"How does Truth apply to the Deity; or how do you shew it to be a divine attribute ?”

In various ways. First, the question has been agitated, whether the visible world is a true index of the divine mind, or whether the Deity has not exhibited in it delusive appearances;-and, secondly, whether he was honest enough to make man's senses so as to give him right notions of sensible or material things,-to see them, for instance, as they are.

"And how do you prove that he has ?"

By that perfect agreement which there is among all mankind as to the appearance of things; and the harmony among these things themselves, so that we see no strife in nature causing at any time even the least momentary suspension of its process. If there was such a lie in men's faculties, they could not exist, at least as social creatures. God, therefore, is not only true in all his ways, but is Truth itself—inasmuch as he is all in all.

17. "How do you vindicate the divine Mercy?" First, by shewing that God is so infinitely above man, as to be perfectly free from such imbecility as vindictiveness. And, secondly, by shewing that when he is called a God of vengeance, it is not more than a compliance with human prejudice, insomuch that all this is only the natural result of sin, which draws its punishment after it, as invariably as a

substance its shadow. But we are chiefly indebted to revelation for our knowledge of this amiable attribute. Therein we find that God's apparently most weighty and severe dispensations are only the more intense mercies in disguise. In the pardoning of sin and the receiving of man into favour, we are justified through the Lord our righteousness,' without whom we could not have been justified before God: that is, without the Mediator, neither his justice, truth, nor mercy could have triumphed.

18. "What do you mean by the immensity of the Deity?"

That his essence, by which I mean all I can set forth as his attributes, is in extent far beyond all imaginable bounds. 'There is no end of his greatness.'

"How would you attempt to enlarge the notion you have of the extent or magnitude of the Deity?"

I would consider first the extent of our globe, the number of its inhabitants, which is computed at more than eight hundred millions of human beings; while the animals, sea and land, are millions of millions without end. Of mankind, not less than three thousand quit the scene every hour, and a greater number are born; while of the animal creation millions receive existence and re

sign it every moment. And we are assured this has continued thousands of years and may continue thousands more. Then the planets, and even the sun itself, which is a million times larger than our globe, are all as well adapted to animal life, and are no doubt as thickly stored with their various inhabitants. Farther still-the fixed stars are found to be of the same nature as our sun, and doubtless have planets revolving round them. The stars we see are only a few stragglers of a great shoal or cluster, which compose the milky way, consisting of millions upon millions, equal in size to our sun in splendour; and some at least a hundred times larger than our sun. But this cluster is only one of many such clusters, which are, from certain telescopic indications, supposed to stock the boundless expanse of the skies, stretching one beyond another without end. Such is the extent of creation, that were our sun, with our globe and the other planets, annihilated, it would have less effect upon the whole, than the depriving a forest of one single leaf. By these millions of millions of worlds, each containing its millions of millions of inhabitants, all created and upheld by that one Great First Cause, called the Deity, I would enlarge my conception of the magnitude of that Being, who, although his power and wisdom are such as to be adequate to all this on the large scale, is yet so perfect in these on the small, that a sparrow may not fall to the ground without his

knowledge; and the life, comforts, and even beauty, of the meanest insect are as much his care, as if that insect alone had all his attention.

"You seem so anxious to fill the womb of space so full of planetary systems, worlds, and their inhabitants, as if you would from the universe exclude all possibility of a throne of God; and what is understood by heaven and hell, if not somewhere among your clusters ?"

By no means. All these, as already said, may be but the waste places of his domains. The place where his immediate honour dwelleth may be far beyond these, and no doubt is in proportion. For, if his power is such as to create and uphold all these, his mansion must bear some adequate relation thereto: it must infinitely exceed all these both in extent and glory. And I count all those men, who say they will not believe in the existence of a heaven and hell because they cannot see them, as little short of irrational creatures.

19. "What do you mean by the personality of the Deity?"

That which can contrive and execute I call a person. The seat of intellect is the person. This attribute in the Deity I call personality.

"Do you suppose, then, that there is but one mind in the Deity, which, if so, must be equally

capable of attending to millions without end of things and processes at one and the same moment of time, even from the projectile of a comet to the muscular motions of an insect, and the lighting up of a sun to the beautifying of a butterfly's wing,— and that he does all this without the aid of minor agencies?"

Certainly I do.

God may have many hierarchies between himself and man, and each individual of them may be active in his proper sphere; but their aid is not needed as auxiliary in the great process of nature.

"What idea, from the consideration of the personality of the Deity, and the constitution of the divine mind, as reflected from the works of nature, have you of the final arrangement of his great plan for eternity, with respect to the different degrees of felicity his blessed creatures shall enjoy?"

The noblest specimen of frame work we have, is that of the sun at the centre of the system. And I conceive the noblest idea we can form of any such arrangement, must be something in the manner of planets encircling the sun. The happiest creatures, on this supposition, will, by their intrinsic worth, gravitate or approach nearest his person, or what we may call the centre of his glory;— 'the bosom of the Father.' And all other degrees find space and their respective stations, till the most worthless and refuse, like chaff or spume,