attention on each minute and separate portion throughout all its dwelling places. Put this of it; that at the very moment it is looking at trait of the angelic character into contrast all worlds, it can look most pointedly and most with the dark and lowering spirit of an infiintelligently to each of them: that at the very del. He is told of the multitude of other moment it sweeps the field of immensity, worlds, and he feels a kindling magnificence it can settle all the earnestness of its regards in the conception, and he is seduced by an upon every distinct hand-breadth of that elevation which he cannot carry, and from field; that at the very moment at which it this airy summit does he look down on the embraces the totality of existence, it can insignificance of the world we occupy, and send a most thorough and penetrating in- pronounces it to be unworthy of those visits spection into each of its details, and into and of those attentions which we read of in every one of its endless diversities? You the New Testament. He is unable to wing cannot fail to perceive how much this adds his way upward along the scale, either of to the power of the all-seeing eye. Tell me, moral or of natural perfection; and when then, if it do not add as much perfection to the wonderful extent of the field is made the benevolence of God, that while it is ex-known to him, over which the wealth of patiating over the vast field of created things, the Divinity is lavished-there he stops, and there is not one portion of the field over-wilders, and altogether misses this essential looked by it; that while it scatters blessings perception, that the power and perfection over the whole of an infinite range, it causes of the Divinity are not more displayed by them to descend in a shower of plenty on the mere magnitude of the field, than they every separate habitation: that while his are by that minute and exquisite filling up, arm is underneath and round about all which leaves not its smallest portions neworlds, he enters within the precincts of glected; but which imprints the fulness of every one of them, and gives a care and a the Godhead upon every one of them; and tenderness to each individual of their teem- proves, by every flower of the pathless deing population. Oh! does not the God, who sert, as well as by every orb of immensity, is said to be love, shed over this attribute of how this unsearchable being can care for all, his its finest illustration, when, while he sits and provide for all; and, throned in mystery in the highest heaven, and pours out his ful- too high for us, can, throughout every inness on the whole subordinate domain of stant of time, keep his attentive eye on every nature and of providence, he bows a pitying separate thing that he has formed, and by an regard on the very humblest of his chil- act of his thoughtful and presiding intellidren, and sends his reviving Spirit into every gence, can constantly embrace all. heart, and cheers by his presence every home, and provides for the wants of every family, and watches every sick-bed, and listens to the complaints of every sufferer; and while by his wondrous mind the weight of universal government is borne, oh! is it not more wondrous and more excellent still, that he feels for every sorrow, and has an ear open to every prayer? "It doth not yet appear what we shall be," says the apostle John, "but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." It is the present lot of the angels, that they behold the face of our Father in heaven, and it would seem as if the effect of this was to form and to perpetuate in them the moral likeness of himself, and that they reflect back upon him his own image, and that thus a diffused resemblance to the Godhead is kept up among all those adoring worshippers who live in the near and rejoicing contemplation of the Godhead. Mark then how that peculiar and endearing feature in the goodness of the Deity, which we have just now adverted to-mark how beauteously it is reflected downwards upon us in the revealed attitude of angels. From the high eminences of heaven, are they bending a wakeful regard over the men of this sinful world; and the repentance of every one of them spreads a joy and a high gratulation

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But God, compassed about as he is with light inaccessible, and full of glory, lies so hidden from the ken and conception of all our faculties, that the spirit of man sinks exhausted by its attempts to comprehend him. Could the image of the Supreme be placed direct before the eye of the mind, that flood of splendour, which is ever issuing from him on all who have the privilege of beholding, would not only dazzle, but overpower us. And therefore it is, that I bid you look to the reflection of that image, and thus to take a view of its mitigated glories, and to gather the lineaments of the Godhead in the face of those righteous angels, who have never thrown away from them the resemblance in which they were created; and, unable as you are to support the grace and the majesty of that countenance, before which the sons and the prophets of other days fell, and became as dead men, let us, before we bring this argument to a close, borrow one lesson of Him who sitteth on the throne, from the aspect and the revealed doings of those who are surrounding it.

The infidel, then, as he widens the field of his contemplations would suffer its every separate object to die away into forgetfulness: these angels, expatiating as they do over the range of a loftier universality, are represented as all awake to the history of each of its distinct and subordinate provin

ces. The infidel, with his mind afloat among ment. I now make my appeal to the sensisuns and among systems, can find no place bilities of your heart; and tell me, to whom in his already occupied regards, for that does the moral feeling within it yield its humble planet which lodges and accommo- readiest testimony-to the infidel, who dates our species; the angels, standing on a would make this world of ours vanish away loftier summit, and with a mightier prospect into abandonment—or to those angels, who of creation before them, are yet represented ring throughout all their mansions the hoas looking down on this single world, and sannas of joy, over every one individual of attentively marking the every feeling and its repentant population? the every demand of all its families. The infidel, by sinking us down to an unnoticeable minuteness, would lose sight of our dwelling-place altogether, and spread a darkening shroud of oblivion over all the concerns and all the interests of men; but the angels will not so abandon us; and undazzled by the whole surpassing grandeur of that scenery which is around them, are they revealed as directing all the fulness of their regard to this our habitation, and casting a longing and benignant eye on ourselves and on our children. The infidel will tell us of those worlds which roll afar, and the number of which outstrips the arithmetic of the human understanding-and then with the hardness of an unfeeling calculation, will he consign the one we occupy, with all its guilty generations, to despair.

And here I cannot omit to take advantage of that opening with which our Saviour has furnished us, by the parables of this chapter, and admits us into a familiar view of that principle on which the inhabitants of heaven are so awake to the deliverance and the restoration of our species. To illustrate the difference in the reach of knowledge and of affection, between a man and an angel, let us think of the difference of reach between one man and another. You may often witness a man, who feels neither tenderness nor care beyond the precincts of his own family; but who, on the strength of those instinctive fondnesses which nature has implanted in his bosom, may earn the character of an amiable father, or a kind husband, or a bright example of all that is soft and endearing in the relations But he who counts the number of the of domestic society. Now, conceive him, stars, is set forth to us as looking at every in addition to all this, to carry his affections inhabitant among the millions of our spe- abroad, without, at the same time, any cies, and by the word of the Gospel beck- abatement of their intensity towards the oning to him with the hand of invitation, objects which are at home-that stepping and on the very first step of his return, as across the limits of the house he occupies,. moving towards him with all the eagerness he takes an interest in the families which of the prodigal's father, to receive him are near him-that he lends his services to back again into that presence from which the town or the district wherein he is placed, he had wandered. And as to this world, and gives up a portion of his time to the in favour of which the scowling infidel will thoughtful labours of a humane and publicnot permit one solitary movement, all hea- spirited citizen. By this enlargement in the ven is represented as in a stir about its re- sphere of his attention he has extended his storation; and there cannot a single son or reach; and, provided he has not done so at a single daughter be recalled from sin unto the expense of that regard which is due to his righteousness, without an acclamation of family--a thing which, cramped and conjoy among the hosts of paradise. Aye, and fined as we are, we are very apt, in the exI can say it of the humblest and the un-ercise of our humble faculties, to do-I put worthiest of you all, that the eye of angels is upon him, and that his repentance would at this moment, send forth a wave of delighted sensibility throughout the mighty throng of their innumerable legions.

it to you, whether, by extending the reach of his views and his affections, he has not extended his worth and his moral respectability along with it?

But I can conceive a still further enlargeNow, the single question I have to ask, ment. I can figure to myself a man, whose is, On which of the two sides of this con- wakeful sympathy overflows the field of his trast do we see most of the impress of hea- own immediate neighbourhood-to whom ven? Which of the two would be most the name of country comes with all the glorifying to God? Which of them car- omnipotence of a charm upon his heart, ries upon it the most of that evidence which and with all the urgency of a most righteous lies in its having a celestial character? For and resistless claim upon his servicesif it be the side of the infidel, then must all who never hears the name of Britain our hopes expire with the ratifying of that sounded in his ears, but it stirs up all his fatal sentence, by which the world is doom- enthusiasm in behalf of the worth and the ed, through its insignificancy, to perpetual welfare of its people-who gives himself exclusion from the attentions of the God-up, with all the devotedness of a passion, head. I have long been knocking at the to the best and purest objects of patriotism door of your understanding, and have tried-and who, spurning away from him the to find an admittance to it for many an argu- vulgarities of party ambition, separates his

life and his labours to the fine pursuit of | tions of cast and of colour, and spreads its augmenting the science, or the virtue, or ample regards over the whole brotherhood the substantial prosperity of his nation. of the species-a philanthropy, which atOh! could such a man retain all the ten- taches itself to man in the general; to man derness, and fulfil all the duties which home throughout all his varieties: to man as the and which neighbourhood require of him, partaker of one common nature, and who, and at the same time expatiate, in the might in whatever clime or latitude you may meet of his untired faculties, on so wide a field with him, is found to breathe the same of benevolent contemplation-would not sympathies, and to possess the same high this extension of reach place him still high-capabilities both of bliss and improvement. er than before, on the scale both of moral It is true that upon this subject, there is and intellectual gradation, and give him a still brighter and more enduring name in the records of human excellence?

often a loose and unsettled magnificence of thought, which is fruitful of nothing but empty speculation. But the men to whom And lastly, I can conceive a still loftier I allude have not imagined the enterprise flight of humanity-a man, the aspiring of in the form of a thing unknown. They whose heart for the good of man, knows have given it a local habitation. They have no limitations-whose longings, and whose bodied it forth in deed and in accomplishconceptions on this subject, overleap all ment. They have turned the dream into a the barriers of geography-who, looking on reality. In them, the power of a lofty genehimself as a brother of the species, links ralization meets with its happiest attemevery spare energy which belongs to him perament in the principle and perseverance, with the cause of its melioration-who can and all the chastening and subduing virtues embrace within the grasp of his ample de- of the New Testament. And, were I in sires the whole family of mankind-and search of that fine union of grace and of who, in obedience to a heaven-born move-greatness, which I have now been insisting ment of principle within him, separates himself to some big and busy enterprise, which is to tell on the moral destinies of the world. Oh! could such a man mix up the softenings of private virtue with the habit of so sublime a comprehension-if, amid those magnificent darings of thought and of performance, the mildness of his benignant eye could still continue to cheer the retreat of his family, and to spend the charm and the sacredness of piety among all its members -could he even mingle himself, in all the gentleness of a soothed and a smiling heart, with the playfulness of his children--and also find strength to shed the blessings of his presence and his counsel over the vicinity around him;-oh! would not the combination of so much grace with so much loftiness, only serve the more to aggrandize him? Would not the one ingredient of a character so rare, go to illustrate and to magnify the other? And would not you pronounce him to be the fairest specimen of our nature, who could so call out all your tenderness, while he challenged and compelled all your veneration?

on, and in virtue of which the enlightened Christian can at once find room in his bosom for the concerns of universal humanity and for the play of kindliness towards every individual he meets with-I could no where more readily expect to find it, than with the worthies of our own landthe Howard of a former generation, who paced it over Europe in quest of the unseen wretchedness which abounds in it; or in such men of our present generation as Wilberforce, who lifted his unwearied voice against the biggest outrage ever practised on our nature, till he wrought its extermination; and Clarkson, who plied his assiduous task at rearing the materials of its impressive history, and at length carried, for this righteous cause, the mind of Parliament; and Carey, from whose hand the generations of the East are now receiving the elements of their moral renovation, and, in fine, those holy and devoted men, who count not their lives dear unto them; but, going forth every year from the island of our habitation, carry the message of heaven over the face of the world; and in the Nor can I proceed, at this point of my front of severest obloquy are now labouring argument, without adverting to the way in in remotest lands; and are reclaiming anwhich this last and this largest style of be- other and another portion from the wastes nevolence is exemplified in our own coun- of dark and fallen humanity; and are widentry-where the spirit of the Gospel has ing the domains of gospel light and gospel given to many of its enlightened disciples principle among them; and are spreading a the impulse of such a philanthropy, as car-moral beauty around the every spot on which ries abroad their wishes and their endeavours to the very outskirts of human population-a philanthropy, of which, if you asked the extent or the boundary of its field, we should answer, in the language of inspiration, that the field is the world-philanthropy, which overlooks all the distinc

they pitch their lowly tabernacle; and are at length compelling even the eye and the testimony of gainsayers, by the success of their noble enterprise; and are forcing the exclamation of delighted surprise from the charmed and arrested traveller, as he looks at the softening tints which they are now

may be brought to meet the infidelity we have thus long been employed in combating. It was nature, and the experience of every bosom will affirm it—it was nature in the shepherd to leave the ninety and nine of his flock forgotten and alone in the wilderness, and betaking himself to the mountains, to give all his labour and all his concern to the pursuit of one solitary wanderer. It was nature; and we are told in the passage before us, that it is such a portion of nature as belongs not merely to men but to angels; when the woman, with her mind in a state of listlessness as to the nine pieces of silver that were in secure custody,

spreading over the wilderness, and as he hears the sound of the chapel bell, and as in those haunts where, at the distance of half a generation, savages would have scowled upon his path, he regales himself with the hum of missionary schools, and the lovely spectacle of peaceful and christian villages. Such, then, is the benevolence, at once so gentle and so lofty, of those men, who, sanctified by the faith that is in Jesus, have had their hearts visited from heaven by a beam of warmth and of sacredness.-What then, I should like to know, is the benevolence of the place from whence such an influence cometh? How wide is the compass of this virtue there, and how exquisite is the feel-turned the whole force of her anxiety to the ing of its tenderness, and how pure and how fervent are its aspirings among those unfallen beings who have no darkness and no encumbering weight of corruption to strive against? Angels have a mightier reach of contemplation. Angels can look upon this world, and all which it inherits, as the part of a larger family. Angels were in the full exercise of their powers even at the first infancy of our species, and shared in the gratulations of that period, when at the birth of humanity all intelligent nature felt a gladdening impulse, and the morning stars sang together for joy. They loved us even with that love which a family on earth bears to a younger sister; and the very childhood of our tinier faculties did only serve the more to endear us to them; and though born at a later hour in the history of creation, did they regard us as heirs of the same destiny with themselves, to rise along with them in the scale of moral elevation, to bow at the same footstool, and to partake in those high dispensations of a parent's kindness and a parent's care, which are ever emanating from the throne of the Eternal on all the members of a duteous and affectionate family. Take the reach of an angel's mind, but, at the same time take the seraphic fervour of an angel's benevolence along with it; how from the eminence on which he stands he may have an eye upon many worlds, and a remembrance upon the origin and the successive concerns of every one of them; how he may feel the full force of a most affecting relationship with the inhabitants of each, as the offspring of one common Father; and though it be both the effect and the evidence of our depravity, that we cannot sympathise with these pure and generous ardours of a celestial spirit; how it may consist with the lofty comprehension, and the everbreathing love of an angel, that he can both shoot his benevolence abroad over a mighty expanse of planets and of systems, and lavish a flood of tenderness on each individual of their teeming population.

Keep all this in view, and you cannot fail to perceive how the principle, so finely and so copiously illustrated in this chapter

one piece which she had lost, and for which she had to light a candle, and to sweep the house, and to search diligently until she found it. It was nature in her to rejoice more over that piece, than over all the rest of them, and to tell it abroad among friends and neighbours, that they might rejoice along with her-aye, and sadly effaced as humanity is, in all her original lineaments, this is a part of our nature, the very movements of which are experienced in heaven, "where there is more joy over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance." For any thing I know, the very planet that rolls in the immensity around me may be a land of righteousness; and be a member of the household of God; and have her secure dwelling-place within that ample limit, which embraces his great and universal family. But I know at least of one wanderer; and how wofully she has strayed from peace and from purity; and how in dreary alienation from him who made her, she has bewildered herself among those many devious tracts, which have carried her afar from the path of immortality; and how sadly tarnished all those beauties and felicities are, which promised, on that morning of her existence when God looked on her, and saw that all was very good-which promised so richly to bless and to adorn her; and how in the eye of the whole unfallen creation, she has renounced all this goodliness, and is fast departing away from them into guilt, and wretchedness, and shame. Oh! if there be any truth in this chapter, and any sweet or touching nature in the principle which runs throughout all its parables, let us cease to wonder, though they who surround the throne of love should be looking so intently toward us-or though in the way by which they have singled us out, all the other orbs of space should, for one short season, on the scale of eternity, appear to be forgotten-or though for every step of her recovery, and for every individual who is rendered back again to the fold from which he was separated, another and another message of triumph should be

made to circulate among the hosts of paradise-or though lost as we are, and sunk in depravity as we are, all the sympathies of heaven should now be awake on the enterprise of him who has travailed, in the greatness of his strength, to seek and to

save us.

summation of their history in time, there should be such a movement in heaven; or that angels should so often have sped their commissioned way on the errand of our recovery; or that the Son of God should have bowed himself down to the burden of our mysterious atonement; or that the Spirit of God should now, by the busy va

And here I cannot but remark how fine a harmony there is between the law of sym-riety of his all-powerful influences, be carrypathetic nature in heaven, and the most ing forward that dispensation of grace touching exhibitions of it on the face of our which is to make us meet for re-admittance world. When one of a numerous house- into the mansions of the celestial. Only hold droops under the power of disease, is think of love as the reigning principle there; not that the one to whom all the tenderness of love, as sending forth its energies and is turned, and who, in a manner, monopo- aspirations to the quarter where its object lizes the inquiries of his neighbourhood, is most in danger of being for ever lost to and the care of his family? When the it; of love, as called forth by this single sighing of the midnight storms sends a dis- circumstance to its uttermost exertion, and mal foreboding into the mother's heart, to the most exquisite feeling of its tenderness; whom of all her offspring, I would ask, are and then shall we come to a distinct and a her thoughts and her anxieties then wan- familiar explanation of this whole mystery: dering? Is it not to her sailor boy whom her Nor shall we resist by our incredulity the fancy has placed amid the rude and angry gospel message any longer, though it tells surges of the oceau? Does not this, the us that throughout the whole of this world's hour of his apprehended danger, concen- history, long in our eyes, but only a little trate upon him the whole force of her wake- month in the high periods of immortality, ful meditations? And does not he engross, so much of the vigilance, and so much of the for a season, her every sensibility, and her earnestness of heaven, should have been every prayer? We sometimes hear of ship- expended on the recovery of its guilty powrecked passengers thrown upon a barba-pulation.

rous shore; and seized upon by its prowling There is another touching trait of nature, inhabitants; and hurried away through the which goes finely to heighten this princitracks of a dreary and unknown wilder-ple, and still more forcibly to demonstrate ness; and sold into captivity; and loaded its application to our present argument. So with the fetters of irrecoverable bondage; long as the dying child of David was alive, and who, stripped of every other liberty but he was kept on the stretch of anxiety and the liberty of thought, feel even this to be of suffering with regard to it. When it exanother ingredient of wretchedness, for pired, he arose and comforted himself. This what can they think of but home; and as all narrative of King David is in harmony with its kind and tender imagery comes upon all that we experience of our own movetheir remembrance, how can they think of ments and our own sensibilities. It is the it but in the bitterness of despair? Oh tell power of uncertainty which gives them so me, when the fame of all this disaster active and so interesting a play in our boreaches his family, who is the member of soms; and which heightens all our regards it to whom is directed the full tide of its to a tenfold pitch of feeling and exercise; griefs and of its sympathies? Who is it that, and which fixes down our watchfulness for weeks and for months, usurps their upon our infant's dying bed; and which every feeling, and calls out their largest sa- keeps us so painfully alive to every turn crifices, and sets them to the busiest expe- and to every symptom in the progress of dients for getting him back again? Who is its malady; and which draws out all our it that makes them forgetful of themselves affections for it to a degree of intensity that nd of all around them; and tell me if you is quite unutterable; and which urges us on an assign a limit to the pains, and the ex- to ply our every effort and our every exertions, and the surrenders which afflicted pedient, till hope withdraw its lingering parents and weeping sisters would make to beam, or till death shut the eyes of our be seek and to save him. loved in the slumber of its long and its last repose.

Now

conceive, as we are warranted to do by the parables of this chapter, the princiI know not who of you have your names ple of all these earthly exhibitions to be in written in the book of life-nor can I tell full operation around the throne of God. if this be known to the angels which are in Conceive the universe to be one secure and heaven. While in the land of living men, rejoicing family, and that this alienated you are under the power and application world is the only strayed, or only captive of a remedy, which if taken as the gospel member belonging to it; and we shall cease prescribes, will renovate the soul, and alto wonder, that from the first period of the together prepare it for the bloom and the captivity of our species, down to the con- vigour of immortality. Wonder not then