which within the circle of his fellowship, | look at the might and majesty of the EterGod, whose justice was inflexible, but whose nal-that no field of clou ess transparency mercy he had, by some plan of mysterious so enchants them by the blissfulness of its wisdom, made to rejoice over it, was put- visions, as when at the shrine of infinite ting forth all the might, and travelling in all and unspotted holiness, they bend themthe greatness of the attributes which belong selves in raptured adoration-that no beauty to him. so fascinates and attracts them, as does that moral beauty which throws a softening lustre over the awfulness of the Godheadin a word, that the image of his character is ever present to their contemplations, and the unceasing joy of their sinless existence lies in the knowledge and the admiration of the Deity. deadness of our earthly imaginations makes an effort necessary; and we shall perceive, that though the world we live in were the alone theatre of redemption, there is a something in the redemption itself that is fitted to draw the eye of an arrested universe towards it. Surely, surely, where delight in God is the constant enjoyment, and the earnest intelligent contemplation of God is the constant exercise, there is nothing in the whole compass of nature or of history, that can so set his adoring myriads upon the gaze, as some new and wondrous evolution of the character of God. Now this is found in the plan of our redemption; nor, But, for the full understanding of this argument, it must be remarked, that, while in our exiled habitation, where all is darkness and rebellion, and enmity, the creature engrosses every heart, and our affections, when they shift at all, only wander from one fleeting vanity to another, it is not so in the habitations of the unfallen. There, Let us put forth an effort, and keep a every desire and every movement is subor-steady hold of this consideration; for the dinated to God. He is seen in all that formed, and in all that is spread around them and, amid the fulness of that delight with which they expatiate over the good and the fair of this wondrous universe, the animating charm which pervades their every contemplation, is that they behold, on each visible thing, the impress of the mind that conceived, and of the hand that made and that upholds it. Here, God is banished from the thoughts of every natural man, and by a firm and constantly maintained act of usurpation, do the things of sense and of time wield an entire ascendancy. There God is all in all. They walk in his light. They rejoice in the beatitudes of his pre-do I see how in any transaction between sence. The veil is from off their eyes, and they see the character of a presiding Divinity in every scene, and in every event to which the Divinity has given birth. It is this which stamps a glory and an importance on the whole field of their contemplations; and when they see a new evolution in the history of created things, the reason they bend towards it so attentive an eye, is, that it speaks to their understanding some new evolution in the purposes of God; some new manifestation of his high attributessome new and interesting step in the his-would put them on the stretch of all their tory of his sublime administration. the great Father of existence, and the children who have sprung from him, the moral attributes of the Deity could, if I may so express myself, be put to so severe and so delicate a test. It is true, that the great matters of sin and of salvation fall without impression, on the heavy ears of a listless and alienated world. But they who, to use the language of the Bible, are light in the Lord, look otherwise at these things. They see sin in all its malignity, and salvation in all its mysterious greatness. Aye, and it faculties, when they saw rebellion lifting up its standard against the Majesty of heaven, and the truth and the justice of God embarked on the threatenings he had uttered against all the doers of iniquity, and the honours of that august throne, which has the firm pillars of immutability to rest upon, linked with the fulfilment of the law that had come out from it; and when nothing else was looked for, but that God, by Now, we ought to be aware how it takes off, not from the intrinsic weight, but from the actual impression of our argument, that this devotedness to God which reigns in other places of the creation, this interest in him as the constant and essential principle of all enjoyment; this concern in the untaintedness of his glory; this delight in the survey of his perfections and his doings, are what the men of our corrupt and dark-putting forth the power of his wrath, should ened world cannot sympathize with. But however little we may enter into it, the Bible tells us by many intimations, that among those creatures who have not fallen from their allegiance, nor departed from the living God, God is their all-that love to him sits enthroned in their hearts, and fills them with all the ecstacy of an overwhelming affection-that a sense of grandeur never so elevates their souls, as when they accomplish his every denunciation, and vindicate the inflexibility of his government, and by one sweeping deed of vengeance, assert in the sight of all his creatures, the sovereignty which belongeth to him--Oh! with what desire must they have pondered on his ways, when amid the urgency of all these demands which looked so high and so indispensable, they saw the unfoldings of the attribute of mercy-and how the supreme Lawgiver was bending upon his guilty creatures an eye of tenderness--and how in his profound and unsearchable wisdom, he was devising for them some plan of restoration-and how the eternal Son had to move from his dwelling-place in heaven, to carry it forward through all the difficulties by which it was encompassed--and how, after, by the virtue of his mysterious sacrifice, he had magnified the glory of every other perfection, he made mercy rejoice over them all, and threw open a way by which we sinful and polluted wanderers might, with the whole lustre of the Divine character untarnished, be re-admitted into fellowship with God, and be again brought back within the circle of his loyal and affectionate family. Now, though it must be admitted that the Bible does not speak clearly or decisively as to the proper effect of redemption being extended to other worlds; it speaks most clearly and most decisively about the knowledge of it being disseminated among other orders of created intelligence than our own. But if the contemplation of God be their supreme enjoyment, then the very circumstance of our redemption being known to them, may invest it, even though it be but the redemption of one solitary world, with an importance as wide as the universe itself. It may spread among the hosts of immensity a new illustration of the character of Him who is all their praise, and looking toward whom every energy within them is moved to the exercise of a deep and delighted admiration. The scene of the transaction may be narrow in point of material extent; while in the transaction itself there may be such a moral dignity, as to blazon the perfections of the Godhead over the face of creation; and from the manifested glory of the Eternal, to send forth a tide of ecstacy, and of high gratulation, throughout the whole extent of his dependent provinces. Now, the essential character of such a transaction, viewed as a manifestation of God, does not hang upon the number of worlds, over which this sin and this salvation may have extended. We know that over this one world such an economy of wisdom and of mercy is instituted-and, even should this be the only world that is embraced by it, the moral display of the Godhead is mainly and substantially the same, as if it reached throughout the whole | I will not, in proof of the position, that of that habitable extent which the science the history of our redemption is known in of astronomy has made known to us. By other and distant places of creation, and the disobedience of this one world, the law is matter of deep interest and feeling among was trampled on; and, in the business of other orders of created intelligence-I will making truth and mercy to meet, and have not put down all the quotations which a harmonious accomplishment on the men might be assembled together upon this arof this world, the dignity of God was put gument. It is an impressive circumstance, to the same trial; the justice of God ap- than when Moses and Elias made a visit to peared to lay the same immoveable barrier; our Saviour on the mount of transfigurathe wisdom of God had to clear a way tion, and appeared in glory from heaven, through the same difficulties; the forgive- the topic they brought along with them, ness of God had to find the same myste- and with which they were fraught, was the rious conveyance to the sinners of a solitary decease he was going to accomplish at Jeworld, as to the sinners of half a universe. rusalem. And however insipid the things The extent of the field upon which this of our salvation may be to an earthly unquestion was decided, has no more influence derstanding; we are made to know, that in on the question itself, than the figure or the the sufferings of Christ, and the glory which dimensions of that field of combat, on which should follow, there is matter to attract the Some great political question was fought, notice of celestial spirits, for these are the has on the importance or on the moral very things, says the Bible, which angels principles of the controversy that gave rise desire to look into. And however listlessly to it. This objection about the narrowness we, the dull and grovelling children of an of the theatre, carries along with it all the exiled family, may feel about the perfecgrossness of materialism. To the eye of tions of the Godhead, and the display of spiritual and intelligent beings, it is nothing. those perfections in the economy of the In their view, the redemption of a sinful Gospel, it is intimated to us in the book of world derives its chief interest from the God's message, that the creation has its display it gives of the mind and purposes districts and its provinces; and we accordof the Deity-and, should that world be but ingly read of thrones, and dominions, and a single speck in the immensity of the principalities, and powers; and whether works of God, the only way in which this these terms denote the separate regions of affects their estimate of him, is to magnify government, or the beings who, by a comhis loving kindness-who rather than lose mission granted from the sanctuary of heaone solitary world of the myriads he has ven, sit in delegated authority over themformed, would lavish all the riches of his even in their eyes the mystery of Christ beneficence and of his wisdom on the re-stands arrayed in all the splendour of uncovery of its guilty population. searchable riches; for we are told that this mystery was revealed for the very intent, that unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places, might be made known by the church, the manifold wisdom of God. And while we, whose prospect reaches not beyond the narrow limits of the corner we occupy, look on the dealings of God in the world, as carrying in them all the insignificancy of a provincial transaction; God him self, whose eye reaches to places which our eye hath not seen, nor our ear heard of, neither hath it entered into the imagination of our heart to conceive, stamps a universality on the whole matter of the Christian salvation, by such revelations as the following: That he is to gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are in earth, even in him-and that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth and that by him God reconciled all things unto himself, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. the fountain opened in the house of Judah, for sin and for uncleanness, send forth its healing streams to other worlds than our own. He does not tell us the extent of the atonement. But he tells us that the atonement itself, known as it is among the myriads of the celestial, forms the high song of eternity; that the Lamb who was slain, is surrounded by the acclamations of one wide and universal empire; that the might of his wondrous achievements, spreads a tide of gratulation over the multitudes who are about his throne; and that there never ceases to ascend from the worshippers of him who washed us from our sins in his blood, a voice loud as from numbers without number, sweet as from blessed voices uttering joy, when heaven rings jubilee, and loud hosannas fill the eternal regions. be unto him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, forever and eyer." "And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the We will not say in how far some of these Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and passages extend the proper effect of that riches, and wisdom, and strength, and glory, redemption which is by Christ Jesus, to and honour, and blessing. And every creaother quarters of the universe of God; ture which is in heaven, and on earth, and but they at least go to establish a widely under the earth, and such as are in the sea, disseminated knowledge of this transaction and all that are in them, heard I saying, among the other orders of created intelli-Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, gence. And they give us a distant glimpse of something more extended. They present a faint opening, through which may be seen some few traces of a wider and a nobler dispensation. They bring before us a dim transparency, on the other side of which the images of an obscure magnificence dazzle indistinctly upon the eye; and tell us that in the economy of redemption, there is a grandeur commensurate to all that is known of the other works and purposes of the Eternal. They offer us no details; and man, who ought not to attempt a wisdom above that which is written, should never put forth his hand to the drapery of that impenetrable curtain which God in his mysterious wisdom has spread over those ways, of which it is but a very small portion that we know of them. But certain it is, that we know as much of them from the Bible; and the infidel, with all the pride of his boasted astronomy, knows so little of them, from any power of observation, that the baseless argument of his, on which we have dwelt so long, is overborne in the light of all that positive evidence which God has poured around the record of his own testimony, and even in the light of its more obscure and casual intimations. The minute and variegated details of the way in which this wondrous economy is extended, God has chosen to withhold from us; but he has oftener than once made to us a broad and a general announcement of its dignity. He does not tell us whether A king might have the whole of his reign crowded with the enterprises of glory; and by the might of his arms, and the wisdom of his counsels might win the first reputation among the potentates of the world; and be idolized throughout all his provinces, for the wealth and the security that he had spread around them--and still it is conceivable, that by the act of a single day in behalf of a single family; by some soothing visitation of tenderness to a poor and solitary cottage; by some deed of compassion, which conferred enlargement and relief on one despairing sufferer; by some graceful movement of sensibility at a tale of wretchedness; by some noble effort of self-denial, in virtue of which he subdued his every purpose of revenge, and spread the mantle of a generous oblivion over the fault of the man who has insulted and aggrieved him; above all, by an exercise of pardon so skilfully administered, as that instead of bringing him down to a state of defencelessness against the provocation of future injuries, it threw a deeper sacredness over him, and stamped a more inviolable dignity than ever on his person and character:--why, my brethren, on the strength of one such performance, done in a single hour, and reaching no further in its immediate effects than to one house, or to one individual, it is a most possible thing, that the highest monarch upon earth name. might draw such a lustre around him as And here it may be remarked, that as the would eclipse the renown of all his public earthly king who throws a moral aggranachievements-and that such a display of dizement around him, by the act of a single magnanimity, or of worth, beaming from day, finds, that after its performance, he the secrecy of his familiar moments, might may have the space of many years for gawaken a more cordial veneration in every thering to himself the triumphs of an exbosom, than all the splendour of his con- tended reign-so the king who sits on spicuous history-aye, and that it might high, and with whom one day is as a thoupass down to posterity, as a more enduring sand years, and a thousand years as one monument of greatness, and raise him fur-day, will find, that after the period of that ther by its moral elevation above the level special administration is ended, by which of ordinary praise; and when he passes in this strayed world is again brought back review before the men of distant ages, may within the limits of his favoured creation, this deed of modest, gentle, unobtrusive vir- there is room enough along the mighty tue, be at all times appealed to, as the track of eternity, for accumulating upon most sublime and touching memorial of his himself a glory as wide and as universal as is the extent of his dominions. You will allow the most illustrious of this world's potentates, to give some hour of his private history to a deed of cottage or domestic tenderness; and every time you think of the interesting story, you will feel how sweetly and how gracefully the remembrance of it blends itself with the fame of his public achievements. But still you think that there would not have been room enough for these achievements of his, had much of his time been spent, either among the habitations of the poor, or in the retirement of his own family; and you conceive, that it is because a single day bears so small a proportion to the time of his whole history, that he has been able to combine an interesting display of private worth, with all that brilliancy of exhibition, which has brought him down to posterity in the character of an august and a mighty sovereign. In like manner did the King eternal, immortal, and invisible, surrounded as he is with the splendours of a wide and everlasting monarchy, turn him to our humble habitation; and the foot-steps of God manifest in the flesh, have been on the narrow spot of ground we occupy; and small though our mansion be, amid the orbs and the systems of immensity, hither hath the King of glory bent his mysterious way, and entered the tabernacle of men, and in the disguise of a servant did he sojourn for years under the roof which canopies our obscure and solitary world. Yes, it is but a twinkling atom in the peopled infinity of worlds that are around it—but look to the moral grandeur of the transaction, and not to the material extent of the field upon which it was executed-and from the retirement of our dwelling-place, there may issue forth such a display of the Godhead, as will circulate the glories of his name Now apply this to the matter before us. among all his worshippers. Here sin en-Had the history of our redemption been tered. Here was the kind and universal confined within the limits of a single day, beneficence of a Father, repaid by the in- the argument that infidelity has drawn gratitude of a whole family. Here the law from the multitude of other worlds, would of God was dishonoured, and that too in never have been offered. It is true, that the face of its proclaimed and unalterable ours is but an insignificant portion of the sanctions. Here the mighty contest of the territory of God-but if the attentions by attributes was ended-and when justice which he has signalized it, had only taken put forth its demands, and truth called for up a single day, this would never have octhe fulfilment of its warnings, and the im-curred to us as forming any sensible withmutability of God would not recede by a drawment of the mind of the Deity from single iota, from any one of its positions, the concerns of his vast and universal goand all the severities he had ever uttered vernment. It is the time which the plan of against the children of iniquity, seemed to our salvation requires, that startles all those gather into one cloud of threatening venge on whom this argument has any impres ance on the tenement that held us-did the sion. It is the time taken up about this Visit of the only-begotten Son chase away paltry world, which they feel to be out of all these obstacles to the triumph of mercy-proportion to the number of other worlds, and humble as the tenement may be, deeply and to the immensity of the surrounding shaded in the obscurity of insignificance as creation. Now, to meet this impression, I do it is, among the statelier mansions which not insist at present on what I have already are on every side of it-yet will the recal brought forward, that God, whose ways of its exiled family never be forgotten-and are not as our ways, can have his eye at the illustration that has been given here the same instant on every place, and can of the mingled grace and majesty of God, divide and diversify his attention into any will never lose its place among the themes number of distinct exercises. What I have and the acclamations of eternity. now to remark, is, that the infidel who urges the astronomical objection to the no limits-why does he not also shoot Why, then, does not the man, who can shoot his conceptions so sublimely abroad over the field of an immensity that knows remembrance, and be regarded as one incident in the extended annals of creation, and with all the illustration and all the glory it has thrown on the character of the Deity, will it be seen as a single step in the evolution of his designs; and long as the time may appear, from the first act of our redemption to its final accomplishment, and close and exclusive as we may think the attentions of God upon it, it will be found that it has left him room enough for all his concerns, and that on the high scale of eternity, it is but one of those passing and ephemeral transactions, which crowd the history of a never-ending administration. DISCOURSE V. On the Sympathy that is felt for Man in the Distant Places of Creation. "I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance."-Luke xv. 7 I HAVE already attempted at full length to establish the position, that the infidel argument of astronomers goes to expunge a natural perfection from the character of God, even that wondrous property of his, by which he, at the same instant of time, can bend a close and a careful attention on a countless diversity of objects, and diffuse the intimacy of his power and of his presence, from the greatest to the minutest and most insignificant of them all. I also adverted shortly to this other circumstance, that it went to impair a moral attribute of the Deity. It goes to impair the benevolence of his nature. It is saying much for the benevolence of God, to say, that a single world, or a single system, is not enough for it-that it must have the spread of a mightier region, on which it may pour forth a tide of exuberancy throughout all its provincesthat as far as our vision can carry us, it has strewed immensity with the floating receptacles of life, and has stretched over each of them the garniture of such a sky as mantles our own habitation-and that even from distances which are far beyond the reach of human eye, the songs of gratitude and praise may now be arising to the one God, who sits surrounded by the regards of his one great and universal family. Now, it is saying much for the benevolence of God, to say that it sends forth these wide and distant emanations over the surface of a territory so ample, that the world we inhabit, lying imbedded as it does amidst so much surrounding greatness, shrinks into a point that to the universal eye might appear to be almost imperceptible. But does it not add to the power and to the perfection of this universal eye, that at the very moment it is taking a comprehensive survey of the vast, it can fasten a steady and undistracted |