book of revelation, God is proclaimed throughout it with ten thousand times ten thousand tongues. All objects in the natural world seem to unite in adoration to God, and to say to man, We have not the faculties you have to worship God, but we bring him our sweets, our brightest hues, our fairest forms, and we solemnly charge you to worship him with the heart and intellect, with your souls and bodies, "which are his." God, when he makes himself known, does not so reveal himself that our finite reason may understand him; reason and the God of reason are insulted when we attempt to comprehend God. Every thing around us proclaims him, but we have this knowledge primarily from revelation. Even the natural perfections of God we cannot comprehend without revelation; but it is in his moral and spiritual perfections that we are particularly interested; his natural perfections are guided by his moral perfections. The Apostle says, "God cannot lie; "all his creative powers are under the guidance of wisdom.

The perfections of God are infinitely beyond our comprehension; the faculties of the mind are not necessary to man, as man; for an idiot is still a man; but every perfection of God is immutable and eternal. If you ask me who is God, he is power. If you ask me who is God, he is holiness. If you ask me who is

God, he is justice,-he is mercy, truth, love, faithfulness, and to suppose one of his perfections can cease to exist, is to suppose that God can cease to exist.

How the most exalted creature sinks into nothing, when compared with God! A man may possess the genius of a Shakspeare or a Newton, but a stroke of the sun, or a blow of the hand, might bring him down, from the height of his speculations.

When we consider the angelic nature in all its moral perfections, it falls infinitely short of the perfections of Deity; and we see a man possessing one intellectual faculty in a superior degree, while others are deficient; but God is infinite, immutable and eternal: all his perfections are equally glorious. Some persons have said He delights in mercy, more than in justice;' but in the crucifixion of Christ we see mercy and justice equally displayed. We should peruse the whole Bible, and believe all that God tells us; for he is not only all wisdom and all knowledge, but all truth, though One in essence, Three in person. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord." Upon this truth all others are founded. If asked, do I comprehend that God is One and Three, I answer, no; but although this truth cannot be comprehended, it must be believed. Let not any one

suppose the doctrine of the Trinity is useless: from it emanates every truth, doctrinal and preceptive. I receive it from Scripture, because God says it. I moreover peruse the history of the Saviour, and see in his atonement two persons manifested,-one to atone, another to accept. Receive the truth simply,-I know of nothing so delightful to the heart and the intellect. I read in Scripture of another person, the Holy Spirit, from whose influence I derive a new being. In contending for the doctrine of the Trinity, we do not contend for something that may be dispensed with ;-it is a doctrine which displays God in all his terror, and if God appear lovely in his justice, not less interesting will he appear in bringing the sinner to himself.

An important question arises, when can a man be said to believe in a triune God? when he looks forward with triumphant anticipation to judgment and a final conquest over sin. It would be infinitely unworthy of God merely to have given us the doctrine of the Trinity as a theory or speculation; but, on the contrary, it flies with all the life of the Holy Spirit into the breast, when we see in it a glorious provision made for the redemption and everlasting salvation of the ruined race of fallen Adam.

Few persons deny the existence of God in terms; but the God of their imagination is not

a God of absolute, infinite perfection, but a being more or less like themselves. We see sometimes in a British court of justice a criminal pleading guilty; and something analogous to this must take place in the heart of every sinner, or he will perish. Do we feel this? Have we passed sentence upon ourselves? Have we echoed the sentence of our own condemnation? But in a human trial, the King will delegate some one to judge and condemn the criminal, but no one can be delegated by God to judge the sinner. How is the criminal to know the royal clemency, to know it in such a manner as to give him relief? He must be aware the royal prerogative enables the King to extend his clemency to whom he pleases. And this is strictly analogous to the case of the sinner with God. It is impossible we can know God otherwise than as a God delighting in mercy, and ourselves as condemned criminals. To know God in any other manner will avail nothing; to know that the King has power to pardon, will afford no relief; we must know God in his law and in his gospel, and know him in his Son as a Rewarder of them that diligently seek him; it is a knowledge of this which induces the believer to seek him. There is also in the text to be considered, the covenant of grace, of the Father, Son, and Spirit, and the

necessity of such a covenant; but this must be reserved for another opportunity.'

1 Mr. Howels' preaching was extempore, with the aid merely of a brief analysis or skeleton of his sermons, of which several specimens have been given by Mr. Bowdler, in his two very interesting volumes before the public: and it not unfrequently happened that the preacher, warmed by the discussion of one part of his subject, was led away from a strict adherence to the outline he had originally prescribed; of this an illustration occurs in the above sermon, which comprises cnly his first division: other similar instances would doubtless be discoverable by a comparison between some of the sermons of this volume, and the analysis from which they were preached. The editor not having the dates of this or the following sermon cannot be certain, but thinks it probable that the latter was preached in continuation of the subject here referred to by Mr. Howels, as involved in the text then under his consideration.