would be possible for God not to be supremely happy. Yes, God, all glorious and supreme as he is, would be miserable, if he were subject, like unholy spirits, to the turbulent commotions of envy or hatred, treachery or deceit. From such passions would arise odious vapours, which would gather into thick clouds, and, by obscuring his glory, impair his felicity. Even heaven would afford but imperfect pleasure, if those infernal furies could there kindle their unhallowed flames. The same reasoning holds good on earth; for, it implies a contradiction, to affirm that we can be happy, while the operations of our minds clash with one another: and it is equally absurd, to suppose that the almighty God can terminate the fatal war, the tragical field of which is the human heart, without the re-establishment of the dominion of holiness. We desire to experience the most close and tender communion with God, next Lord's day, in receiving the holy sacrament: Let us be holy then, "because the Lord our God is holy." This august ceremony may be considered in several points of view: and one of them deserves a peculiar attention. The table of the Lord's Supper has been compared, by some, to that which was formerly set, by the command of God, in the holy place: I mean, the table of "show-bread," or "bread of the presence," Ex. xxv. 30. God commanded Moses to set twelve loaves upon the table, to change them every sabbath, and to give those that were taken away to the priests, who were to eat them in "the holy place," Lev. xxiv. 6, &c. What was the end of these ceremonial institutions? The tabernacle at first was considered as the tent, and the temple afterward as the palace of the Deity, who dwelt among the Israelites. In the palace of God, it was natural to expect a table for the use of him and his attendants. This was one of the most glorious privileges that the Israelites enjoyed, and one of the most august symbols of the presence of God among them. God and all the people of Israel, in the persons of their ministers, were accounted to eat the same bread. The heathens, stricken with the beauty of these ideas, incorporated them into their theology. They adopted the thought, and set in their temples tables consecrated to their gods. The prophet Isaiah reproaches the Jews with forsaking the Lord, forgetting his holy mountain and preparing a table for the host of heaven, Isa. Îxv. 2. And Ezekiel reckons among the virtues of a just man, that he had "not eaten upon the mountains," Ez. xviii. 6. It was upon tables of this kind that idolaters sometimes ate the remainder of those victims which they had sacrificed to their gods. This they called eating with gods; and Homer introduces Alcinous saying, "The gods visit us, when we sacrifice hecatombs, and sit down with us at the same table." This is one of the most beautiful notions, under which we can consider the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. There we eat with God. God sits down with us at the same table, and, so causes us to experience the meaning of this promise, "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me," Rev. iii. 20. But what do such close connexions with holy God require of us? They require us to be holy. They cry to us, as the voice cried to Moses from the midst of the burning bush, "Draw not nigh hither; put off thy shoes from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground," Ex. iii. 5. God is supremely holy: God supremely loves order. Order requires you to leave vengeance to God, to pardon your bitterest and most professed enemies; and, what is more difficult still, order requires you to pardon your most subtle and secret foes. Would ye approach the table of a holy God gnawn with a spirit of animosity, hatred, or vengeance? God is supremely holy: God supremely loves order. Order requires you to dedicate a part of those blessings to charity, with which Providence has intrusted you; to retrench the superfluities of your tables, in order to enable you to assist the starving and dying poor. Would ye approach the table of a holy God with hearts hardened with indifference to that poor man whom God has commanded you to love as yourselves? God is supremely holy: God supremely loves order. Order requires you to be affected with the tokens of divine love. All are displayed at the Lord's table. There the bloody history of your Redeemer's sufferings is again exhibited to view. There the blood, that Christ the victim shed for your crimes, flows afresh. There God recounts all the mysteries of the cross. Would ye approach that table cold and languishing? Would ye approach that table without returning to Jesus Christ love for love, and tenderness for tenderness? Would ye approach that table void of every sentiment and emotion, which the venerable symbols of the love of God must needs produce in every honest heart? Ah! my brethren, were ye to approach the table of Jesus Christ without these dispositions, ye would come, not like St. John, or St. Peter, but like Judas. This would not be to receive an earnest of salvation, but to "eat and drink your own damnation," 1 Cor. xi. 29. This would not be to receive the body of Jesus Christ: this would be to surrender yourselves to Satan. I can hardly allow myself to entertain such melancholy thoughts. Come to the table of Jesus Christ, and enter into a closer communion with a holy God. Come and devote yourselves entirely to the service of a holy God. Come and arrange the operations of your minds by the perfections of a holy God. Come and diminish the grief that ye feel, be‐ cause, in spite of all your endeavours to be holy as God is holy," ye are so far inferior to his glorious example. But, at the same time, come and receive fresh assurances, that ye are formed for a more perfect period of holiness. Come and receive the promises of God, who will assure you, that ye shall one day "see him as he is, and be like him," 1 John iii. 2. May God grant us this blessing! To him be honour and glory for ever. Amen. SERMON VII. THE COMPASSION OF GOD. PSALM ciii. 13. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. AMONG many frivolous excuses, which mankind have invented to exculpate their barrenness under a gospel-ministry, there is one that deserves respect. Why, say they, do ye address men as if they were destitute of the sentiments of humanity? Why do ye treat Christians like slaves? Why do ye perpetually urge, in your preaching, motives of wrath, vengeance, "the worm that never dies, the fire that is never quenched?" Isa. lxvi. 24. Motives of this kind fill the heart with rebellion instead of conciliating it by love. Mankind have a fund of sensibility and tenderness. Let the tender motives that our legislator has diffused throughout our Bibles, be pressed upon us; and then every sermon would produce some conversions, and your complaints of Christians would cease with the causes that produce them. I call this excuse frivolous: for how little must we know of human nature, to suppose men so very sensible to the attractives of religion! Where is the minister of the gospel, who has not displayed the charms of religion a thousand, and a thousand times, and displayed them in vain? Some souls must be terrified, some sinners must be "saved by fear, and pulled out of the fire," Jude 23. There are some hearts that are sensible to only one object in religion, that is, hell; and, if any way remain to prevent their actual destruction hereafter, it is to overwhelm their souls with the present fear of it: "knowing therefore the terrors of the Lord, we persuade Yet, however frivolous this pretext may appear, there is a something in it that merits respect. I am pleased to see those men, who have not been ashamed to say, that the Lord's yoke is intolerable, driven to abjure so odious a system: I love to hear them acknowledge, that religion is supported by motives fitted to ingenuous minds; and that the God from whom it proceeds, has discovered so much benevolence and love in the gift, that it is impossible not to be affected with it, if we be capable of feeling. I cannot tell, my brethren, whether among these Christians, whom the holiness of this day has assembled in this sacred place, there be many, who have availed themselves of the frivolous pretence just now mentioned; and who have sometimes wickedly determined to despise eternal torments, under an extravagant pretence that the ministers of the gospel too often preach, and too dismally describe them. But, without requiring your answer to so mortifying a question, without endeavouring to make you contradict yourselves, we invite you to behold those attractives today, to which ye boast of being so very sensible. Come and see the supreme Legislator, to whom we would devote your services; behold him, not as an avenging God, not as a consuming God, not "shaking the earth, and overturning the mountains" in his anger, Job ix. 4, 5: not "thundering in the heavens, shooting out lightnings, or giving his voice in hailstones and coals of fire," Ps. xviii. 13, 14; but putting on such tender emotions for you as ye feel for your children. In this light the prophet places him in the text, and in this light we are going to place him in this discourse. O ye marble hearts! so often insensible to the terrors of our ministry; may God compel you to-day to feel its attracting promises! O ye marble hearts! against which the edge of the sword of the Almighty's avenging justice has been so often blunted; the Lord grant that ye may be this day dissolved by the energy of his love! Amen. Like as a father pitieth his children, so doth the Lord pity them that fear him." Before we attempt to explain the text, we must premise one remark, which is generally granted, when it is proposed in a vague manner, and almost as generally denied in its consequences; that is, that the most complete notion which we can form of a divine attribute, is to suppose it in perfect harmony with every other divine attribute. The most lovely idea that we can form of the Deity, and which, at the same time, is the most solid ground of our faith in his word, and of our confidence in the performance of his promises, is that which represents him as a uniform Being, whose attributes harmonize, and who is always consistent with himself. There is no greater character of imperfection in any intelligent being than the want of this harmony: when one of his attributes opposes another of his attributes; when the same attribute opposes itself; when his wisdom is not supported by his power; or when his power is not directed by his wisdom. This character of imperfection, essential to all creatures, is the ground of those prohibitions that we meet with in the Holy Scriptures, in regard to the objects of our trust. "Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth, in that very day his thoughts perish," Psalm cxlvi. 3, 4. "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm," Jer. xvii. 5. Why? Because it is not safe to confide in man, unless he have such a harmony of attributes, as we have just now described; and because no man has such a harmony. His power may assist you, but, unless he have wisdom to direct his power, the very means that he would use to make you happy, would make you miserable. Even his power would not harmonize with itself in regard to you, if it were sufficient to supply your wants to-day, but not to-morrow. That man, that prince that mortal, to whom thou givest the superb titles of Potentate, Monarch, Arbiter of peace, and Arbiter of war; that mortal, who is alive to-day, will die to-morrow; the breath that animates him will evaporate, he will "return to his earth," and all his kind regards for thee will vanish with him. But the perfections of God are in perfect | ought to love us. We cannot conceive the harmony. This truth shall guide us through consistency of God's love, in making us wise this discourse, and shall arrange its parts: and this is the likeliest way that we can think of, to preserve the dignity of our subject, to avoid its numerous difficulties, to preclude such fatal inferences as our weak and wicked passions have been too well accustomed to draw from the subject, and to verify the prophet's proposition in its noblest meaning, "Like as a father pitieth his children, so doth the Lord pity them that fear him.” Would ye form a just notion of the goodness of God, (for the original term that our translators have rendered pity, is equivocal, and is used in this vague sense in the Holy Scriptures.) Would ye form a just notion of the goodness of God? Then, conceive a perfection that is always in harmony with, I. The spirituality of his essence. II. The inconceivableness of his nature. III. The holiness of his designs. IV. The independence of his principles. V. The immutability of his will. VI. The efficacy of his power. But, above all, VII. With the veracity of his word. I. The goodness of God must agree with the spirituality of his essence. Compassion, among men, is that mechanical emotion which is produced in them by the sight of distressed objects. I allow that the wisdom of the Creator is very much displayed in uniting us together in such a manner. Ideas of fitness seldom make much impression on the bulk of mankind; it was necessary, therefore, to make sensibility supply the want of reflection, and, by a counter-blow, with which the miseries of a neighbour strike our feelings, to produce a disposition in us to relieve him. Nature produces but few monsters who regale themselves on the sufferings of the wretched. Here or there has been a Phalaris, who has delighted his ears with the shrieks of a fellow-creature burning in a brazen bull: and some, whose minds were filled with ideas of a religion more barbarous and inhuman than that of the Bacchanalians, have been pleased with tormenting those victims which they sacrificed, not to God the Father of mankind, but to him who is their murderer: but none, except people of these kinds, have been able to eradicate those emotions of pity with which a wise and compassionate God has formed them. in a school of adversity, in exposing us to the vicissitudes and misfortunes of life, and in frequently abandoning his children to pains and regrets. It seems strange to us, that he should not be affected at hearing the groans of the damned, whose torments can only be assuaged by uttering blasphemies against him. Renounce these puerile ideas, and entertain more just notions of the Supreme Being. He has no body; he has no organs that can be shaken by the violence done to the organs of a malefactor; he has no fibres that can be stretched to form a unison with the fibres of your bodies, and which must be agitated by their motions. Love, in God, is in an intelligence, who sees what is, and who loves what may justly be accounted lovely; who judges by the nature of things, and not by sensations, of which he is gloriously incapable: his love is in perfect harmony with the spirituality of his essence. II. Our ideas of the goodness of God must agree with our notions of the inconceivableness of his nature. I oppose this reflection to the difficulties that have always been urged against the goodness of God There are two sorts of these objections; one tends to limit the goodness of God, the other to carry it beyond its just bounds. If God be supremely good, say some, how is it conceivable that he should suffer sin to enter the world, and with sin, all the evils that necessarily follow it? This is one difficulty which tends to carry the goodness of God beyond its just extent. Is it conceivable, say others, that the great God, that God, who, according to the prophet, "weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance," Isa. xl. 12; that God, who "measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with a span," ver. 22; that God, who "sitteth upon the earth, and considereth the inhabitants thereof as grasshoppers:" is it conceivable, that he should have such a love for those mean insects as the gospel represents; a love that inclined him to give his own Son, and to expose him to the most ignominious of all punishments, to save them? This is an objection of the second class, which tends to limit the goodness of God. But this sensibility degenerates into folly, One answer may serve to obviate both these when it is not supported by ideas of order, | kinds of objections. The love of God is in and when mechanical emotions prevail over perfect harmony with the inconceivableness the rational dictates of the mind. It is a of his nature. All his perfections are inconweakness, it is not a love worthy of an intel-ceivable, we can only follow them to a cerligent being, that inclines a tender mother to tain point, beyond which it impossible to pull back the arm of him who is about to per- discover their effects. "Canst thou by searchform a violent, but a salutary operation on ing find out God?" Job xi. 7. the child whom she loves. It is a weakness, it is not a love worthy of an intelligent being, that inclines a magistrate to pardon a criminal, whose preservation will be an injury to society, and the sparing of whose life will occasion a thousand tragical deaths. Canst thou by searching find out his eternity? Explain an eternal duration: teach us to comprehend an extent of existence so great, that when we have added age to age, one million of years to another million of years, if I may venture to speak so, when we have This kind of weakness, that confounds a heaped ages upon ages, millions of ages upon mechanical sensation with a rational and in-millions of ages, we have not added one day, telligent love, is the source of many of our misapprehensions about the manner in which God loves us, and in which we imagine he one hour, one instant to the duration of God, with whom "a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years" Canst thou by searching find out his knowledge? Explain to us the wisdom of an Intelligence, who comprehended plans of all possible worlds; who compared them altogether; who chose the best, not only in preference to the bad, but to the less good; who knew all that could result from the various modifications of matter, not only of the matter which composes our earth, but of the immense matter that composes all bodies, which are either in motion or at rest in the immensity of space, which lie beyond the reach of our senses, or the stretch of our imaginations, and of which, therefore, we can form no idea. Explain to us the wisdom of a God, who knew all that could result from the various modifications of spirits, not only of those human spirits which have subsisted hitherto, or of those which will subsist hereafter in this world, but of the thousands, of the "ten thousand times ten thousands that stand before him," Dan. vii. 10. Canst thou by searching find out his power? Explain to us that self-efficient power, which commands a thing to be, and it is; which commands it not to be, and it ceases to exist. The extent of God's mercy is no less impossible to find out than the extent of his other attributes. We are as incapable of determining concerning this, as concerning any of his other perfections, that it must needs extend hither, but not thither: that it ought to have prevented sin, but not to have given Jesus Christ to die for the salvation of sinners. Our notion of the goodness of God should agree with the inconceivableness of his nature, and, provided we have good proofs of what we believe, we ought not to stagger at the objections which an insufficient, or rather an insolent reason, has the audacity to oppose to it. principles of interest may appear low and mean, yet they often deserve pity more than blame. It would be extremely difficult for a debtor, if he were oppressed by a merciless creditor, to love any person more than him, who should be both able and willing to free him from the oppressor's iron rod. It would be strange if a starving man were not to have a more vehement love for him who should relieve his necessities, than for any one else. While our necessities continue as pressing as they are in this valley of tears, principles of interest will occupy the most of our thoughts, and will direct the best of our friendships. Disinterested love seems to be incompatible with the state of indigent creatures. But God forbid that we should entertain similar notions of the Deity! God is supremely happy. His love to his creatures is supremely disinterested. Indeed, what interest can he have in loving us? Were this world, which has existed but a little while, to cease to exist; were all the beings upon earth, material and immaterial, to return to their nonentity; were God to remain alone, he would enjoy infinite happiness; in possessing himself he would possess perfect felicity. Every beast of the forest is his, and the cattle upon a thousand hills," Ps. 1. 10; sacrificial flesh affords no nourishment to him; clouds of fragrant incense communicate no odours to him; he is not entertained with the harmony of the music that is performed in his honour; for "our goodness extendeth not to him," Ps. xvi. 2. The praises of the seraphim can no more augment the splendour of his glory, than the blasphemies of the damned can diminish it. V. The love of God to his creatures agrees with the immutability of his will. There is but little reality, and less permanency, in human love. The names of steadiness, constancy, and equanimity, an indelible image, an everlasting impression, a perpetual idea, and endless attachment, an eternal friendship, all these are only names, only empty, unmeaning sounds, when they are applied to those sentiments which the most faithful friends entertain for each other. III. Our notion of the goodness of God should agree with the holiness of his designs. I mean, that it would imply a contradiction to suppose that a Being who is supremely holy, should have a close communion of love with unholy creatures, considered as unholy and unconverted. By this principle we exclude the dreadful consequences, that weakness and wickedness have been used to infer from the doctrine under our consideration. We oppose this principle to the execrable reasoning of those libertines, who say, (and, alas! how many people, who adopt this way of reasoning, mix with the saints, and pretend to be saints themselves!) "Let us continue in sin that grace may abound," Rom. vi. 1. With the same principle the prophet guards the text, "Like as a father pitieth his children, so doth the Lord pity," whom? Them, who establish their crimes on the mercy of God? God forbid! "So doth the Lord pity them that fear him." This truth is so conformable to right reason, so often repeated in the Holy Scrip-ed strength enough to close the eyes of her tures, and so frequently enforced in this pulpit, that none but those who wilfully deceive themselves can mistake the matter; and for these reasons we dismiss this article. IV. The love of God is in perfect harmony with the independence of his principles. Interest is the spring that moves, and very often the defect that destroys human friendships. It must be allowed, however, that though I am not describing now those light and inconstant people only, who are as ready to break as to form connexions: I am describing people of another, and a better, disposition of mind. We are ignorant of ourselves when we imagine ourselves capable of a permanent attachment, and, when we think that we shall always love, because we are assured that we love at present, we are the first to deceive ourselves. This man, who only at certain times discovers sentiments of tenderness, is not a hypocrite. That woman was very sincere, when weeping over a dying husband, and in some sense more agonizing than he, she just gather departing all, and protested that she should never enjoy another moment, except that in which the great Disposer of all events should appoint her to follow her beloved partner to the grave: the woman expressed what she then felt, and what she thought she should always feel: but, however, time brought forward new objects, and other scenes have calmed the violence of her passions, and have placed her in a state of tranquillity and submission to the will of God, which all the maxims of religion had not the power of producing. People are not always to be blamed for the slightness of their friendships. Our levity constitutes, in some sort, our felicity, and our perfections apologize for our inconstancy.Life would be one continued agony if our friendships were always in the same degree of activity. Rachel would be infinitely miserable, if she were always thinking about "her children, and would not be comforted because they are not," Matt. ii. 18. I only mean to observe, that a character of levity is essential to the friendships of finite human minds. other's happiness, we denominate friendship. But suppose a union of every heart in thy favour; suppose, though without a precedent, thyself the object of the love of all mankind, what benefit couldst thou derive from all this love in some circumstances of thy life? What relief from real evils? Ah! my friends, ye are eager to assist me in my dying agonies: Alas! my family, ye are distressed to death to see me die; ye love me, and I know the tears that bathe you, flow from your hearts; yes, ye love me, but I must die! None but the infinite God, my dear brethren, none but the adorable God hath an efficient love. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" Rom. viii. 31. Let the elements be let loose against my person and my life, let mankind, who differ about every thing else, agree to torment me, let there be a general conspiracy of nature and society against my happiness, what does it signify to me? If God love me, I shall be happy: with God to love and to beatify is one and the same act of his self-efficient will. God alone is capable, (O thou adorable Being, who only canst have such noble sentiments, enable us to express them!) God only, my dear brethren, is capable of a love, real, solid, and permanent, free from diversion and without interruption. What delineations, what representations, what purposes, revolved in the infinite mind, before that appointed period, in which he had determined to express himself in exterior works, and to give existence VII. But finally, the goodness of God must to a multitude of creatures? Yet throughout agree with his veracity. I mean that although all these countless ages, through all these un- the many Scripture-images of the goodness of fathomable abysses of eternity (I know no God are imperfect, and must not be literally literal terms to express eternity) yet through understood, they must, however, have a real all eternity he thought of us, my dear brethren; sense and meaning. Moreover, I affirm, that then he formed the plan of our salvation; then the grandeur of the original is not at all dihe appointed the victim that procured it; then minished, but on the contrary, that our ideas he laid up for us the felicity and glory that we of it are very much enlarged, by purifying and hope for ever to enjoy! What care and ap-retrenching the images that represent it; and plication are required to inspect, to order, and arrange the numberless beings of the whole earth? The whole earth, did I say? The whole earth is only an inconsiderable point: but what care and application are required to inspect, to order and arrange the worlds which we discover revolving over our heads with other worlds, that we have a right to suppose in the immensity of space? Yet this application does not prevent his attention to thee, believer; thy health he guards, thy family he guides, thy fortune and thy salvation he governs, as if each were the only object of his care, and as if thou wert alone in the universe! What an immensity of happiness must fill the intelligence of God, who is himself the source of felicity; of a God, who is surrounded with angels, archangels, and happy spirits, serving him day and night, continually attending round his throne, and waiting to fly at a signal of his will; of a God, who directs and disposes all; of a God, who, existing with the Word and the Holy Spirit, enjoys in that union inconceivable and ineffable delights; and yet the enjoyment of his own happiness does not at all divert his attention from the happiness of his creatures! If a Saul persecute his church, he is persecuted with it, Acts ix. 4; and when profane hands touch his children, they "touch the apple of his eye," Zech. ii. 8. "In all her affliction he is afflicted," Isa. lxiii. 9; "lo! he is with us always, even unto the end of the world," Matt. xxviii. 20. this we are obliged to do on account of the eminence of the divine perfections. And here, my brethren, I own I am involved in the most agreeable difficulty that can be imagined; and my mind is absorbed in an innumerable multitude of objects, each of which verifies the proposition in the text. I am obliged to pass by a world of proofs and demonstrations. Yes, I pass by the firmament with all its stars, the earth with all its productions, the treasures of the sea and the influences of the air, the symmetry of the body, the charms of society, and many other objects, which in the most elegant and pathetic manner, preach the Creator's goodness to us. Those grand objects which have excited the astonishment of philosophers, and filled the inspired writers with wonder and praise, scarcely merit a moment's attention today. I stop at the principal idea of the prophet. We have before observed, that the term which is rendered pity in the text, is a vague word, and is often put in Scripture for the goodness of God in general; however, we must acknowledge, that it most properly signifies the disposition of a good parent, who is inclined to show mercy to his son, when he is become sensible of his follies, and endeavours by new effusions of love to re-establish the communion that his disobedience had interrupted: this is certainly the principal idea of the prophet. Now who can doubt, my brethren, whether God possesses the reality of this image in the most noble, the most rich, and the most eminent sense? Wouldst thou be convinced, sin VI. The goodness of God must harmonize with the efficiency of his will. The great de-ner, of the truth of the declaration of the fect of human friendships is their inefficacy. The unavailing emotions that men may feel for each other, their ineffectual wishes for each VOL. I.-12 text? Wouldst thou know the extent of the mercy of God to poor sinful men? Consider then, 1. The victim that he has substituted in |