Fathers and Brethren,-Is not the subject of our meditations, this evening, eminently suited to the times? In what other direction can we find an effectual barrier against the incoming floods of error? Of many of the views presented, has there not been full confirmation in our own experience? When we have been most intimate with the divine word, has not our own piety been most vigorous our preparation most ample for the work of the pulpit? Have not our most biblical discourses been those which have told most powerfully on human hearts? In scenes of revival, how has everything called for scripture, and how have we had scripture for everything! What seemed then our work but the simple echoing of the word of God? Is it amiss for us to ask, whether, in this respect, there has been no deterioration in our ministry, or whether, at least, there be not a deficiency? Are we not less scriptural than the Baxters, and Erskines, and Edwardses, of other times-those holy men whom God delighted to bless? May it not be one of the reasons why the influences of divine grace are so withheld from our congregations, that we give the people so much of our mind, and so little of God's?" The Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither His ear heavy that He cannot hear." Searching our hearts on this subject, and reviewing our ways, let us resort anew to the divine word. Let us prove to the utmost its saving power; and we shall feel, as never before, how true and how precious is that declaration-" All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."

BY REV. ROBERT TURNBULL,

Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Hartford, Ct.

THE THOUGHTS OF GOD.

"O Lord, how great are thy works! and thy thoughts are very deep."

-PSALMS 92: 5.

"How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them !"-PSALMS 139: 17.

To think is the property of mind, of immaterial and immortal spirit. Matter can be brought into the most complicated relations, the most elaborate and beautiful forms; but it cannot think. It can neither commence nor control a particular course of action. Thought is self-conscious, self-controlling, and appertains to a being of intelligence and will-a being, conscious of its own acts. and plans, and capable of commencing, continuing, and directing particular trains of action. Matter may be made the vehicle of thought. It may transmit it by the mouth, the hand, the trumpet, the telegraph, but it cannot make it, cannot control it. Thinking is neither worked out nor ground out. It is neither light, nor heat, nor electricity. It is neither brain nor nerve, eye nor ear, head nor hand; though these all may transmit it, or receive it, under the direction of mind. Thought has nothing in it akin to matter or its motions: it is a thing by itself, an original, independent thing, having characteristics and powers of its own. It belongs to the spirit, and is spiritual in all its manifestations and results. And thus, if spirit is infinite and immortal, thought also is infinite and can never die.

Thought is the only thing free and independent; the only thing conscious and active; the only thing that knows and loves, suffers and rejoices; the only thing that creates and controls; the only thing that is great, and good, and eternal. How wonderful then is thought! How wonderful is man! Above all, how wonderful is God! Ah! what thinking is His. How infinite, how mysterious, how ineffable are His thoughts! "O Lord, how great are thy works! and thy thoughts are very deep."

We have said that thought is the only thing that loves. But "God is love!" Therefore all His thoughts are love. How tender, then, how generous and kind are those thoughts in reference

to us.

"How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God!

how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake I am still with thee."

Here is a great and awful mystery; in itself so stupendous as to appall and overwhelm the soul.-The mind of God; the thinking of the Almighty-the infinite and everlasting thinking of Him, who is above all, through all, and in all. But it is the thinking of love; and this invests the mystery, dark and overpowering in itself, with a sweet and attractive radiance; so that hope springs from the mystery, and rejoices in its depth.

This, we think, was something of the experience of the Psalmist, as detailed in the one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm. Referring to the omnipresence and omniscience of God, he exclaims: "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike unto thee. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well."

Here the Psalmist beheld some of the thinking of God, in his own framework, and in the mysterious spirit by which it is inhabited. He trembled at himself, as a dread and fathomless mystery. But he is instantly reassured, by remembering the loving-kindness of the Lord, and hence he joyfully adds:" How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! when I awake I am ever with thee"-ever resting on the bosom of God,

"Whose love doth keep,

In its complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep."

Here, then, my beloved brethren, is the mind of God-an infinite, unfathomable mystery, but a mystery of love. Thoughts deeper than the grave, stronger than hell, wider than the universe, more enduring than the everlasting hills,-thoughts awful, mysterious, resistless, appalling,-thoughts boundless, omnipotent, everlasting; but thoughts of love, thoughts of mercy and compassion to the children of men.

Let us consider this great and thrilling subject-the Thoughts of God. In the first place, let us inquire whether, and to what extent, the thoughts of God are attainable by us: Secondly, what are some of the Thoughts of God-what, especially, in reference to us, are His leading and most cherished Thoughts; in other words, what are some of the characteristics of God's Thinking.

I. In the first place, Are the Thoughts of God attainable by us; and, if so, how and to what extent?

our own.

We can reach the thoughts of our fellow-men: they gleam out upon their countenances, echo in their words, appear in their actions. We find them embodied in books, letters, inscriptions, monuments, buildings, canals, railroads, bridges, statues, and paintings. In all these we attain their thoughts, and make them We reach thus, not only the thoughts of our contemporaries, but of those also who lived in past generations--of the Homers and Platos, the Pauls and the Luthers, the Newtons and the Miltons, the Halls and the Howards of by-gone times. By the same means we are able to transmit our thoughts to other lands and other times, and make them attainable even by those who may live at the close of time. It is questionable, however, whether we can attain all the thoughts even of man. There are trains of reflection, and especially trains of emotion, which never reach the surface of the soul; trains of thought and tides of feeling, not only too deep for tears, but too deep for words. Great and original spirits exist, much of whose thinking cannot be understood even when it is expressed, and much of whose thinking is too profound, too delicate and etherial, for words. How vast even the obscurities of Revelation. Ah! there are depths in the human soul and in the human heart, not attainable by any of us; depths which God alone can sound. Still, the thoughts of our fellow-men, generally speaking, are attainable by us; and oh! how interesting, sometimes, is the pursuit and acquisition of such thoughts. To reach, nay more, to become familiar with the thoughts of Plato, of Paul, of Luther, of Bacon, of Edwards, of Pascal, and of Foster, and not only so, but to make them our own, to weave them, like threads of gold, into the web of our own thinking, how desirable, how delightful!

So also we might attain the thoughts of angels, if we could only see their godlike faces, gleaming in the sunlight of heaven; or hear their mystic voices, uttering a language familiar to us; or read their thoughts, embodied in books, in works, or in actions. By these, and other means which are conceivable, we might, in some degree, understand and appreciate the thinking of angels. Moreover, what an acquisition this! Take one of them, for example, who, six thousand years ago, sang, with his compeers, the creation of the world, and has lived, in purity and blessedness, from that time till now, with all the accumulated treasures of his vast and varied experience, his profound and protracted thinking, in the very presence-chamber of the King of kings, and amid "the thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers" of the heavenly state, with all that he has gathered from his meditations on nature and on God, and especially on the great work of Redemption by the Cross of Christ: let such an one communicate to us some

of his most intimate and cherished thoughts, on the nature and destiny of man, the work and glory of Christ, the beauty of holiness, and "the life everlasting," what an ineffable attainment, what an unspeakable blessing! How, in its unutterable radiance, would all our former thinking grow dim and vanish away! But it may be questioned whether, in our present state, we could understand much of the thinking of such a being; for its very luminousness might blind our eyes, and bewilder our minds. "Light, itself," as Sir Thomas Brown, quaintly but profoundly, remarks, "while it illuminates some things, casts others into shadow. The greatest mystery of religion is expressed by adumbration; and in the noblest parts of Jewish types, we find the Cherubim shadowing the Mercy Seat. The sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and light but the shadow of God." How then can we attain the thoughts of God? How can we gaze upon the central Sun, and read the thoughts of God in the lines of infinite space? It would seem impossible. "Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself!" exclaims the prophet, as if blinded by the excessive light of Jehovah's countenance. Thy thoughts, O God, are very deep! "O, the depths! O, the depths!" was the repeated exclamation of an old divine, when he had gained some slight conception of the counsels of God.

It must be clear, we think, from the very nature of the case, that we cannot attain all the thoughts of God; and that, in all probability, we can attain none of them in a perfect manner. "Canst thou, by searching, find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?" "Great is the mystery of godliness!" "O the depths both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!"

But we can surely attain some of the thoughts of God. In other words, God can communicate Himself unto us. He can reach our minds, put us in possession of His thoughts. And yet, some have doubted this, and insisted, because we could know little, we could know nothing of God, either from nature or from revelation. But surely this is to limit the Holy One of Israel. It is to bind God himself in the chains of a resistless fate,-a power stronger than Himself, a power which must be more than infinite, more than omnipotent-which is absurd. What! God not reveal Himself,-not embody His thoughts,-not transmit them to the mind of His creatures, if He so will it! Can we, creatures of a day, communicate with the distant, nay, with the unborn; can we incarnate our thoughts in books and works; can we send them, with lightning-speed, through a thousand miles of magnetic wire, making them luminous to the eye of the far-distant friend, and can God, the infinite, the omnipotent, not transmit His thoughts to the souls of the beings whom He has made? The idea is preposterous in itself, and moreover is stultified by facts.