jects, they must, for a much stronger reason, be fewer and poorer to describe Almighty God. The Scriptures, therefore, are to be read with this caution. They speak of the eyes, and hands, and feet of God; they speak of the heart, and the anger, and the love of God; they speak of God's waking, and watching, and going, and coming; and yet there is in God no parts of head or hands, no passions of hatred or anger, no motion from a place where he was, to a place where he was not before. Take our text for an example. God is called a father, not because he is in the form, or shape, or any thing like the person you call father; so that when you pray to God, you must not think of him as one in the form of your father. In like manner, God hath not such passions as your father hath; nothing like his anger, nor any feelings like what you call love in your father: he is not, like him, sometimes full of affection, at other times displeased and angry, sometimes more kind, and sometimes more angry than at other times. What is called love in God doth not make him go and come, and so on; for none of these things agree with the spiritual, independent, and unchangeable perfection of God. If therefore we would entertain just notions of God, we must lay aside all similitudes, even those which the poverty of language made it necessary for inspired men to

use.

Further, having rent the veil of gross matter, and that of resemblance or similitude, you must, in order to form right notions of God, lay aside a partial view of him. I will explain myself (and let it not surprise you, if I be at a loss for words plain enough to bring down this subject to the size of our understandings). A partial view of any thing is such a view as a man takes of an object too big for his eyes to take in at once. For example; if a man goes up a hill to see the town of Cambridge, he will indeed see the town; that is to say, one side of the town; and if he would see the whole town, he must go from place to place all round it, from street to street all through it; and every step would bring him to see some part of the town which he had not seen before. Thus every one of us hath seen Cambridge, and no one of us hath seen Cambridge ; we have all seen it partially. In like manner, if a man

would see how wheat grows, it would not be enough to see it in January; for this would be a partial sight; but he must watch it from seed-time till harvest. Apply this to our subject. We speak of God. God is a great Being, and this world is a very little part of his empire; and the whole of God is from everlasting to everlasting. When therefore we speak of the justice of God, the goodness of God, the power of God, we speak partially, according to the little views we have of acts that appear just, and good, and powerful; but we should not be such children as to think that God lays aside what we call one perfection, when he exercises another; that he is more kind in harvest than he is in December; that he is more powerful in a tempest than he is in a calm day; that he is merciful when we recover from a sickness, and cruel when we die of it. Strictly speaking, there are not more perfections in God than one, that is a general excellence, a love of order in this he agrees with our idea of a father, who nourishes, cherishes, feeds, clothes, instructs, corrects, and protects his child, intending by all to make him happy by making him holy.

I wish I knew how to make this subject so plain, particularly the last article mentioned, that you might not mistake it. The excellence of instruction is not that it may be understood, but that it cannot be misunderstood. There was lately a man executed at Cambridge, for robbing and murdering one of your neighbours. Was the execution of this man a judgment or a mercy, an act of justice or an act of kindness? We call it the just judgment of the law upon this criminal. It was so: but was it not also an administration of kindness and mercy? Perhaps to the man; for it might save him from a hotter place in hell, which he might have deserved, had he gone unpunished here, by robbing and murdering twenty more of you. Perhaps, too, the process of justice, from his apprehension to his death, might bring him to repentance; and certainly it was an act of mercy to us, as well as to other people disposed to rob and murder us, but who may be deterred by this example. An unthinking man at this execution, especially if he had, like too many, been drinking to cheer his spirits before he saw the dismal sight,

would have wondered, had any one on the spot exclaimed, Oh the goodness and mercy! Oh the excellent compassion of the laws of England! Apply this to our subject, and always remember, that the most terrible dispensations of Almighty God are as kind in one view as they are dreadful in another that the greatest profusions of his goodness are as just in one view as they are kind in another; and that when we speak of one perfection of God, we always mean all the rest, and speak thus only to adapt this great subject to the littleness of our minds.

It is to this littleness of mind that God condescends to adapt himself. We are taught in the text to consider God as our Father. As a wise and good father he instructs his children, and, strictly speaking, every benefit which God bestows on us is intended to give us an education. If we be nourished by our food, warmed by our clothes, corrected by our afflictions, and protected from our enemies, all these are for the sake of instructing us, that so by knowledge and virtue we may be trained up, and fitted and prepared to live in heaven. For this purpose God hath laid open before us, so to speak, four books, in each of which he is represented as the Father and Friend of man.

The first is the book of Creation! "Heavens that declare the glory of God; a firmament that sheweth his handy work; days and nights teaching knowledge;" a whole world to make us understand" his eternal power and Godhead," and to inform us that the Father of spirits is the Father of the rain, and the Father of all our mercies, and all our comforts of every kind. Read the two first chapters of Genesis, the book of Job, the hundred and fourth Psalm, the fortieth chapter of Isaiah, and other passages of scripture, which describe the world in which we live; and expounding what you read by what you see in the world, acknowledge that the wisdom and goodness of God to man are laid open in a manner so clear, as to fill us with a conviction that he is, and that he is the object of our chief confidence and esteem, "a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." It is he that "giveth to all nations of men life, and breath, and all things." It is he that "determined our times, and appointed the bounds of our habitation." It is he "in whom we live, and move, and have our being;"

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and we are his offspring," the offspring of God. It is he who is "not far from every one of us." To use the language of an Apostle, let us "feel after him, if haply we may find him."

See here, I hold a Bible in my hand, and you see the cover, the leaves, the letters, and the words; but you do not see the writers or the printers, the letter-founder, the ink-maker, the paper-maker, or the binder. You never did see them, you never will see them, and yet there is not one of you who will think of disputing or denying the being of these men. I go further: I affirm that you see the very souls of these men in seeing this book; and you feel yourselves obliged to allow that they had skill, contrivance, design, memory, fancy, reason, and so on. In the same manner, if you see a picture, you judge there was a painter; if you see a house, you judge there was a builder of it; and if you see one room contrived for this purpose, and another for that; a door to enter, a window to admit light, a chimney to hold fire, you conclude that the builder was a person of skill and forecast, who formed the house with a view to the accommodation of its inhabitants. In this manner examine the world, and pity the man who, when he sees the sign of the wheat-sheaf, has sense enough to know that there is somewhere a joiner, and somewhere a painter; but who, when he sees the wheat-sheaf itself, is so stupid as not to say to himself,-This creature had a wise and good Creator.

It is impossible for me, in this place, to pursue this part of our subject fully, and therefore I shall conclude it with two words of advice, and I give you these on this principle, that a little thought of your own, on any subject, is of more worth to you than all the thoughts of other men sounding in your ears, or clattering through your lips. I have that confidence in your memories, that I do think I could soon teach you to utter these words-causes-effects-combinations-proportions-circulations--equipoise -uniformity-variety-series of events-gravitation-and so on and I would do so, if you would give me leave, did I not know that, after all my teaching, and your repeating what I taught you, you would know just as much of the subject as a musical instrument does of the tune play

ed upon it. Would you not rather be the herdman's poor boy, than the finest instrument of music? Think for yourselves, if you think ever so little.

My first word of advice is, Read the account of the six days-works of creation, contained in the first chapter of Genesis, and read it over and over again; let your children get it by heart, so that they may all understand what Moses intended to teach; that is, that God made the heavens and the earth, and all that is therein.

My second word of advice is,—Attend diligently to the properties, qualities, characters, laws (what shall I call them) of creation. Observe one word of Moses; he says, "the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them." Observe the word host; it signifies army: and Moses resembled the collection of creatures, which we call the world, to such a collection of men as we call an army, for the sake of putting people upon thinking of several articles not mentioned in the history. For example: when you see an army, you think of a commanding officer, whose order the army obeys, and which, properly speaking, is his power, the general's power to protect or to destroy. An army makes us think of wisdom that disposed the men in order, and put them in various ranks, and disciplined them with one design, to perform various exercises, to produce one great end. Hence you will trace the laws, orders, and rules of moving and acting, which prevail through the whole creation, up to "the king, whose name is the Lord of Hosts; who measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, who meted out heaven with a span, who weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance; who hangeth the earth upon nothing; who bindeth up waters in thick clouds, and the cloud is not rent under them; who made a weight for the winds, a decree for the rain, a way for the lightning and the thunder; who gave goodly wings unto the peacock, and sent out the wild ass free; who deprived the ostrich of the wisdom of preserving her eggs and her young; who taught the hawk to fly toward the south, and the eagle to make her nest upon the crag of the rock; who feeds man as a shepherd feeds his flock, and carries him in his bosom;" who doth all this without direction or control;