dom 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?

heart. His inspiration gives birth to every | wide monarchy. Tell me, then, if, in any purpose within me. His hand impresses a one field of this province, which man has direction on every footstep of my goings. access to, you witness a single indication Every breath I inhale, is drawn by an en- of God sparing himself-of God reduced to ergy which God deals out to me. This languor by the weight of his other employbody, which, upon the slightest derange- ments-of God sinking under the burden ment, would become the prey of death, or of that vast superintendence which lies upon of woful suffering, is now at ease, because him-of God being exhausted, as one of he at this moment is warding off from me ourselves would be, by any number of cona thousand dangers, and upholding the thou-cerns, however great, by any variety of sand movements of its complex and delicate them, however manifold? and do you not machinery. His presiding influence keeps perceive, in that mighty profusion of wisby 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 company, amid all my forgetfulness of him, he never forgets My time does not suffer me to dwell on me. In the silent watches of the night, when this topic, because, before I conclude, I my eyelids have closed, and my spirit has must hasten to another illustration. But sunk into unconsciousness, the observant when I look abroad on the wondrous scene eye of him who never slumbers, is upon that is immediately before me-and see, me. I cannot fly from his presence. Go that in every direction it is a scene of the where I will, he tends me, and watches me, most various and unwearied activity-and and cares for me; and the same being who expatiate on all the beauties of that garniis now at work in the remotest domains of ture by which it is adorned, and on all the Nature and of Providence, is also at my prints of design and of benevolence which right hand to eke out to me every moment abound in it-and think, that the same God, of my being, and to uphold me in the exer- who holds the universe, with its every syscise of all my feelings, and of all my faculties. tem, in the hollow of his hand, pencils Now, what God is doing with me, he is every flower, and gives nourishment to doing with every distinct individual of this every blade of grass-and actuates the world's population. The intimacy of his movements of every living thing-and is presence, and attention, and care, reaches not disabled, by the weight of his other to one and to all of them. With a mind un-cares, from enriching the humble departburdened by the vastness of all its other ment of nature I occupy, with charms and concerns, he can prosecute, without distrac-accommodations, of the most unbounded tion, the government and guardianship of variety-then, surely, if a message, bearevery one son and daughter of the species.-ing every mark of authenticity, should proAnd is it for us, in the face of all this expe- fess to come to me from God, and inform rience, ungratefully to draw a limit around the perfections of God ?-to aver, that 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 attributes on some high plan of pardon and immortality, in behalf of its countless generations?

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, But, secondly, were the mind of God so then let science and sophistry try to cheat fatigued, and so occupied with the care of me of my comfort as they may-I will not other worlds, as the objection presumes hiin let go the anchor of my confidence in God to be, should we not see some traces of ne--I will not be afraid, for I am of mor glect, or of carelessness, in his management value than many sparrows. of ours? Should we not behold, in many a field of observation, the evidence of its master being overcrowded with the variety of his other engagements? 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 inhabit shrinks into one remote and solitary province of his

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 invention, another instrument was formed, which laid open a scene no less wonderful, and rewarded the inquisitive spirit of man with a discovery, which serves to neutralize the whole of this argument. This was the microscope. The one led me to see a system in every star. The other

leads me to see a world in every atom. | forth an upholding influence among the The one taught me, that this mighty globe, orbs and the movements of astronomy, can with the whole burden of its people, and of fill the recesses of every single atom with its countries, is but a grain of sand on the the intimacy of his presence, and travel, in high field of immensity. The other teaches all the greatness of his unimpaired attrime, that every grain of sand may harbour butes, upon every one spot and corner of within it the tribes and the families of a the universe he has formed. 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. The one has suggested to me, that beyond and above all that is visible to man, there may lie 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 beneath all that minuteness which the aided eye of man has been able to explore, there may be 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 microscope, 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.

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 Testament, because he has so many other worlds to attend to, think of him as a man. They confine their view to the informations of the telescope, 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 superintendance, 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 then 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 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; for, 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 no 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 too minute for his notice, nor too humble for the visitations of his care.

Now, mark how all this may be made to meet the argument of our infidel astronomers. By the telescope they have discovered, that no magnitude, however vast, is beyond the grasp of the Divinity. But by the microscope we have also discovered, that no minuteness, however shrunk from the notice of the human eye, is beneath the condescension of his regard. Every addition to the powers of the one instrument, 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 Almighty 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 It is a wonderful thing that God should comprehend the whole, in the vast com- be so unincumbered by the concerns of a pass of its generality, he has also a mind whole universe, that he can give a constant to concentrate a close and a separate at- attention to every moment of every inditention on each and on all of its particu-vidual in this world's population. But, lars; and that the same God, who sends wonderful as it is, you do not hesitate to

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.

88

EXTENT OF DIVINE CONDESCENSION.

admit it as true, on the evidence of your
own recollections. It is a wonderful 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 im-
probability to darken it, for its reality is
what you actually witness, and you never
think of questioning the evidence of obser-
vation. It is wonderful, it is passing won-
derful, 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 unexpen-
ded as if he 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 va-
rieties 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 miscroscope.
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 revela-
tions; 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-beloved Son upon the
errand, and he, to accomplish it, should,
mighty to save, put forth all his strength,
and travail in the greatness of it. But such
wonders as these have already multiplied
upon you; and when evidence is given of
their truth, you have resigned your every
judgment of the unsearchable God, and
rested in the faith of them. I demand, in
the name of sound and consistent philoso-
phy, that you do the same in the matter
before us-and take it up as a question of
evidence and examine that medium of
testimony through which the miracles and
informations of the Gospel have come to
your door-and go not to admit as argu-
ment 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 inquiry, a lesson which you
should have learned upon other fields-
even the depth of the riches both of the
wisdom and the knowledge of God, that
his judgments are unsearchable, and his
ways are past finding out.

I do not enter at all into the positive evidence 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 that this is done to the satisfaction of a philosophical inquirer, and that the evidence is sustained, and that the same mind that is familiarised 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 gratitude, and wonder, should he look on the descent of him into this lower world, who made all these things, and without whom was not any thing made that was made. What a grandeur does it throw over every step in the redemption 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 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 substantial 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 heaven, which he hath opened and made known In taking to that way, let us follow to us. his every direction with that humility which a sense of all this wonderful condescension is fitted to inspire. Let us forsake all that he bids us forsake. Let us do all that he Let us give ourselves up to his bids us do. guidance with the docility of children, overpowered by a kindness that we never merited, and a love that is unequalled by all the perverseness and all the ingratitude of our stubborn nature-for what shall we render unto him for such mysterious benefits-to him who has thus been mindful of us-to him who thus has deigned to visit us?

But the whole of this argument is not yet exhausted. We have scarcely entered on the defence 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 | entire absence of all observation in its beportion of it. The way in which we have half, he can pass on to the distinct affirmaattempted to dispose of this plea, is by in- tive testimony of the Bible. sisting 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.

We do think that this lays open a very interesting 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 ambiguous scepticism to a set of giddy and ignoIn the whole of this argument we have rant admirers, or that a half-learned and looked upon the earth as isolated from the superficial public should associate with the rest of the universe altogether. But ac- christian priesthood, the blindness and the cording to the way in which the astrono- bigotry of a sinking cause-with these feelmical objection is commonly met, the earth ings, we are not disposed to blink a single is not viewed as in a state of detachment question that may be started on the subject from the other worlds, and the other orders of the Christian evidences. There is not of being which God has called into exist- one of its parts or bearings which needs the ence. It is looked upon as the member of shelter of a disguise thrown over it. Let a more extended system. It is associated the priests of another faith ply their prudenwith the magnificence of a moral empire, tial expedients, and look so wise and so as wide as the kingdom of nature. It is not wary in the execution of them. But Chrismerely asserted, what in our last Discourse tianity stands in a higher and a firmer attihas been already done, that for any thing tude. The defensive armour of a shrinking we can know by reason, the plan of re- or timid policy does not suit her. Hers is demption may have its influences and its the naked majesty of truth; and with all bearings on those creatures of God who the grandeur of age, but with none of its people other regions, and occupy other infirmities, has she come down to us, and fields in the immensity of his dominions; gathered new strength from the battles she that to argue, therefore, on this plan being has won in the many controversies of many instituted for the single benefit of the world generations. With such a religion as this we live in, and of the species to which we there is nothing to hide. All should be belong, is a mere presumption of the infi- above boards. And the broadest light of del himself; and that the objection he rears day should be made fully and freely to ciron it, must fall to the ground, when the culate throughout all the secrecies. But vanity of the presumption is exposed. The secrets she has none. To her belong the Christian apologist thinks he can go fur-frankness and the simplicity of conscious ther than this-that he cannot merely ex-greatness; and whether she grapple it with pose the utter baselessness of the infidel the pride of philosophy, or stand in fronted assertion, but that he has positive ground opposition to the prejudices of the multitude, for erecting an opposite and a confronting she does it upon her own strength, and assertion in its place--and that after having spurns all the props and all the auxiliaries neutralised their position, by showing the of superstition away from her.

DISCOURSE IV.

On the Knowledge of Man's Moral History 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 can- | stance that is within reach of his hand. He not carry any one of his perceptions, and can smell a flower that is presented to him. from the ulterior of which he cannot gather a He can taste the food that is before him. single observation to guide or to inform him. He can hear a sound of certain pitch and While he keeps by the objects which are intensity; and, so much does this sense of near, he can get the knowledge of them hearing widen his intercourse with exterconveyed to his mind through the ministry nal nature, that, from the distance of miles, of several of the senses. He can feel a sub-it can bring him in an occasional intimation.

M

But of all the tracks of conveyance which | over the whole face of which he hath inGod has been pleased to open up between scribed the evidence of his high attributes, the mind of man, and the theatre by which in all their might, and in all their manifeshe is surrounded, there is none by which tations. he so multiplies his acquaintance with But man has a great deal more to keep the rich and the varied creation on every him humble of his understanding, than a side of him, as by the organ of the eye. It mere sense of that boundary which skirts is this which gives to him his loftiest com- and terminates the material field of his mand over the scenery of nature. It is this contemplations. He ought also to feel by which so broad a range of observation how within that boundary, the vast mais submitted to him. It is this which ena-jority of things is mysterious and unknown bles him, by the act of a single moment, to to him; that even in the inner chamber of send an exploring look over the surface of an his own consciousness, where so much lies ample territory, to crowd his mind with the hidden from the observation of others, there whole assembly of its objects, and to fill his is also, to himself, a little world of incomvision with those countless hues which di- prehensibles; that if stepping beyond the versify and adorn it. It is this which carries limits of this familiar home, he look no him abroad over all that is sublime in the further than to the members of his family, immensity of distance; which sets him as there is much in the cast and the colour of it were on an elevated platform, from every mind that is above his powers of diwhence he may cast a surveying glance vination; that in proportion as he recedes over the arena of innumerable worlds; from the centre of his own personal expewhich spreads before him so mighty a pro- rience, there is a cloud of ignorance and vince of contemplation, that the earth he secrecy, which spreads, and thickens, and inhabits, only appears to furnish him with throws a deep and impenetrable veil over the pedestal on which he may stand, and the intricacies of every one department of from which he may descry the wonders of human contemplation; that of all around all that magnificence which the Divinity him his knowledge is naked and superficial, has poured so abundantly around him. It and confined to a few of those more conspicuis by the narrow outlet of the eye, that the ous lineaments which strike upon his senses; mind of man takes its excursive flight over that the whole face both of nature and of those golden tracks, where, in all the ex- society, presents him with questions which haustlessness of creative wealth, lie scatter- he cannot unriddle, and tells him how beed the suns, and the systems of astronomy.neath the surface of all that the eye can But oh! how good a thing it is, and how becoming well, for the philosopher to be humble even amid the proudest march of human discovery, and the sublimest triumphs of the human understanding, when he thinks of that unscaled 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 foundation 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 earth 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 rebuke does it bring on the swelling vanity of science, to think that the whole field of its most ambitious enterprises may be swept away altogether, and there remain before the eye of him who sitteth on the throne, an untravelled immensity, which he hath filled with innumerable splendours, and

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 speculation which astronomy has opened-should he, baffled by the mysteries which beset his every footstep upon earth attempt an ambitious flight towards 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 onethat number, and motion, and magnitude, and figure, make up all the barrenness 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 worldsthat 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 the testimony of a competent messenger. Conceive a native