and bow before you," For know ye not that ye shall judge angels?" All the glories of heaven are promised to you,— not as a mere gratuity,—but as an inheritance. "He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son." O, it is not a cold-hearted and austere monarch who has made such exceeding great and precious promises! They are the promises of a father.

Christians! God is your father. He is the author of your being; he is your protector and guide. He rules you with a father's tenderness; he sustains you with a father's care; he watches over you with a father's faithfulness; he promises you a father's blessing. He is really and truly interested in your welfare, and directs all things for your good. If he chastises you, you may not complain. "We have had fathers of the flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence; shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of our spirits?" If you are surrounded by dangers, you need not be terrified. Have you not seen the little child when the tempest was dark and the lightning flashed and the thunder roared, run and draw himself up on a parent's knee, and feel himself safe in a parent's embrace? If disappointment meets you, you must not be amazed and despair. Do you not know that even a sparrow falleth not to the ground without your heavenly Father? If you are poor, you ought not to be distrustful. Consider the ravens,-your Father feedeth them. When you are sick, you should not be cast down. "As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." And when you die, O do not die in sadness, trepidation and dismay, -you will but go home to receive your inheritance. Your

religion is not a religion of fearfulness and gloom. It is a religion of hope and gratitude and love. The spirit of the Christian is the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. God is your father. Go to him in confidence; shrink not away from his love; tremble not as you go. It is only guilt that makes you afraid,—it is sin that confuses you with doubts. Go to him as children,-pour out your souls to him in prayer. And "when ye pray, say, Our Father."

Unrepenting sinners! God is your Father, too. The day may come, when, as an upright father, in due respect to himself, and kind regard to his children who obey, he will banish you for ever from his house. Many an earthly father has done the like, with the united approbation of all around, and been a father still. He may soon bid you depart. But that day has not yet come. He waits for your repentance; he entreats you to turn. "As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, but that he turn from his way and live. Turn ye, for why will ye die !" He is represented as lamenting over you, as a perverse and ungrateful and reckless child. "How shall I give thee up,

Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within me." And whenever you may come to yourself, and will arise and go to your Father, be sure he will come forth to meet you, while yet a great way off, and throw around you the arms of his love. He will forgive all that is past, and make you happy in his favor. O, sinner, you are not rebelling against a tyrant, you are not resisting a despot, you are not even treating a stranger with neglect. You are

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neglecting your friend,—you are disregarding your benefactor, -you are abusing kindness,-you are sinning against your Father. Your ingratitude is black,-your disingenuousness is base, your disobedience is hatefully wicked. Go bow to him to-day, and tell him you have sinned. Confess to him your wickedness and beseech him to forgive. Go pray to him alone, and "when ye pray, say, Our Father."

SERMON XIII.*

FOR WE ARE STRANGERS BEFORE THEE, AND SOJOURNERS, AS WERE ALL OUR FATHERS; OUR DAYS ON THE EARTH ARE AS A SHADOW, AND THERE IS NONE ABIDING.-1 CHRONICLES 29: 15.

It was when the princes and people of Israel had contributed liberally for the building of the temple, and sufficient means were secured for the erection of that splendid and imposing structure, that David gave utterance to the effusions of his heart, in the prayer that contains the text. Deeply affected. with the providence of God, overwhelmed with gratitude, and oppressed with a sense of his imbecility, and the frailty of his fleeting life, he exclaimed, "Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty; for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come of thee, and thou reignest over all; and in thine hand is the power and the might; and in thine hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all. Now therefore, our God, we thank thee, and praise thy glorious But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee. For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers;

name.

A New Year's Discourse.

us all to say with one united voice, and to feel with sympathetic love, that God is our Father.

The sanctions, too, which were given to this law, correspond with its character, and speak only of the goodness of him who enacted it. They are urgent as its importance; but they do not bind man as with cords and chains, which are always hateful, though the cords be silken and the chains of gold. The sanctions of the law do not destroy his freedom, or degrade the proper dignity of his nature. I say nothing here of what constitutes that freedom. Let those talk of this, who are anxious to make out for him a freedom greater or less than he is conscious of. It is enough that he is not made to feel himself enslaved. It is enough that we may know God has not claimed obedience arbitrarily. He created man a free, responsible, moral being, foretold to him the necessary consequences of obeying or disobeying, and left him to act, without compulsion, according to his choice. He only added to the motives of obligation, glorious, unmerited rewards of obedience, and lifted up a flaming sword in the pathway of sin. He dealt with him as with a child. He seems to have said to him, My son, it is right that you obey; but I wish to encourage your virtue, and put you on your guard against any thing that may tempt you to transgress;-if you maintain your integrity, I give you riches and honor; if you disobey, you know you wrong your own soul; but I wish you to act for yourself. Life and death are placed before you-choose-and abide by your choice.

Then the character of the father comes out perhaps more fully, when man had chosen, and committed the first act of disobedience. It may be impossible for us to conceive of the