We first of all calumniate the Sovereign of the universe by misrepresentations of His moral government. We embrace a theology, which by direct implication makes Him the author of sin and death-or which represents Him, equally with wretched mortals, bound by the adamantine chain of an antecedent and inexorable fate. We suppose Him to send his children into the world so constituted, in their physical, their intellectual, their moral nature, that they must oppose the will of God-must sin-must perish-that they must, as by the impulse of an eternal necessity, rush on in a downward course of moral turpitude, from the cradle to the tomb, formed and predestined to inevitable perdition. We exonerate the sinful and disobedient from the guilt of their transgressions, by making their departures from God, the unavoidable result of that nature which God himself has given themand then, we represent the All-righteous Spirit of truth, of honour, of love, as visiting with unquenchable wrath, the crimes, which, according to this stern doctrine of necessity,

have originated in His own will, and were designed for His own glory! We forget that God tempteth no man, and that the abuse of his own moral faculties, and nothing else, can ruin the soul of man, or cut him off from communion with his Creator and with happi

We forget that we are making the Great Spirit, not a father, but a tyrant. Yet, doubtless, God is our Father! And all the misconceptions of the faith of Christ, which would transform our veneration of whatever is lovely and majestic, into gloom, and dread, and suspicion-all such corruptions must be obliterated from our Creed, before we can calmly and sweetly rest our souls on God!— We may incur his anger by our sins. We may justly be appalled by his rectitude, as the injured parent or offended sovereign. But let us not confound our evil deeds with his acts of goodness-let us not imagine, that, without most daring and criminal presumption, we can impute to him the disorders entailed by sin upon a fallen race-nor suppose, that because we are regardless children,

he is an unfeeling parent!-Ah, no!-Rob the Deity of his paternal character-invest his throne with attributes of stern and ironsceptered tyranny, make it plain that he delights to create only that he may have the opportunity to destroy-and you veil the universe in mourning, you throw over the hopes and the destinies of man, the shadows of an eternal night!-The elect themselves may be deceived! Better that the sun be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood! The material world may be wrecked, and I still keep my hold upon my God! But let my confidence in his goodness be broken, and all is over, I perish in despair!-The love of God, the deep and tender interest he takes in the destinies of the human family— is the brightest truth of the everlasting Gospel! It beams from the Cross in mild effulgence. It is seen in the redemption of the Church, in the removal of sin, and the abolition of death. And the joy of proclaiming it to a guilty trembling world, was the motive which warmed the zeal of the first mission

aries of our faith. "Therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, especially of those that believe!"

Be still, and know that I am God!

II. It is a consideration, most consolatory amidst the evils of the present state, that it is a state of moral probation, of trial and of discipline, and that the sufferings to which we are exposed, as well as the series and combination of events, are subservient to the designs of God, in relation to his moral government. In many respects, the present condition of human nature is a mystery. We have not knowledge, we have not faculties, to discern the more distant bearings and relations of the mighty system of things, of which we form a part, and in which our final destinies are implicated. It is but a part, an extremely minute portion, that we see of the vast, the immeasurable, the infinite, which forms the dominions of Eternal mind. But if any one thing is satisfactorily made out, it is, that the present system is one of proba

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tion, for the trial and formation of character, training up the mind by a process of instructive discipline, and the heart by the purification of its passions, for the future state of blessedness. The idea of probation is discountenanced by those who embrace, with all its consequences, the doctrine of fatalism, or, which is practically the same, that of rigid and unconditional predestination. But the question is, not whether a doctrine squares with a plausible metaphysical argument, or with popular prejudices, but whether it accords with moral truth, with the dictates of conscience, with the constitution of our moral nature, and with the tenor of the sacred testimony. And there is no point on which I feel a more deep conviction, after pursuing the subject in all its known bearings, and after a thoughtful reading of the most distinguished writers on every side of the question, than that the present state of man is strictly probationary, that, as the subject of a moral economy, he is a candidate for Eternal life ;or-that we are totally in the dark respect