with unceasing care over your welfare? Is it not, therefore, in a secondary sense only that we are to ascribe the term of Father to our earthly parent, while the primary and full meaning of the word belongs only to our Creator? Let us, my brethren, know our true state, let us understand our high dignity and noble birth. Let us remember, that in having God for our Father, we possess the highest honour and the noblest privilege which any created beings can enjoy.

But, secondly, there is another sense in which the title of Father is justly claimed by God. He is the Father who hath bought us. When man, by his rebellion against his Maker, had forfeited the title of a son, it pleased God to provide an atonement for him. Through the sacrifice of our Redeemer, God offered to restore his offending children in the most ample manner, to the privileges which they had lost; and as the Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to become, in a still higher sense than before, our Father also. He would be justly considered as acting towards us the part of a parent, and as deserving all our filial confidence and gratitude, who, after our temporal death, should bestow on us a second life, who should deliver us from ruin and decay, and place us in a new and happy state of existence. With what reason then ought we to call him our Father, who has, by the death of his Son, redeemed us from eternal death, and rendered us capable of enjoying eternal happiness and glory? In this sense, our blessed Lord has taught us to look up to God as our Father: "I ascend," says he, "unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." And indeed the New Testament, in every page, exhibits to us this delightful view of our Creator. It continually teaches us to look to him as a reconciled Father in Jesus Christ. It speaks of the spirit of adoption sent into our hearts, whereby we cry, Abba, Father, teaching us, that is, to draw near to God with humble boldness, through Christ, as to a Father, and to repose in him all filial confidence.

When I have reflected upon the numerous and signal proofs which God has given of his paternal feelings towards us, I have often been surprised that those whose gratitude to their earthly parents is unbounded, and whose confidence in them never fails, should shew so little affection to their heavenly Father, and rely so little on his love and mercy. The reasons of this inconsistency appear to me to be the following.

First, the undue attachment which we are apt to place on objects of sense. We see and converse with

an earthly parent, but our bodily senses do not inform us of the presence of God. Yet the proofs of his presence are actually more strong and numerous than those which attest the existence of any material object; and all the blessings which we have ever enjoyed concur to prove, that it is as a Father that he is present with us to protect us and to do us good.

Secondly, Through the weakness of the human understanding we continually entertain an undue estimation of second causes. We do not feel the extent of our obligations to our heavenly Father, because many of the blessings which he bestows are communicated to us by some instrument appointed for that end. Now we should esteem it a strange degree of absurd reasoning, if a poor man, to whom we sent our bounty by an agent, were to express no gratitude to us, but much to the person whom we might employ. Yet we all reason too frequently in this manner with respect to the great Author of all good. What we obtain through the kindness of our parents, we attribute solely to them, not considering who has induced their minds to feel towards us that parental tenderness. What we procure through our own labour we ascribe to ourselves, not reflecting that it is in this way that God inclines and enables us to obtain the good he bestows upon us. Could we withdraw the veil which is interposed between us and the Divine Being, we should clearly see that there is not a blessing which we enjoy which has not been given to us by the provident

VOL. 11.

22

us.

and watchful beneficence of God, and that men have been only the instruments of his bounty. But there is in our hearts a reluctance to set God before We know enough of his majesty to shrink from his presence; enough of his holiness to be afraid of his inspection; enough of his justice to tremble at our guilt. We do not like therefore to retain him in our knowledge. He is a Being whom we consider as too great to be connected with us but as our Lawgiver and our Judge, and therefore we rather turn our attention from him. But Revelation is given to rectify this false estimate of the Divine character. It displays the goodness of God as well as his justice: it represents him as our Father, as well as our Judge: it beseeches us to lay aside our dread of him and our enmity towards him. Now then, "we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God; for he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

It is to this state of reconciliation with God to which, by the help of his Holy Spirit, I would wish to guide you. I would cause all his goodness to pass before you. I would proclaim to you his Name, as he himself proclaimed it to Moses: "The Lord, the Lord God merciful and gracious, long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty." I would set before you such a display of the Divine goodness and love that your hearts should be drawn to him by the cords of affection, and that from henceforth you might give up to him your bodies and souls as a lively and

reasonable sacrifice.

It will probably, however, be generally acknowledged, that the character of God is good and gracious. This degree of acquaintance with his nature is easily attained. It is in the practical use of such knowledge that we are chiefly apt to fail. This is therefore the end to which I now shall direct your attention. I will suppose you

then to allow, that God is love; that his mercy and goodness are infinite; that his bounty is inexhaustible; that the gift of his Son to be our Redeemer proves, beyond contradiction, his thoughts of mercy to be as far above our thoughts as the heavens are above the earth; that he is continually doing us good, using his infinite power only for that purpose; that, in a word, he is in the highest sense of the expression our Father; what then ought to be your thoughts and conduct towards him?

1. In the first place, you ought to entertain the highest reverence for his laws. -The commands of a Father should justly be esteemed sacred; because they are given by him, and because they can only be dictated by love to his children. If you were to see a parent most kind and benevolent in his nature, and peculiarly affectionate towards his son, would you suppose it possible that in the precepts he gave to him he could have any end in view but his welfare? Would not every exhortation bear the stamp and character of kindness and love? Such is the system of laws given to you by God. Whenever you open the Bible consider it in this light: My heavenly Father, ever wise and attentive to my good, has given me this book, as a token of his care and tenderness, to point out to me the paths of peace and eternal happiness. There is not a single precept in this volume which does not flow from the purest kindness and the deepest affection, directed by the clearest wisdom. How shall. I then receive it? Shall I not value it as my counsellor and guide? Shall I not cheerfully and readily make every sacrifice which it requires? Shall I not read it constantly as containing the will of my heavenly Father? Such, it is evident, must be the disposition and views of those who consider God as their Parent and their Friend.

2. This view of the character of God as our Father should teach us to form a just idea of the true nature of religion! Religion! with what terror has it been beheld! How has it been considered as a system of restraint and gloom; of penances and mortifications, enjoining the most irksome labours, and threating dreadful punishments if its conditions were not fulfilled. Allow me, from the preceeding considerations, to suggest a juster view of its nature.

Religion is the homage which you pay to your heavenly Father, by offering to him the worship of the heart and asking of him the most valuable blessings. It is the regulation of your lives by his holy word. It is the enjoyment of the innumerable benefits offered to mankind through his beloved Son. Religion must bear the stamp and character of its Author. Look at Jesus Christ was any other character equally amiable ever exhibited to the world? Was he not always engaged in going about doing good? Were not pity and compassion, kindness and love, the governing principles of his nature? Can that be a gloomy or unreasonable service which has Christ for its author, and heaven for its end?

True; but religion requires holiness, and holiness is irksome to the corrupt nature of man. God forbid that I should induce any of my hearers to suppose that what the Gospel requires of us is less arduous than in reality it is, or that I should omit to represent to you the obligations of religion as well as its pleasantness, the justice as well as the compassion and love of God. But still, when our view is directed to these awful considerations our Father's tenderness is yet more clearly discernible. For is God so holy and so high? Then how truly paternal was it in him not to spare his only begotten Son, but to give him up as a sacrifice for our sins! And is holiness so essentially requisite? Behold in religion the provision made for the attainment of it. The Gospel is glad tidings of great joy. It proclaims pardon to the penitent, through Jesus Christ. It bids us draw near to God as reconciled through him. It speaks peace, and inspires hope to the desponding and self-condemned. It assures us of