sity, he must always exist, for absolute necessity is al ways the same, without any relation to time or place. Therefore he always was and ever will be.

And what a wonderful Being is this! a Being unbegun, and that can never have an end! a Being possessed of a complete, entire eternity. Here, my brethren, let your thoughts take wing, and fly backward and forward, and see if you can trace his existence. Fly back in thought about six thousand years, and all nature, as far as appears to us, was a mere blank; no heaven nor earth, no men nor angels. But still the great Eternal livedlived alone, self-sufficient and self-happy. Fly forward in thought as far as the conflagration, and you will see "the heavens dissolving, and the earth and the things that are therein burnt up: " but still Jehovah lives unchangeable, and absolutely independent. Exert all the powers of numbers, add centuries to centuries, thousands to thousands, millions to millions; fly back, back, back, as far as thought can possibly carry you, still Jehovah exists: nay, you are even then as far from the first moment of his existence as you are now, or ever can be. Take the same prospect before you, and you will find the King eternal and immortal still the same: he is then no nearer an end than at the creation, or millions of ages before it.

What a glorious being is this! Here, again, let men and angels, and all the offspring of time, bow the knee and adore. Let them lose themselves in this ocean, and spend their eternity in ecstatic admiration and love of this eternal Jehovah.

O! what a glorious portion is he to his people! Your earthly enjoyments may pass away like a shadow; your friends die, yourselves must die, and heaven and earth may vanish like a dream, but your God lives! he lives for ever, to give you a happiness equal to your immortal duration. Therefore, blessed, blessed is the people whose God is the Lord!

But O! let sinners, let wicked men and devils tremble before him, for how dreadful an enemy is an eternal God! He lives for ever to punish you. He lives for ever to hate your sin, to resent your rebellion, and to display his justice; and while he lives you must be miserable. What a dismal situation are you in, when the eternal existence of Jehovah is an inexhaustible fund of terror to you! O

how have you inverted the order of things, when you have made it your interest that the Fountain of being should cease to be, and that with him yourselves and all other creatures should vanish into nothing! What a malignant thing is sin, that makes existence a curse, and universal annihilation a blessing! What a strange region is hell, where being, so sweet in itself, and the capacity of all enjoyments, is become the most intolerable burden, and every wish is an imprecation of universal annihilation! Sinners, you have now time to consider these miseries and avoid them, and will you be so senseless and fool-hardy as to rush headlong into them? O! if you were but sensible what will be the consequences of your conduct in a few years, you would not need persuasions to reform it: but O the fatal blindness and stupidity of mortals, who will not be convinced of these things till the conviction be too late!

IV. The name of Jehovah implies that God is unchangeable, or always the same. If he exists necessarily, he must always necessarily be what he is, and cannot be anything else. He is dependent upon none, and therefore he can be subject to no change from another; and he is infinitely perfect, and therefore cannot desire to change himself. So that he must be always the same through all duration, from eternity to eternity: the same, not only as to his being, but as to his perfections; the same in power, wisdom, goodness, justice, and happiness. Thus he represents himself in his word, as "the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, nor shadow of turning: James i. 17; "the same yesterday, to-day, and forever: Heb. xiii. 8. What a distinguished perfection is this! and indeed it is in Jehovah only that immutability can be a perfection. The most excellent creature is capable of progressive improvements, and seems intended for it; and to fix such a creature at first in an immutable state, would be to limit and restrain it from higher degrees of perfection, and keep it always in a state of infancy. But Jehovah is absolutely, completely, and infinitely perfect, at the highest summit of all possible excellency, infinitely beyond any addition to his perfection, and absolutely incapable of improvement; and consequently, as there is no room for, so there is no need of, a change in him; and his immutability is a per

petual, invariable continuance in the highest degree of excellency, and therefore the highest perfection. He is the cause and the spectator of an endless variety of changes in the universe, without the least change in himself. He sees worlds springing into being, existing awhile, and then dissolving. He sees kingdoms and empires forming, rising, and rushing headlong to ruin. He changes the times and the seasons; removeth kings, and ne setteth up kings: Dan ii. 21; and he sees the fickleness and vicissitudes of mortals; he sees generations upon generations vanishing like successive shadows; he sees them now wise, now foolish; now in pursuit of one thing, now of another; now happy, now miserable, and in a thousand different forms. He sees the revolutions in nature, the successions of the seasons, and of night and day. These and a thousand other alterations he beholds, and they are all produced or permitted by his all-ruling providence; but all these make no change in him; his being, his perfections, his counsels, and his happiness, are invariably and eternally the same. He is not wise, good, just, or happy, only at times, but he is equally, steadily, and immutably so through the whole of his infinite duration. O how unlike the fleeting offspring of time, and especially the changing race of man!

Since Jehovah is thus constant and unchangeable, how worthy is he to be chosen as our best friend! You that love him need fear no change in him. They are not small matters that will turn his heart from you: his love is fixed with judgment, and he never will see reason to reverse it it is not a transient fit of fondness, but it is deliberate, calm, and steady. You may safely trust your all in his hands, for he cannot deceive you; and whatever or whoever fail you, he will not. You live in a fickle, uncertain world; your best friends may prove treacherous or cool towards you; all your earthly comforts may wither and die around you; yea, heaven and earth may pass away; but your God is still the same. He has assured you of it with his own mouth, and pointed out to you the happy consequences of it: "I am the Lord Jehovah," says he, "I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed:" Mal. iii. 6.

What a complete happiness is this Jehovah to those who have chosen him for their portion! If an infinite

God is now sufficient to satisfy your utmost desires, he will be so to all eternity. He is an ocean of communicative happiness that never ebbs or flows, and therefore completely blessed will you ever be who have an interest in him.

But O! how miserable are they who are the enemies of this Jehovah! Sinners, he is unchangeable, and can never lay aside his resentments against sin, or abate in the least degree in his love of virtue and holiness. He will never recede from his purpose to punish impenitent rebels, nor lose his power to accomplish it. His hatred of all moral evil is not a transient passion, but a fixed, invariable, deep-rooted hatred. Therefore, if ever you be happy, there must be a change in you. As you are so opposite to him, there must be an alteration in the one or the other: you see it cannot be in him, and therefore it must be in you; and this you ought to labor for above all other things. Let us then have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire (Heb. xii. 28, 29,) to his impenitent and implacable enemies.*

SERMON XVIII.

GOD IS LOVE.

1 JOHN IV. 8.-God is love.

LOVE is a gentle, pleasing theme, the noblest passion of the human breast, and the fairest ornament of the rational nature. Love is the cement of society, and the source of social happiness; and without it the great

* Our author has evidently not finished his subject, and I do not find it prosecuted in any of the discourses that have come to my hands: but yet I determined to publish the Sermon, not only for its own (if I mistake not) substantial worth, but the rather as the Sermon that next follows in order, may be considered as a prosecution, if not a completion of the great and glorious subject he has undertaken, particularly of his professed design in this Sermon," of explaining the several perfections here ascribed to God, and showing that they all concur to constitute his goodness. The Editor.

community of the rational universe would dissolve, and men and angels would turn savages, and roam apart in barbarous solitude. Love is the spring of every pleasure; for who could take pleasure in the possession of what he does not love! Love is the foundation of religion and morality; for what is more monstrous than religion without love to that God who is the object of it ! Or who can perform social duties without feeling the endearments of those relations to which they belong? Love is the softener and polisher of human minds, and transforms barbarians into men; its pleasures are refined and delicate, and even its pains and anxieties have something in them soothing and pleasing. In a word, love is the brightest beam of divinity that has ever irradiated the creation; the nearest resemblance to the everblessed God; for God is love.

God is love. There is an unfathomable depth in this concise laconic sentence, which even the penetration of an angel's mind cannot reach; an ineffable excellence, which even celestial eloquence cannot fully represent. God is love; not only lovely and loving, but love itself; pure, unmixed love, nothing but love; love in his nature and in his operations; the object, source, and quintessence of all love.

My present design is to recommend the Deity to your affections under the amiable idea of love, and for that end to show that his other perfections are but various modifications of love.

I. Love comprehends the various forms of divine beneficence. Goodness, that extends its bounties to innumerable ranks of creatures, and diffuses happiness through the various regions of the universe, except that which is set apart for the dreadful, but salutary and benevolent purpose of confining and punishing incorrigible malefactors; grace, which so richly showers its blessings upon the undeserving, without past merit or the prospect of future compensation; mercy, that commiserates and relieves the miserable as well as the undeserving; patience and long-suffering, which so long tolerate insolent and provoking offenders: what is all this beneficence in all these its different forms towards different objects, what but love under various names? It is gracious, merciful, patient and long-suffering love; love variegated,