BLESSEDNESS OF TRUSTING IN GOD. 57

the end of its existence; the highest object of all its desires and affections. When it came fresh and unpolluted from His hands, it was natural, nay, it was its very nature and instinct, to rely on God, to rejoice in the consciousness of His love and the security of His protection. Surrounded by innumerable proofs of the goodness of the Almighty, it was impossible for the pure and untainted spirit to avoid reposing the most unbounded confidence in the Author and end of its existence. And as long as this confidence was undisturbed, it was impossible for man to do wrong; for to trust in God is to have no other will than His. The first effort, therefore, of Satan was to create in the heart of our first parents a doubt and misgiving of the love of God; to insinuate that He had unsus pected motives for that only limit which He had placed to the freedom and dominion of His representatives on earth; and thus to render disobedience to His command possible, by making it appear desirable. This was the ruin of our nature. The whole system and constitution of human nature

was disordered and deranged. An alienation of affection and a confusion of judgment were introduced, which so completely marred and shattered the divine image, that it required the hand of the Creator Himself to reunite the broken fragments, and reduce them once more into the likeness of His holiness.

To bring back things to their former state, to restore this unity of spirit between God and man, was that necessity which brought down the Son of God from the bosom of His Father, and moved the blessed Spirit to descend and make His temple in the human heart. All this manifestation of the love of God, of His unalterable and unconquerable love to the work of His own hands, though guilty and self-destroyed, all this revelation of a mystery and depth of goodness which the eyes of angels desire to fathom and explore, is exhibited and pressed on our attention by the language of Scripture, the facts of Christianity, and the dispensations of divine grace and providence, in order to bring back the wandering affections of the soul, to inspire man

with that confidence which he once placed in his Creator, and to confirm and strengthen that confidence, so that he shall be able to bear the arts and the assaults of the devil, and the miseries of a world which human guilt has made the abode of pain and care and sorrow; to endure even the most perplexing trials of faith; to suffer patiently not merely for sin, but for righteousness; to rejoice in God at the moment He appears to forsake him; and at last to look with steady eye and with a calm and rational hope on the grave itself, and when he walks through the valley of the shadow of death to fear no evil.

It must be evident that to distrust God, to doubt His love, or, in other words, to doubt the sincerity of His professions of love to us (for His works and words are all so many professions of His love), is as wicked and unjust as it is unnatural and unreasonable. For this reason, trust in God is enforced in the Holy Scripture as the bounden duty of every human being, and he that refuses to confide in God, or

that chooses rather to rely on himself, or on any other created thing, is criminal in the highest degree, and must expect to suffer the utmost severity of divine justice. But it is not solely or chiefly by commands and threats that God seeks to restore our confidence in Him. Sometimes He lays aside the majesty of our offended God, He appears as our merciful Father, He stretches out His arms to embrace us, He intreats us to return to His bosom and His love, and beseeches us to be reconciled to Him. At other times He condescends to reason with us, and points out to us the folly of all false confidence and of refusing to rely on that which never can disappoint or deceive us: He tells us of the misery of unbelief, and the happiness of a soul reposing on His eternal love. At other times He sets before us the examples of His saints that trusted in Him in old time. He exhibits the noble and upright spirit with which they followed Him amidst a faithless world, unknown and despised. He unlocks the sacred retirement of their devotion, and lets us hear with our own ears the

breathings of their delight in Him, and witness with our own eyes the sunshine which confidence in Him can shed over a desolate and contrite heart.

In this point of view we should consider the beautiful psalm from whence our text has been taken; in which David, having expressed the most ardent longings after God, and the most intense delight in His worship, concludes with a devout expression of his adoring confidence in the almighty object of his love: "For the Lord God is a sun and a shield: the Lord God will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly:" and then sums up all his praises in the words of the text, “O Lord of Hosts, blessed is the man that putteth his trust in thee?"

In maintaining the truth of the doctrine contained in our text, I shall endeavour to prove that the man who putteth his trust in God is truly rational, truly virtuous, and truly happy. If this be the fact, then he is blessed indeed. If not, he cannot be blessed. For who is blessed without happiness, or at