ultimate good: who is not, indeed, the author of the crimes and frenzies, the lusts and ambitions, the evil passions and evil deeds of men; but who bends them to His purposes: so that, while ruinous to themselves from the motive, they oftentimes subserve some important aim in the effect; so that monarchs and subjects, even oppressors and rebels, do not frustrate, they but unconsciously execute, the Divine intentions; and carry all things forward to their destined accomplishment. The rise and fall of nations; the mighty dynasties that are engulfed in the storms of revolution, as a proud vessel sinks in the depths of a tempestuous sea; the superabundance of population in some regions, leading to the colonization of others, and gradually to the complete occupation and cultivation of the globe; the fluctuations of empire; the grandeur and the decay, the successes and the reverses, of separate states; the general progress of the entire community of mankind-all hang at last upon the Will of God; derive from that will their commission; have in that will their limitation, and their coherence, and their mutual adjustments. We may look abroad, even, perhaps, upon some terrible commotion-even, perhaps, upon some deluge of tears and blood; but the strength of our comfort is, and the brightness of our hope, that the end is still with the AllMerciful and as the smallest accidents which befall our individual selves are within the knowledge of Him by whom the very hairs of our head are numbered, and shall be made to work together to our final welfare, if we but love God; so all that constitutes the great life of humanity is tending and contributing to some issue, which has been pre-ordained by His volition, and is worthy of Himself. In very truth then, brethren, the Will of God is the soul of the world: and not the soul only, in the Pantheistic sense, as if the body were something self-formed and contradistinguished from it, but the source and fountain of all matter and all mind, as well as the inspiration of nature, and the very life of man, and of the universe. In this Will, the immense variety, the long series, of all occurrences is united and bound up: for the whole is the one product of this Will, entering into all the veins of being, and working itself out in all events. But, if these things be so, what must be our first and last concern? Surely, to discover this will, and to obey it. Here, however, we have ample matter for future meditation. Yet I cannot quite terminate this discourse without charging you to fix steadily in your minds the superlative importance of the question before you. Remember, that as there is, or is not, a Divine Will, the whole conditions of our existence must be altogether different. If there is not a Divine volition; if the Will of God be a name, a phantom, an unreality; then this existence of ours can have no moral or religious purpose; we have, in truth, no moral or religious existence at all. For then, there is no moral Governor of the universe, to whom retribution belongeth, and to whom we are morally accountable. There is no gracious, loving Providence, which watches over us and all creation, and superintends all our concerns; there is no supreme and all-wise Mind, which is to be the rule of ours; there is no living, intelligent Personality, that we can either please or offend. Therefore, too, all worship, all devotion, all prayer, all reverence, all these offices of piety, all this observance of Sunday on religious grounds, must be blotted out from the map of humanity. There can remain no occasion for them; no reason for them; no room for them. And with these things must go sin and holiness; all our ideas of righteousness and judgment to come. All dutiful obedience, must also go,-or at least its hold upon us must be immeasurably weakened; all dutiful obedience, I mean, to earthly parents, or earthly rulers; when no longer is to be found the universal Parent, the Sovereign Ruler, our duty to whom is the archetype and foundation of all other obligations. Ah, sweep away, or disbelieve, the Will of God, and man must sink at once ten thousand thousand fathoms down in the scale of being. His loftiest endowments are left without exercise or object; and must either perish by blight and rust; or drive him into superstitions the most abject at once and the most aimless. But does our reason, do our very instincts, recoil from this desolating theory? Have we an invincible argument against it in the impossibility of pursuing it into its logical consequences? Then cherish, I beseech you, the opposite creed; and follow up the solemn truth, as you happily may, to its practical conclusions. Live as if indeed assured, that you came into being by the sole will of God; and that, were He to will it, you might in an instant be nothing again, as you were before He made you. If you meditate on this, you will feel, as perhaps you never felt before, that you belong wholly to God. Nothing stands to you in the place in which you stand to God: nothing you possess, whether it have life or not, is yours in the sense in which you are God's. The animal you kill, the fuel you consume, the food you eat, have their existence independently of you: but you, as they also, have no existence out of God. It is not only that God is great and strong, and that you are little and weak; but that you exist only by the act of his will. It is not only that you are God's property, and that He has the power of life and death over you, but that out of Him you are nothing. Words cannot express the full reality of this stupendous truth: God is all, and you are nothing. Then not only all that you have, but all that you are, is His. You owe him your life, your very being, in one word, yourself. This is the debt you owe to God by the very fact of your existence through his mere will. You the creature owe yourself to God the Creator'.' 1 These sentences are quoted from a Roman Catholic tract, one of a series which appears to be very profusely distributed. It may be useful, though it is somewhat painful to remark, that many numbers of this series are written with a terseness and skill, which other tracts advocating a purer form of Christianity do not always possess. SERMON V. ON THE WILL OF GOD. III. ON THE DUTY OF STUDYING AND OBSERVING THE DIVINE WILL. ROMANS XII. 2. That ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. YOU OU may think, my brethren, that in discoursing on the Will of God, we have dwelt too long upon truths which are plain and incontrovertible; and that we shall not the more realize such a subject to our hearts and souls, by speculating so keenly upon it, recapitulating the arguments in relation to it, turning it about on every side, striving to exhibit it in all its various lights and aspects, and, in short, treating it as a matter of doubtful disputation. You may think it lost labour to prove, that the forces of nature, mechanical or chemical, are but secondary instrumentalities, the Will of God being the primary and sole agent: and that we do too much honour, attach too much importance, to the cavils and objections which oppose themselves to such a proposition, by, as it were, girding our armour to refute them. You may think that true and faithful Christians are fully aware, how the unity of the world, throughout space and time, in all its substances and all its events, is gathered up into the Will of a Divine Being; how they, and every creature, must owe all to that Will; how |