all situations, however afflictive-and independently of all the passions and infirmities of one another.

It is therefore the greatest wisdom of man, in this state of being, to use this inestimable privilege of his nature with constancy, and a fervent mind; as nothing else can be so much his reasonable duty, and nothing else can avail him under the prevalence of all the spiritual darkness which he is so often led to deplore.

And as we must be beyond a doubt convinced of the infinite attributes of the Being who made us, and who faid, "Let there be "light, and there was light;" the doctrines of his gospel instruct us to believe, that through the earnest prayer of our minds, and the dedication of our affections to him, his infinite goodness will effect for us, in such a disposition, all that good which his infinite power can accomplish.

He who hath marvellously made us capable • of perceiving that outward light, which was the effect of his creating word, and called us to

contemplate

contemplate thereby the wonders of his power -seeing we are also called of him to another state of existence, and to a citizenship in a city "which needeth not the light of the fun, or of "the moon, or of the stars;" and furthermore, that we are called, while here, to a preparation for that inheritance; let us stedfastly believe in the call, and accordingly pray, that by the energy of the same omnific word, he would create within us a manifestation of that celestial light-the light which is the effect of the love of his own heavenly kingdom; and under the direction of his unerring wisdom, this light will shine.

III.

And GOD faw the light, that it was good.
Gen. i. 4.

FORMED as we are with capacities to diftinguish between things that differ, and not only to yield our mental affent to the fitness and excellence of moral truths, but our admiration of outward and intellectual beauty; how can we fufficiently employ our thoughts on those objects objects of beauty, to which infinite wisdom hath called us?

It is not only possible for poor benighted and inattentive men to " pass the time of their fo"journing here," in a kind of stupid apathy, regardless of the glory that is shed around them, by means of the light of the fun; but observation may convince us that such actually feems to be the cafe, with far the greater part of the multitude. The beautiful variety of form and colour, exhibited in the clouds of heaven, and the numberless plants and flowers wherewith the face of the earth is clothed, are so many means to engage our attention to the power and glory of that Being, who formed them all!

It is not for us to understand the uses, in the great order of nature, for which these amazing varieties were ordained. And there may be infinite and relative beauties, utterly hidden from the imperfection of our vifion. They may all have their appointments and ends, with respect to each other, and the whole harmony of creation; ends which are infinitely beyond our conception; and such they undoubtedly have.

They are a part of that universal order and beauty, which eternally existed in the divine mind, beyond the conception of the highest orders of intelligent creatures!

But we, infignificant as we are, are nevertheless made capable of difcerning so much of it as should excite our continual reverence: and if we are regardless, as we pass along, of those helps to devotion, we do all we can to make ourselves equally stupid with the beasts of the field, which use the light of the fun for no better purpose than to crop the beauty of that field, for their sustenance, without reflection.

But as we are thus particularly admonished by the example of the great Creator himself, to notice and diftinguith goodness in the light and glory of his works, how shall we dare be forgetful of our duty, in reverently regarding that light, and that glory, which for our fakes he hath fo emphatically pronounced good? And the more fo when we have such abundant cause to believe, that the manifestation of outward light, glorious as it is, is but a shadowy resemblance blance of that intellectual and heavenly light, which in the infinite mercy of God is yet more largely to be revealed!

IV.

And on the seventh day God ended his work, which he had made: and he rested on the Seventh day from all his work which he had made. Gen. ii. 2.

No part of Holy Scripture may be said to require so great caution and distinction in the human mind, as those passages wherein the operations and affections of the Supreme Majesty are spoken of, in conformity to our feeble powers of conception.

And though fuch relations are given in condescension to our weakness, while in the body, nothing surely should conduce more to the constant humility of our minds, than thoughts of the neceffity that there seems to have been, for an appearance of degradation, even of the unalterable majesty of God, in order that we might have any sensible conception at all of him.

For