their glory and honour into it. And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there. And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it. And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life 1."

Such is the origin, such the progress, and such the final consummation of the life of a Christian. It originates and ends in the great doctrine of the Divinity of Jesus Christ. If he be indeed the Son of God, all these benefits flow from his death in natural succession. As St. Paul says, "He that spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things 2. " If he be divine, his death may well atone for mortal sin. If he be Lord of all, he can, of his abundance, give us our heavenly portion. And, since such is power, let us doubt not his will to help

his

1 See Revelation xxi. 11,

&c. 2 Rcm. viii. 32.

us. He who stooped from the throne of his majesty in the heavens, to pitch his tabernacle among men, had no common object to answer in so wonderful an act of self-humiliation, nor will he leave that object uncompleted or imperfect. What he has done for us already, is a pledge and security of what he will certainly do for us hereafter. Having loved his own which are in the world, he will love them unto the end. Let us, then, always bearing in mind the high destiny to which we have been called, continually implore Almighty God to "give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which," (as on this day,) "his Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty to judge both the quick and dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with the Father, and the Holy Ghost, now and ever! Amen 1."

1 Collect for the day.

SERMON IV.

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD THE GROUNDWORK OF

ALL RELIGION.

PSALM CXXXix. 1.

O Lord, thou hast searched me out, and known me: thou knowest my down-sitting, and mine up-rising: thou understandest my thoughts long before.

THE state of religious progress, as well among individuals as among nations, can be measured by no standard more accurately, than by the notions which they entertain of the Almighty. The just are described, in one word, as those who "set the Lord always before them 1;" while, on the other hand, we are told "the ungodly is so proud that he careth not for God, neither is God in all his thoughts 2. 2 99 As

1

the light of nature grew dimmer, and man gradually lost the religious knowledge which had been vouchsafed to him from heaven, his notions concerning the nature and attributes of God became day by day more gross and superstitious, till he could not even conceive the existence of a pure and spiritual and moral governor of the world. The mind which possessed no virtue in itself, lost the power of picturing the existence of virtue in others; instead of raising itself to a higher standard, it brought down what was excellent to its own level, and supposed the Almighty Author of the universe to be governed by the like unholy passions, and guided by the same unworthy motives as itself. All the Heathen did not, indeed, sink equally deep into this error; they differed from each other in their estimate of the Deity, exactly in proportion to the state of their religious knowledge; but they all, in this most vital point, fell lamentably below the truth, and, as one error invariably leads to another, as ignorance of themselves led to forgetfulness of

God, so again forgetfulness of God conduced inevitably to greater depravity of practice. St. Paul, in the opening of his Epistle to the Romans, gives us an account of the general state of degradation into which the whole Heathen world had fallen, which cannot be read without horror; and this he attributes to the very cause here assigned, their wilful forgetfulness of God. "Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools; and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things." They considered him to be endowed with the same attributes as themselves; and no wonder, then, that the conceptions which sprung from so polluted a fountain, should be themselves impure and grovelling. A God of such a nature as they conceived theirs to be, 1 Rom. i. 21-23.