made;" and as men could not fail of discovering his Being and Providence, if they would but carefully attend to the effects of his operations continually before their eyes, God is represented as highly offended with those Gentiles who neglected to pay Him that worship which is justly his due. In consequence of their idolatry "God gave them up," says the Apostle, "to vile affections and to a reprobate mind, because when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man, and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things, because they worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever."

We cannot be too much on our guard against falling into this sin. That we may be preserved from it, let us remember that there is one God, and one God

only. Let us remember that He is that great, venerable, and glorious Being who created all things by the word of his power, who is the Father of angels and of men; who is the greatest, the wisest, and the best of all Beings, whom cherubim, seraphim, and all the celestial hosts adore and venerate, and who has a just claim to our noblest and most exalted praises. And let us guard against introducing a confusion into our conceptions, and an inconsistency in our religious services, by metaphysical and unscriptural distinctions. If we talk about three persons in the Godhead, we must either mean three distinct Beings, or three modes or attributes of the same Being. Between these there is no conceivable medium. The former, (the belief of three distinct Beings,) is inconsistent with the Unity of God; the latter, (the belief of three modes or attributes of the same Being,) with the use of a term which has done more injury to Christianity than all the writings of infidels. Let us always

remember that "there is one God and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus." That more Gods than one and more Mediators than one should have been introduced into the worship of Christians, cannot be too much lamented. It has destroyed the simplicity of our holy religion, led men to substitute something else in the room of a holy life, and been the cause of much bigotry, oppression, and persecution. O that that happy time may speedily arrive when the knowledge of one God will universally prevail ! - when the whole world will be brought to believe in Him and in Jesus Christ whom He hath sent! O that the Sun of righteousness may shortly arise with healing in his rays, dispel every cloud of ignorance, bigotry, and superstition, and diffuse virtue and peace, truth and happiness far as the influence of the solar rays extends !

LECTURE XXXI.

As the question respecting the Unity of God, properly considered, is a question relating to number only, there seems to be no reason why it should be involved in any obscurity. The spirituality of God, which is the subject to which I purpose at this time to direct your thoughts, is certainly much more difficult in its nature and in its mode of investigation. I shall, however, with humility, endeavour to lay before you the information with which we are favoured by Reason and Revelation, on this venerable attribute of the Supreme Being.

If the difficulty of forming adequate conceptions of self-existence, eternity and infinity, which the finite nature of the

human mind renders insurmountable, were allowed to be any just foundation for entertaining doubts respecting the existence of a Deity, (and on this difficulty Atheism rests,) on the same principles, our ignorance of the age and personal qualities of the author of any literary work or curious piece of mechanism, would be a just foundation for doubting whether such an author ever actually existed, and whether the work was made at all. In like manner, if our ignorance of the nature or essence of a spiritual being be brought as a reason for doubting of the existence of such a being, our ignorance of the substance of matter, and of the principle of thought, might be urged as an argument for doubting of our own existence. It is true, as the Scripture expresses it, “we cannot by searching find out God; we cannot find out the Almighty to perfection." We may, however, by attending to the operations of his hand, both within us and around us, discover with certainty