SERMON I.

HEBREWS ii. 6.

He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.

As the work of the Almighty, man owes to Him his best, his utmost services. Our very being, and our preservation in this state of being, have constant claims to our love and gratitude; and our sense of His power naturally makes us dread to incur at His hand the punishment which disobedience and ingratitude for His goodness deserve. To make us more sincere and fervent in our duty, He hath graciously vouchsafed to reveal to us much of His nature and of His dealings with mankind. Hence faith, or belief in His revelations,

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-submission to His purposes, however hidden from us,-and reliance on His promises-become eternal obligations on man, and no more to be dispensed with, than is the obedience which is due to His Almighty Power.

But no divine revelation can be expected to enable man fully to comprehend Him who is declared to be incomprehensible; or make our weak and finite understandings capable of reaching the depths of infinite wisdom in those things which angels themselves, we are told, desire humbly and at a distance to look into. After all, therefore, that He hath revealed of Himself and His dealings, much must ever remain which can be seen only darkly by us, or be impenetrably hidden from our eyes: yet what is necessary for us to know is clearly revealed.

But though the Almighty hath been thus gracious to His creatures, still proud man has ever acted with presumption and folly. Men profess to believe that the Creator and Governor of the universe is all-wise and good; yet are they ever restless under the

revelations He hath vouchsafed to make to them, and under His dispensations. They cannot but feel, and be constrained to acknowledge, that their faculties are finite and weak, and yet they presumptuously make themselves judges of what the Governor of the world sees fit to do or to declare; and this to such a degree, that whenever they find a difficulty in any point of faith, they assume the right to question and reject; and every virtue which they think too exalted for them to attain, they endeavour to persuade themselves God will not require of them. This propensity thus to deceive themselves very many feel, and yet the result of such propensity is most plain, for by it men labour to remove the blame of their misconduct from themselves by arraigning the wisdom and the justice of Almighty God." He that cometh to God," saith the Apostle, " must believe

that He is, and that He is a rewarder of "them that diligently seek Him." Our belief, then, of the being of a God, and of His active goodness over His worthy servants, is the same, equally clear and

unquestionable, and built on the same foundation of eternal truth.

Through all the works of the creation, the loving-kindness of our heavenly Father to His creatures is most conspicuously displayed.-Prompted by this He first formed man to life;-taught him to know his great Benefactor, and to expect perfect happiness in serving and obeying Him. Though man early abused his knowledge, and disobeyed or forgot his gracious Maker, yet His goodness remained unabated and unchanged. To the wants of those who erred through ignorance or infirmity, He was not inattentive:--when they sought to discover Him, His aid was not withholden from them :-and the several revelations which He made of Himself by Moses and the Prophets, even to the last and most perfect which He gave es by His Son, may be considered as the fruits of His unceasing love to us, and His regard to our eternal welfare.

The Divine Love, indeed, from its very nature, cannot but be active, unwearied, and unbounded; and while, through all

ages, it has incessantly relieved the ordinary wants of human life, it could not but pity, and therefore remove, those more pressing evils of ignorance and sin which obstructed, and threatened with ruin, our final happiness. We may, then, safely conclude that, if God is good and merciful (and that He is so we see from all His works), He would interpose, as He is declared to have done, in order to "give knowledge of salvation unto His people,

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by the remission of their sins; through "His tender mercy, whereby the day

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spring from on high hath visited us."*

While we thus view our God as the source of all goodness, and while the Gospel is regarded as His Word, all the prophecies delivered, and miracles performed, as testimonies that Jesus is the Son of God, claim our highest reverence and belief. The word of God has com manded us, under the heaviest penalties if we are disobedient, to believe in His Son; the testimonies, therefore, on which our faith is to rest, must be certain and

*Luke i. 77, 78.