who were reproached with loving and serving the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.'

The text is a description of those who have but a slight sense of universal accountableness to God as the supreme authority;-who have not a conscience, constantly looking and listening to him, and testifying for him ;-who proceed as if this world were a province absolved from the strictness of his dominion and laws;—who will not apprehend that there is his will and warning affixed to everything;-who will not submissively ask, "What dost thou pronounce on this?" To be insensible to the Divine character as lawgiver, rightful authority, and judge, is truly to be "without God in the world; for thus every action of the soul and the life assumes that he is absent, or not exists.

This insensibility of accountableness exists almost entire -a stupefaction of conscience-in very many minds. But in many others there is a disturbed, yet inefficacious feeling. And might not some of these be disposed to say, “We are not without God in the world, as an awful authority and judge,-for, we are followed, and harassed, and persecuted. sometimes quite to misery, by the thought of him in this character. We cannot go on peacefully in the way our inclinations lead,a portentous sound alarms us,-a formidable spectre encounters us,-though we still persist."

The case is here that men wish to be "without God in the world;" they would, in preference to any other prayer, implore him to depart, "for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. They would be willing to resume the enterprise of the rebellious angels, if there were any hope. "Oh, that he with his laws and judgments, were infinitely far away!" To be thus with God, is, in the most emphatical sense, to be without him—without him as a friend, approver, and patron. Each thought of him tells the soul, who it is

that it is without! and who it is that, in a very fearful sense, it never can be without!

The description belongs to that state of mind in which there is no communion with him, maintained, or even sought, with cordial aspiration;-no devout, ennobling converse held with him; no conscious reception of delightful impressions-sacred influences-suggested sentiments;-no pouring out of the soul in fervent desires, for his illuminations, his compassion, his forgiveness, his transforming operations ;-no earnest, penitential, hopeful pleading in the name of the glorious Intercessor;-no solemn, affectionate dedication of the whole being; no animation and vigour obtained for the labours and the warfare of a Christian life. But, how lamentable to be thus "without God!" Consider it in one single view only, that of the loneliness of a human soul in this destitution. All other beings are necessarily (shall we express it so ?) extraneous to the soul; they may communicate with it, but they are still separate, and without it; an intermediate vacancy keeps them for ever asunder, so that the soul must be, in a sense, in an insuperable and eternal solitude-that is, as to all creatures. But, on the contrary, God has an all-pervading power-can interfuse, as it were, his very essence through the being of his creatures,―can cause himself to be apprehended and felt as absolutely in the soul; (“dwelling in us and walking in us,")-such an intercommunion as is, by the nature of things, impossible between created beings. And thus the interior central loneliness, the solitude of the soul, is banished, by a perfectly intimate presence, which imparts the most affecting sense of society-a society, a communion, which imparts life and joy, and may continue in perpetuity. To men completely immersed in the world, this might appear a very abstracted and enthusiastic notion of felicity; but, to those who have in any measure attained it, the idea of its

loss would give the most emphatical sense of the expressions, "without God in the world."

The terms are a true description, also, of the state of mind, in which there is no habitual anticipation of the great event of going at length into the presence of God-in which, there is an absence of the thought of being with him in another "world"—of being with him in judgment— and whether to be with him for ever;-not considering that he awaits us somewhere,—that the whole movement of life is absolutely towards him,-that the course of life is deciding in what manner we shall appear in his presence; -not thinking what manner of fact that will be,-what experience, what consciousness, what emotions;-not regarding it as the grand purpose of our present state of existence that we may attain a final dwelling in his presence.

One more, and the last, application we would make of the description is, to those who, while professing to retain God in their thoughts with a religious regard, frame the religion, in which they are to acknowledge him, according to their own speculation and fancy. Thus, many rejecters of Divine revelation have professed, nevertheless, a reverential homage to the Deity; but the God of their faith was to be such as their sovereign reason chose to feign; and, therefore, the theory and mode of their religion was entirely arbitrary. But, if revelation be true, the simple question is, will the Almighty acknowledge your feigned god for himself, and admit your religion as equivalent to that which he has declared and defined? If he should not, you are without God in the world."

This is unavoidably, the condition, also, of those who reject anything which he has declared essential to the relation of being in acceptance and peace with him. If this happy connexion be, as we believe, appointed to subsist

alone through a Mediator constituted as a substitute, sacrifice, and atonement, then the rejection of this constitution. abolishes the connecting medium between man and God,— and the one is "without" the other.

Such are the general illustrations, faintly exhibited, of the grave and formidable import of the text. We intended briefly to add a few practical exemplifications of the bad and miserable effects of such estrangement from God as seen in youth, in the active busy occupation with worldly concerns,-in general social converse, -in times of temptation,-in situations of affliction and sorrow,-in old age,and in death.

And, now, surely this is not the condition for us to be content with for one hour,-for us, who are cast for a short period upon a scene of vanities, dangers, and ruins, with a nature full of want, helplessness, and disorder. Content! with this destitution, while He is here, the Almighty Power-while we can find him,—accost him,-importune him. Let us implore him not to permit our spirits to be detached from him, abandoned, exposed, and lost;-not to let them be trying to feed their immortal fires on transitory sustenance, but to attract them, and exalt them, and hold them in his communion for ever.

LECTURE LVII.

MAN'S DEVICES AND GOD'S COUNSEL.

PROVERBS Xix. 21.

"There are many devices in a man's heart; nevertheless, the counsel of the Lord, it shall stand."

COMPARISONS between God and man are continually occuring in the Scriptures, and in all religious books and discourse. There is, from this a possible wrong consequence, against which we have to guard; namely, that of lessening our sense of the infinite disparity of the objects. Whatever may be the distance which is expressly signified in the terms of the comparison, the fact that they may be, and are, compared at all, tends to reduce our conception of the greatness of the Almighty. It is so, when the comparison is that of the parallel or likeness; as in goodness, sanctity, perfection. And it is so, too, when it is that of contrast; for, though the contrast be meant to display the immense difference, yet the mere circumstance of the conjunction of the ideas of a diminutive creature-an atom of existence, and an Infinite Being, has somewhat of the effect, if we may so express it, of keeping down the idea of that infinity. Two objects that we can take in the same view, do not seem infinitely different. We shall do well to endeavour against this disadvantageous effect, by rising to the contemplation of the Most High in his own absolute nature, as above all comparison. And our doing this sometimes, in a solemn and devotional spirit, will contribute to our receiving a stronger impression of the magnitude of the difference, when we are