AND OMEGA, SAITH THE LORD, THE BEGINNING AND THE ENDING, WHICH IS, AND WHICH WAS, AND WHICH IS TO COME, THE ALMIGHTY.*

We preach that HE should be the beginning and the ending of every human thought.

II...It is not so. For man is "careful, and troubled about many things." And, “indeed, can never attain, in the shape of conviction, a lively idea of his own position on the scale of the universe, unless he look with undistracted attention above and around him, and put forth all the energies of his intellect, with a view to explore the vast scheme of existence of which he forms a part. As long as he confines his curiosity to the history of his fellowmen, wondering at their progress from the tangled forest to the crowded city; shuddering at the sanguinary wars, foreign or domestic, of which almost every field on the globe has at one time or another been the theatre; poring over obsolete principles of philosophy and legislation, or devising new combinations for the regulation of transitory

* Rev. i. 8.

"Virorum nugæ negotia vocantur." See Luke x. 41, 42; Prov. xvii. 24.

interests—so long will he remain unconscious of the much more exalted pursuits for which his faculties are destined. The little routine of each succeeding day leads him into notions altogether false as to the real purpose for which life was given him. Looking upon the immediate object of his avarice or ambition as exclusively worthy of his care-his busy thought by day, his feverish dream by nighthe feels an exaggerated sense of his own importance that precludes him from bestowing a single reflection upon the commencement, the termination, and the final issue of the sixty years an hour, nay, not a minute of eternity -which are allotted to his share."* Led away by the wiles of the "rulers of the darkness of this world," + man forgets God: or, as the inspired writer expresses it, he does not

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like" to retain God in his knowledge. God, therefore, gives him over to a reprobate mind : to do those things which are “ not convenient:"§ to be lured away into the midst of the vanities and the crimes which he has preferred to entertain thoughts contrary to the deductions of all sound reason, inconsistent with every law of Truth.

* Whewell.
Rom. i. 28.

+ Eph. vi. 12.
f Rom. i. 28.

III..." Surely," says Solomon,

"vain are

all men by nature, who are ignorant of God, and could not, out of the good things that are seen, know him that is neither by considering the works, did acknowledge the workmaster; but deemed either fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the violent water, or the lights of heaven, to be the gods which govern the world. With whose beauty, if they being delighted, took them to be gods; let them know how much better the Lord of them is: for the first author of beauty hath created them. And if they were astonished at their power and virtue, let them understand by them, how much mightier HE is that MADE them. For by the greatness and beauty of the CREATURES, proportionably the MAKER of them is

It is written in the book of Job," Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ?”—(i. e.) Canst thou find out, and comprehend ALL that belongs to his Godhead?

"WE SEE THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY," says St. Paul.

"WE KNOW IN PART."

"When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. Nevertheless, St. Paul also says, "The invisible things of Him ARE clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead!"

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In another place, St. Paul says, Every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God."+

Again,-"Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."‡

IV...There is no mind which does not possess conviction as to the truth of the self-evident proposition of the existence of a God, which can understand that THINGS THAT

ARE MADE MUST HAVE HAD A MAKER.

Therefore, while we contemplate the immensity, the beauty, and the harmony of the

* See Rom. xiii. Deut. xxix. 29. Rom. xi. 33.

† Heb. iii. 4.

Heb. xi. 3; and see the parallel passages.

§ "The belief in a God," it was once said, "is a fixed star in the minds of men, which is as plainly seen by the naked eye of the peasant, as through the telescope of the philosopher."

universe; while we look forth, and observe, how all things are formed, sustained, regulated and governed by never-changing laws of the most wondrous wisdom :-We see how "the face of nature, lying visible before us, is a tissue of effects produced by a train of operations depending upon one another:" -that if we trace this line up to its original, it leads us to God, "the fountain of all powers, and intelligent disposer of all

things."

Such design, we KNOW, "must have had a designer," + which designer is God! †

v..." The fool," says the Psalmist, "hath said in his heart, There is no God." § That is, the desperately-wicked person hath said this [for this is the meaning of the word fool as used in the original language in which the Psalm was written]. And why has the

* See Abraham Tucker's Light of Nature, vol. v. and vol. vii. p. 627.

See Paley's Nat. Theol. c. xxiii.

See Appendix B.

§ Ps. xiv. 1. Folly is a term employed in Hebrew to signify the greatest possible degree of guilt." See "A New Translation of the book of Psalms from the original Hebrew, with explanatory Notes, by W. French, D.D. and G. Skinner," p. 19.