our fellow-creatures, command our esteem and admiration, and if they have condescended to confer upon us unexpected and unmerited favours, our hearts glow with all the ardour of affection and gratitude. What then should be our feelings towards God!_towards him who is the first and the last the greatest and the best of all Beings towards him who created not only us, but every part of the universe:towards him who is clothed with all possible perfections, and who is continually exercising these perfections for the promotion of our happiness :-towards him from whom we derive all that we possess ; all our present comforts, and all our future hopes. It is impossible to think of God without being fixed in all the stillness of astonishment. It is impossible duly to think of him, without swelling with every celestial emotion of confidence and love.-• Great is the Lord, and greatly to be prais'ed.' Who would not praise and magnify his excellent name?' Praise the Lord all his works! Praise the Lord, O my soul: While the fool says in his heart, there is no God;' let me delight to acknowledge

him, and sing praises to him while I have any being.'

BUT while we adore and love him, wE

SHOULD BE DESIROUS TO RENDER ALL POSSI

BLE OBEDIENCE TO HIM. When he made us, he made us for some end; and the end for which he made us was to enjoy and communicate happiness. But we cannot answer this end, without imitating and obeying him who designed this end, and hath appointed the only means by which we can attain to it. And we can never attain to it, if we suffer our faculties to slumber in indolence, or if we exert them only in the commission of vice. We must put forth all the heaven-born energies with which we are supplied, and with this noble activity, enter each upon the faithful performance of his appointed office. Never must we relax, for one moment, our holy endeavours; but incessantly labour to be fully qualified for higher and higher spheres of usefulness. We must, with zeal and without intermission, pursue that glorious plan, which is evidently formed for the accomplishment of the greatest possible happiness. Let us carefully study then the all-perfect

will of our adorable Creator, and earnestly pray for grace to enable us to conform to it. What, O man, doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love · mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.'* Attend solicitously to this, and thou shalt have thy reward, Thou shalt not only be comfortable here, but eternally happy hereafter. While the fool who hath said in his heart, there is no God,' go away into everlasting punishment,

'shall
'thou shalt go into life eternal.

i and

I CONCLUDE with observing, that if all this is true, wHAT MANNER OF MEN THEY ARE WHO REJECT AND DESPISE IT! They reject and despise what is evidently consonant to the plainest dictates of reason; and what we could not believe any man would ever reject or despise, did we not know it from woful experience. And yet these are the persons, who, in the pride of their hearts, lay claim to superior acquirements, and pretend to look down with pity, if not with contempt, upon the rest of man

* Mic. vi, 8,

+ Matt. xxv, 46.

kind, who are believers in God, and votaries of religion! But what are the vaunted acquirements of unbelievers? They have learnt to give their minds a turn of thinking peculiar to themselves. They have learnt to resist the strongest evidence, and to repudiate the conclusions of common sense. To a certain species of talents, indeed, we are not inclined to deny the justness of their claims. They have sometimes ingenuity, but it is without fairness; often wit, but it is without wisdom; and always audacity, but it is without goodness. Well then, does the psalmist denominate them "fools. May God whom they deny, shew them their folly, and bring them, through Jesus Christ, to genuine repentance: for except they repent, they must perish.'

APPENDIX.

In the preceding dissertation, there is, perhaps, little new, except in the arrangement, and in the general manner of treating the subject. But if, even in these respects, there be any thing new, and at the same time just, it is certainly important.

THE authors, whose writings I have perused upon the existence of God, have generally divided their arguments into two kinds,—the argument, as it is commonly called, a priori, and the argument a poste riori. This having long appeared to me something like a distinction without a difference, I have, therefore, endeavoured to combine the two arguments into one. With what success, I leave the reader to judge.

THE argument a priori, seems to me nothing but the argument a posteriori, put in a more abstract form. Both arguments