by the sacrifice of himself upon the cross; and thus to remove all those impediments which spring from the character of God to acceptance in his sight, and to restore them to the enjoyment of his eternal favour. He gave himself a sacrifice on the altar of justice, that a free passage might be opened to the favour of his heavenly Father without any impeachment of the Divine character: "that he might be just, and yet the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus."

What movements are in your minds, my brethren, with respect to this great object at this time? Are they stationary, or are they moving in a right or a wrong direction? Are you under the guidance of Christ, seeking increased acquaintance with him, aspiring after higher degrees of resemblance to him, fixing your hopes more firmly upon his promises? Then all things will be favourable to you; "the world, or life, or death, things present, or things to come, all are yours." You have obeyed from the heart the call of the gospel; you have forsaken the world; have become dead to it before you are called to leave it; and have laid up treasure in heaven, having trusted your souls for safety to the Divine Redeemer; "you know whom you have believed, and are persuaded that he is able to keep that which you have committed unto him until that day.". But if your minds are engaged in a contrary direction; if you are seeking happiness in the things of this world, living in the neglect of God, never raising your thoughts to the contemplation of the Supreme Good,―if, having rejected the great salvation, you are content to lie under the weight of unacknowledged, and therefore unpardoned guilt,-yet, bear with me while I remind you that you must have a meeting with God; you must see the face of that Divine Being whose authority you have spurned, and feel the anger of that Divine Redeemer whom you have rejected. You will, if you persist in this course, hear him pronounce the fearful sentence, " Those mine enemies that would not have me to reign over them, bring them hither and slay them before me:" " Depart from me, ye that work iniquity."

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Blessed be God, there are those now present who are placing their affections habitually on the great Supreme, and uniting themselves, more and more closely, to him by faith in the Son of God. Let such persons rejoice in the prospects before them. The interruptions which arise from your corporeal state will speedily terminate; the flesh shall then no longer lust against the spirit, nor the spirit against the flesh; but you will do the things that you would." You have preferred the interests of the mind to those of the body; the service of Jesus Christ, and the prospects of eternity, to all sublunary good. You are approaching nearer and nearer to the Chief Good; you are hungering and thirsting after righteousness; and you shall certainly be satisfied. God approves your choice, and will assist your infirmities; "he will strengthen you with all might by his Spirit in your inner man;" will "work in you to will and to do of his own good pleasure;" and enable you to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling."

"They that sow to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption;

they that sow to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." Let us make continual progress in Christian virtue. Every act of sin has a tendency to misery. Every effort to subdue corruption, and to live to the will of God, is a seed which, by God's grace, will bring forth fruit to everlasting life. By patient continuance in well-doing, let us seek for glory, honour, and immortality; for to such God will assuredly recompense eternal life: but to those that are disobedient, and do not obey the truth, "indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish." "On the wicked he will rain fire and brimstone, and am horrible tempest; this shall be the portion of their cup."*

II.

THE GLORY OF GOD IN CONCEALING.

PROVERBS XXV. 2.—It is the glory of God to conceal a thing.†

[PREACHED AT Cambridge, serTEMBER, 1826.]

IT is difficult to say whether the glory of God appears more in what he displays, or in what he conceals, of his operations and designs. Were he to conceal every thing from our view, it would be impossible that any glory could result to him from the sentiments and actions of his creatures. From entire ignorance nothing could arise, no medium of intercourse could be established between the creature and the Creator. In the total absence of the knowledge of God, religion must be totally excluded and unknown. But it is by a partial communication of himself, which the Divine Being might, if he pleased, in various degrees extend and increase beyond the present measure, that he has in the highest degree consulted his honour and manifested his wisdom. If there were no light, we should sink into a state of irreligious doubt and despair; if there were no darkness, we should be in danger of losing that reverential sense of his infinite majesty so essential to religion, and of impiously supposing that the Almighty is such a one as ourselves. But a temperature of mingled light and obscurity, a combination of discovery and concealment, is calculated to produce the most suitable impressions of the Divine excellence on the minds of fallen creatures. When God was pleased to favour his ancient people with a supernatural display of his presence, by a visible symbol, during their journey through the wilderness, it wore this twofold aspect it was a pillar of cloud and of fire, dark in the daytime and luminous in the night; and when he conducted them through the Red Sea, he turned the bright side of the cloud towards the camp of

* Rom. ii. 7-9; Ps. xi. 6.

From the notes of Joshua Wilson, Esq.

Israel, and the gloomy side towards the Egyptians, by whom they were pursued.*

When he descended on Mount Sinai, the token of his presence was a mass of thick and dark clouds, penetrated at intervals by flashes of lightning. On the third day, in the morning, we are informed, there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount: and, it is added, "the mount was altogether in a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace." When Solomon had finished his temple, the manifestation which the Deity made of himself, in taking possession of it and consecrating it to his service, was of the same character. No sooner had the priest gone out of the holy place, than the cloud filled the house of the Lord; and "the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord." The first indication of the Divine presence was the overspreading of thick darkness, which afterward subsided, and unfolded itself gradually, till it terminated in an insufferable splendour. Upon observing this, Solomon, at the commencement of his celebrated prayer, used these words: "The Lord said that he would dwell in the thick darkness." If God dwells in light inaccessible, he equally makes darkness his dwelling-place,-"his pavilion dark waters and thick clouds of the sky." "Clouds and darkness," says David, "are round about him; righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne." In this view of the character and dispensations of the Almighty, the Psalmist probably alludes to those sensible appearances of his presence which are recorded in his ancient oracles.

At our Saviour's transfiguration, the three disciples retained their composure until the cloud appeared; for they knew that to be the symbol of the immediate presence of the Deity. "They feared," we are told, "when they entered into the cloud;" and it was thence the voice proceeded, saying, "This is my beloved Son, hear ye him.” These representations are in perfect harmony with the doctrine of the passage under our present consideration, in which the wisest of men, speaking by inspiration, informs us that "it is the glory of God to conceal a thing." He does it with a design to promote his glory, being by necessity his own ultimate and final end.

There are two observations naturally suggested by these words:I. The Divine Being is accustomed to conceal much.

II. In this he acts in a manner worthy of himself, and suited to display his glory.

I. We shall specify some of the instances in which God conceals things.

1. In relation to his own nature and manner of existence.

His essence is altogether hidden from the most profound investigation, the most laborious research, the most subtile penetration of his creatures. With respect to this, it may be said, "Who by searching can find out God; who can find out the Almighty to perfection?" We know that he possesses certain attributes, (which we distinguish by † 1 Kings viii. 12.

*Exod. xiv. 19, 20.

different names drawn from analogous excellences among men), exclusive of all limit or imperfection found in human nature. We ascribe to him every idea of virtue and spiritual beauty, exalted to infinite perfection. But how the Divine Being himself exists in an essential and eternal nature of his own, without beginning as well as without end, how he can be present at the same moment in every point of illimitable space, without excluding any one of his creatures from the room it occupies,-how, unseen, unfelt by all, he can maintain a pervading and intimate acquaintance and contact with all parts and portions of the universe,-how he can be at once all eye, all ear, all presence, all energy, yet interfere with none of the perceptions and actions of his creatures, this is what equally baffles the mightiest and the meanest intellect; this is the great mystery of the universe, which is at once the most certain and the most incomprehensible of all things; -a truth at once enveloped in a flood of light and an abyss of darkness! Inexplicable itself, it explains all besides: it casts a clearness on every question, accounts for every phenomenon, solves every problem, illuminates every depth, and renders the whole mystery of existence as perfectly simple as it is otherwise perfectly unintelligible, while itself alone remains in impenetrable obscurity! After displacing every other difficulty, it remains the greatest of all, in solitary, unsurmountable, unapproachable grandeur! So truly "clouds and darkness are round about him." "He maketh darkness his secret habitation ; his pavilion to cover him, thick clouds."

His perfections are impressed on the works of nature, but in such a manner that we learn them only by inference. We ascend from effects to causes; from the marks of contrivance and design, to the necessary existence of an Almighty Contriver. But what sort of being he is, and what is the nature of his contact with his creatures, must, in the present state at least, remain an unfathomable mystery. We are utterly at a loss in all such speculations; yet this affords no diminution of the motives of piety. Our belief in the being of a God is the belief of a profound mystery. The very idea of such a Being would appear incredible were it not that it is necessary, because the greatest absurdities would flow from supposing the contrary, Nothing can be accounted for unless we admit the existence of a causeless Cause a presiding Governor of the universe. We are compelled therefore to choose the less difficulty of the two; or rather to choose difficulty instead of impossibility, mystery instead of absurdity and hence we repose on this grand truth.

2. The Divine Being observes the same method of concealment in a great variety of respects, with regard to the structure and constitution of his works. The scenes of nature lie open to our view; they solicit our senses, and are adapted to impress themselves in a most lively manner upon our minds. "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork." We cannot look around us without beholding, not only the works themselves, but evident traces of that matchless wisdom, power, and goodness whence they sprang. Still, the mysteries of nature, with regard to the

essences of things, and indeed to a multitude of subtile operations, are kept in a kind of sacred reserve, and elude the utmost efforts of philosophy to surprise them in their concealments and bring them to light. While Philosophy goes on from step to step in the march of her discoveries, it seems as if her grandest result was the conviction how much remains undiscovered; and while nations in a ruder state of science have been ready to repose on their ignorance and error, or to confound familiarity with knowledge, the most enlightened of men have always been the first to perceive and acknowledge the remaining obscurity which hung around them; just as, in the night, the farther a light extends, the wider the surrounding sphere of darkness appears. Hence it has always been observed, that the most profound inquirers into nature have been the most modest and humble. So convinced was Socrates, the chief luminary of the ancient world, of the great obscurity attending all such inquiries, that he abandoned the search of nature, and confined his disquisitions to moral questions, and rules for the conduct of life. The same illustrious man declared, that he knew no reason why the oracle of Delphos pronounced him to be the wisest of men, except it was that, being conscious of his ignorance, he was willing to confess that he knew nothing. Newton, the greatest philosopher whom the modern world has known, declared, speaking of a distinguished contemporary from whose genius he augured vast discoveries, but who died in early life, (the celebrated Cotes), "If that young man had lived, we should have known something." In so modest a manner did he advert to his own imperfect knowledge of that science with which he had attained such prodigious acquaintance as to have become the pride and wonder of the world! Those that have devoted themselves to an investigation of the laws of nature find, in a great variety of the most common productions, sufficient to engage their inquiries and employ their faculties: they perceive that the meanest work of God is inexhaustible,-contains secrets which the wisdom of man will never be able to penetrate. They are only some of the superficial appearances and sensible properties with which we are familiar. Substances and essences we cannot reach. The secret laws which regulate the operations of nature we cannot unveil. Indeed, we have reason to believe that the most enlarged understanding must, in a very short time, resolve its inquiries into the will of God as the ultimate reason. Thus, one of the best effects of intellectual cultivation and the acquisition of knowledge, is to restore the mind to that state of natural simplicity and surprise in which every thing above, beneath, and around us appears replete with mystery, and excites those emotions of freshness and astonishment with which the scenes of nature are contemplated during the season of childhood.

3. God is accustomed to conceal much in the dispensations of his providence. The dispensations of the Divine providence are that series of actions which the Divine Being is continually carrying on in the government of the world which he has made. This, though it presents many evident marks of wisdom and design, is also eminently