorous land-mark
which verges the field of legitimate discovery,
they should have seen when it is that philosophy
becomes vain, and science is falsely so called^
and how it is, that when philosophy is true to
her principles, she shuts up her faithful yotary
to the Bible, and makes him willing to count
all but loss, for the knowledge of Jesus Christy
and of him crucified.
But let it be well observed, that the object of
this message is not to convey information to us
about the state of these planetary regions. This
is not the matter with which it is fraught. It
is a message from the throne of God to this
rebellious province of his dominions; and the
purpose ef it is, to reveal the fearful extent of
is

134
our guilt and of our danger, and to lay before
us the overtures of reconciliation. Were a
similar message sent from the metropolis of a
mighty empire, to one of its remote and revo
lutionary districts, we should not look to it for
much information about the state or economy
of the intermediate provinces. This were a
departure from the topic on hand— though
still there may chance r to be some incidental
allusions to the extent and resources of the
whole monarchy, to the existence of a similar
spirit of rebellion in other quarters of the land,
or to the general principle of loyalty by~which it
was pervaded. Some casual references of this
kind may be inserted in such a proclamation,
or they may not — and it is with : this precise
feeling of ambiguity that we open the record
of that embassy which has been sent us from
heaven, to see if we can gather any thing there,
about other places of the creation, to meet the
obj ections of the infidel astronomer. But, while
we pursue this object, let us have a care not to
push the speculation beyond the limits of the
written testimony; let us keep a just and a
steady eye on the actual boundary of our know-

135
ledge, that, throughout every distinct step of
our argument, we might preserve that chaste
and unambitious spirit, which characterises the
philosophy of him who explored these distant
heavens, and, by the force of his genius, un
ravelled the secret of that wondrous mechanism
which upholds them.
The informations of the Bible upon this sub
ject, afe of two sorts— that from which we con
fidently gather the fact, that the history of the
redemption of our species is known in other
and distant places of the creation — and that,
from which we indistinctly guess at the fact,
that the redemption itself may stretch beyond
the limits of the world we occupy.
And, here it may shortly be adverted to,
that, though we know little or nothing of the
moral and theological economy of the other
planets, we are not to infer, that the beings who
occupy these widely extended regions, even
though not higher than we in the scale of
understanding, know little of ours. Our first
parents, ere they committed that act by which
14

136
they brought themselves and their posterity
into the need of redemption, had frequent and
familiar intercourse with God. He walked
with them in the garden of paradise; and there
did angels hold their habitual converse; and,
should the same unblotted innocence which
charmed and attracted these superior beings
to the haunts of Eden, be perpetuated in
every planet but our own, then might each of
them be the scene of high and heavenly com
munications, and an open way for the messen
gers of God be kept up with them all, and their
inhabitants be admitted to a share in the,
themes and contemplations of angels, and have
their spirits exercised on those things, of which x
we are told that the angels desired to look into
them; and thus, as we talk of the public mind
of a city, or the public mind of an empire-. — by
the well-frequented avenues of a free and ready
circulation, a public mind might be formed
throughout the whole extent of God's sinless
and intelligent creation— and, just as we often
read of the eyes of all Europe being turned to
the one spot where some affair of evefitful im
portance is going on, there might be the eyes

137
of a whole universe turned to the one world,
where rebellion against the Majesty of heaven
had planted its standard.; and for the re-admis
sion of which within the circle of his fellowship,
God, whose justice was inflexible, but whose
mercy he had, by some plan of mysterious wis
dom, made to rejoice over it, was putting forth
all the might, and travailing in all the greatness
of the attributes which belonged to him.
But, for the full understanding of this argu
ment, it must be remarked, that, while in our
exiled habitation, where all is darkness, and
rebellion, and enmity, the creature engrosses
every heart; and our affections, when they shift
at all, only wander from one fleeting vanity to
another, it is not so in the habitations of the
unfallen. There, every desire and every move
ment is subordinated to God. He is seen in
all that is formed, and in all that is spread
around them— and, amid the fulness of that
delight with which they expatiate over the
good and the fair of this wondrous universe, the
animating charm which pervades their every
contemplation, is, that they- behold, on each

138
visible thing, the impress of the mind that con
ceived, and of the hand that made and that
upholds it. Here, God is banished from the
thoughts of every natural man,- and, by a firm
and constantly maintained act of usurpation,
do the things of sense and of time wield an en
tire ascendancy. There, God is all in all. They
walk in his light. They rejoice in the beatitudes
of his presence. The veil is from off their eyes,
and they see the character of a presiding Di
vinity in every scene, and in every event to
Which the Divinity has given birth. It is this
which stamps a glory and an importance on the
Whole field of their contemplations; and when
they see a new evolution in the history of
created things, the reason they bend towards it
so attentive an eye, is, that it speaks to their
understanding some new evolution in the pur
poses of God — some new manifestation of his
high attributes — some new and interesting step
in the history of his sublime administration.
Now, we ought to be aware how it takes off
not from the intrinsic weight, but from the ac
tual impression of our argument, that this de-

139
votedness to God which reigns in other places
of the creation; this interest in him as the con
stant and essential principle of all enjoyment;
this concern in the untaintedness of his glory;
this delight in the survey of his perfections and
his doings, are what the men of our corrupt and
darkened world cannot sympathise with.
But however little we may enter into it; the
Bible tells us by many intimations, that amongst
those creatures who have not fallen from their
allegiance, nor departed from the living God,
God is their all — that love to him sits enthron
ed in their hearts, and fills them with all the
ecstacy of an overwhelming affection— that a
sense of grandeur never so elevates their souls,
as when they look at the might and majesty of
the Eternal — that no field of cloudless transpa
rency so enchants them by the blissfulness of
its visions, as when at the shrine of infinite and
unspotted holiness, they bend themselves in
raptured adoration — that no beauty so fascinates
and attracts them, as does that moral beauty
which throws a softening lustre over the awful-
ness of the Godhead — in a word, that the image

140
of his character is ever present to their contem
plations, and the unceasing joy of their sinless
existence lies in the knowledge and the admira
tion of Deity;
Let us put forth an effort, and keep a steady
hold of this consideration, for the deadness of
our earthly imaginations makes an effort neces
sary; and we shall perceive, that though' the
world we live in, were the alone theatre of re
demption, there is a something in the redemp
tion itself that is fitted to draw the eye of an
arrested universe towards it. Surely, surely,
where delight in God is the constant enjoyment,
and the earnest intelligent contemplation of
God is the constant exercise, there is nothing
in the whole compass of nature or of history,
that can so set his adoring myriads upon the
gaze, as some new and wondrous evolution of
the character of God. Now this is found in the
plan of our redemption ; nor, do I see how in
any transaction between the great Father of
existence, and the children who have sprung
from him, the moral attributes of the Deity
could, if I may so express myself, be put to so

141
severe and so delicate a test. It is true, that
the great matters of sin and of salvation, fall
without impression, on the heavy ears of a list
less and alienated world. But they who, to use
the language of the Bible, are light in the Lord,
look otherwise at these things. They see sin
in all its malignity, and salvation in all its mys
terious greatness. Aye, and it would put them
on the stretch of all their faculties, when they
saw rebellion lifting up its standard against the
Majesty of heaven, and the truth and the jus
tice of God embarked on the threatenings he
had uttered against all the doers of iniquity,
and the honours of that august throne, which
has the firm pillars of immutability to rest upon,
linked with the fulfilment of the law that had
come out from it ; and when nothing else was
looked for, but that God by putting forth the
power of his wrath should accomplish his every
denunciation, and vindicate the inflexibility of
his government, and by one sweeping deed of
vengeance, assert in the sight of ail his crea
tures, the sovereignty which belonged to him —
Oh! with what desire must they have pondered
on his ways, when amid the urgency of all these

142
demands which looked so high and so indis
pensable, they saw the unfoldings of the attri
bute of mercy — and how the Supreme Law
giver was bending upon his guilty creatures an
eye of tenderness — and how in his profound
and unsearchable wisdom, he was devising for
them some plan of restoration — and how the
eternal Son had to move from his dwelling-
place in heaven, to carry it forward through
among all the difficulties by which it was en
compassed — and how, after by the virtue of his
mysterious sacrifice, he had magnified the glory
of every other perfection, he made mercy re
joice over them all, and threw open a way by
which we sinful and polluted wanderers, might,
with the whole lustre of the Divine character
untarnished, be re-admitted into fellowship with
God, and be again brought back within the cir
cle of his loyal and affectionate family.
Now, the essential character of such a trans
action, viewed as a manifestation of God,
does not hang upon the number of worlds, over
which this sin and this salvation may have ex
tended. We know that over this one world

143
such an economy of wisdom and of mercy is
instituted— and, even should this be the only
world that is embraced by it, the moral display
of the Godhead is mainly and substantially the
same, as if it reached throughout the whole of
that habitable extent which the science of astro
nomy has made known to us. By the disobe
dience of this one world, the law was trampled
on — and, in the business of making truth and
mercy to meet, and have a harmonious accom
plishment on the men of this world, the dignity
of God was put to the same trial; the justice of
God appeared to lay the same immoveable bar
rier; the wisdom of God had to clear a way
through the same difficulties; the forgiveness of
God had to find the same mysterious conveyance
to the sinners of a solitary world, as to the sin
ners of half a universe. The extent of the field
upon which this question was decided, has no
more influence on the question itself, than the
figure or the dimensions of that field of com
bat, on which some great political question was
fought, has on the importance or on the moral
principles of the controversy that gave rise to
it. This objection about the narrowness of the

144
theatre, carries along with it all the grossness
of materialism. To the eye of spiritual and in
telligent beings, it is nothing. In their view,
the redemption, of a sinful world derives its
chief interest from the display it gives of the
mind and purposes of the Deity — and, should
that world be but a single speck in the immen
sity of the works of God, the only way in which*
this affects their estimate of him is to magnify
his loving kindness— Who, rather than lose one
solitary world of the myriads he has formed,
would lavish all the riches of his beneficence
and of his wisdom on the recovery of its guilty
population. Now, though it must be admitted that the
Bible does not speak clearly or decisively as to
the proper effect of redemption being extended
to other worlds; it speaks most clearly and most
decisively about the knowledge of it being dis
seminated amongst other orders of created, in
telligence than our own. But if the contem
plation of God be their supreme enjoyment,
then the very circumstance of our redemption
being known to them, may invest it, even

145
though it be but the aedemption of one solitery
world, with an importance as wide as the uni
verse itself. It may spread amongst the hosts
of immensity a new illustration of the character
of him who is all their praise, and in looking
toward whom every energy within them is
moved to the exercise of a deep and delighted
admiration. The scene of the transaction may
be narrow in point of material extent; while in
the transaction itself there may be such a moral
dignity, as to blazon the perfections, of the
Godhead over the face > of creation; and from
the manifested glory of the Eternal, to send
forth a tide of ecstaey, and of high gratulation,
throughout the whole extent of hjs, dependent
provinces. I will not, in proof of the position, that the
history of our redemption is known in other
and distant places of creation, and is matter of
deep interest and feeling amongst other orders
of created intelligence — I will not put down
all the quotations which might be assembled to
gether upon this argument. It is an impressive
circumstance, that when Moses and Elias made
K

146
a visit to our Saviour on the mount of transfigu
ration, ' and appeared in glory from heaven, the
topic they brought along with them* and with
Which they were fraught, was the decease he
Was going to accomplish at Jerusalem. And
however insipid the things of our salvation may
be to an earthly understanding;, we are made to
know, that in the sufferings of Christ', and the
glory which should follow, there is matter to
attract the notice of celestial spirits, for these
are the very things, says the Bible, which angels
desire to look into. And however Ksttessly we*
the dull and grovelling children of an exiled
family, may feel about the perfections of thj|
Godhead, and the display of those perfections
in the economy of the Gospel; it is intimated
to us in the book of God's message, that the
creation has its districts and its provinces ; and
we accordingly read of thrones, and dominions,
and principalities, and powers— rand wbether
these terms denote the separate regions of gov*
ernment, or the beings who, by a commission
granted from the sanctuary of heaven, sit in
delegated authority over them— even in their
eyes the mystery of Christ stands arrayed in all

147
the splendour of unsearchable riches; for we are
told that this mystery was revealed for the very
intent, that unto the principalities and powers, in
heavenly places, might be made known by the
church, the manifold wisdom of God. And while
we, whose prospect reaches not beyond the nar
row limits of the corner we occupy, look on the:
dealings of God in the world, as carrying in tbem
all the insignificancy of a provincial transaction;
God himself, whose eye reaches to places which
our eye hath not seen, nor our ear heard of,
neither hath it entered into the imagination of
our heart to conceive, stamps a universality on
the whole matter of the Christian salvation, by
such revelations as the following:— That he is
to gather together in one all things in Christ,
both which are in heaven, and which are in
earth, even in him — and that at the name of
Jesus every knee should bow, of things in hea
ven, and things in earth, and things under the
earth- — and that by him God reconciled all
things unto himself, whether they be things in
earth, or things in heaven.
We will not say in how far some of these pas-
K 2

148
sages extend the proper effect of that redemption
which is by Christ Jesus, to other quarters of the
universe of God ; but they at least go to estab
lish a widely disseminated knowledge of this
transaction amongst the other orders of created
intelligence. And they give us a distant glimpse
of something more extended. They; present a
faint opening, through which may be seen some
few traces of a wider and a nobler dispensation.
They bring before us a dim transparency, on
the other side of which the images of an obscure-
magnificence dazzle indistinctly upon the eye ;
and tell us, that in the economy of redemption^
there is a grandeur commensurate to all that is
known of the other works and purposes of: the
Eternal. They offer us no details; and man,
who ought not to attempt a wisdom above that
which is written, should never never put forth
his hand to the drapery of that impenetrable
curtain which God in his mysterious wisdom^
has spread over those ways, of which it is but
a very small portion that we know of them.
But certain it is, that we know as much of them
from the Bible; and the Infidel, with all the
pride of his boasted astronomy, knows so little
3

149
of them, from any power of observation, that
the baseless argument of his, on which we have
dwelt so long, is overborne in the light of all
that positive evidence which God has poured
around the record of his own testimony, and
even in the light of its more obscure and casual
intimations. The minute and variegated details of the way
in which this wondrous economy is extended,
God has chosen to withhold from us; but he
has oftener than Once, made to us a broad and a
general announcement of its dignity. He does
not tell us whether the fountain opened in the
house of Judah, for sin and for uncleanness,
send forth its healing streams to other worlds
than our own. He does not tell us the extent
of the atonement. But he tells us that the
atonement itself, known, as it is, among the
myriads of the celestial, forms the high song of
eternity; that the Lamb who was slain, is sur
rounded by the acclamations of one wide and
universal empire; that the might of his won
drous achievements, spreads a tide of gratula-
tion over the multitudes who are about his
K 3

150
throne; and that there never ceases to ascend
from the worshippers of him, who washed us
from our sins in his blood, a voice loud as from
numbers Without number, sweet as from blessed
voices uttering joy, when heaven rings jubilee,
and loud hosannahs fill the eternal regions.
" And I beheld, and I heard the voice of
many angels round about the throne, and the
number of them was ten thousand times ten
thousand, and thousands of thousands. Saying
with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was
slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom,
and strength, and glory, and honour, and bless
ing. And every createe Which is in heaven,
and ion the earth, and under the earth, and such
as are in the sea, and all that are in theuj, iheard
I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and
power, be unto him that sitteth on the throne,
and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever."
A king might have* the whole of his reign
crowded with the enterprises of glory; and by
the might of his arms, and the wisdom of his
counsels, might win the first reputation among

151
the potentates of thp wprld; and be idolized
throughout all his provinces, :fpr the wealth and
the security that he had spread abound them —
and still it is conceivable, that by the act of a
single day in behalf of a single family ; by some
soothing visitation of tenderness tjp. a, poor and
solitary cottage; by some deed of compassion,
.which conferred enlargement and relief on one
despairing sufferer; by some grapeful movement
flf sensibility at a tale of wretchedness ; by some
noble effort; of sejf-denial, in. virtue of which he
subdued his every purpose of revenge, and
spread the mantle of a generous oblivion over
the fault of the man who had insulted and ag
grieved him; above all, by an exercise, of par
don so skilfully administered, as that instead pf
bringing him down to a state of defencelessness
against the provocation of future injuries, it
tlu;ew a deeper sacredness over him, and stamped
a more inviplable dignity than ever on his
person and character: — why, my brethren, on
the, stre ngtii of one .such, performance done in a
single hour,, and reaching np fafthe? in its inv
.mediate effects,, than to one house, or tp one in
dividual it is a most possible thing, that the
K 4

152
highest monarch upon earth might draw such a
lustre around him, as would eclipse the renown
of all his public achievements — and that such a
display of magnanimityj or Of worth, beaming
from the;secrecy of his familiar moments, might
waken a more cordial veneration in every bosom,
than all the splendour of his conspicuous- his
tory — aye, and that it might pass down to pos
terity, as a more enduring monument of great
ness, and raise him farther by its moral eleva
tion, above the level of ordinary praise; and
when he passes in review before the< men of
distant ages, may this deed of modest; gentle,
unobtrusive virtue, be at all times appealed to,
as the most sublime and touching memorial of
his name.
In like manner, did the King eternal, immor
tal, and invisible, surrounded as he is with the
splendours of a wide and everlasting monarchy,
turn him to our humble habitation; and the
footsteps of God manifest in the flesh, have
been on the narrow spot of ground we occupy;
and small though our mansion be, amid the orbs
and the systems' of immensity, hither hath the

153
King of glory bent his mysterious way, and
entered the tabernacle of men, and in the dis
guise of a servant did he sojourn for years un
der the roof which canopies our obscure and
solitary world. Yes, it is but a twinkling atom
in the peopled infinity of worlds that are around
it — but look to the moral grandeur of the trans
action, and not to the material extent of the
field upon which it was executed-— -and from the
retirement of our dwelling-place, there may
issue forth such a display of the Godhead,, as
will circulate the glories of his name amongst
all his worshippers. Here sin entered. Here
was the kind and universal beneficence of a
-Father, repaid by the ingratitude of a whole
family. Here the law of God was dishonoured,
and that too in the face of its proclaimed and
unalterable sanctions. Here the mighty contest
of the attributes was ended — and when justice
put forth its demands,. and truth called for the
fulfilment of its warnings, and the immutability
of God would not recede by a single iota, from
any one of its positions, and all the severities
he had ever uttered against the children of in
iquity, seemed to gather • into one cloud of

154
threatening vengeance on the tenement that
held us— did the visit of the only.begotten Son
chase away all these obstacles to the triumph of
mercy— and humble as the tenement may be,
deeply shaded in the obscurity of insignificance
as it is, among the statelier mansions which are
on every side of it— yet will the recal of %
exiled family never be, forgotten— and the illus
tration that has been given here, of the mingled
grace and majesty of God, will never lose its
place among the themes and the acclamations
of eternity.
And. here it may be remarked, that as the
earthly king who throws a moral aggrandise
ment around him, by the act of a single day,
finds, that after its performance, he may have
the space of many years for gathering to himr
self the triumphs of an extended reign— so the
King who sits on high, and with whom one day
is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as
one day, will find, that after the period of that
special administration is ended, by which this
strayed world is again brought, back within' the
limits of his favoured creation, there is room

155
enough along the mighty track Of eternity, for
accumulating iipon himself a glory as wide and
as universal as is the extent of his dominions.
You will allow the most illustrious of this
world's potentates, to give some hour of his
private history to a deed of cottage or of do
mestic tenderness; and every time you think of
the interesting story, you will feel how sweetly
and how gracefully the remembrance of it
blends itself with the fame of his public achieve
ments. But still you think that there would
not have been room enough for these achieve
ments of his, had much of his time been spent,
either amongst the habitations of the poor, or
in the retirement of his own family; and you
conceive, that it is because a single day bears
so small a proportion to the time of his whole
history, that he has been able to combine an
issteresting: ' display of private worth, with all
that brilliancy of exhibition, which has brought
him dbwn to posterity in the character of an
august and a mighty sovereign.
Now apply this to the matter befof e us. Had
the histpfy- of our redemption been confined

156
within the limits of a single day, the argument
that Infidelity has drawn from the multitude of
other worlds, would never have been offered. It
is true, that ours is but an insignificant portion
of the territory of God — but if the attentions by
which he has signalized it, had only taken up a
single day, this would never have occurred to
us as forming any sensible withdrawment of the
mind of the Deity from the concerns of his vast
and universal government. It is the time which
the plan of our salvation requires, that startles
all those on whom this argument has any im
pression. It is the time taken up about this
paltry world, which they feel to be out of pro*.
portion to the number of other worlds, and to
the immensity of the surrounding creation.
Now, to meet this impression, I do not insist at
present on what I have already brought forward,
that God, whose ways are not as our ways, can
have his eye at the same instant on every place,
and can divide and diversify his attention into
any number of distinct exercises. What I have
now to remark, is, that the Infidel who urges
the astronomical objection to the truth of Chris
tianity, is only looking with half an eye to the

157
principle on which it rests. Carry out the prin
ciple, and the objection vanishes. He looks
abroad on the immensity of space, and tells us
how Impossible it is, that this narrow' corner of
it can be so distinguished by the attentions of
the Deity. Why does he not also look abroad
on the magnificence of eternity; and perceive
how the whole period of these peculiar atten
tions, how the whole time which elapses be
tween the fall of man and the consummation of
the scheme of his recovery, is but the twinkling
of a moment to the mighty roll of innumerable
ages? The whole interval between the time of
Jesus Christ's leaving his Father's abode, to so
journ amongst us, to that time when he shall
have put all his enemies under his feet, and de
livered up the kingdom to God even his Father^
that God may be all in all; the whole of this
interval bears as small a proportion to the whole
of the Almighty's reign, as this solitary world
does to the universe around it, and an infinitely
smaller proportion than any time, however short,
which an earthly monarch spends on some en
terprise of private benevolence, does to the
whole walk of his public and recorded history.

158
Why then does not the man, who can shoot
his conceptions so sublimely abroad over the
field of an immensity that knows no limits—why
does he not also shoot them forward through
the vista of a succession, that ever flows with
out stop and without termination? He has
burst across the confines of this world's habita
tion in space, and out of the field which lies on
the other side of it, has he gathered an argu-
ment against the truth of revelation. I feel
that I have nothing to do but to burst across the
confines of this world's history in time, and out
of the futurity which lies beyond it, can I gather
that which will blow the argument to pieces, or
Stamp upon it all the narrowness of a partial
and mistaken calculation. The day is coming,
when the whole of this wondrous history shall
be looked back upon by the eye of remembrance,
and be regarded as one incident in the extended
annals of creation, and with all the illustration
and all the glory it has thrown on the character
of the Deity, will it be seen as a single step in
the evolution of his designs; and long as the
time may appear, from the first act of our re
demption to its final accomplishment, and close

159
and exclusive as we may think the attentions of
God upon it, it will be found that it has left
him room enough for all his concerns, and that
on the high scale of eternity, it is but one of
those passing and ephemeral transactions, which
crowd the history of a never-ending administra-
tion.

160

DISCOURSE V.
ON THE SYMPATHY THAT IS FELT FOR MAN IN THE
DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION.

" I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over
one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and
nine just persons which need no repentance."
Luke xv. 7.
I have already attempted at full length to
establish the position, that the infidel argument
of astronomers goes to expunge a natural per
fection from the character of God — even that
wondrous property of his, by which he, at the
same instant of time, can bend a close and a
careful attention on a countless diversity of ob
jects; and diffuse the intimacy of his power and
of his presence, from the greatest to the mi
nutest and most insignificant of them all. I also
adverted shortly to this other circumstance

161
that it went to impair a moral attribute of the
Deity. It goes to impair the benevolence of
his nature. It is saying much for the benevo
lence of God, to say, that a single world, or a
single system, is not enough for it — that it must
have the spread of a mightier region, on which
it may pour forth a tide of exuberancy through
out all its provinces — that as far as our vision
can carry us, it has strewed immensity with the
floating receptacles of life, and has stretched
over each of them the garniture of such a sky
as mantles our own habitation— and that even
from distances which are far beyond the reach
of human eye, the songs of gratitude and praise
may now be arising to the one God, who sits
surrounded by the regards of his one great and
universal family.
Now it is saying much for the benevolence of
God, to say that it sends forth these wide and
distant emanations over the surface of a terri
tory so ample — that the world we inhabit, lying
imbedded as it does, amidst so much surround
ing greatness, shrinks into a point that to the
universal eye might appear to be almpst imper-

162
ceptible. But does it not add to the power and
to the perfection of this universal eye, that at
the very moment it is taking a comprehensive
survey of the vast, it can fasten a steady and
undistracted attenticn on each minute and se
parate portion of it; that at the very moment it
is looking at all worlds, it can look most point
edly and most intelligently to each of them;
that at the very moment it sweeps the field of
immensity, it can settle all the earnestness of
its regards upon every distinct handbreadth of
that field; that at the very moment at which it
embraces the totality, of existence, it can send
a most thorough and penetrating inspection into
each of its details, and into every one of its
endless diversities? You cannot fail to perceive
how much this adds to the power of the all-see
ing eye. Tell me then, if it do not add as
much perfection to the benevolence of Gojdt
that while it is expatiating over the vast field of
created things, there is not one portion of the
field overlooked by it; that while it scatters
blessings over the whole of an infinite range, it
causes them to descend in a shower of plenty
on every separate habitation; that while his

163
arm is underneath and round about all worlds,
he enters within the precincts of every one of
them, and gives a care and a tenderness to each
individual of their teeming population. Oh!
does not the God, who is said to be love, shed
Over this attribute of his, its finest illustration!
when while he sits in the highest heaven, and
pours out his fulness on the whole subordinate
domain of nature and of providence, he bows a
pitying regard on the very humblest of his chil
dren, and sends his reviving Spirit into every
heart, and cheers by his presence every home,
and provides for the wants of every family, and
watches every sick-bed, and listens to the com
plaints of every sufferer; and while by his won
drous mind the weight of universal government
is borne, oh! is it not more wondrous and more
excellent still, that he feels for every sorrow,
and has an ear open to every prayer.
" It doth not yet appear what we shall be,"
says the apostle John, " but we know that When
he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we
shall see him as he is." It is the present lot of
L 2

164
the angels, that they behold the face of our
Father in heaven ; and it would seem as if the
effect of this was to form and to perpetuate in
them the moral likeness of himself; and that
they reflect back upon him his own image; and
that thus a diffused resemblance to the Godhead,
is kept up amongst all those adoring worship
pers who live in the near and rejoicing contem
plation of the Godhead. Mark then hoW that
peculiar and endearing feature in the goodness
of the Deity, which we have just now adverted
to — mark how beauteously it is reflected down-
Wards upon us in the revealed attitude of angels.
From the high eminences of heaven, are they
bending a wakeful regard over the men of this
sinful world; and the repentance of every one
of them spreads a joy and a high gratulation
throughout all its dwelling places. Put this
trait of the angelic character into contrast with
the dark and louring spirit of an infidel. He
is told of the multitude of other worlds, and he
feels a kindling magnificence in the conception,
and he is seduced by an elevation which he can
not carry, and from this airy summit does he

165
look down on the insignificance of the«world we
occupy, and pronounces . it to be unworthy of
those visits and of those attentions which we
read of in the New Testament. He is unable
to wing his upward way along the scale, either
of moral or of natural perfection; and when
the wonderful extent of the field is made known
to him, over which the wealth of the Divinity
is lavished—there he stops, and wilders, and al
together misses this essential perception, that
the power and perfection of the Divinity are
not more displayed by the mere magnitude of
the field, than they are by that minute and ex
quisite filling up, which leaves not its smallest
portions neglected; but which imprints the ful
ness of the Godhead upon every one of them;
and proves, by every flower of the pathless
desert, as well as by every orb of immensity,
how . this unsearchable Being can care for all,
and provide for all, and throned in mystery too
high for, us, can, throughout every instant of
time, keep his attentive eye on every separate
thing that he has formed, and by an act of his
thoughtful and presiding intelligence, can conr
stantly embrace all. L3

166
But God* compassed about as he is with
light inaccessible, and full of glory, lies so
hidden from the ken and conception of all our
faculties, that the spirit of man sinks exhausted
by its attempts to comprehend him. Could the
image of the Supreme be placed direct before
the eye of the mind, that flood of splendour,
which is ever issuing from him on all who have
the privilege of beholding, would not only
dazzle, but overpower us.i And, therefore it
is, that I bid you look to the reflection of that
image, and thus to take a view of its mitigated
glories, and to gather the lineaments of the
Godhead in the face of those righteous angels,
who have' never thrown away from them the
resemblance in which they were created; and,
unable as you are to support the grace and the
majesty of that countenance, before which" the
seers and the prophets of other days fell, and
became as dead men, let us, before we bring
this argument to a close, borrow one lesson, of
him who sitteth on the throne, from the aspect
and the revealed doings of those who are sur
rounding it.

167
The infidel, then, as he widens the field of his
contemplations, would suffer its every separate
object to die away into forgetful ness: these
angels, expatiating as they do, over the range
of a loftier universality, are represented as all
awake to the history of each of its distinct and
subordinate provinces. The infidel, with his
mind afloat among suns and among systems,
can find no place in his already occupied re
gards, for that humble planet whijch lodges and
accommodates our species: the angels, stand
ing on a loftier summit, and with a mightier
-prospect of creation before them, are yet re
presented as looking down on this single world,
and attentively marking the every feeling and
the every demand of all its families. The in
fidel, by sinking us down to an unnoticeable
minuteness, would lose sight of our dwelling-
place altogether, and spread a darkening shroud
of oblivion over all the concerns and all the
interests of men: but the angels will not so
abandon us; and, undazzled by the whole sur
passing grandeur of that scenery which is around
them, are they revealed as directing all the ful
ness of their regard to this our habitation, and
L 4

168
casting a longing and a benignant eye on our
selves and on our children. The infidel will
tell us of those worlds which roll afar, and the
number of which outstrips the arithmetic of the
human understanding — and then with the hard
ness of an unfeeling calculation, will he consign
the one we occupy, with all its guilty genera
tions, to despair. But he who counts the num
ber of the stars, is set forth to us as looking at
every inhabitant among the millions of our
species, and by the word of the Gospel beckon
ing to him with the hand of invitation, and on
the very first step of his return, as moving to
wards him with all the eagerness of the prodi
gal's father, to receive him back again into that
presence from which he had wandered. And
as tp this world, in favour of which the , scowls
ing infidel will not permit one solitary move
ment, all heaven is represented as in; a stir
about its restoration; and there cannot a single
son, or a single daughter, be recalled from sin
unto righteousness, without an acclamation of
joy amongst the hosts of Paradise. Aye, and
I can say it of the humblest and the un-
worthiest of you all, that the eye of angels

169
is upon him, and that his repentance would, at
this moment, send forth a wave of delighted
sensibility throughout the mighty throng of
their innumerable legions.
Now, the single question I have to ask, is,
On which of the two sides of this contrast do
we see most of the impress of heaven? Which
of the two would be most glorifying to God?
Which of them carries upon it most of that evi
dence which lies in its having a celestial charac
ter? For if it be the side of the infidel, then
must all our hopes expire with the ratifying
of that fatal sentence, by which the world is
doomed, through its insignificancy, to perpetual
exclusion from the attentions of the Godhead.
I have long been knocking at the door of your
understanding, and have tried to find an admit
tance to it for many an argument. I now make
my appeal to the sensibilities of your heart ;
and tell me, to whom does the moral feeling
within it yield its readiest testimony — to the
infidel, who would make this world of ours
vanish away into abandonment — or to those
angels, who ring throughout all their mansions

170
the hosannas of joy, over every one individual
of its repentant population?
And here I cannot omit to take advantage of
that opening with which our Saviour has fur
nished us, by the parables of this chapter, and by
which he admits us into a familiar view of that
principle on which the inhabitants of the heavens'
are so awake to the deliverance and the restora*-
tion of our species. To illustrate the difference
in the reach of knowledge and of affection, be
tween a man and an angel, let us think of the dif
ference of reach between one man and another.
You may often witness a man, who feels neither
tenderness nor care beyond the precincts of his
own family; but who, on the strength of those
instinctive fondnesses which nature has im
planted in his bosom, may earn the character
of an amiable father, or a kind husband, or a
bright example of all that is soft and endearing
in the relations of domestic society. Now* con
ceive him, in addition to all this, to carry his
affections abroad, without, at the same time,
any abatement of their intensity towards the
objects which are at home — that stepping across

171
the limits of the house he occupies, he takes an
interest in the families which are near him —
that he lends his services to the town or the
district .wherein he is placed, and gives up a
portion of his time to the thoughtful labours of
a humane and public-spirited citizen. By this
enlargement in the sphere of his attention, he
has extended his reach; and, provided he has
not done so at the expense ofthat regard which
is due to his family, a thing which,, cramped
and confined as we are, we are very apt, in the
exercise of our humble faculties to do — I put
it to you, whether by extending the reach of
his views and his affections, he has not extended
his worth and his moral respectability along
with it?
But I can conceive a still further enlarge
ment. I can figure to myself a man, whose
wakeful sympathy overflows the field of his own
immediate neighbourhood — to whom the name
of country comes with all the omnipotence of a
charm upon his heart, and with all the urgency
of a most righteous and resistless claim upon
his services— who never hears the name of Bri-

172
tain sounded in his, ears, but it stirs up all his
enthusiasm in behalf of the worth and the wel
fare of its people — who gives himself up, with
all the devotedness of a passion, , to the best
and the purest objects of patriotism— and who,
spurning away from him the vulgarities of party
ambition, separates his life and his labours
to the fine pursuit of augmenting the science,
or the virtue, or the substantial prosperity
of his nation. Oh! ceuld such a man retain
all the tenderness, and fulfil all the duties
which home and which neighbourhood require
of him, and at the same time, expatiate in
the might of his untired faqulti.es, on so wide
a field of benevolent contemplation — would not
this extension of reach place him still higher
than before, on the scale both of moral and in
tellectual gradation, and give him a still bright
er and more enduring name in the records of
human excellence ?
And, lastly, I can conceive a still loftier
flight of humanity — a man, the aspiring ,pf
whose heart for the good of man, knows no
limitations-tjwhose longings, and whose concep-

173
tions on this subject, overleap all the barriers of
¦.*¦»'
geography — who, looking on himself as a brother
of the species, links every spare energy which
belongs to him, with the cause of its meliora
tion — who can embrace within the grasp of his
ample desires, the whole family of mankind—
and who, in obedience to a heaven-born move
ment of principle within him, separates himself
to some big and busy enterprise, which is to
tell on the moral destinies of the world. Oh !
could such a man mix up the softenings of pri
vate virtue, with the habit of so sublime a com
prehension — if, amid those magnificent darings
of thought and of performance, the mildness
of his benignant eye could still continue to
cheer the retreat of his family, and to spread
the charm and the sacredness of piety among
all its members — could he even mingle himself
in all the gentleness of a soothed and a smiling
heart, with the playfulness of his children — and
also find strength to shed the blessings of his
presence and his counsel over the vicinity
around him; — oh! would not the combination
of so much grace with so much loftiness, only
serve the more to aggrandize him? Would not the

174
one ingredient of a character so rare, go to il
lustrate and to magnify the other? And would
not you pronounce him to be the fairest speci
men of our nature, who could so call out all
your tenderness, while he challenged and com
pelled all your veneration ?
Nor can I proceed, at this point of my argiF-
ment, without adverting to the way in which
this last and this largest style of benevolence is
exemplified in our own country — where the
spirit of the Gospel has given to many of its
enlightened disciples, the impulse of such a
philanthropy, as carries abroad their wishes and
their endeavours to the very outskirts of human
population — a philanthropy, of which, if you
asked the extent or the boundary of its field, we
should answer, in the language of inspiration,
that the field is the world-^-a ' philanthropy,
which overlooks all the distinctions of cast and
of colour, and spreads its ample regards over
the whole brotherhood of the species — a philan
thropy, which attaches itself to man in tne
general; to man throughout all his varieties;
to man as the partaker of one common nature,

175
and who, in whatever clime or latitude you
may meet with him, is found to breathe the
same sympathies, and to possess the same high
capabilities both of bliss and of improvement. It
is true, that, upen this subject, there is often a
loose and unsettled magnificence of thought,
which is fruitful of nothing but empty specula
tion, But the men to whom I allude, have not
imaged the enterprise in the form of a thing
unknown. They have given it a local habita
tion. They have bodied it forth in deed and
in accomplishment. They have turned the
dream into a reality. In them, the power of
a lofty generalization meets with its happiest
attemperment, in the principle and perseve-
ranee, and all the chastening and subduing
virtues of the New Testament And, were I in
search of that fine union of grace and of great
ness which I have now been insisting on, and,
in virtue of which, the enlightened Christian
can at once find room in his bosom for the
concerns of universal humanity* and for the
play of kindliness towards every individual he
meets with — I could no where more readily
expect to find it, than with the worthies of our

176
own land — the Howard of a former generation,
who paced it over Europe in quest of the un
seen wretchedness whieh abounds in it — or in
such men of our present generation, as Wilber-
force, who lifted his unwearied voice against
the biggest outrage ever practised on our na
ture, till he wrought its extermination — and
Clarkson, who plied his assiduous task at rear
ing the materials of its impressive history, and,
at length carried, for this righteous cause, the
mind of Parliament — and Carey, from whose
hand the generations of the East are now re
ceiving the elements of their moral renovation'
—and, in fine, those holy and devoted men,
who count not their lives dear unto them; but,
going forth every year from the island of our
habitation, carry the message of heaven over
the face of the world ; and, in the front of se
verest obloquy, are now labouring in remotest
lands; and are reclaiming another and another
portion from the wastes of dark and fallen hu
manity; and are widening the domains of gos
pel light and gospel principle amongst them;
and are spreading a moral beauty around the
every spot on which they pitch their lowly

177
tabernacle; and are at length compelling even
the eye and the testimony of gainsayers, by the
success of their noble enterprise ; and are forc
ing the exclamation of delighted surprise from
the charmed and the arrested traveler, as he
looks at the softening tints which they are now
spreading over the wilderness, and as he hears
the sound of the chapel bell, and as in those
haunts, where at the distance of half a genera
tion, savages would have scowled upon his path,
he regales himself with the hum of missionary
schools, and the lovely spectacle of peaceful and
Christian villages.
Such, then, is the benevolence, at once so
gentle and so lofty, of those men, who, sanctified
by the faith that is in Jesus, have had their
hearts visited from heaven by a beam of warmth
and of sacredness. What, then, I should like
to know, is the benevolence of the place from
whence such an influence cometh? How wide is
the compass of this virtue there; and how ex
quisite is the feeling of its tenderness; and
how pure and how fervent are its aspirings
among those unfallen beings who have no
M

178
darkness, and no encumbering weight of cor
ruption to strive against? Angels have a
mightier reach of contemplation. Angels
can look upon this world and all which it in
herit as She part of a larger family. Angels*
were in the full exercise of their powers even
at the first infancy of our species, and shared
in the gratulations of that period, when at the
birth of humanity all intelligent nature felt a
gladdening impulse, and the morning stars sang
together for joy. They loved us even with the
love which a family on earth bears to a youngeu
sister; and the very childhood of our tinier fac*-
ulties did only serve the more to endear us to
them; and though born at a later hour in the
history of creation, did they regard us as heirs
of the same destiny with themselves, to rise
along with them in the scale of moral elevation,
to bow at the same footstool, and to partake in
those high dispensations of a parent's kindness
and a parent's care, which are ever emanating
from the throne of the Eternal on all the mem
bers of a duteous and affectionate family. Take
the reach of an angel's mind ; but, at the same
time, take the seraphic fervour of an angel's

179
benevolence along with it; how, from the emi
nence on which he stands he may have an eye
upon many worlds, and a remembrance upon
the origin and the successive concerns of every
one of them ; how -he may feel the full force of
a most affecting relationship with the habitants
of each, as the offspring of one common Father;
and though it be both the effect and the evidence
of our depravity, that we cannot sympathise
with these pure and generous ardours Of a
celestial spirit; how it may consist with the lofty
comprehension, and the ever-breathing love of
an angel, that he can both shoot his benevolence
abroad over a mighty expanse of planets and
of systems, and lavish a flood of tenderness on
each individual of their teeming population.
Keep all this in view, and you cannot fail to
perceive how the principle so finely and so
copiously illustrated in this chapter, may be
brought to meet the infidelity we have thus
long been employed in combating. It was na
ture, and the experience of every bosom will
affirm it — it was nature in the shepherd to leave
the ninety and nine pf his flock forgotten and
M 2

180
alone in the wilderness, and betaking himself
to the mountains, to give all his labour and all
his concern to the pursuit of one solitary wan
derer. It was nature; and we are told in the pas
sage before us, that it is such a portion of na
ture as belongs not merely to men, but to an
gels ; when the woman, with her mind in a state
of listlessness as to the nine pieces of silver that
were in secure custody, turned the whole force
of her anxiety to the one piece which she had
lost,1 and for which she had to light a candle,
and to sweep the house, and to search diligently
until she found it. It was nature in her to re
joice more over that piece, than over all the rest
of them, and to tell it abroad among friends and
neighbours, that they might rejoice along with
her — aye, and sadly effaced as humanity is, in
all her original lineaments, this is a part of our
nature, the very movements of which are ex
perienced in heaven, " where there is more joy
over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety
and nine just persons who need no repentance."
For any thing I know, the very planet, that
rolls in the immensity around me, may be a land
of righteousness; and be a member of the house-

181
hold of God; and have her secure dwelling-
place within that ample limit, which embraces
his great and universal family. But I know at
least of one wanderer; and how woefully she
has strayed from peace and from purity; and
how in dreary alienation from him who made
her, she has bewildered herself amongst those
many devious tracks, which have carried her
afar from the path of immortality; and how
sadly tarnished all those beauties and felicities
are, which promised, on that morning of her
existence when God looked on her, and saw
that all was very good- — which promised so
richly to bless and to adorn her; and how
in the eye of the whole unfallen creation,
she has renounced all this goodliness, and is
fast departing away from them into guilt, -and
wretchedness, and shame. Oh:! if there be any
truth in this chapter, and any sweet or touching
nature in the principle which runs throughout
all its parables, let us cease to wonder, though
they who surround the throne of love should
be looking so intently towards us — or though,
in the way by which they have singled us out,
all the other orbs of space should, for one short.
M3

182
season, on the scale of eternity, appear to be
forgotten — or though; for every step of her re
covery, and for every individual who is rendered
back again to the fold from which he was se
parated, another and another message of triumph
should be made to circulate amongst the hosts
of paradise — or though, lost as we are, and sunk
in depravity as we^ are, all the sympathies of
heaven should now be awake on the enterprise
of him who has travailled, in the greatness of
his strength, to seek and to save us.
And here I cannot but remark how fine a
harmony there is between the law of sympathetic
nature in heaven, and the most touching exhibi
tions of it on the face of our world: When one
of a numerous household droops under the power
of disease, is not that the one to whom all the
tenderness is turned, and who, in a manner,
monopolises the inquiries of his neighbourhood,
and the, care of his family? When the sighing
of the midnight storm sends a dismal foreboding
into the mother's heart, to whom of all her off
spring, I would ask, are her thoughts and her
anxieties then wandering? Is it not to her sailor

183
boy whom her fancy has placed amid the rude
and angry surges of the ocean? Does not this,
the hour of his apprehended danger, concentrate
upon him the whole force of her, wakeful medita
tions? And does not he engross, for a season,
her every sensibility, and her every prayer? We
sometimeshear of shipwrecked passengers thrown
upon a barbarous shore ; and seized upon by its
prowling inhabitants; and hurried away through
the tracks of a dreary and unknown wilderness;
and sold into captivity; and loaded with the fet
ters of irrecoverable bondage ; and who stripped
of every other liberty but the liberty of thought,
feel even this to be another ingredient of
wretchedness — for what can they think of but
home, and as all its kind and tender imagery
comes upon their remembrance, how can they
think of it but in the bitterness of despair? Oh
tell me when the fame of all this disaster reaches
his family, who is the member of it to whom is
directed the full tide of its griefs and of its
sympathies? Who is it that, for weeks and for
months, usurps their every feeling, and calls
out their largest sacrifices, and sets them to the
busiest expedients for getting him back again?
M 4

184
Who is it that makes them forgetful of them
selves and of all around them; and tell me 'if
you can assign a limit to the pains, and the ex
ertions, and the surrenders which afflicted pa
rents and weeping sisters would make to seek
and to save him?
Now conceive, as we are warranted to do by
the parables of this chapter, the principle of all
these earthly exhibitions to be in full operation
around the throne of God. Conceive the uni
verse to be one secure and rejoicing family, and
that this alienated world is the only strayed, or
only captive member belonging to it; and we
shall cease to wonder, that from the first period
of the captivity of our species, down to the
consummation of their history in time, there
should be such a movement in heaven; or that
angels should so often have sped their commis
sioned way on the errand of our recovery; or
that the Son of God should have bowed himself
down to the burden of our mysterious atone
ment; or that the Spirit of God should now, by
the busy variety of his all-powerful influences,
be carrying forward that dispensation of grace

185
which is to make us meet for re-admittance into
the mansions of the celestial. Only think of
love as the reigning principle there; of love, as
sending forth its energies and aspirations to the
quarter where its object is most in danger of
being for ever lost to it; of love as called forth
by this single circumstance to its uttermost ex
ertion, and the most exquisite feeling of its ten
derness; and then shall we come to a distinct
and familiar explanation of this whole mystery:
nor shall we resist by our incredulity, the gospel
message any longer, though it tells us, that
throughout the whole of this world's history,
long in your eyes, but only a little month in the
high periods of immortality, so much of the
vigilance and so much of the earnestness of
heaven should have been expended on the re
covery of its guilty population.
There is another touching trait of nature,
which goes finely to heighten this principle,
and still more forcibly to demonstrate its applica
tion to our present argument. So long as the
dying child of David was alive, he was kept on

186
the stretch of anxiety and of suffering with re
gard to it. When it expired, he rose and
comforted himself. This narrative of King
David is in harmony with all that we experience
of our own movements and our own sensibilities.
It is the power of uncertainty which gives them
so active and so interesting a play in our bosoms;
and which heightens all our regards to a tenfold
pitch of feeling and of exercise ; and which fixes
down our watchfulness upon our infant's dying
bed ; and which keeps us so painfully alive to
every turn and to every symptom in the pro
gress of its malady; and which draws out all
our affections for it to a degree of intensity that
is quite unutterable; and which urges us on to
ply our every effort and our every expedient,
till hope withdraw its lingering beam, or till
death shut the eyes of our beloved in the slum
ber of its long and its last repose.
I know not who of you have your names
written in the book of life— nor can I tell if
this be known to the angels which are in heaven.
While in the land of living men, you are under
the power and application of a remedy, which

187
if taken as the Gospel prescribes, will renovate
the soul, and altogether prepare it for the bloom
and the vigour of immortality. Wonder not
then that with this principle of uncertainty in
such full operation, ministers should feel for you;
or angels should feel for you ; or all the sensi
bilities of heaven should be awake upon the
symptoms of your grace and reformation; or
the eyes of those who stand upon the high
eminences of the celestial world, should be so
earnestly fixed on the every footstep and new
evolution of your moral history. Such a con
sideration as this should do something more
than silence the infidel objection. It should
give a practical effect to the calls of repent
ance. How will it go to aggravate the whole
guilt of our impenitency, should we stand out
against the power and the tenderness of these
manifold applications — the voice of a beseech
ing God upon us — the word of salvation at our
very door — the free offer of strength and of
acceptance sounded in our hearing — the Spirit
in readiness with his agency to meet our every
desire and our every inquiry — angels beckon-

188
ing us to their company — and the very first
movements of our awakened conscience, draw
ing upon us all their regards and all their ear
nestness.

189

DISCOURSE VI.

ON THE CONTEST FOR AN ASCENDENCY OVER MAN,
AMONGST THE HIGHER ORDERS OF INTELLIGENCE.

" And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a
show of them openly, triumphing over them in it."
Col. ii. 15.
Though these Astronomical Discourses be now
drawing to a close, it is not because I feel that
much more might not be said on the subject
of them, both in the way of argument and of
illustration. The whole of the Infidel difficulty
proceeds upon the assumption, that the exclu
sive bearing of Christianity is upon the people
of our earth ; that this solitary planet is in no
way implicated with the concerns of a wider
dispensation; that the revelation we have of
the dealings of God, in this district of his em
pire, does not suit and subordinate itself to a

190
system of moral administration, as extended
as is the whole of his monarchy. Or, in other
words, because Infidels have not access to the
whole truth, will they refuse a part of it, how
ever well attested or well accredited it may be;
because a mantle of deep obscurity rests on the
government of God, when taken in all its eter
nity and all its entireness, will they shut their
eyes against that allowance of light which has
been made to pass downwards upon our world
from time to time, through so many partial un-
foldings; and till they are made to know the
Share which other planets have in these com
munications of mercy, will they turn them
away from the actual message which has come
to their own door, and will neither examine its
credentials, nor be alarmed by its warnings, nor
be won by the tenderness of its invitations.
On that day when the secrets of all hearts
shall be revealed, there will be found such a
wilful duplicity and darkening of the mind
in the whole of this proceeding, as shall bring
down upon it the burden of a righteous con
demnation. But, even now, does it lie open to

191
the rebuke of philosophy, when the soundness
and the consistency of her principles are brought
faithfully to bear upon it. Were the character of
modern science rightly understood, it would be
seen, that the very thing which gave such strength
and sureness to all her conclusions, was that hu
mility of spirit which belonged to her. She
promulgates all that is positively known; but
she maintains the strictest silence and modesty
about all that is unknown. She thankfully ac
cepts of evidence wherever it can be found ;
nor does she spurn away from her the very
humblest contribution of such doctrine, as can
be witnessed by human observation, or can be
attested by human veracity. But with all this
she can hold out most sternly against that power
of eloquence and fancy, which often throws so
bewitching a charm over the plausibilities of
ingenious speculation. Truth is the alone idol
of her reverence ; and did she at all times keep
by her attachments, nor throw them away when
theology submitted to her cognizance its de
monstrations and its claims, we should not de
spair of witnessing as great a revolution in
those prevailing habitudes of thought which oh-

192
tain throughout^. our, literary establishments, on
the subject of Christianity, as that which has ac
tually taken place in the philosophy of external
nature. This is the first field on winch have been
successfully practised the experimental lessons
of Bacon; and they who are conversant with
these matters, know how great and how general
a uniformity pf doctrine now prevails in the
science of astronomy, and mechanics, and chem7
istry, and almost all the other departments in
the histpry and philosophy of matter. But this
uniformity stands strikingly contrasted with the
diversity of our moral systems, with the restless
fluctuations both of language and pf sentiment
which are taking place in the philosophy of
mind, with the palpable fact, that every new
course of instruction upon this subject, has
some new articles, or some new explanations to
peculiarise it: and all this is to be attributed,
not to the progress of the science, not to a
growing, but to an alternating movement, not
to its perpetual additions, but to its perpetual
vibrations. I mean not to assert the futility of moral

193
science, or to deny her importance, or to insist
on the utter hopelessness of her advancement
The Baconian method will not probably push
forward her discoveries with such a rapidity, or
to such an extent, as many of her sanguine dis
ciples have anticipated. But if the spirit and
the maxims of this philosophy were at all times
proceeded upon; it would certainly check that
rashness and variety of excogitation, in virtue
of which it may almost be said, that every new
course presents us with a new system, and that
every new teacher has some singularity or other
to characterise him. She may be able to make
out an exact transcript of the phenomena of
mind; and in so doing, she yields a most impor
tant contribution to the stock of human acquire
ments. But when she attempts to grope her
darkling way through the counsels of the Deity,
and the futurities of his administration; when,
without one passing acknowledgement to the
embassy which professes to have come from
him, or to the facts and to the testimonies by
which it has so illustriously -been vindicated,.
she launches forth her own speculations on the
character of God, and the destiny of man;
N

194
when; though this be a subject on which neither
the recollections of history; nor the ephemeral
experience of any single life, can furnish one
observation to enlighten her, she will neverthe
less utter her own plausibilities; not merely with
a contemptuous neglect of the Bible, but in
direct opposition to it; then it is high time to
remind her of the difference between the reverie
of him who has not seen God, and the well-
accredited declaration of him who was in the
beginning with God, andiwas God; and to tell
her, that this so far from being the argument of
an ignoble fanaticism, is in harmony with the
very argument upon which the science of ex
periment has been reared* and by Which it has
been at length delivered from the influence of
theory, and purified of all its vain and visionary
splendours. In my last Discourses, I have attempted to
collect from the records of God's actual com
munication to the world, such traces of rela
tionship between other orders of being and the
great family Of mankind, as serve to prove that
Christianity is not so paltry and provincial a

195
system as Infidelity presumes it to be. And as
I said before, I have not exhausted all that may
legitimately be derived upon this subject from
the informations of Scripture. I have adverted,
it is true, to the knowledge of our moral his
tory,- which obtains- throughout Other provinces
of the intelligent creation. I have asserted the
universal importance which this may confer on
the transactions even of one planet, in as much
as it may spread an honourable display of the
Godhead amongst all the mansions of infinity.
I have attempted to expatiate on the argument,
that an event little in itself^ may be so pregnant
with character, as to furnish all the worshippers
of heaven with a theme of praise for eternity.
I have stated that nothing is of magnitude in
their eyes, but that which serves to endear to
them the Father of their spirits, or to shed a
lustre over the glory of his incomprehensible
attributes — and that thus, from the redemption
even of our solitary species, there may go forth
such an exhibition of the Deity,1 as shall bear
the triumphs of his name to the very outskirts
of the universe.

196
I have farther adverted to another distinct
Scriptural intimation, that the state of fallen
matt was not only matter of knowledge to other
orders of creation, but was also matter of deep
regret and affectionate sympathy; that,; agree
ably to such laws of sympathy as are most
familiar even to- human observation, the very
wretchedness Of our condition was fitted to con
centrate Upon us the feelings, and the atten
tions, and the services, of the celestial— to sin-
•gle us out for a time to the gaze of their most
earnest and unceasing contemplation — to draw
forth all that was kind and all that was tender
within them — and just in proportion to the
need and to the helplessness of us miserable
exiles from the family of God, to multiply upon
Us the regards, and call out in our behalf the
fond and eager exertions of those who had
never wandered away from him. This appears
from the Bible to be the style of that benevo
lence which glows and Which circulates around
the throne of heaven. It is the very benevo
lence which emanates from the throne itself,
ancl the attentions of which have for so many
thousand years Signalized the inhabitants of our

197
world. This may look a long period for so pal
try a world. But how have Infidels come to
their conception that our world is so paltry?
By looking abroad over the countless systems
of immensity. But why then have they missed
the conception, that the time of those peculiar
visitations* which they look upon as so dispro
portionate to the magnitude of this earth, is
just as evanescent as the earth itself is insignifi
cant? Why look they not abroad on the count
less generations of eternity; and thus come
back to the conclusion, that after all, the re
demption of our species is but an ephemeral
doing in the ,history of intelligent nature; that
it leaves the Author of it room for all the ac
complishments of a wise and equal administra
tion; and not to'mention, that even during the
progress of it, it withdraws not a single thought
or a single energy of his, from other fields of crea
tion, that there remains time enough to him for
carrying round the visitations of as striking, and
as peculiar a tenderness, over the whole extent
of his great and universal monarchy? .
It might serve still farther to incorporate the

198
concerns of our planet with the general history
of moral and intelligent beings, to state, not
merely the knowledge which they take of us,
and not merely the compassionate anxiety which
they feel: for us; but to state the importance
derived to our world from its being the actual
theatre of a keen and ambitious contest amongst
the upper orders of creation. You know that
how for the possession of a very small and in
sulated territory, the mightiest empires of the
•world, have put forth all their resources; and
on some field of mustering competition, have
monarchs met,1 and' embarked for victory, all
the pride of a country's talent, and all the
flower and strength of a country's population.
The solitary island around which so many fleets
are hovering, and on the shores of which so
many armed men are descending, as to an arena
of hostility, may well wonder at its own un-
looked for estimation. But other principles are
animating the battle; and the glory of nations
is at stake ; and a much higher result is in the
contemplation of each party, than the gain of
so humble an acquirement as the primary object
of the war; and honour, dearer to many a bosom

199
than existence, is now the interest on which so
much blood and so much treasure is expended;
and the stirring spirit of emulation has now
got hold of the combatants; and thus, amid all
the. insignificancy which attaches tothe material
origin of the contest, ,do both the eagerness and
the extent of it, receive from the constitution
of our nature, their most full and adequate
explanation. Now, if this be also the principle of higher
natures— if, on the one hand, God be jealous of
his honour, and on the other, there be proud
and exalted spirits, who scowl defiance at him
and at his monarchy — if, on the side of heaven,
there be an angelic host rallying around the
standard of , loyalty, who flee with alacrity at
the bidding of the Almighty, who are devoted
to his glory, and feel a rejoicing interest in the
evolution of his counsels; and if, on the side of
hell, there be a sullen front of resistance, a hate
and malice inextinguishable, an unquelled dar
ing of revenge to baffle the wisdom of the Eter
nal, and to arrest the hand, and to defeat the
purposes of Omnipotence — then let the material

200
prize of victory be insignificant as it may, it is
the victory in itself which upholds the impulse
of this keen and stimulated rivalry. Ifr by the
sagacity of one infernal mind,- a single planet
has been seduced from its allegiance,- and been
brought under the ascendency of him who is
called in Scripture, "the god of this world;"
and if the errand on which our Redeemer came,
was to destroy the works of the devil— then let
this planet have all the littleness which astrono
my has assigned to it- — call it what it is, one of
the smaller islets which float on. the ocean of
vacancy; it has become the theatre of such a
competition, as may have all the desires and all
the energies of a divided universe embarked
upon it. It involves in it other objects than
the single recovery of our species. It decides
higher questions. >It stands linked with the
supremacy of God, and will at length demon
strate the way in which he inflicts chastisement
and overthrow upon all his enemies. I know
not if our rebellious world be the only .strong
hold which Satan is possessed of; or if it be but
the single post of an extended warfare, that is
now going on between the ^powers of light and

201
of darkness. But be it the one or the other,
the parties are in array* and the spirit of the
contest is in full energy, and the honour of
mighty combatants is at stake; and let us
therefore cease to wonder that our .humble resi
dence has been made the theatre of so busy an
operation; orthatthe ambition of loftier natures
hashere put forth all its desire and all its stren-
uousness. This unfolds to us another of those high and
extensive bearings, which the moral history of
our globe may have on the system of God's
universal administration. Were an enemv to
touch the shore of this high-minded country,
and to occupy so much as one of the humblest
of its villages, and there to seduce the natives
from their loyalty, and to sit down along with
them in enirenched defiance to all the threats,
and to all the preparations of an insulted em
pire— oh! how would the cry of wounded pride
resound throughout aft the ranks and varieties
of our mighty- population ; and this very move
ment of indignancy would reach the king upon
his throne ; and circulate among those who stood

202
in all the grandeur of chieftainship around him ;
and be heard to thrill in the eloquence of Parlia-.
ment; and spread so resistless an appeal to a na
tion's honour, and a nation's patriotism, that the
trumpet of war would summon to its call, all the
spirit and all the willing energies of our kingdom ;
and rather than sit down in patient endurance
under the burning disgrace of such a violation,
would the whole of its strength and resources
be embarked upon the contest; and never never
would we let down our exertions and our sacri
fices, till either our deluded countrymen were
reclaimed, or till the whole of this offence,
were, by one righteous act of vengeance, swept
away altogether from the face of the territory
it deformed.
The Bible is always most full and most ex
planatory on those points of revelation in which
men are personally interested. But it does at
times offer a dim transparency, through which
may be caught a partial view of such designs
and of such enterprises as are now afloat among
the upper orders »of intelligence. It tells us of
a mighty struggle that is now going on for a

203
moral ascendency over the hearts of this world's
population. It tells us that our race were se
duced from their allegiance to God, by the
plotting sagacity of one who stands pre-eminent
against him, among the hosts of a very wide
and extended rebellion. It tells us of the Cap
tain of Salvation, who undertook to spoil him
of this triumph ; and throughout the whole of
that magnificent train of prophecy which points
to him, does it describe the work he had to do,
as a conflict, in which strength was to be put
forth, and painful suffering to be endured, and
fury to be poured upon enemies, and principali
ties to be dethroned, - and all those toils, and
dangers, and difficulties to be borne, which
strewed the path of perseverance that was to
carry him to victory.
But it is a contest of skill, as well as of
strength and of influence. There is the earnest
competition of angelic faculties embarked on
this strugle for ascendency. And while in the
Bible there is recorded, (faintly and partially,
we admit,) the deep and insidious policy that
is practised on the one side;, we. are also told,

204
that on the plan of our 'world's restoration,
there' are lavished all the riches of an unsearch
able wisdom, upon the other. It would appear,
that for the accomplishment of his purpose, the
great enemy of God and of man plied his every
calculation; and brought all the devices of his
deep and settled malignity to bear upon our
species; and thought that could he involve us
in sin, every attribute of the Divinity stood
staked to the banishment of our race from be
yond the limits of the empire of righteousness;
and thus did he practise his invasions on the
moral territory of the unfallen; and glorying
in his success, did he fancy and feel that he had
achieved a permanent separation between the
God who sitteth in heaven, and one at least of
the planetary mansions which he had reared.
The errand of the Saviour was to restore this
sinful world, and have its people re-admitted
within! the circle of heaven's pure and righteous
family. But in the government of heaven, as
well as in the government of earth, there are
certain principles which cannot be compro
mised; and certain maxims of administration

205
which must never be departed from; and a
certain character of majesty and of truth, on
which the taint even of the slightest violation
can never be permitted; and a certain authority
which must be upheld by the immutability of .
all its sanctions, and the unerring fulfilment of
all its wise and righteous proclamations. All
this was in the mind of the archangel, and a
gleam of malignant joy shot athwart him, as he
conceived his project for 'hemming our Unfor
tunate species within the bound of an irrecover
able1 dilemma; and as surely as sin and holiness
could not enter into fellowship, so surely did
he thinks that if man were seduced to diso
bedience, would the truth, and the justice, and
the immutability of God, lay their insurmount
able barriers on the path of his 'future ac
ceptance. It was only in that plan of recovery of which
Jesus Christ was the author and the finisher,
that the great adversary of our species met with
a wisdom which over-matched him. It is true,
that he had reared, in the guilt to which he
seduced us,* a mighty obstacle in the way of this

206
lofty undertaking. But when the grand expe
dient was announced, and the blood of that
atonement* by which sinners are brought nigh,
was willingly offered to be shed for us, and the
eternal Son, to carry this mystery into accom
plishment, assumed our nature — then was the
prince of that mighty rebellion, in which the
fate and the history of our world are so deeply
implicated, in visible alarm for the safety of all
his acquisitions: — nor can the record of this
wondrous history carry forward its narrative,
without furnishing some transient glimpses of a
sublime and a superior warfare, in which, for
the prize of a spiritual dominion over our
species, we may dimly perceive the contest of
loftiest talent, and all the designs of heaven in
behalf of man, met at every point of their
evolution, by the counterworkings of a rival
strength and a rival sagacity.
We there read of a struggle which the Cap
tain of our salvation had to sustain, when the
lustre of the Godhead lay obscured, and the
strength of its omnipotence wras mysteriously
weighed down under the infirmities of our na-

207
ture— -how Satan singled him out, and dared
him to the combat of the wilderness — how all
his wiles and all his influences were resisted —
how he left our Saviour in all the triumphs of
unsubdued loyalty — how the progress of this
mighty achievement is marked by the every
character of a conflict — how many of the gospel.
miracles were so many direct infringements on
the power and empire of a great spiritual re
bellion — how in one precious season of gladness
among the few which brightened the dark
career of our Saviour's humiliation, he rejoiced
in spirit, and gave as the cause of it to his dis
ciples, that "he saw Satan fall like lightning
from heaven" — how the momentary advantages
that were gotten over him, are ascribed to the
agency of this infernal being, who entered the
heart of Judas, and tempted the disciple to be
tray his Master and his Friend. I know that I
am treading on the confines of mystery. I cannot
tell what the battle that he fought. I cannot
compute the terror or the strength of his enemies.
I cannot say, for I have not been told, how it was
that they stood in marshalled and hideous array
against him : — nor can I measure how great the

208
firm daring of his soul, when he tasted that cup
-in all its bitterness, which he prayed might pass
away from him; when with the feeling that he
was forsaken by his God, he trod the Wine-press
alone ; when he entered single-handed upon that
dreary period of agony, and insult, and death*
in which, from the garden to the cross, he had
to bear the burden of a world's atonement. . I
cannot speak in my own language, but I can
say, in the language of the Bible, of the days
and the nights of this great enterprise, that it
was the season of the travail of his soul; that
it was the hour and the power of darkness;
that the work of our redemption, was a work
accompanied by the effort, and the violence,
and the fury of a combat; by all the arduous-
ness of a battle in its progress, and all the
glories of a victory in its termination: and after
he called out that it was finished, after he was
loosed from the prison-house of the grave, after
he had ascended up on high, he is said to have
made captivity captive; and to have spoiled
principalities and powers; and to have seen his
pleasure upon his enemies; and to have made a
show of them openly.

209
I will not affect a wisdom above that which
is Written, by fancying such details of this war
fare as the Bible has not laid before me. But
surely it is no more than being wise up to that
which is written, to assert that in achieving the
redemption of our world, a warfare had to be
accomplished; that upon this subject there was
among the higher provinces of creation, the
keen and the animated conflict of opposing in
terests ; that the result of it involved something
•t
grander and more affecting, than even the fate
of this world's population; that it decided a
question of rivalship between the righteous and
everlasting Monarch of universal being, and
the prince of a great and widely extended re
bellion, of which I neither know how vast is
the magnitude, nor how important and diversi
fied are the bearings: and thus do we gather
from this consideration, another distinct argu
ment, helping us to explain, why on the salva
tion of our solitary species so much attention
appears to have been concentred, and so much
energy appears to have been expended.
But it would appear from the Records of In-
O

210
spiration, that the contest is, not yet ended;
that on the one hand the Spirit of God is em
ployed in making for the truths of Christianity,
a way into the human heart, with all the power
of an effectual demonstration ; that on the other,
there is a spirit now abroad, which worketh in
the children of disobedience; that on the one
hand, the Holy Ghost is calling men out of
darkness into the marvellous light of the: Gos
pel; and that on the other hand, he who is
styled the god of this world, is blinding their
hearts,, lest the light of the gjorious gospel of
Christ should enter into them ; that, they who
are under the dominion of the one, are said to
have overcome,, because greater is he that is in
them than he. that is; in the world;, and. that
they who are under the dominion of the other,
are said to be the children, of the devil, and to
be under his snare,, and to be taken captive by
him at his will. How these respective powers,
do operate, is one question. The fact of their
operation* is another. We abstain from, the
former. We attach ourselves to the latter, and
gather from it, that the prince of darkness still
walketh abroad amongst us; that he is still

211
working his insidious policy, if not with the
vigorous inspiration of hope, at least with the
frantic energies of despair; that while the over
tures of reconciliation are made to circulate
through the world, he is plying all his devices
to deafen and to extinguish the impression of
them; or, in other words, while a process of
invitation and of argument has emanated from
heaven, for reclaiming men to their loyalty —
the process is resisted at all its points, by one
who is putting forth his every expedient, and
wielding a mysterious ascendency, to • seduce
and to enthral them-
To an infidel ear, all this carries the sound
of something wild and visionary along with it.
But though only known through the medium; of
revelation; after it is known, who can fail to
recognise its harmony with the great lineaments
of human experience? Who- has not felt the
workings of a rivalry within him, between the
power of conscience and the power of tempta
tion? Who does not remember those seasons of
retirement, when the calculations of eternity
had gotten a momentary command over the

212
heart; and time, with all its interests and all its
vexations, had dwindled into insignificancy be
fore them? And who does not remember, how
upon his actual engagement with the objects of
time, they resumed a controul, as great and as
omnipotent, as if all the importance of eternity
adhered to them — how they emitted from them
such an impression upon his feelings, as to fix
and to fascinate the whole man into a subser
viency to their influence — how in spite of every
lesson of their worthlessriess, brought home to
him at every turn by the rapidity of the seasons,
and the vicissitudes of life, and the ever-moving
progress of his own earthly career, and the visi
ble ravages of death among his acquaintances
around him, and the desolations of his family,
and the constant breaking up of his system of
friendships, and the affecting spectacle of all
that lives and is in motion, withering and hasten^
ing to the grave;— oh! how comes it, that in
the face of all this experience, the whole eleva
tion of purpose, conceived in the hour of his
better understanding, should be dissipated and
forgotten? Whence.the might, and whence the
mystery of that spell, which so binds and so in-

213
fatuates us to the world? What prompts us so
to embark the whole strength of our eagerness
and of our desires, in pursuit of interests which
we know a few little years will bring to utter
annihilation? Who is it that imparts to them all
the charm and all the colour of an unfailing dura
bility? Who is it that throws such an air of
stability over these earthly tabernacles, as makes
them look to the fascinated eye of man, like
resting-places for eternity? Who is it that so
pictures out the objects of sense, and so magni
fies the range of their future enjoyment, and so
dazzles the fond and deceived imagination, that
in looking onward through our earthly career,
it appears like the vista, or the perspective, of
innumerable ages? He who is called the god of
this world. He who can dress the idleness of
its waking dreams in the garb of reality. He
who can pour a seducing brilliancy over the
panorama of its fleeting pleasures and its vain
anticipations. He who can turn it into an in
strument of deceitfulness; and make it wield
such an absolute ascendency over all the affec
tions, that man become the poor slave of its
idolatries and its charms, puts the authority of

214
conscience, and the warnings of the Word of
God, and the offered instigations of the Spirit
of God, and all the lessons of calculation, and
all the wisdom even of his own sound and sober
experience, away from him.
But, this wondrous contest will come to a
close. Some will return to their loyalty, and
others will keep by their rebellion; and, in the,
day of the winding up of the drama of this
world's history, there will be made manifest to
the myriads of the various orders of creation,
both the mercy and vindicated majesty of the
Eternal. Oh! on that day, how vain will this
presumption of the Infidel astronomy appear,
when the affairs of men come to be examined
in the presence of an innumerable company;
and beings of loftiest nature are seen to crowd
around the judgment-seat; and the Saviour
shall appear in our sky, with a celestial retinue,
who have come with him from afar to witness
all his doings, and to take a deep and solemn
interest in all his dispensations; and the destiny
of our species, whom the Infidel would thus de
tach, in solitary insignificance, from the universe

215
altogether, shall be found to merge and to
mingle with higher destinies — the good to spend
their eternity with angels — the, bad to spend
their eternity with angels — the former to be re
admitted into the universal family of God's
obedient worshippers — the latter to share in the
everlasting pain and ignominy of the defeated
hosts of the rebellious— the people of this planet
to be implicated, throughput the whele train pf
their never-ending history, with the higher
, ranks, and the more extended tribes of intelli
gence: And thus it is, that the Special adminis
tration we now live under, shall be seen to har
monise in its hearings, and to accord in its mag
nificence, with all that extent of nature and of
her territories, which modern science has un
folded.

216

DISCOURSE VII.
ON THE SLENDER INFLUENCE OF MERE TASTE AND
SENSIBILITY, IN MATTERS OF RELIGION.

" And, lo ! thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one
who hath a pleasant voice, and can play w^ll on an instru
ment: for they hear thy words, but they do them not."
Ezekiel xxxiii. 32.
You easily understand how, a taste for music is
one thing, and a real submission to the influence
of religion is another— rhow the ear may be re
galed by the melody of sound, and the heart
may utterly refuse the proper impression of the
sense that is conveyed by it — how the sons and
daughters of the world may, with their every
affection devoted to its perishable vanities, in
hale all the delights of enthusiasm, as they sit
in crowded assemblage around the deep and
solemn oratorio — aye, and whether it be the

217
humility of penitential feeling, or the rapture of
grateful acknowledgment, or the sublime of a
contemplative piety, or the aspiration of pure
and of holy purposes, which breathes throughput
the words of the performance, and gives to it
all the spirit and all the expression by which it
is pervaded; it is a very possible thing, that the
moral, and the rational, and the active man,
may have given no entrance into his bosom for
any of these sentiments; and yet so overpowered
may he be by the charm of the vocal convey
ance through which they are addressed to him,
that he may be made to feel with such an emo
tion, and to weep with such a tenderness, and
to kindle with such a transport, and to glow
with such an elevation, as may one and all carry
upon them the semblance of sacredness.
But might not this semblance deceive him?
Have you never heard any tell, and with com
placency too, how powerfully his devotion was
awakened by an act of attendance on the ora
torio — how his heart, melted and subdued by
the influence of harmony, did homage to all the
religion of which it was the vehicle— how he

'218
was so moved and overborne, that he had to
s^hed the tears of contrition, and to be agitated
by the terrors of judgment, and to receive an
aiwe upon his spirit of the greatness and the
majesty of God — and that wrought up to the
jfty pitch of eternity, he could look down upon
le world, and by the glance of one command-
ag survey, pronounce upon the littleness and
the vanity of all its concerns ? Oh ! it is very
very possible that all this might thrill upon the
ears of the man, and circulate a succession of
solemn and affecting images around his fancy—
and yet that essential principle of his nature,
upon which the practical influence of Christian
ity turns, nfight have met with no reaching and
no subduing efficacy whatever to arouse it. He
leaves the exhibition* as dead in trespasses and
sins as he came to it. Conscience has. not
wakened upon him. Repentance has not turned
him. Faith has not made any positive lodgement
within him of her great and her constraining
realities. He speeds him back to his business
and to his family; and there he plays off the old
man in all the entireness of his uncrucified tem
per, and of his obstinate worldliness, and of all

219
those earthly and unsanctified affections, which
are found to cleave to him with as great tenacity
as ever. He is really and experimentally the very
same man as before — and all those sensibilities
which seemed to bear upon them so much of
the air and unction of heaven, are found to go
iuto dissipation, and be forgotten with the love
liness of the song.
Amid all that illusion which such momentary
visitations of seriousness and of sentiment throw
around the character of man, let us never lose
sight of the test, that "by their fruits ye shall
know them." It is not coming up to this test,
that you hear and are delighted. It is that you
hear and do. This is the ground upon which
the reality of your religion is discriminated now;
and on the day of reckoning, this is the ground
upon which your religion will be judged then;
and that award is to be passed upon you, which
will fix and perpetuate your destiny for ever.
You have a taste for music. This no more im
plies the hold and the ascendency of religion
over you, than that you have a taste for beauti
ful scenery, or a taste for painting, or even a

220
taste for the sensualities of epicurism. But
music may be made to express the glow and the
movement of devotional feeling; and is it say
ing nothing, to say that the heart of him who
listens with a raptured ear, is through the whole
time of the performance, in harmony with such
a movement? Why, it is saying nothing to the
purpose. Music may lift the inspiring note of
patriotism; and the inspiration may be felt; and
it may thrill over the recesses of the soul, to
the mustering up of all its energies; and it may
sustain to the last cadence of the. song, the firm
nerve and purpose of intrepidity; and all this
may be realised upon him, who in the day of
battle, and upon actual collision with, the dan
gers of it, turns out to be a coward. And music
may lull the feelings into unison with piety; and
stir up the inner man to lofty determinations;
and so engage for a time his affections, that as
if weaned from the dust, they promise an im
mediate entrance on some great and elevated
career, which may carry him through his pil
grimage superior to all the sordid and grovelling
enticements that abound in it. But he turns
him to the world, and all this glow abandons

221
him; and the words which he had heard, he
doeth them not; and in the hour of temptation
he turns out to be a deserter from the law of
allegiance; and the test I have now specified
looks hard upon him, and discriminates him
amid all the parading insignificance of his fine
but fugitive emotions, to be the subject both of
present guilt and of future vengeance.
The faithful application of this test would
put to flight a host of other delusions. It may
be carried round amongst all those phenomena
of human character, where there is the exhibi
tion of something associated with religion, but
which is not religion itself. An exquisite relish
for music\s no test of the influence of Chris
tianity. Neither are many other of the exqui
site sensibilities of our nature. When a kind
mother closes the eyes of her expiring babe, she
is thrown into a flood of sensibility, and soothing
to her heart are the sympathy and the prayers
of an attending minister. When a gathering
neighbourhood assemble to the funeral of an
acquaintance, one pervading sense of regret
and tenderness sits on thefaces of the company;

222
and the deep silence, broken only by the solemn
utterance of the man of God, carries a kind of
pleasing religiousness along with if. The sacred
ness of the hallowed day,-, and all the decencies of
its observation, may engage the affections of him
who loves to walk in the footsteps of his father;
and^ every recurring Sabbath may bring to has
bosom, the charm of its regularity and its quiet
ness. Religion has its accompaniments; and
in these, there may be a something to soothe
and to fascinate, even in the absence of the
appropriate influences of religion. The deep
and tender impression of a family-bereavement,
is not religion. The love' of established decen
cies, is not religion. The charm of all that sen-
timentaMsm which is associated with many of
its solemn and affecting services, is not religion.
They may form the distinct folds of its accus
tomed drapery; but they do not, any, or all of
them put together, make up the substance of
the thing itself. A mother's tenderness may
flow most gracefully over the tomb of her de
parted little one; and she may talk the while of
that heaven whither its spirit has ascended;
The man whom death hath widowed of his

223
friend, may abandon himself to the movements
of that grief, which for a time will claim an as
cendency over him ; and, amongst the multitude
of his other reveries, may love to hear of the
eternity, where sorrow and separation are alike
unknown. He who has been trained*, from his
infant days, to remember the Sabbath, may love
the holiness of its aspect; and associate himself
with all its observances ;: and take a delighted
share in the mechanism of its forms. But, let
not these think, because the tastes and the sen
sibilities which engross them, may be blended
with religion, that they, indicate either, its
strength or its existence within them. I recur
to the test. I press its imperious exactipns
upon you. I call for fruit, and demand the
permanency of a religious influence on the
habits and the history. Oh! how many who
take a flattering unction to their souls, when
they think of their amiable feelings^ and, their
becoming observations, with whom, this severe
touch-stone would, like the head of Medusa,
put to flight all their complacency. The afflic
tive dispensation is forgotten — and he on whom
it was laid, is practically as indifferent to God

224
and to eternity as before. The Sabbath services
come to a close; and they are followed by the
same routine of week-day worldhness as before.
In neither the one case nor the other, do we see
more of the radical influence of Christianity,
than in the sublime and melting influence of
sacred music upon the soul; and all this tide of
emotion is found to die away from the bosom,
like the pathos or like the loveliness of a song.
The instances may be multiplied without
number. A man may have a taste for elo
quence, and eloquence the most touching or
sublime may lift her pleading voice on the side
of religion. A man may love to have his un
derstanding stimulated by the ingenuities, or
the resistless urgencies of an argument; and
argument the most profound and the most over-
bearing, may put forth all the might of a con
straining vehemence in behalf of religion. A
man may feel the rejoicings of a conscious ele
vation, when some ideal scene of magnificence
is laid before him ; and where are these scenes
so readily to be met with, as when led to ex
patiate in thought over the track of eternity, or

225
to survey the wonders of creation, or to look to
the magnitude of those great and universal
interests which lie within the compass of reli
gion. A man may have his attention riveted
and regaled by that power of imitative descrip
tion, which brings all the recollections of his
own experience before him; which presents
him with a faithful analysis of his own heart;
which embodies in language such intimacies of
observation and of feeling, as have often passed
before his eyes, or played within his bosom, but
had never been so truly or so ably pictured to
the view of his remembrance. Now, all this
may be done in the work of pressing the duties of
religion; in the work of instancing the applica
tions of religion ; in the work of pointing those
allusions to life and to manners, which manifest
the truth to the conscience, and plant such a
conviction of sin, as forms the very basis of a
sinner's religion. Now, in all these cases, I see
other principles brought into action, and which
may be in a state of most lively and vigorous
movement, and be yet in a state of entire se
paration from the principle of religion. I will
make bold to say, on the strength of these illus-
P

226
trations, that as much delight may emanate
from the pulpit, on an arrested audience beneath
it, as ever emanated from the boards of a thea
tre — aye, and with as total a disjunction of mind
too, in the one case as in the other, from the
essence or the habit of religion, I recur to the
test. I make my appeal to experience; and I
put it to you all, whether your finding upon the
subject do not agree with my saying about it,
that a man may weep, and admire, and have
many of his faculties put upon the stretch of
their most intense gratification — his judgment
established, and his fancy enlivened, and his
feelings overpowered, and his hearing charmed
as by the accents of heavenly persuasion, and
all within him feasted by the rich and varied
luxuries of an intellectual banquet! — Oh! it is
cruel to frown unmannerly in the midst of so
much satisfaction. But I must not forget that
truth has her authority, as well as her sternness;
and she forces me to affirm, that after all this
has been felt and gone through, there might
not be one principle which lies at the turning-
point of conversion, that has experienced a
single movement — not one of its purposes be

227
conceived — not one of its doings be accom
plished — not one step of that repentance, which^
if we have not, we perish, so much as entered
upon — not one announcement of that faith, by
which we are saved, admitted into a real and
actual possession by the inner man. He has
had his hour's entertainment, and willingly does
he award this homage to the performer, that he
hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an
instrument — but, in another hour, it fleets away
from his remembrance, and goes all to nothing,
like the loveliness of a song.
Now, in bringing these Astronomical Dis
courses to a close, I feel it my duty to advert
to this exhibition of character in man. The
sublime and interesting topic which has engaged
us, however feebly it may have been handled;
however inadequately it may have been put in
all its worth, and in all its magnitude before
you; however short the representation of the
speaker, or the conception of the hearers, may
have been of that richness, and that greatness,
and that loftiness, which belong to it; possesses
in itself a charm 'to fix the attention, and to re1-

228
gale the imagination, and to subdue the whole
man into a delighted reverence; and, in a word,
to beget such a solemnity of thought and of
emotion, as "may occupy and enlarge the soul
for hours together, as may waft it away from
the grossness of ordinary life, and raise it to a
kind of elevated calm above all its vulgarities
and all its vexations.
Now, tell me whether the whole of this effect
updn the feelings, may not be formed without
thepresence of religion. Tell me whether there
might not be such a constitution of mind, that
it may both want altogether that principle in
virtue of which the doctrines of Christianity are
admitted into the belief, and the duties of Chris
tianity are admitted into a government over the
practice — and yet, at the very same time, it may
have the faculty of looking abroad over some
scene of magnificence, and of being wrought up
to ecstacy with the sense of all those glories
among which it is expatiating. I want you to
see clearly the distinction between these two.
attributes of the human character. They are,
in truth, as different the one from the other, as

229
a taste for the grand and the graceful of scenery
differs from the appetite of hunger; and the
one may both exist and have a most intense
operation within the bosom of that very indi
vidual, who entirely disowns, and is entirely
disgusted with the other. What! must a man
be converted, ere from the most elevated peak
of some Alpine wilderness, -he become capable
of feeling the force and the majesty of those
great lineaments which the hand of nature has
thrown around him, in the varied forms of pre
cipice, and mountain, and the wave of mighty
forests, and the rush of sounding waterfalls,
and distant glimpses of human territory, and
pinnacles of everlasting snow, and the sweep of
that circling horizon, which folds in its ample
.embrace the whole of this noble amphitheatre?
Tell me whether without the aid of Christianity,
or without a particle of reverence for the only
name given under heaven whereby men can be
saved, a man may not kindle at such a perspec
tive as this, into all the raptures, and into all
the movements of a poetic elevation; and be
able to render into the language of poetry, the
whole of that sublime and beauteous imagery

230
which adorns it: aye, and as if he were tread
ing on the confines of a sanctuary which he has
not entered, may he not mix up with the power
and the enchantment of his description, such
allusions to the presiding genius of the scene;
or to the, still but animating spirit of the soli
tude; or to the speaking silence of some mys
terious character which reigns throughout the
landscape; or, in fine, to that eternal Spirit,
who sits behind the elements he has formed, and
combines them into all the varieties of a wide
and a wondrous creation; might not all this be
said and sung with an emphasis so moving, as
to spread the colouring of piety over the pages
of him who perforins, thus well upon his instru
ment; and yet, the performer himself have a
conscience unmoved., by a single warning of
God's actual communication, and the judgment
unconvinced, and the fears unawakened, and
the life unreformed by it?
Now what is true of a scene on earth, is also
true of that wider and more elevated scene
which stretches over the immensity around it,
into a dark and a distant unknown. Who does

231
not feel an aggrandisement of thought and of
faculty, when he looks abroad over the ampli
tudes of creation — when placed on a telescopic
eminence, his aided eye can find a pathway to
innumerable worlds — when that wondrous field,
over which there had hung for many ages the
mantle of so deep an obscurity, is laid open to
him, and instead of a dreary and unpeopled soli
tude, he can see over the whole face of it such
an extended garniture of rich and goodly habi
tations. Even the Atheist, who tells us that the
universe is self-existent and indestructible — even
he, who instead of seeing the traces of a mani
fold wisdom in its manifold varieties, sees noth
ing in them all but the exquisite structures and
the lofty dimensions of materialism — even he,
who would despoil creation of its God, cannot
look upon its golden suns, and their accompany
ing systems, without the solemn impression of
a magnificence that fixes and overpowers him.
Now, conceive such a belief of God as you all
profess, to dawn upon his understanding. Let
him become as one of yourselves — and so be put
into the condition of rising from the sublime of
matter to the sublime of mind. Let him now

232
learn to subordinate the whole of this mechanism
to the design and authority of a great presiding
Intelligence : and re-assembling all the members
of the universe, however distant, into one family,
let him mingle with his former conceptions of
the grandeur which belonged to it, the concep
tion of that eternal Spirit who sits enthroned
on the immensity of his own wonders, and em
braces all that he has made, within the ample
scope of one great administration. Then will
the images and the impressions of sublimity
come in upon him from a new quarter. Then
will another avenue be opened, through which
a sense of grandeur may find its way into his
soul, and have a mightier influence than ever
to fill, and to elevate, and to expand it. Then
will be established a new and a noble association,
by the aid of which all that he formerly looked
upon- as fair, becomes more lovely; and all that
he formerly looked upon as great, becomes more
magnificent. But willyou believe me, that even
with this accession to his mind of ideas gathered
from the contemplation of the Divinity; even
with that pleasurable glow which steals over his
imagination, when he now thinks him of the

233
majesty of God; even with as much of what
you would call piety, as I fear is enough to
soothe and to satisfy many of yourselves, and
which stirs and kindles within you when you
hear the goings forth of the Supreme set before
you in the terms of a lofty representation ; even
with all this, I say there may be as wide a dis
tance from the habit and the character of god
liness, as if God was still atheistically disowned
by him. Take the conduct of his life and the
currency of his affections ; and you may see as
little upon them of the stamp of loyalty to God,
or of reverence for any one of his authenticated
proclamations, as you may see in him who offers
his poetic incense to the genii, or weeps enrap
tured over the visions of a beauteous mythology.
The sublime of Deity has wrought up his soul
to a pitch of conscious and pleasing elevation —
and yet this no more argues the will of Deity
to have a practical authority over him, than
does that tone of elevation which is caught by
looking at the sublime of a naked materialism.
The one and the other have their little hour of
ascendency over him ; and when he turns him
to the rude and ordinary world, both vanish

234
alike from his sensibilities, as does the loveli
ness of a song. r
To kindle and be elevated by a sense of the
majesty of God, is one thing. It is totally
another thing, to feel a movement of obedience
to the will of God, under the impression of his
rightful authority over all the creatures whom
he has-formed. A man may have an imagina
tion all alive to the former; while the latter
never prompts him to one act of obedience;
never leads him to compare his life with the re
quirements of the Lawgiver; never carries him
from such a scrutiny as this, to the conviction
, of sin ; never whispers such an accusation to
the ear of his conscience, as causes him to
mourn, and to be in heaviness, for the guilt of
his hourly and habitual rebellion; never shuts
him up to the conclusion of the need of a
Saviour; never humbles him to acquiescence in
the doctrine of that revelation, which comes to
his door with such a host of evidence, as even
his own philosophy cannot bid away; never ex
torts a single believing prayer in the name of
Christ, or points a single look, either of trust or

285
of reverence, to his atonement; never stirs any
effective movement of conversion ; never sends
an aspiring energy into his bosom after the aids
of that Spirit, who alone can waken him out of
his lethargies, and by the anointing which re-
maineth, can rivet and substantiate in his prac
tice, those goodly emotions which have hitherto
plied him with the deceitfulness of their mo
mentary visits, and then capriciously abandoned
him. The mere majesty of God's power and great
ness, when offered to your notice, lays hold of
one of the faculties within you. The holiness
of God, with his righteous claim of legislation,
lays hold of another of these faculties. The
difference between them is so great, that the
one may be engrossed and interested to the full,
while the other remains untouched, and in a
state of entire dormancy. Now, it is no matter
what it be that ministers delight to the former
of these two faculties : If the latter be not ar
rested and put on its proper exercise, you are
making no approximation whatever to the right
habit, and character of religion. There are a

236
thousand ways in which we may contrive to re
gale your taste for that which is beauteous and
majestic. It may find its gratification in the
loveliness of a vale, or in the freer and bolder
outlines of an upland situation, or in the terrors
of a storm, or in the sublime contemplations of
astronomy, or in the magnificent idea of a God
who sends forth the wakefulness of his omni
scient eye, and" the vigour of his upholding
hand, throughout all the realms of nature and
of providence, The mere taste of the human
mind may get its ample enjoyment in each and
in all of these objects, or in a vivid representa
tion of them; nor does it make any material
difference, whether this representation be ad
dressed to you from the stanzas of a poem, or
from the recitations of a theatre, or finally from
the discourses and the demonstrations of a pul
pit. And thus it is, that still on the impulse of
the one principle only, people may come in
gathering multitudes to the house of God; and
share with eagerness in all the glow and bustle
of a crowded attendance; and have their every
eye directed to the speaker; and feel a respond
ing movement in their bosom to his many

237
appeals and his many arguments; and carry a
solemn and overpowering impression of all the
services away with them ; and yet, throughout
the whole of this seemly exhibition, not one
effectual knock may have been given at the
door of conscience. The other principle may
be as profoundly asleep, as if hushed into the
insensibility of death. There is a spirit of deep
slumber, it would appear, which the music of
no description, even though attuned to a theme
so lofty as the greatness and majesty of the
Godhead, can ever charm away. Oh! it may
have been a piece of parading insignificance
altogether — the minister playing on his favourite
instrument, and the people dissipating away
their time on the charm and idle luxury of a
theatrical emotion.
The religion of taste, is one thing. The re
ligion of conscience, is another. I recur to the
test. What is the plain and practical doing
which ought to issue from the whole of our ar
gument? If one lesson come more clearly or
more authoritatively out of it than another, it
is the supremacy of the Bible. If fitted to im-

238
press one movement rather than another; it is
that movement of docility, in virtue of which,
man, with the feeling that he has all to learn,
places himself in the attitude of a little child,
before the book of the unsearchable God, Who
has deigned to break his silence, and to trans
mit even to our age of the world, a faithful
record of his own communication. What pro
gress then are you making in this movement?
Are you, or are you not, like new born babes, de*-
siring the sincere milk of the word, that you may
grow thereby? How are you coming on in the
work of casting down your lofty imaginations?
With the modesty of true science, Which is here
at one with the humblest and most penitentiary
feeling which Christianity can aWaken, are you
bending an eye of earnestness on the Bible, and
appropriating its informations, and moulding
your every conviction to its doctrines and its
testimonies? How long, I beseech you, has this
been your habitual exercise? By this time do
you feel the darkness and the insufficiency of
nature? Have you found' your way to the need
of an atonement? Have you learned the might
and the efficacy which are given to the principle

239
of faith? Have you longed with all your ener
gies to realise it? Have you broken loose from
the obvious misdoings of your former history?
Are you convinced of your total deficiency from
the spiritual obedience of the affections? Have
you read of the Holy Ghost, by whom renewed
in the whole desire and character of your mind,
you are led to run with alacrity in the way of
the commandments? Have you turned to its
practical use, the important truth, that he is
given to the believing prayers of all, who really
want to be relieved from the "power both of
secret and of visible iniquity? I demand some
thing more than the homage you have rendered
to the pleasantness of the voice that has been
sounded in your hearing. What I have now to
urge upon you, is the bidding of the voice, to
read, and to reform, and to pray, and, in a
word, to make your consistent step from the
elevations of philosophy, to all those exercises,
whether of doing or of believing, which mark
the conduct of the earnest, and the devoted,
and the subdued, and the aspiring Christian.
This brings under our view, a most deeply

240
interesting exhibition of human nature, which
may often be witnessed among the cultivated
orders of society. When a teacher of Chris
tianity addresses himself to that principle of
justice within us, in virtue of which we feel the
authority of God to be a prerogative which
righteously belongs to him, he is then speaking
the appropriate language of religion, and is ad
vancing its naked and appropriate claim over
the obedience of mankind. He is then urging
that pertinent and powerful consideration, upon
which alone he can ever hope to obtain the
ascendency of a practical influence over the
purposes and the conduct of human beings. It
is only by insisting on the moral claim of God
to a right of government over his creatures,
that he can carry their loyal subordination to
the will of God. Let him keep by this single
argument, and urge it upon the conscience, and
then, without any of the other accompaniments
of what is called Christian oratory, he may
bring convincingly home upon his hearers all
the varieties of Christian doctrine. He may
establish within their minds the dominion of all
that is essential in the faith of the New Testa-

241
ment. He may, by carrying out this principle
of God's authority into all its applications, con
vince them of sin. He may lead them to com
pare the loftiness and spirituality of his law,
with the habitual obstinacy of their own worldly
affections. He may awaken them to the need
of a Saviour. He may urge them to a faithful
and submissive perusal of God's own communi
cation. He may thence press upon them the
truth and the immutability of their Sovereign.
He may work in their hearts an impression of
this emphatic saying, that God is not to be
mocked — that his law must be upheld in all the
significancy of its proclamations — and that either
its severities must be discharged upon the guilty,
or in some other way an adequate provision be
found for its outraged dignity, and its violated
sanctions. Thus may he lead them to flee for
refuge to the blood of the atonement. And he
may farther urge upon his hearers, how, such is
the enormity of sin, that it is not enough to
have found an expiation for it; how its power
and its existence must be eradicated from the
hearts of all, who are to spend their eternity in
the mansions of the celestial; how, for this pur-
Q

242
pose, an expedient is made known to us in the
New Testament; how a process must be de
scribed upon earth, to which there is given the
appropriate name of, sanctification ; how, at the
very commencement of every true course of
discipleship, this process is entered upon with
a purpose in the mind of forsaking all; how
nothing short of a single devotedness to the
will of God, will ever carry us forward through
the successive stages of this holy and elevated
career; how, to help the infirmities of our na
ture, the Spirit is ever in readiness to be given
to those who ask it; and that thus the life of
every Christian becomes a life of entire dedica
tion to him who died for us— a life of prayer,
and .vigilance, and close dependence ; on the
grace of God— -and, as the infallible result of
the plain but powerful and peculiar teaching of
the Bible, a life of vigorous unwearied activity
in the doing of all the commandments.
Now, this I would call the essential business
of Christianity. This is the truth as it is in
Jesus, in its naked and unassociated simplicity.
In the work of urging it, nothing more might

243
have been done, than to present certain views,
which may come with as great clearness, and
freshness, and take as full possession of the
niind of a peasant, as of the mind of a philoso
pher. There is a sense of God, and of the
"^htful allegiance that is due to him. There
are plain and practical appeals to the conscience.
There is a comparison of the state of the heart,
with the requirements of a law which proposes
to take the heart under its obedience. There is
the inward discernment of its coldness about
God; of its unconcern about the matters of
duty and of eternity; of its devotion to the for
bidden objects of sense; of its constant ten
dency to nourish within its own receptacles, the
very element and principle; of rebellion, and in
virtue of this,' to send forth the stream of an
hourly and accumulating disobedience over
those doings of the outer man,' which make up
his visible history in the world. There is such
an earnest and overpowering impression of all
this, as will fix a man down tothe single object
of deliverance; as will make him awake only to
those realities which have a significant and sub
stantial bearing on the case that engrosses him;

244
as will teach him to nauseate all the impertin
ences of tasteful and ambitious description ; as
will attach him to the truth in its simplicity ; as
will fasten his every regard upon the Bible,
where, if he persevere in the work of honest in
quiry, he will soon be made to perceive the ac-
cordancy between its statements, and all those
movements of fear, or guilt, or deeply felt ne
cessity, or conscious darkness, stupidity, and
unconcern about the matters of salvation, which
pass within his own bosom ; in a word, as will
endear to him that plainness of speech, by which
his own experience is set evidently before him,
and that plain phraseology of Scripture, which
is best fitted to bring home to him the doctrine
of redemption, in all the truth and in all the
preciousness of its applicatipns.
Now, the whole of this work maybe going
on, and that too in the wisest and most effectual
manner, without so much as one particle of in
cense being offered to any of the subordinate
principles of the human constitution. There
may be no fascinations of style. There may be
no magnificence of description. There1 may be

245
no poignancy of acute and irresistible argu
ment. There may be a riveted attention on the
part of those whom the Spirit of God hath a^
wakened to seriousness about the plain and af
fecting realities of conversion. Their conscience
may be stricken, and their appetite be excited
for an actual settlement of mind on those points
about which they feel restless and unconfirmed.
Such as these are vastly too much engrossed
with the exigencies of their condition, to be re
pelled by the homeliness of unadorned truth.
And thus it is, that while the loveliness of the
song has done so little in helping on the influ
ences of the gospel, our men of simplicity and
prayer have done so much for it. With a deep
and earnest impression of the truth themselves,
they have made manifest that truth to the con
sciences of others. Missionaries have gone forth
with no other preparation than the simple Word
of the Testimony — and thousands have owned
its power, by being both the hearers of the word
and the doers of it also. They have given us
the experiment in a state of unmingled sim
plicity; and we learn, from the success of their
noble example, that without any one human ex-

246
pedient to charm tiie ear, the heart may, by the
naked instrumentality of the Word of God,
Urged with plainness on those who feel its de
ceit and its worthlessness,* be charmed to an
entire acquiescence in the revealed way of God,
and have impressed upon it the genuine stamp
and character of godliness.
Could the sense of what is due to God, be
effectually stirred up within the human bosom,
it Would lead to a practical carrying of all the
lessons of Christianity. NoW, to awaken this
moral sense, there are certain Simple relations
between the creature and the Creator, which
must be clearly apprehended, and manifested
with power unfb the conscience.: We believe,
that however much philosophers may talk about
the comparative ease of forming those concep
tions which are simple, they' will; if in good
earnest after a right footing with God, soon dis
cover in their own minds, all that darkness and
incapacity about spiritual things, which are so
broadly announced to us in the New Testament.
And oh! it is a deeply interesting spectacle, to
behold a man, who can take a masterly and

247
commanding. survey over the field of some hu
man speculation; who can clear his discriminated
way through all the turns and ingenuities of
some human argument; who by the march of a
mighty and resistless demonstration; can scale
with assured footstep the sublimities of science,
and from his firm stand on the eminence he has
won, can descry some wondrous range of natural
or intellectual truth spread out in subordination
before him: — and yet this very man, may, in
reference to the moral and authoritative claims
of the Godhead, be in a state of utter apathy
and blindness! All his attempts, either at
the spiritual discernment, or the practical im
pression of this doctrine, may be arrested and
baffled by the weight of some great inexplicable
impotency. A man of homely talents, and still
homelier education, may see what he cannot
see, and feel what he cannot feel; and wise and
prudent as he is, there may lie the barrier of an
obstinate and impenetrable concealment, be
tween his accomplished mind, and those things
which are revealed unto babes.
But while his mind is thus utterly devoid of

248
what may be called Ihe main or elemental prin
ciple of theology, he may have a far quicker
apprehension, and have his taste and his feel
ings much more powerfully interested; than the
simple Christian who is beside him, by what
may be called the circumstantials of theology.
He can throw a wider and more rapid glance"
over the magnitudes of creation. He- can be
more delicately alive to the beauties and the
sublimities which abound in it. He can, when
the idea of a presiding God is suggested to him,
have a more kindling sense of his natural ma
jesty; and be able, both in imagination and in
words, to surround. the throne of the Divinity
by the blazonry of more great, and splendid,
and elevating images. And yet, with all those
powers of conception which he does possess, he
may not possess that on which practical Chris*
tianity hinges. The moral relation between him,
and God, may neither be effectively perceived,
nor faithfully proceeded on. Conscience may
be in a state of the most entire dormancy, and
the man be regaling himself with the magnifi
cence of God, while he neither loves God,* nor
believes God, nor obeys God.

249
And here -I cannot but remark, how much
effect and simplicity go together in the annals
of Moravianism. The men of tnis truly in
teresting denomination, address themselves ex
clusively to that principle of our nature, on
which the proper influence of Christianity turns.
Or, in other words, they take up the subject of
the gospel message — that message devised by
him who knew what was in man, and who,
therefore, knew how to make the right and the
suitable application to man. They urge the
plain Word of the Testimony; and they pray
for a blessing from on high ; and that thick im
palpable veil, by which the god of this world
blinds the hearts of men who believe not, lest
the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should
enter into them — that veil, which no power of
philosophy can draw aside, gives way to the de
monstration of the Spirit; and thus it is, that a
clear perception of Scriptural truth, and all the
freshness and permanency of its moral influences j
are to be met with among men who have just
emerged from the rudest and the grossest bar
barity. Oh ! when one looks at the number and
the greatness of their achievements— when he

. 250
thinks of the; change they have made on ma
terials so coarse and so unpromising— wheti" he
eyes the villages theyhaveformed— and around
the whole of that engaging perspective by which
they have chequered and relieved the grim soli
tude of the desert, he witnesses the love, and
listens to the piety of reclaimed savages; — who
wOuld not long to be in possession of the charm
by which they have wrought this wondrous trans
formation—who would not willingly exchange
for it all the parade of human eloquence, and all
the confidence of human argument — and for the
wisdom of winning souls, who is there that
would not rejoice to throw the loveliness of the
song, and all the insignificancy of its passing
fascinations away from him?
And yet it is right that every cavil against
Christianity should be met, and every argument
for it be exhibited, and all the graces and sub
limities of its doctrine be held out to their
merited admiration. And if it be trne, as it
certainly is, that throughout the whole of this
process, a man may be carried rejoicingly along
from the mere indulgence of his taste, and the

251
mere play and exercise of his understanding;
while conscience is untouched, and the supre
macy of moral claims upon the heart and the
conduct is practically disowned by him — it is
farther right that this should be adverted to;
and that such a melancholy unhingement in the
constitution of man should be fully laid open;
and that he should be driven out of the seduc
tive complacency which he is so apt to cherish,
merely because he delights in the loveliness of
the song; and that he should be urged with the
imperiousness of a demand which still remains
unsatisfied, to turn him from the corrupt indif
ference of nature, and to become personally a
religious man; and that he should be assured
how all the gratification he felt in listening to
the word which respected the kingdom of God,
will be of no avail, unless that kingdom come to
himself in power — that it will only go to heigh
ten the perversity of his character — that it will
not extenuate his real and practical ungodliness,
but will serve most fearfully to aggravate the
condemnation of it.
With a religion so argumentable as ours, it

252
may be easy to gather out of it a feast for the
human understanding. With a religion so mag
nificent as ours, it may be easy to gather out of
it a feast for the human imagination. But with
a religion so humbling, and so strict, and so
spiritual, it is not easy to mortify the pride; or
to quell the strong enmity of nature; or to ar
rest the currency of the affections; or to turn
the constitutional habits; or to pour a new com
plexion over the moral history; or to stem the
domineering influence of things seen and things
sensible; or to invest faith with: a practical su
premacy; or to give its objects such a vivacity
of influence as shall overpower the near and
the hourly impressions, that are ever emanating
upon man from a seducing world. It is here
that man feels himself treading upon the limit
of his helplessness. It is here that he sees where
the strength of nature ends; and the power of
grace must either be put forth, or leave him to
grope his darkling way, without one inch of
progress toward the life and the substance of
Christianity. It is here that a barrier rises on
the contemplation of the inquirer — the barrier of
separation between the carnal and the spiritual,

253
and on which he may idly waste the every
energy which belongs to him, in the enterprise
of surmounting it. It is here, that after having
walked the round of nature's acquisitions, and
lavished upon the truth all his ingenuities, and
surveyed it in its every palpable character of
grace and majesty, he will still feel himself on
a level with the simplest and most untutored of
the species. He needs the power of a living
manifestation. He needs the anointing which
remaineth. He needs that which fixes and per
petuates a stable revolution upon the; character,
and in virtue of which he may be advanced
from the state of one who hears, and is -de
lighted, to the' state of one who hears, and is a
doer. Oh ! how strikingly is the experience even
of vigorous and accomplished nature at one ;on
this point with the announcements of revela
tion, that to work this: change, there must be
the putting forth of a peculiar agency; andthat
it is an agency, which, withheld from the exer
cise of loftiest talent, is often brought down: on
an impressed audience, through the humblest of
all instrumentality, with the ; demonstration of
the Spirit and with power.

254
Think' it not enough, that you carry in your
bosom an expanding sense of the magnificence
of creation. But pray for a subduing sense of
the authority of the Creator. Think it not
enough, that with the justness of a philosophi
cal discernment, you have traced that boundary
which hems in all the possibilities of human at
tainment, and have found that all beyond it is
a dark and fathomless unknown. But let this
modesty of science be carried, as in consistency
it ought, to the question of revelation, and let
all the antipathies of nature be • schooled to ac
quiescence in the authentic testimonies of the
Bible. Think it not enough, that you have
looked with sensibility and wonder at the re
presentation of God throned in immensity, yet
combining with the vastness of his entire super
intendence, a most thorough inspection into all
the minute and countless diversities of exist
ence. Think of your own heart as one of
these diversities; and that he ponders all its
tendencies; and has an eye upon all its move
ments; and marks all its waywardness; and, God
pf judgment as he is, records its every secret,
and its every sin, in the book of his remem-

255
brance. Think it not enough, that you have
been led to associate a grandeur with the salva
tion of the New Testament, when made to un
derstand that it draws upon it the regards of
an arrested universe. How is it arresting your
own mind? What has been the earnestness of
your personal regards towards it? And tell me,
if all its faith, and all its repentance, and all its
holiness, are not disowned by you? Think it
not enough, that you have felt a sentimental
charm when angels were pictured to your fancy
as beckoning you to their mansions, and anxious
ly looking to the every symptom of your grace
and reformation. Oh! be constrained by the
power of all this tenderness, and yield your
selves up in a practical obedience to the call of
the Lord God merciful and gracious. Think it
not enough, that you have shared for a moment
in the deep and busy interest of that arduous
conflict which is now going on for a moral
ascendency over the species. Remember that
the conflict is for each of you individually; and
let this alarm you into a watchfulness against
the power of every temptation, and a cleaving
dependence upon him through whom alone you

256
will be more than conquerors. Above all, forget
not, that while you only hear and are delighted,
you are still under nature's powerlessness and
nature's condemnation — and that the foundation
is not laid, the mighty and essential change is
not accomplished, the transition from death
unto life is not undergone, the saving faith
is not formed, nor the passage taken from dark
ness to the marvellous light of the gospel, till
you are both hearers of the word and doers also.
"For if any be a hearer of the word and not a
doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural
face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and
goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what
manner of man he was."

APPENDIX.

The writer of these Discourses, has drawn
up the following compilation of passages from
Scripture, as serving to illustrate or to confirm
the leading arguments which have been em
ployed in each separate division of his subject.

DISCOURSE I.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. —
Gen. i. 1.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the
the host of them. — Gen. ii. 1.
Behold the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, is the
.Lord's thy God, the earth also, with all that therein js. —
Deut. x. 14-.
There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth
upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the
sky. — Deut. xxxiii. 26.
And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord, and said, 0 Lord
God of Israel, which dwellest between the cherubims, thou
art the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the
earth; thou hast made heaven and earth.— 2 Kings xix. 15.
R

258
For all the gods of the people are idols: but the Lord
made the heavens. — 1 Chron. xvi. 26.
Thou, even thou, art Lord alone: thou hast made heaven,
the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all
things that are therein, the seas and all that is therein; and
thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth
thee. — Neh. ix. 6.
Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon
the waves of the sea; which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and
Pleiades, and the chambers of the south.— Job ix. 8, 9.
He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and
hangeth the earth upon nothing.— Job xxvi. 7.
By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens. — Job xxvi. IS.
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament
showeth his handy -work. — Psalm xix. 1 .
By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all
the host of them by the breath of his mouth. — Psalm
xxxiii. 6.
Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth ; and the
heavens are the work of thy hands.- — Psalm cii. 25.
Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment ; who
stretchest out the heavens like a curtain.— Psalm civ. 2.
He appointed the moon for seasons ; the sun knoweth his
going down  Psalm civ. 19.
You are blessed of the Lord which made, heaven and
earth. The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord's:; but
the earth hath he given to the children of men.— Psalm cxv.
15, 16. <
My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and
earth.— Psalm cxxi. 2. . *

259
Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven
and earth — Psalm cxxiv. 8.
The Lord that made heaven and earth, bless thee out of
Zion. — Psalm cxxxiv. 3.
Which made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that
therein is. — Psalm cxlvi. 6.
The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth ; by under
standing hath he established the heavens. — Prov. iii. 19.
Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand,
and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the
dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains
in scales, and the hills in a balance  Isa. xl. 12.
It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the
inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out
the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent
to dwell in  Isa. xl. 22.
Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the heavens,
and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and
that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the
people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein. — Isa.
xlii. 5.
Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, and he that formed
thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things ;
that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth
abroad the earth by myself. — Isa. xliv.- 24.
I have made the earth, and created man upon it; I, even
my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host
have I commanded  Isa. xlv. 12.
For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, God
himself that formed the earth and made it, he hath estab-

260
lished it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhab
ited  Isa. xlv. 18.
Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth, and
my right hand hath spanned the heavens ; when I call unto
them, they stand up together — Isa. xlviii. 13.
He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established
the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens
by his discretion. — Jer. x. 12.
Ah Lord God! behold, thou hast made the heaven and
the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and
there is nothing too hard for thee.— Jer. xxxii. 17.
He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established
the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heaven
by his understanding. — Jer. Ii. 15.
It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, and hath
founded his troop in the earth; he that calleth for the waters
of the sea,, and poureth them out upon the face of the
earth, The- Lord is his name. — Amos ix. 6.
We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto
you, that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living
God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all
things that are therein. — Acts xiv. 15.
Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom
he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made
the worlds. — Heb. i. 2.
Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of
the earth ; and the heavens are the work of thine hands.—
Heb. i. 10.
Through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed
by the word of God.— Heb. xi. 3.

261

DISCOURSE II.
The secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but
those things which are revealed belong unto us, and to our
children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law. —
Deut. xxix. 29.
I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit
my cause; Which doeth great things and unsearchable;
marvellous things without number. — Job v. 8, 9.
Which doeth great things past finding out; yea, and won
ders without number. — Job ix. 10.
Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find
out the Almighty unto perfection? — Job xi. 7.
Hast thou heard the secret of God? and dost thou restrain
wisdom to thyself? — Job xv. 8.
Lo, these are parts of his ways ; but how little a portion
is heard of him? but the thunder of his power who can un
derstand? — Job xxvi. 14.
Behold, God is great, and we know him not; neither can
the number of his years be searched out  Job xxxvi. 26.
God thundereth marvellously with his voice; great things
doeth he, which we cannot comprehend.— Job xxxvii. 5.
Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out: he is
excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of
justice. — Job xxxvii. 23.
Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters,
and thy footsteps are not known. — Psalm lxxvii. 19.
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and his
greatness is unsearchable. — Psalm cxlv. 3.

262
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your
ways my ways, saith the Lord. , For as the heavens are
higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your
ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. — Isa. lv. 8, 9.
Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and be'
come as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom
of heaven. — Matth. xviii. 3.
Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the
kingdom of God as a little child, shall in no wise enter
therein. — Luke xviii. 17.
0 the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and know
ledge of God ! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his
ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the
Lord? Or who hath been his counsellor? — Rom. xi. 33, 34.
Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you
seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool,
that he may be wise  1 Cor. Hi. 18.
For if a man think himself to be something, when he is
nothing, he deceiveth himself. — Gal. vi. 3.
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and
vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments
of the world, and not after Christ. — Col. ii. 8.
O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy fatust,
avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of
science falsely so called  1 Tim. vi. 20.

263

DISCOURSE III.
But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, the
heaven, and heaven of heavens, cannot contain thee; how
much less this house that I have builded? Yet have thou
respect unto the prayer of thy servant, and to his supplica
tion, O Lord my God, to hearken unto the cry and to the
prayer which thy servant prayeth before thee to-day : That
thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day,
even toward the place of which thou hast said, My name
shall be there; that thou nrayest hearken unto the prayer
which thy servant shall make toward this place. — 1 Kings
viii. 27, 28, 29.
For lie looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under
the whole heaven. — Job xxviii. 24.
For his eyes are upon the ways of man, and he seeth all
his goings. — Job xxxiv. 21.
Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the
lowly.— -Psalm cxxxviii. 6.
O Lord thou hast searched me and known me. Thou
knowest my down-sitting and mine up-rising: thou under-
standest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path
and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord ! thou
knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and be
fore, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too
wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither
shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy
presence ? — Psalm cxxxix. 1 — 7.

264
How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God!
how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they
are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am
still with thee  Psalm cxxxix. 17, 18.
The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the
evil and the good.— Prov. xv. 3.
Can any hide himself in secret places, that I shall not see
him? saith the Lord: do not I fill heaven and earth? saith
the Lord. — Jer. xxiii. 24.
Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do
they reap, nor gather into barns ; yet your heavenly Father
feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? And
why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the
field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon, in all his
glory, was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if
God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and
to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more
clothe you, O ye of little faith? — Matth. vi. 26. 28, 29, 30.
But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.—
Matth. x. 30.
Neither is there any creature that Is not manifest in his
sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of
him with whom we have to do. — Heb. iv. 13.

265

DISCOURSE IV.
And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth,
and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels
of God ascending and descending on it  Gen. xxviii. 12.
For a thousand years in thy sight, are but as yesterday
when it is past, and as a watch in the night. — Psalm xc. 4.
Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth
beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and
the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell
therein, shall die in Uke manner ; but my salvation shall be
for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished. — Isa.
Ii. 6.
For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father
with his angels; and then he shall reward every man accord
ing to his works. — Matth. xvi. 27.
When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all
the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne
of his glory. — Matth. xxv. 31.
Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before
men, him shall the Son of Man also confess before the
angels of God. But he that denieth me before men, shall
be denied before the angels of God. — Luke xii. 8, 9.
And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you,
hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of
God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. —
John i. 51.
We are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and
to men. — 1 Cor. iv. 9.

266
Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given
him a name which is above every name. That at the name
of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and
things in earth, and things under the earth ; And that every
tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory
of God the Father.— Phil. ii. 9, 10, 11.
When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with
his mighty angels.-"-2 Thess. i. 7.
And without controversy great. is. the mystery of godli
ness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit,
seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in
the world, received up into glory — 1 Tim. iii. 16.
I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and
the elect angels, that thou observe these things. — 1 Tim.
v. 21.
And again when he bringeth in the first-begotten into the
world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him.
—Heb. i. 6.
But ye are come unto Mount Zion, dnd unto the city of
the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumer
able company of angels, To the general assembly and church
of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God
the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,
And to Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant  Heb.
xii. 22, 23, 24.
But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one
day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand
years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his
promise, as some men count slackness ; but is long-suffering
to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all

267
should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will
come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall
pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt
with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are
therein, shall be burnt up. — 2 Peter iii. 8, 9, 10.
And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon
the earth, lifted up his hand to heaven, And sware by him
that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven and the
things that therein are, and the earth and the things that
therein are, and the sea and the things which are therein,
that there should be time no longer. — Rev. x. 5, 6.
And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud
voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and re
ceive his mark in his forehead or in his hand, The same
shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured
out without mixture into the cup of his indignation ; and he
shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence
of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb. — Rev.
xiv. 9, 10.
And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it,
from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and
there was found no place for them. — Rev. xx. 11.

DISCOURSE V.
And Nathan departed unto his house: and the Lord struck
the child that Uriah's wife bare unto David, and it was very
sick. David therefore besought God for the child : and
David fasted, and went in and lay all night upon the earth.

268
And the elders of his house arose, and went to him, to raise
him up from the earth : but he would not, neither did he
eat bread with them. And it came to pass on the seventh
day, that the child died. And the servants of David feared
to tell him that the child was dead; for they said, Behold,
while the child was yet alive, we spake unto him, and he
would not hearken unto our voice; how will he then vex
himself, if we tell him that the child is dead? But when
David saw that his servants whispered, David perceived that
the child was dead : therefore David said unto his servants,
Is the child dead? And they said, he is dead. Then David
arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself, and
changed his apparel, and came into the house of the Lord,
and worshipped : then he came to his own house : and, when
he required, they set bread before him, and he did eati Then
said his servants unto him. What thing is this that thou hast
done? Thou didst fast and weep for the child while it was
alive: but when the child was dead, thou didst rise and eat
bread. And he said, while the child was yet alive, I fasted
and wept: for I said, who can tell whether God, will be
gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead,
wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again ? I shall
go to him, but he shall not return to me. — 2 Sam. xii. 15 —
23. The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that
fear him, and delivereth them. — Psalm xxxiv. 1.
For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep
thee in all thy ways. — Psalm xci. 11.
And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a
trumpet; and they shall gather together his elect from the

269
four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. — Matth.
xxiv. 31.
Likewise, I say unto you, There is joy in the presence of
the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. — Luke
xv. 10.
Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister
for them who shall be heirs of salvation? — Heb. i. 14.

DISCOURSE VI.
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness,
to be tempted of the devil  Matth. iv. 1.
The enemy that sowed them is the devil ; the harvest is
the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. The
Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall
gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them
which do iniquity  Matth. xiii. 39. 41.
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, De
part from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for
the devil and his angels.— Matth. xxv. 41.
And in the synagogue there was a man which had a spirit
of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud voice, saying,
Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of
Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who
thou art : the Holy One of God. — Luke iv. 33, 34.
Those by the way-side are they that hear ; then cometh
the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest
they should believe and be saved. — Luke viii. 12.

270
But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, Every
kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation ; and
a house divided against a house, falleth. If Satan also be
divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? be
cause ye say that I cast out devils through Beelzebub—
Luke xi. 17, 18.
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your
father ye will do: he was a murderer from the beginning;
and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is
a liar, and the father of it. — John viii. 44.
And supper being ended, (the devil having now put into
the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him.) —
John xiii. 2.
But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart
to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price
of the land  Acts v. 3.
To open. their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to
light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may
receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them
which are sanctified by faith that is in me— Acts xxvi. 18.
And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet
shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
Amen. — Rom. xvi. 20.
Lest Satan should get an advantage of us : for we are not
ignorant of his devices  2 Cor. ii. 11.
In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of
them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel
of Christ, who is- the image of God, should shine unto them.
2 Cor. iv. 4.

271
Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course
ef this world, according to the prince of the power of the
air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of dis
obedience. — Eph. ii. 2. r
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not
against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against
powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,
against spiritual wickedness in high places. — Eph. vi. 11,
12. For some are already turned aside after Satan  1 Tim.
v. 15.
Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and
blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that
through deatli he might destroy him that had the power of
death, that is the devil. — Heb. ii. 14.
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil,
and he will flee from you. — James iv. 7.
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil,
as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may de-.
vour: Whom resist, stedfast in the faith, knowing that the
same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are
in the world  1 Pet. v. 8, 9.
He that committeth sin, is of the devil ; for the devil sin-
neth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God
was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the
devil. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of
the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God,
neither he that loveth not his brother. — 1 John iii. 8. 10.

272
Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them ;
because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the
world. — 1 John iv. 4.
And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left
their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains,
under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day. —
Jude 6.
He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white
raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of
life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before
his angels. — Rev. iii. 5.
And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels
fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his
angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found
any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out,
that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which de-
ceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and
his angels were cast out with him. Therefore rejoice, ye
heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters
of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto
you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath
but a short time. — Rev. xii. 7, .8, 9. 12.
And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which
is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.
And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be
loosed out of his prison. And the devil that deceived them
was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast
and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and
night, for ever and ever  Rev. xx. 2, 7, 10.

273

DISCOURSE VII.
Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and
doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built
his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the
floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house ;
and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every
one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not,
shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house
upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods
came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house ; and it
fell: and great was the fall of it. — Matth. vii. 24—271
At that time, Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O
Father! Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid
these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed
them unto babes. — Matth. xi. 25.
Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drank in
thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets. But he
shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are: depart
from me all ye workers of iniquity. — Luke xiii. 26, 27. .
For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but
the. doers of the law shall be justified. — Rom. ii. 13.
And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with ex
cellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the
testimony of God. . For I determined not to know any thing
among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified. And my
speech. and my preaching was not with enticing words of
man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of,
power. That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of
S

274
men, but in the power of God: Now we have received not
the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that
we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
Which thjngs also we speak, not in the words which man's
wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; com
paring spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are
foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because
they are spiritually discerned. — 1 Cor. ii. 1, 2. 4, 5. 12,
13, 14.
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. —
1 Cor. iii. 19.
For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.—
1 Cor. iv. 20.
Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle
of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the
Spirit of the living God ; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy
tables of the heart. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves
to think any thing as of ourselves ; but our sufficiency is of
God; Who also hath made us able ministers of the New Tes
tament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter
killeth, but the spirit giveth life  2 Cor. iii. 3. 5, 6.
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of
glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revela
tion in the knowledge of him: The eyes of your understand
ing being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope
of his 'calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheri
tance in the saints, And what is the exceeding greatness of
his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working
of his mighty power — Eph. i. 17, 18, 19.

275
Andlyou hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses
and sins. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ
Jesus unto good works. — Eph. ii. 1. 10.
For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also
in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance. —
1 Thes. i. 5.
Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that
we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures.
But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only,, de
ceiving yourselves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and
not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face
in a glass. For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way,
and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and con-
tinueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer
of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. — James
i. 18. 22—25.
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an
holy nation, a pecuhar people, that ye should show forth the
praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his
marvellous light — 1 Pet.ii. 9.
But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know
all things.
But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth
in you: and ye need not that any man teach you: but as
the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth,
and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide
in him. — 1 John ii. 20. 27.
THE END.

3 9002 08867 6243

TT

Vm