timbrels. Others with monstrous shapes and sorceries have disguised their deities in brutish forms. Animate creatures have presided here, and there inanimate. Yet all have been esteemed deities. Amid the rabble of false gods, the only true God has been neglected and forgotten. And whatever may be the voice of nature to re-echo the voice of the Almighty, to the heathen she has been as a mute and mystic sibyl, and left revelation to teach, that "the Lord our God is one Lord."2

There is not perhaps in this a precise pattern of our danger. We apprehend, that our Christian brethren of the Church of Rome have been on the verge of a similar folly, when they have adored the Holy Virgin, and Saints, and Angels, as if they were in the place of God; or imputed to them divine attributes; and prayed to them, as if, like God, they were present, and could hear every where, and could save all their servants.

Protestants

1 See note at end of vol.

2 Deut. vi. 4.

recoil from the direct worship of a specified creature. But they also often set up obscure and indeterminate conceptions into the place of God, and ascribe his attributes, and even his works, to something, of which they have not formed a distinct idea, much less have they reduced it to a distinct personification. They accustom themselves to represent fortune, or chance, or human talent as directing what is under the control of Providence; or they speak of nature as the mistress of that material creation, which the hand of God produces and sustains. Hence the lessons and chastisements with which God would instruct his people, are rendered of no avail. This man's object of worldly regard is snatched from him: and he is deemed, and deems himself unfortunate. Another languishes under protracted disease and his malady is traced with scientific accuracy to its origin: but the counsel conveyed by the haggard cheek and sunken eye, as regards the future, is never dreamt of. Death makes his ra

vages around, and tells no tale of warning. The young, the hale, the strong, bid him take the old and wretched, who are his due: he takes the young and gay, and those that feared him least he carries off the first yet their companion discovers some special infirmity or accident has caused their end, and goes on himself secure. The destitute survives the opulent; the feeble wraps the athletic in his shroud; stout corpulence is but the sleek disguise of a fatal distemper; beneath the bloom of beauty lurks the pale cheek of premature decay; and in the smile of innocence is the heavenly hope that soon. will be accomplished; and yet in all these the lookers on, cold and insensible, see no hand of a supreme God: they recognise no sign of overruling Providence: they discover but the operations of nature, and of nature's laws; and investigate physical causes and relations: but not one arrives at the conclusion, that the life is long enough, which has answered life's great end.

This, then, is to break the first commandment, if we ascribe that to accident, or second causes, which Providence, the great first cause, has in its wisdom or its goodness appointed. He who will not see the hand of the Almighty in the concerns of men, will soon set up himself, or something in his own heart, to be the Almighty's rival. This was the wretched blindness of Pharaoh, who would not discern the divine power working miracles in Egypt, when the magicians did likewise. And his heart was hardened; though for this very cause was he raised up, that God should shew in him his power.

Some habituate themselves to rely on human agency, until they regard it as alone and supreme in ordering the concerns of the world. They set up man, and the faculties of man, into the highest place, and forget, that there is One, who is above and over all. They seem to think, that there are beings and causes independent of God. Nay! Nay! they will

demand themselves to be obeyed, or urge that others should be obeyed, even in that which is opposed to the revealed Word. This, too, is to break the first commandment. This is to have other

gods beside the Lord. This is to be like Moses at the waters of Meribah, when he did not sanctify God in the eyes of the people of Israel; and therefore he was not permitted to bring the congregation into the promised land.1 This is to be like Herod arrayed in royal apparel, and seated on his throne, and hearing the people shout, "It is the voice of a god," when he made an oration: "And immediately an angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory.

Others, again, who perceive the care of God guarding the order and harmony of the natural world,-who tremble at his avenging arm conspicuous in the pestilence, the famine, the earthquake, and the storm-yet overlook his government

1 Numbers, xx. 12.

Acts, xii.