of its Fatherly compassion, is unwilling that any soul which lives should perish, but that all should come to salvation. It is to this love of the Father for all his children, even those who have far strayed from him; this love which knew no limits in its operation, but which, in the ineffable union that it formed between its innate Mercy and the rules of Holiness, Wisdom, and Righteousness, brings into action the whole energy of the Godhead; it is to this that the Apostle next opens the minds of his disciples, and shows them that even "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ," great as were its consequences to them, and to all, was yet a dispensation that only moved in subservience to the universal love of the Father for every thing on which his image had once been stamped, however afterwards defaced or defiled.

That, amidst all the consciousness of this weakness and defilement, we may yet be enabled to lay hold of the grace which has been offered to us, and to be assured of our Father's love, and still to live as in his presence, and as looking forward to a station in that Heaven where he dwells, the Apostle farther reminds us of "the communion of the Holy Ghost;" that there is now a Divine

Inmate ever ready to dwell in "the humble and contrite heart;" that, weak as we must feel ourselves to be, and unable of our own power to walk in the path of a Godly and Christian life, there is a powerful Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son, which is ever present to the prayer of the sincere, and to the efforts of the obedient.

It is in such a spirit, my brethren, that the sublime mystery of this day is presented to us by the Apostle; and we see that, mysterious as it is, it is only a mystery of love and of goodness, that there is little in it on which the faculties of our understandings are called to be exercised, but much on which the devotion of our hearts is led to repose, that it is throughout a manifestation of "grace," of

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love," and of condescending" communion,”and that, while in this life, we may be wellsatisfied to remain under that veil of mystery, in which the brightness of the Godhead is mercifully softened to the weakness of mortal eyes, -yet how thankful ought we to be, that every Distinct Ray which streams from the Central Point of Union, is a ray of grace and of guidance to lead us on through the darkness and the pol

lution of mortality, into the effulgence of the perfect day!

II. From the vision of the Divine Nature, which opens upon us in these words of the Apostle, we are, in the second place, my brethren, called down to the contemplation of the Beings among whom we live, and in what spirit is it that the Apostle descends to this wide contemplation? In the view of the Deity, he beheld solely the operating principle of love,—in the view of man, he beholds only that Being upon whom divine love is exerted. "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all." It is to a world no longer alienated from God, but living under the radiance of his Mercy, that he looks,-a mercy which is seeking and saving every thing that was lost,which is bounded by no limits of necessity, or of gloomy and arbitrary decrees,-which is not thrown back by any strength of original corruption, or even by any amount of actual transgression, but which, wherever man lives and breathes, contemplates him with the affectionate tenderness of a Father,-wherever man has sin

ned or suffers, descends to die for him as a Brother, wherever the heart of man awakens to penitence, or beats with the ambition of duty, dwells with him as the Spirit of consolation and of strength, to restore to him the peace of conscience, and to revive in him anew the decaying principle of goodness. It is in this view, and in this alone, that the Apostle looks abroad upon the world of man, and pours upon that wandering and suffering world the unlimited expression of his benedictions. It is upon every living head that he calls down that high and holy blessing, the " grace," the "love," the "communion," of the one Eternal God. The flame which the contemplation of that Being, who is Love, and Love alone, enkindled in him, was the wide and unquenchable flame of unrestrained Charity,-it was "love," in which he ever prayed that his disciples might be “rooted and grounded,”—that they might "be able to comprehend (he can scarcely find language for his glowing and crowding thoughts) what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, and that they might be filled with all the fulness of God."

III. What, then, thirdly, are the duties which those glorious conceptions bind upon every one of our individual hearts? In the first place, what is the sense of duty which they must awaken towards God?-Is it not the duty of joyful thankfulness? To feel, with gratitude, what is the system of mercy in which we move, and to rejoice in it while we are thankful,-to open our hearts to all the glories of that beneficence, -to see it every where around us in nature, and to trace it in every discovery of Revelation, -and to cast off every contracted prejudice of opinion, and every narrow and worldly sentiment, which may throw one dark and unseemly fetter upon the boundless expansion of that overflowing love; and while we look to the infinitude of space in which God dwells, and to that unnumbered and numberless assemblage of worlds which He has made the seat of sentient and moral being, to feel our hearts burn within us, in thankfulness, that His Love for his creatures is equally infinite with His own Existence, and with the existence of the creation, which moves and has its being in Him!

What, in the second place, is the duty which these conceptions call upon us to per