rears its altar "to the unknown God." All ideas of the Divine nature will be found to be not innate, but traditionary. There are no characters carven on the infant mind by which, in riper years, the man can spell out of his own industry the letters of the Eternal Name. God has had both to originate and to sustain the notion of his own existence; and his infinite love has never suffered it wholly to perish, or the world would have been left in its own hopeless Atheism, to die. Here, then, is the excellency of the Gospel: that in it the revelation is clearer and more vivid than in aught beside. There are partial revelations otherwhere. There is a discovery of God in Nature. She has much to say of her Master and His name. The sky, with its all enclosing-dome, the sun in his strength, the watching host of stars, the mountains -broad-based and solemn, the earth enamelled in beauty, the chorus of winds and waters, the rivers in their flow, and the ocean in its unceasing chime, the woodlands with their foliage and minstrelsy, and the tribes of the animated in the hum and rapture of their life—how large the volume and how full! How glorious the testimony to the power and presidency of God. And yet how partial after all is the discovery! This God, of whom Nature tells me-what is He? How is He affected towards me ? Is there Mercy with Him, to control and temper his power? Does Judgment or Tenderness prevail in his administration ? These are questions which Nature finds no tongue to answer, or which she answers falteringly and in vain. That sky, so serene in its azure, is darkened by tempest. That ocean, so calm in its play, is lashed wrathfully into a thing of storm. Those woodlands, so glad in their summer time, shrivel, and wither, and die. Those insect tribes, which flutter in the morning in the sunshine, their whole frames vibrating with life and pleasure, at eventide lie cold and dead on the leaf or in the stream. Where is the proof of mercy? Where are the tidings of forgiveness? There is no ease for a burdened conscience, no balm for a bleeding heart. Ah! Nature is fair and she is eloquent; but her beauty is the beauty of the present, and her eloquence tells not of the recompense of heaven. Her volume has within it its Genesis of lovliness and its Exodus of sorrow, its Psalms, both glad and plaintive, and its Prophecies alike of warning and of resurrection; but there is no Gospel in it. It is the Old Testament which needs to be fulfilled and interpreted by the New. The record of pardon is awanting. The depth saith, "It is not in me," and the sea saith, "It is not in me." It is neither written by the sunbeam, nor chanted by the song-bird, nor wafted by the mountain breeze. Here it is that the glory of the Gospel of Christ is seen. It publishes the tidings which you cannot gather from the universe beside-publishes them in freedom and in power. Here the whole Deity is known. No attribute infracts upon the province of another—they are all seen in individual distinctness, but in harmonious combination-justice that is inflexible, and wisdom that is unerring; dignity in its untarnished grandeur, and mercy so ample in its resources, and so boundless in its range, that it embraces and can save the entire family of man. Is it Justice of which you speak? Where is it so effectually displayed as in the Gospel of Christ? In obedience to its principles and sanctions, God has on all occasions evinced his righteous displeasure against sin. We see it on the shores of the Red Sea, in drifted corpses and in battered armour. We see it in the cities of the plain, blasted in their rebel pride by Jehovah's kindled anger. We trace it in the waters of the deluge, and in the fires of the torment-home-where prayer is ineffectual, and Mercy silent. But in each, in all of these, we have no such exhibitions of the Justice of God as we find in the garden and on the cross. There is the sufferer, rent with wounds and racked with pain-the soul in its agony exuding the moisture from its creature-body-darkness in the sky and deeper darkness in the mind-the blood flowing forth—the body writhing in extremest anguish— the chill and lonely sense of the withdrawal of the Father's presence—the last passion-cry-seeming as if in its enforced utterance it rent the very heart in twain, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" And what is this? Oh! it is Justice punishing the sinner through his representative and surety. It is Justice sheathing the sword in the heart of Mercy. It is God's own Son enduring a weight of woe which none but Omnipotence could inflict, and which none but Omnipotence could bear. If I want to discover in their fulness either the justice of God or the enormity of sin, I must stand me by the cross of Christ. แ Is it Wisdom of which you speak?-the right application of knowledge-the selection of suitable means-and the attainment of ends by their beneficial uses. Where do you find it so worthily as in the Gospel of Christ? It is presented to us everywhere. In the green carpet of creation-in the provisions of the bountiful universe-in the adaptation of light to the eye-in the transmission of sound to the ear—in the mutual dependencies of nature -and in the rare and grand harmonies of material things; but its most surpassing exhibition hath abounded in the scheme of salvation. We can conceive of holy and happy beings subsisting in friendliness-and conferring offices of kindness on each other; but it was left to the wisdom of the cross to find out how-while Justice relaxes not its claims, nor Truth abates its sanctions-the guilty can be pardoned, and the lost be saved. We can conceive even how, in the abstract, Mercy can pardon an offender, or Justice punish his sins; but in no school but that of Calvary is it taught, how while the principles of government remain intact, and the law is upheld, vindicated, magnified-the King yet delighteth to honour, adopts into his family, owns of his blood-royal, the very rebels who have spurned his authority, and tried to undermine his throne. That hill of sacrifice is the mount of wisdom. In the cross, as in the person of Christ, are "hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." Is it Love on which you dwell? The stream of goodness flowing out from its illimitable fountain? Where is its brightness of glory but in the Gospel of Christ? The world indeed is full of it. The fragrance which regales the senses, and the beauty which charms the eye-flowers in their wildering sweetness, and fruits in their ripening plenty-the spring-time in its promise and the autumn in its fruition—the glad laugh of children, those wavelets which dance rejoicingly on the surface of the ocean of life— the smiles of gathered friends-the father's pride and the mother's tenderness, and all the unutterable happinesses of home-all these are its manifestations, and though in fainter cadence and on a minor key, they are striking every day the one note of the world's high music, that God is love. But what are these compared to the exhibition of love in the sacrifice and atonement of Christ? Christ dying that we might never die! Death seizing on Him, that life might be conferred upon us! Wrath descending on Him who had never sinned, that mercy might encompass us who had done nothing else but sin! Here is a depth of lovingkindness whose fulness we must die to know, and the marvel of whose unsearchable and face of the brave and "Herein is love-not loved us, and sent his strong affection eternity itself will hardly be able to explain. We wonder not that the Apostle, when he would teach the love of God to man, does not take us to the summit of some lofty mountain and show us the fair landscape on which the smile of heaven hath rested. No, but to a far different scene: he takes us to the foot of Calvary, on a stormy day, under a darkened sky, when night has climbed up strangely to the throne of noon, and there, when the forked lightnings gleam fearfully upon the cross, and light up the pale heavenly Sufferer, and he says that we loved God, but that He Son to be the propitiation for our sins." Have we not established our position? Is it not true that the Gospel is the clearest development of God? It is this which makes all other Revelations available. When the Gospel of Christ has first awakened the man's soul, all nature becomes illustrative of God. There is opened for him the inner eye which no prejudice can darken, and the inner ear which no discord can bewilder. There in everything he can find spiritual meanings and tidings of the Holy One. He hears his name in the waving of the trees-drinks it in from each panting flower-cupknows that the wild waves are saying it, and that in the dash of their billows There is a something greater, Which speaks to the heart alone; Dwells in that mighty tone. It is the Gospel of Christ which animates nature, explains the mysteries of Providence, fulfils and inspirits the visions of prophecy, realizes all types and absorbs all emblems, exhausts all figures, and flings down full in the |