what space a body, to which a certain degree | for ever," Heb. xiii. 8. He is, as it were, the of velocity is communicated, must pass through fixed point, on which all creatures revolve, in a given time: but as soon as we suppose a while he is neither moved by their motion, greater degree of motion, as soon as we imagine shaken by their action, nor in the least imaginan augmentation of velocity to this greater de-able degree altered by all their countless vicisgree; as soon as we try to apply our knowledge situdes. He will answer the idea of the great of moving powers to those enormous bodies, and marvellous by the efficiency of his will. which the mighty hand of God guides in the Creatures have some efficient acts of volition: immensity of space, we are involved in per- but not of themselves. But go back to that plexity and confusion. But God conceives period in which there was nothing. Figure to infinite combination. He will make us partici- yourselves those immense voids, which prepate, as far as our minds can, his ideas; so ceded the formation of the universe, and reprethat we shall be able to give a large expanse sent to yourselves God alone. He forms the to our meditation without any fear of confusing plan of the world. He regulates the whole ourselves. design. He assigns an epoch of duration to it in a point of eternity. This act of his will produces this whole universe. Hence a sun, a moon, and stars. Hence earth and sea, rivers and fields. Hence kings, princes, and philosophers. "He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. The heavens were made by the word of the Lord, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth," Ps. xxxiii. 9. God then, perfectly answers our idea of the grand and the marvellous. He answers also the idea of the just.

5. In fine, the ideas of mankind are incomplete in their number. Most men think, there are only two sorts of beings, body and spirit; and they have also determined, that there can be only two. A rash decision in itself: but more rash still in a creature so confined in his genius as man. But the ideas of God are complete. He knows all possible beings. He will make us participate this disposition of mind, and from it may arise ideas of myriads of beings, on which now we cannot reason, because now we have no ideas of them. A communication It was he who gave us an idea of justice or of ideas is the first way in which God will make order. It was he who made the greatest sacrihimself known to us. This will be the first fices to it. It was he who moved heaven and trait of our resemblance of him. "We shall earth to re-establish it, and who testified how be like him, for we shall see him as he is." dear it was to him by sacrificing the most The second communication of God to a bea-worthy victim that could possibly suffer, I tified soul is a communication of love. We mean his only Son. cannot possibly partake of the ideas of God without participating his love. To participate the ideas of God is to possess just notions. To possess just notions is to place each object in the rank that is due to it; consequently, we shall regard the chief being as the only object of supreme love.

What is necessary to answer the idea, that an upright soul forms of the lovely? The lovely object must answer three ideas: the idea of the great and marvellous; the idea of the just; and the idea of the good: and, if I may venture to speak so, of the beatifying. Now, it is impossible to know God without entertaining these three ideas of him alone; consequently it is impossible to know God without loving him.And this is the reason of our profound admiration of the morality of the gospel. The morality of the gospel is the very quintessence of order. It informs us, no creature deserves supreme love. It makes this principle the substance of its laws. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind," Matt. xxi. 37. How worthy of supreme love will this God appear, how fully will he answer the idea of the great and the marvellous, when "we shall see him as he is!" He will answer it by his independence. Creatures exist: but they have only a borrowed being. God derives his existence from none. He is a self-existent Being. He will answer our idea of the magnificent by the immutability of his nature. Creatures exist: but they have no fixed and permanent being. They arise from nothing to existence. Their existence is rather variation and inconstancy than real being. But God, but "I the Lord," says he of himself, "I change not," Mal. iii. 6. "The same yesterday, to-day, and

Finally, God will perfectly answer our idea of the good and the beatifying. Who can come up to it except a God, who opens to his creatures an access to his treasures? A God, who reveals himself to them in order to take them away from their "broken cisterns," and to conduct them to the "fountain of living waters," Jer. ii. 13. A God, whose eternal wisdom cries to mankind, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money, come ye; buy and eat; yea come; buy wine and milk without money, and without price. Wherefore do you spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto me; hear, and your soul shall live," Isa. lv. 1-3.

We cannot, then, know God without loving him. And thus a communication of ideas leads to a communication of love. But this communication of love will render us like the God whom we admire. For the property of love in a soul inflamed with it, is to transform it in some sort into the object of its admiration. This is particularly proper to divine love. We love God, because we know his attributes; when we know his attributes, we know we can no better contribute to the perfection of our being than by imitating them, and the desire we have to perfect our being will necessitate us to apply wholly to imitate them, and to become like him.

Let us pass to our third consideration. The third communication of God to a beatified soul is a communication of his virtues. To love and to obey, in Scripture-style, is the same thing. "If ye love me, keep my commandments," is

a well known expression of Jesus Christ, John | xiv. 15. "He who saith I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him," is an expression of our apostle, 1 John ii. 4. This is not peculiar to the love of God. To love and to obey, even in civil society, are usually two things which have a very close connexion. But, as no creature has ever excited all the love, of which a soul is capable, so there is no creature to whom we have rendered a perfect obedience. It is only in regard to God, that there is an inseparable connexion between obedience and love. For when we love God, because we know him, we are soon convinced, that he cannot ordain any thing to his creature but what is useful to him; when we are convinced he can ordain nothing to be performed by his creature but what is useful to him, it becomes as impossible not to obey him as it is not to love ourselves. To love and obey is one thing, then, when the object in question is a being supremely lovely. These are demonstrations; but to obey God, and to keep his commandments, is to be like God.

The commandments of God are formed on the idea of the divine perfections. God has an idea of order; he loves it; he follows it; and this is all he ever has required, and all he ever will require, of his intelligent creatures. He requires us to know order, to love it, to follow it. An intelligent creature, therefore, who shall be brought to obey the commandments of God will be like God. "Be ye perfect, as your Father, which is in heaven, is perfect," Matt. v. 48. "Be ye holy, for I am holy," 1 Pet. i. 16. "Every man, that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself, even as he is pure," 1 John iii. 3. These precepts are given us here on earth, and we obey them imperfectly now: but we shall yield a perfect obedience, to them in heaven, when we shall "see him as he is." Here our apostle affirms, "Whosoever sinneth, hath not seen him, neither known him," ver. 6; that is to say, he who suffers sin to reign over him, does not know God; for, if he knew God, he would have just ideas of God, he would love him; and, if he loved him, he would imitate him. But in heaven we shall see, and know him, we shall not sin, we shall imitate him, "we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."

Lastly, The fourth communication of the Deity with beatified souls is a communication of felicity. In an economy of order, to be holy and to be happy are two things very closely connected. Now we are in an economy of disorder. Accordingly, virtue and felicity do not always keep company together, and it sometimes happens, that for "having hope in Christ we are," for a while, " of all men most miserable," 1 Cor. xv. 19. But this economy of disorder must be abolished. Order must be established. St. Peter, speaking of Jesus Christ, says, "The heavens must receive him until the times of the restitution of all things," Acts iii. 21. When all things shall be restored, virtue and happiness will be closely united, and, consequently, by participating the holiness of God, we shall participate his happiness.

God is supremely good. He is naturally

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inclined by his own perfections to do good. Rather than include himself in his own felicity, he went out of himself in the works of creation. He formed creatures capable of his favours. But these very perfections, which inclined him to do good, prevent his rendering impure and criminal creatures happy. "He is of purer eyes than to behold evil," Hab. i. 13. This is the cause of the innumerable penal evils, under which we groan. For this reason there are miserable people. Remove this obstacle, and God will follow his inclination to bounty. All creatures capable of being happy would be rendered perfectly happy. In heaven this obstacle will be removed.

Moreover, we may offer, if I may be allowed to speak so, a more evangelical reason to confirm this article. One part of the covenant of grace between the eternal Father and the Son, when the Son became incarnate, was, that the Father should restore them to happiness, whom the Son should redeem. Hence this adorable Son of God, in the sacerdotal prayer, which he offered to the Father the evening before he offered himself a sacrifice to death on the cross, repeats this clause of the covenant; "I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory," John xviii. 6. 24.

God is, then, inclined by the nature of his perfections, and by the spirit of the covenant made with Jesus Christ, to render like himself, in regard to his felicity, those who are already made like him in regard to his ideas, in regard to his love, and in regard to his holiness; and this is the fourth sense of the proposition in our text, "We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." This is the fourth communication of God to glorified souls. He will communicate his felicity to them. What constitutes the felicity of God will constitute the felicity of glorified souls.

God is happy in contemplating his works.— He approves all the plans that his intelligence has conceived, and which his wisdom and power have so gloriously executed, "He seeth every thing that he hath made, and approves it as very good," Gen. i. 31. God will discover these works to glorified souls. He will display before them all the pompous decorations of nature. He will direct their attention to the symmetry, the magnificence, the number of those luminous bodies, those flaming spheres, which appear to our weak eyes at present as only so many sparks.

God is happy in contemplating his providence, and the marvellous manner in which he governs the universe. God will discover this perfect government to glorified souls. Then will appear the folly of the many objections, which at present perplex our minds on the darkness of Providence; then will the many injurious suspicions vanish, which we have entertained concerning the government of the world; then will all the sophisms be confounded, that rash human minds have formed concerning the manner in which God has distributed good

and evil.

God is happy in the contemplation 'of his

xv. 15.

designs. The active spirit of the first great cause will diversify his works infinitely, and for ever; he judges of what may be as of what is, and determines of the possible world as of that which actually exists, that all is very good. | He will communicate these designs to glorified souls. "Shall I hide from Abraham the thing which I do?" said God once to that patriarch, Gen. xviii. 17. Agreeably to which, Jesus Christ said to his apostles, "Henceforth I call you not servants: but I have called you friends; for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth: but all things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you," John God will hide nothing from glorified souls. He will open to them inexhaustible treasures of wisdom and knowledge. He will display in their sight all that would result from them. He will anticipate the future periods of eternity (if we may speak of future periods when we speak of eternity,) and he will show them every moment of this infinite duration signalized by some emanation of his excellence. God is happy in certain sentiments, which may probably bear some analogy to what we call in ourselves sensations. At least, we may assure ourselves, to be rendered capable of pure sensations would contribute very much to the perfection and happiness of our souls. Sensations lively, affecting and delicious, we know, contribute to our present felicity. They who have affected to refine and spiritualize our ideas of felicity, and to free them from every thing sensitive, I think, have mistaken the nature of spirit. God will impart to glorified souls all the sentiments of which they are capable. He will make them feel something more harmonious than the best compositions of music; something more delicious than the most exquisite tastes: and so of the rest. God is happy in the society of the spirits which surround him. He is the centre of all their felicity. He accepts their adoration and homage. He reflects their services to him on themselves. God will receive glorified souls into this society. He will unite us to angels and seraphims, thrones, dominions, and cherubims, and to all other happy intelligent beings, which are without number, and of infinite variety. Their felicity will make our felicity, as our happiness will make their happiness. "There will be joy in heaven" over many repenting sinners," Luke xv. 7.

But this subject carries me beyond all due bounds. The imagination of a hearer, less warmed than that of a preacher, cannot extend itself so far as he would conduct it. Only recollect, then, and unite the ideas, which we have been mentioning. "We know, when he shall appear, we shall see him as he is."

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This passage, we say, seems to offer two senses. The first regards the human nature of Jesus Christ. "We shall see" the glorious body of Jesus Christ "as it is;" because our bodies, being rendered glorious like his, will have faculties relative to his, and proper to enable us to perceive it.

The other sense regards the Deity. "We shall see" God, not with the eyes of our bodies, but with the eyes of the mind, that is to say, we shall know him. "We shall see him as he is," not literally and fully, for God is

an infinite Spirit, who cannot be fully compre hended by infinite beings: but we shall know him, as much as it will be possible for us to know him, and our resemblance to him will bear a proportion to our knowledge of him. He will communicate himself to us. There will be four communications between God and glorified souls; a communication of ideas, of love, of holiness, and of happiness.

And, what deserves our particular regard, because it is most admirable, is, these four communications are connected together, and flow from one another. Because we shall see God as he is, we shall be like him." Because we shall know his ideas, we shall be possessed of a rectitude of thought like his. Because we shall possess a rectitude of thought like his, we shall know that he is supremely lovely, and cannot but love him. Because we cannot help loving him, we cannot help imitating his holy conduct, as holiness will appear the perfection of our nature. Because we shall imitate his holiness, we shall participate his happiness; for he is naturally inclined by his own perfections to render those intelligent beings happy like himself, who like him are in a state of order. The three last communications are, then, immediate consequences of the first, and the first is the ground of the rest;

we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." Then will all the divine plan of human redemption by Jesus Christ be fully executed. Then all the privileges of our adoption, and of the love that elevated us to a con. dition so noble, and glorious, will clearly appear. "Behold! what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God! Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know, that when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is."

This is the plan of God in regard to man: a plan diametrically opposite to that of Satan. The plan of Satan is to render man unlike to God." Satan has been too successful in the execution of his design. "A liar and a murderer from the beginning," John viii. 44; he seduced our first parents; he made them fall from truth to error, from error to vice: already he has robbed us of the glory of our first innocence; already he has darkened our understandings; already succeeded in making us find that pleasure in vice, which ought to follow virtue only; and, having communicated his vice to us, he has made us partake of his miseries; hence the air becomes infected, hence the ocean becomes a grave to mariners, hence animals rebel against him who was originally appointed to be their lord and king, hence passion, revenge and hatred, which begin a hell upon earth, hence maladies which consume our days in pain, and death, that most formidable weapon of the devil, to put a period to them, and hence, "the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone," Rev. xxi. 8, in which this wicked spirit will strive to alleviate the pain of his own punishment by the infernal pleasure of having companions of his misery.

The plan of the Son of God is opposite to that of Satan: "for this purpose was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the

plan? Are you endeavouring to form this fea- Ps. cxxxix. 7; I will call to my relief the ture, you who feel no other flame than that,"mountains" and the "rocks," Rev. vi. 16; which worldly objects kindle, and which the and, provided they can conceal me from thy Scripture calls "enmity with God, James iv. terrible presence, it will signify nothing, should 4; you who, at the most, perform only some they crush me by their fall, and bury me for exterior duties and ceremonies of religion, and ever in their ruins. dedicate to these only a few hours on a Lord's day; and who lay out all your vigour and zeal, performances, emotions and passions, on the world? The design of God, we said, is to render us like himself by enabling us to imitate his holiness. Do you enter into this part of his design? Do you desire to resemble God, you, who conform to this present world; you, who "run with them to the same excess of riot," 1 Pet. iv. 4; you, who sacrifice your souls to fashion and custom? The design of God, we told you, is to render us like himself by communicating his felicity to us. Do you enter into this part of his plan? Are you labouring to attain this resemblance of the Deity? Are you seeking a divine felicity? Do you place 'your hearts where your treasure is?" Matt. vi. 21. Do you "seek those things which are above?" Col. iii. 11. You, who are all taken up with worldly attachments; you, who are endeavouring by reputation, and riches, and worldly grandeurs, to fasten yourselves for ever to the world as to the centre of human felicity; you, whose little souls are all confined to the narrow circle of the present life; you, who turn pale, when we speak of dying; you, who shudder, when we treat of that eternal gulf, on the brink of which you stand, and which is just ready to swallow you up in everlasting wo; do you enter into the design of participating the felicity of God?

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Let us not deceive ourselves, my brethren! We cannot share the second transformation unless we partake of the first; if we would be like God in heaven, we must resemble him here in his church below. A soul, having

Let not such frightful sentiments ever revolve in our minds, Christians. Let us now begin the great work of our transformation. Let us commune with God. Let us apply all our efforts to obtain the knowledge of him. Let us kindle in our souls the fire of his love. Let us propose his holiness for our example. Let us anticipate the felicity of heaven. Indeed, we shall often be interrupted in this great work. We shall often find reason to deplore the darkness that obscures our ideas, the chilling damps which cool our love, and the vices that mix with our virtues; for the grief which these imperfections will cause will frequently lower our felicity. But hope will supply the place of fruition. Our souls will be all involved in evangelical consolations, and all our bitterness will be sweetened with these thoughts of our apostle, "Behold! what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know, that when he shall appear, we shall be like him: for we shall see him as he is." To him be honour and glory for ever. Amen.

SERMON XL.

HELL.

REVELATION xiv. 11.

ever and ever.

VIOLENT diseases require violent remedies. This is an incontestable maxim in the science of the human body, and it is equally true in religion, the science that regards the soul. If a wound be deep, it is in vain to heal the surface, the malady would become the more dangerous, because it would spread inwardly, gain the nobler parts, consume the vitals, and so become incurable. Such a wound must be cleans

these first features, experiencing this first And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for transformation, is prepared for eternity; when it enters heaven, it will not alter its condition, it will only perfect it. The most beautiful object, that can present itself to the eyes of such a soul, is the divine Redeemer, the model of its virtues, the original of its ideas. Hast thou experienced the first transformation? Hast thou already these features? Dost thou ardently desire the appearance of the Son of God; and, should God present himself to thee as he is, couldst thou bear the sight withouted, probed, cut, and cauterized: and softening trembling and horror? Ah, my brethren! how miserable is a mind, when it considers Him as an object of horror, whom it ought to consider as an object of its desire and love! How miserable is a soul, which, instead of "loving the appearing of the Lord, the righteous judge," as St. Paul expresses it, 2 Tim. iv. S, has just reason to dread it! How wretched is the case of the man, who, instead of crying, "Come Lord Jesus! come quickly!" Rev. xxii. 20, cries, Put off thy coming; defer a period, the approach of which I cannot bear; thy coming will be the time of my destruction; thine appearing will discover my shame; thy glory will be my despair; thy voice will be the sentence of my eternal misery; instead of hasten- My brethren, let us not waste our time in ing to meet thee, I will avoid thy presence; declaiming against the manners of the times I will strive to "flee from thy Spirit," | Let us not exaggerate the depravity of Chris

the most terrible pains by exciting in the patient a hope of being healed, he must be persuaded to endure a momentary pain in order to obtain a future firm established health. Thus in religion; when vice has gained the heart, and subdued all the faculties of the soul, in vain do we place before the sinner a few ideas of equity; in vain do we display the magnificence of the heavens, the beauties of the church, and the charms of virtue; "the arrows of the Almighty" must be fastened in him, Job vi. 4; "terrors, as in a solemn day, must be called round about” him, Lam. ii. 22, and "knowing the terrors of the Lord," we must persuade the man, as the holy Scriptures express it.