6

What is the glory of the Lord? It is, first, that visible splendour in which God has been pleased to make his presence manifest to men's bodily senses. Thus it is said in Exodus that Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount. And the glory of the Lord abode upon mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. And the sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount, in the eyes of the children of Israel.' But that this was not the sole, but merely one visible exhibition of his glory, is manifest from the fact, that after this Moses says to the Lord, 'I beseech thee, show me thy glory;' and the Lord graciously answers, 'I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by. And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts'—or that which I shall hereafter be but my face shall not be seen.' Agreeably to this account of the visible glory, John describes it as exhibited in the Son of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.'

Now since man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever,' it becomes a subject of the most solemn inquiry, How shall we glorify him?

We cannot cause any visible glory to appear to ourselves or others. It might be highly presumptuous, nay, impious, to desire it. But we glorify God when we diligently study, spiritually discover, and humbly and fervently acknowledge his perfections. That this should be our chief end on earth is evident, because it is the chief work of the church in heaven: for, they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. And when the living creatures give glory, and honour, and thanks, to him that sat on the throne, that liveth for ever and ever, the four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power.'

We glorify God when we acknowledge all the blessings we enjoy, and all the gifts with which we are endowed, to have come down from him as

We glorify God when we humble ourselves beneath his mighty power, when we confess and lament our sins before him, when we bow to his chastisements, and deprecate and flee from his deserved anger. Thus speaks the prophet to Israel; 'Hear ye and give ear; be not proud, for the Lord hath spoken. Give glory to the Lord your God, before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble on the dark mountains.

We glorify God when patiently, cheerfully, and joyfully, we are contented to suffer for truth and righteousness. Thus Peter admonishes the church—If any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.'

We glorify God when we employ our hearts, and our voices in his praise, and so fulfil his own declaration, 'who offereth praise, glorifies me.'

6

Our obligations to glorify God result immediately from the various means whereby he may be glorified. We have had his brightest perfections shining upon us in the beams of the Sun of righteousness.' The very opening of our eyes therefore compels us to tell of what we see. He has enriched us with his spiritual treasures, and we are bound to acknowledge our obligation. We have sinned against his law, and come short of his glory in our disobedience; we are bound, therefore, to glorify the mercy by which we are brought to salvation. If tried in the furnace of affliction, we are bound to glorify him; for he only refines us from the dross of worldliness, that the brightness and the value of the gold may appear. He has given us eyes to see, hearts to feel, and voices to praise: we are bound, therefore, to employ our gifts to the honour and glory of the donor.

But beyond the obligations to the duty, there lies this paramount inducement, which we select out of many. Our eternal enjoyment of Godour possession of him as our own—as our Father, our Saviour, our Sanctifier-with all our delight in his perfections and gifts all lie in the very act of glorifying God, and cannot be separated from it. To glorify God, is to enjoy God; an enjoyment that increases as our knowledge, our faith, our love, our hope, our confidence, our submission, our sensibility, and our utterance increase an enjoyment, now impe: ect, because

we but see as through a glass darkly; but it shall be perfected for ever when we shall see as we are seen, and know as we are known.

TWENTY-SECOND DAY.-MORNING.

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul,'

Gen. ii. 7.

THE appearance of material objects, independent of observation and experience, affords no intimation of what they may become. The man who looks upon a little seed, could, from that sight alone, form no anticipation that, by man's ingenuity, it would be converted into cloth; and the man who looks upon the cloth, it may be coarse in texture, and discoloured in appearance, could never, from that sight alone, foretell that, by a subsequent transformation, it would become the paper from which he reads. Now if such be the changes upon material things produced by man's art and device, how much greater changes may we reasonably expect when the work is from the hand of God! Here is dust of the ground. Dried in the sunbeams, it is scattered by every wind. Wetted by the rain, it again becomes adhesive, and easily formed by the plastic hand of the potter. Burned in the fire, it becomes a vessel of use or of ornament; but the power of man is now exhausted, and further than mere commixture of materials, and change of form, he is utterly unable to proceed.

Of such mean materials, can anything higher be made? Yes; the Lord formed man out' of this very dust of the ground,' intending, no doubt, by this record of his origin, to demonstrate, first, the wondrous wisdom and power of his Maker; and, secondly, to inculcate a perpetual lesson of the deepest humility upon a creature, the root of whose genealogy arises from the 'dust of the ground.'

But how much deeper still sinks the lesson of humility, when through faith we understand that the worlds were formed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.' In other words, that, not of an eternal, or self-existent material, did God make the worlds-but that he made all things of nothing, by the word of his power, by the forthputting of his omnipotence. Those glorious stars of light were formed of nothing not higher was the origin of the light; and of worthless dust of that dust so originated, was

But while the lesson of humility is thus derived from our origin, the lesson of admiration, not of ourselves, but of our Maker, is derived from our structure. 'God formed man,' and every portion of his frame attests the divinity of the workmanship. When we contemplate a timepiece, a telescope, a steam engine, or any other curious piece of machinery, we never hesitate, in deed we cannot hesitate, to ascribe design, and skill, and power, to the mechanist. Nor does our ignorance of the principles of the machine, or of the formation of its several parts, detract one jot or tittle from our admiration of the structure itself, or of the genius of him by whom it was designed and completed. And surely, when we contemplate the human body, the mysterious means by which it is nourished, the wonderful contrivances by which its organs are fitted for their several uses-the adaptation and subserviency of one part to another-and the concurrence of so many contradictory powers and forms to one harmonious result—while we exclaim, with the psalmist, we are fearfully and wonderfully made,' we must acknowledge with the philospher, that the contemplation of one single organ is sufficient to rebuke and to silence atheism, and to demonstrate the being and the perfections of God our Creator.

And if the body be sufficient to call forth our admiration of itself, and of him who formed it, how much more should the soul? We have a soul, a power, a mode of being, for which matter and motion, organ and function, can never give the shadow of account. The soul is the breath of God in man. The breath of the Almighty,' says Job, 'hath given me life.' It is not dust, it returneth not to the dust, because it is not of the dust. 'The dust shall return to the earth as it was, but the spirit, the breath of the Lord, shall return to God who gave it.' God is the former of our bodies, but he is the Father of our

from God, was held at his good pleasure, and as easily resumed, as it was freely and generously bestowed. It was needful even in Eden, that man should feel he had no inherent right; for a sense of God's goodness, and of the creature's absolute dependence, is as essential to preservation in a state of holiness, as in a state of restoration from

sin.

When God created man, he blessed him. But no gift can render any one blessed, unless in so far as God is seen to be the giver. The happiness of Eden lay not in the majestic rivers by which it was watered; in the pleasant and fruitful trees with which it was planted; in the salubrious sky that shone above the head; nor in the fertile soil that lay beneath the feet; it lay not in the loveliness of the flowers that bloomed in nature's earliest spring, nor in the sweet voice of the birds that sung amongst the branches. It lay not even in the communion of human spirits, though maintained and cemented by innocence. It lay in the fact, that every gift was traced immediately to God as its fountain, and thence deriving its every power of contributing to the creature's enjoyment.

But it is moreover worthy of special remark, that when God placed man in Eden, in a state of holiness and happiness, he did not intend him to be idle. He put him into the garden, 'to dress it, and to keep it.' He gave him the whole earth, but with a commission to 'subdue it.' But this commission to 'subdue' did not imply any stubbornness or rebellion, but the suppression of that superabundant luxuriance with which the vegetable world was invested, and the converting to his purposes of the various powers with which nature, in all her kingdoms, was so bountifully endowed. This order was exactly suited to man's capacities and condition. Enabled to think, one part of his employment must consist in thinking; but enabled to act, another part must necessarily consist in acting; and in the connection of these two capacities, thinking and acting, must the third element of his nature be called forth-that is, his capacity of enjoyment. Without these capacities of thinking and acting, and of thence deriving his enjoyment, man would have been no image of his great Creator. The eternal mind, the Spirit of God, is not a quiescent entity, immovably absorbed in its own contemplations. He acts eternally in purpose, having his delights with the sons of men,' and endowing them with his choicest gifts in Christ Jesus, before the world was.' In the beginning he puts forth the Almighty energies of creation, and in the progress of time is ever acting, not by mere im

pressed or delegated laws, but by the untiring hand which upholds all things' according to the word of his power.' And if the delights' of the eternal love thus lay in the mighty purpose and works of creation, and the beneficent design and accomplishment of redemption, man, to be an exact created image of the uncreated Godhead, must not only be invested with the attributes of thought, but with purposes and capacities of activity, by which he may exercise, not a creative, but a formative power-the image of creation; and by which he may calculate, and anticipate, and prepare for futurity-the image of providence; and from which, in subordination to the will of God, he may derive his chiefest joys,' and be conformed to the image of Him, who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, and is now set down on the right hand of God.'

Idleness, in a state of sin, affords not only an opportunity, but an incentive to more sin; and the sweat of the brow,' and the sorrow of the heart, in which man is doomed to eat bread, might be supposed a punishment inflicted upon a criminal, rather than a merciful regimen for the healing of a perishing invalid. Yet, while the infliction of labour as a curse, is neither to be forgotten, nor denied, it is an infliction of punishment only in so far as the bitterness of sin is infused into the original cup of enjoyment. Man's first enjoyment originally lay in perfect communion with God; his second in communion with whatever, as partaking of the same image, enjoyed the same communion; and his third in the active duties of that universal dominion with which God had invested him as his delegated representative. Idleness was therefore inconsistent with man's original nature and office, and must be as inconsistent still, though his nature has become infected, and the dignity of his office forfeited by sin.

When we return to contemplate the first man in the state of innocence, we cannot fail to acknowledge and admire the dignity of his birth. There is a dignity in birth. The son of parents, wise, good, and thus truly great, cannot be disrobed of a portion of the parent's praise. But how transcendant the dignity of Adam's ancestry! He traced his genealogy immediately to Almighty God! And he claims a derivative right to every region of the earth! Yet, thus dignified in descent, thus endowed with dominion, he is immediately appointed to work!

Are we, then, to be surprised, if that labour which was required as a duty, and which was necessary to enjoyment, in a state of holiness, should continue to be required as a duty, and be

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