designs for our good. All the wicked schemes of Jacob's sons, which their father, if he had known them and been able, would doubtless have prevented, eventually promoted the salvation of himself and his children. If we knew or comprehended more than we do, we should often, without intending it, oppose various obstacles to the designs of God, and con'sequently to our own happiness. The same observation is applicable to the prophecies. It was highly necessary for God to involve them in obscurities, lest the clearness of a prediction should obstruct its fulfilment. If those which regard the Messiah had been perfectly clear, without any obscurity, the Jews "would not have crucified the Lord of glory."*

I return to the examples. Behold Israel in Egypt under the tyranny of the Pharaohs: they are employed in making bricks: their male infants are thrown into the river. What a servitude! Does it not seem that their race must shortly be extinct? and what will become of the divine promises? This calamity is continued for a long period: Moses, destined to be their deliverer, is himself obliged to quit the country, and become a shepherd. Behold God hiding himself. And for how many years? Moses was eighty years old, when he went to address Pharaoh. But at length after the requisite preparation, God puts his hand to the work; he conquers Egypt by the force of his strokes; and the humble shepherd with his rod, triumphs over all the pride, resistance and power of Pharaoh: the sea divides, and Israel is fed by a miracle in the desert. Behold God the Saviour!

*I Cor. ii, 8.

Let us proceed to the deliverance from Babylon, which our prophet has in view. Who could have thought, after so many marks of the wrath and desertion of God, after the destruction of Jerusalem, the transportation of the people into Chaldea, and a captivity of seventy years, that the re-establishment of that nation would be commenced by the authority of the kings of Persia; and that, in spite of all the opposition of their neighbours, the work would be accomplished? Yet this actually comes to pass. God touches the hearts of those monarchs, on whom the Jews are dependent; and their re-establishment, after having been successively interrupted and resumed under six or seven kings, is at length completed. Do we not behold God the Saviour?

Let us go farther in all the work of redemption, towards which the views of the prophet are secondarily and more remotely directed; in redemption, do we not discover, first a God that hideth himself, and afterwards God the Saviour? Consider the times of the Old Testament, when almost all the nations of the world were without God and without hope, pursuing the vanity of their own imaginations; those times, when God seemed to have abandoned them all, toconfine his cares to a single nation; those times, when God revealed himself to his own people, only in an obscure manner, and treated them like a child under a tutor, loading them with a burthensome yoke, and binding them by a rigorous law. Was not the God of Israel, then, a God hiding himself?

Next contemplate the times of the New Testament, the oracles accomplished, Jesus Christ given, death vanquished, hell disarmed, the Holy Spirit

descended, the Gentiles called, the church established: do you not, in these events, behold God the Redeemer? Do you not perceive that "the mystery "which hath been hidden from ages and generations "is now manifested to our glory?"* Survey the various parts of the economy of Jesus Christ, the state of every believer, the successive revolutions of the church: after "the God that hideth himself," in all these, you will invariably discover "God the

Saviour." Behold Christ, in his birth, his life, his death and burial; in all the stages of his humiliation, is he not literally " the God that hideth himself," and that, in order to be the Redeemer of Israel? But in his resurrection, ascension, and session at the right hand of God, in the mission of his Spirit, and the establishment of his Church throughout the world, is he not a God that manifests his power and glory, and saves to the very ends of the earth? And will not that other part of his economy which we expect, his second coming and judgment, be the perfect manifestation of God the Saviour, who in some respects hides and conceals himself still. So, in the life of each individual of the faithful, and in his present condition in this world, where all is merely the commencement, the sketch, the first fruits, where "it doth not yet appear what we shall "be," where our "life is hid with Christ in God;" do you not perceive "the God that hideth himself?" Has he chosen us? it is in the secret of his eternal counsel. Does he work in us? it is in the secret recesses of our souls, and by the hidden operation us? Does

of his Holy Spirit. Does he justify us?

• Col. i. 26. I Cor. ii. 7.

he appoint us a crown? it is still within the veil that every thing is done. But when Christ shall appear, and we shall appear with him in glory, will not that glorification, the natural and infallible consequence of our regeneration commenced in the present state, fully prove him to be "God the "Saviour?"

In all that happens to the church, you will observe these two things in succession. The church is afflicted under the heathen emperors; it is God hiding himself: she becomes glorious and triumphant under Constantine; it is God the Saviour. The church is obscured, corrupted, and almost annihilated under the tyranny of Antichrist, so that it may be asked, Where is her God? She rises again, purified by the Reformation: behold God her Deliverer. During the prosperous days of the church, the mystery of iniquity began to work: it was the mystery of Satan who was secretly carrying on his plot. But while Satan seems to reign, God who hides himself has also his mystery, and is secretly working to effect a deliverance. Thus he is acting now, and

thus he will always act. It is his will to permit certain revolutions and periods of trial: but night will always be succeeded by day, and God will finish his work.

On the manner in which he delivers his people, I forbear at present to expatiate. He has a thousand different ways of doing this; for he "is won"derful in counsel, and excellent in working.' Sometimes he employs means apparently the most natural and common, without our perceiving his

Isaiah xxviii. 29.

interference, or suspecting any thing beyond human agency. He will diffuse a terror by some unexpected intelligence: by a disease he will bring down to the tomb an opposing enemy: he will discover the conspiracies of a Haman, and undeceive an Ahasuerus: to the counsel of an Ahitophel he will oppose that of a Hushai, which shall prevail : he will introduce into the courts of princes, an Ezra, a Daniel, an Esther, a Nehemiah, who shall find favour in their sight. He will secretly touch the heart of a Cyrus, a Darius, an Artaxerxes, who shall re-establish what a Nebuchadnezzar shall have destroyed. Sometimes God employs means that are more conspicuous. For the defence of the church he will raise up some extraordinary personage; he will place at the head of his people, a Moses, a Joshua, a Gideon: he will strengthen their hands, guide their swords, and inspire their counsels. Does he not know likewise how to conquer the Pharaohs by the force of his strokes? Do not all things move at his command? war, pestilence, famine, inundations, earthquakes, lightnings? If the manifestation of himself as a Saviour require miracles altogether above the laws of nature, does he not exhibit them whenever he pleases? He thinks no miracle too great, to evince his faithfulness in his promises, and to prove himself the Redeemer of his church even to the end.

Let us reflect, in the last place, on the promises of religion, and the certainty which revelation gives us of a judgment to come. The present world is a state of probation, in which God only designs our preparation for another. This life is a season of