As the moral power of God consists in the excellence of his character, the more like God men become, in respect to character, the more moral power will they possess. Other kinds of power they may have by other means. They may exert a physical power over their fellow beings, by giant frames and iron muscles. They may exert a secular power, by riches, rank and office. They may exert an intellectual power, by high mental endowments and cultivation. But they can exert a moral power, only as they possess moral excellence. When a person is anxious for the salvation of his soul, he flies for help to the man in whose piety he has most confidence. It does not enter his mind to inquire whether the man have great physical strength and prowess, whether he be rich or high in rank, office, or mere intellectual attainments. These are to him of no consequence. His leading inquiry is, whether in respect to character the man is Godlike-whether he walks with God, has favor with God, and is seeking God's glory in the salvation of men. If such be indeed his character, his power over that anxious soul is next to omnipotent. What a motive this for high attainments in piety! Here we see what Christ meant by the "salt of the earth," and "the light of the world."*

It is of infinite moment that all the divine attributes be faithfully exhibited. Leave out any one of them, and the saving power of the others is destroyed. Exhibit nothing but justice, and you drive sinners to despair; nothing but long-suffering, and you encourage their

* Matt. v. 13, 14.

delay of repentance; nothing but grace, and you increase their presumption; nothing but mercy, and you embolden them in sin. It is therefore important that both law and gospel, penalty and grace, the thunder of impending justice and the soft subduing notes of compassion, should all be made to fall in their combined and harmonious action upon the soul. Leave out either of the divine attributes, or present it halting and feeble, and you are sure to write Ichabod upon the walls of the temple.

Sinners can be renewed and saved, only as they become reconciled to all the divine attributes. To be reconciled to the mercy of God, and not to his justice, implies no holiness of heart--no meetness for heaven. But because justice comes last in God's dealings with us-because the present is a scene of delayed justice, to give sinners space for repentance-great opportunity is afforded to preachers and to hearers to keep divine justice out of view, and thus banish from their religious faith the doctrine of the future perdition of the wicked. We would by no means advocate a mere poetic, imaginative, physical presentation of hell, more calculated to move the passions than to convict the conscience of guilt and moral danger. "The steady conviction that misery, intolerable, must be forever connected with rejecting the offered mercy of God, is the true impression produced by the declarations of the Bible on this matter; and this is a much more efficient and practically useful principle, than the terrors of an imagination, worked up by a picture of the secrets of that prison-house."*

* Erskine.

But let no sinner console himself with the expectation that the punishment of the wicked will be any the less intolerable, because of a moral nature. Whether it will be partly physical, or exclusively moral, we do not know; but this we know, that no judgments are like moral judgments, no calamities like moral calamities, no ruin like moral ruin, no misery like moral misery. Prisoner of hope! consider this-consider it well-consider it now. Ruin awaits the soul that will not consider it. Do not presume that because justice seems to come tardily, she will never come. Delaying judgments are but earnests of gathering indignation, if the space afforded for repentance be not improved. Let every man, as he would act wisely for eternity, firmly possess his mind of this truth. If he remain in sin, no surer will this day's sun go down and leave him in darkness, no surer will his hours roll on and bring him to the grave, than his day of grace will pass over, the sun of salvation will withdraw from him, and an eternal night of moral ruin and wo settle down on his lost spirit.

CHAPTER IV.

CREATION AND POWERS OF MAN.

THE Scriptures instruct us that the universe is not the work of chance, but of an intelligent and almighty BEING, whom we call GOD.* In opposition to the dark speculations of pagan philosophy, they inform us that matter has not self-existence-that this is an attribute which belongs only to God—and that all material things, as well as all living spirits, are dependent on his will. We are then to contemplate a period, in the past ages of eternity, when the material of this world, and of all the worlds around us, rose into being by the fiat of the Almighty. Not only did God create the material of the universe, but his own hands have fashioned it, and peopled it with endless tribes of living creatures.

When we first open our eyes upon the universe and attempt to study its nature and design, it seems a vast assemblage of strange, confused, inexplicable phenom

ena.

What, whence, why, this creation?—this great

* Gen. i. 1.

globe of land and sea, teeming with an endless and confused variety of animate and inanimate objects ?— yonder spacious canopy, sparkling with glittering hosts of stars by night, and blazing with the effulgent beams of the sun by day ?—and in the midst of this stupendous scene, the little creature-man ?—a being truly strange, even unto himself;—of the earth, and yet not of the earth—an animal, and yet more than an animal -a kin to worms, and yet a kin to angels-a frail child of corruption, and yet a proud heir of immortality.

But as we proceed to examine, darkness and chaos gradually give place to light and order ;—we see in creation a beginning, a progress, a consummation, and more than all, a design, worthy of the great Author.

We are carried back in thought to the period, when this huge chaotic mass of matter-—perhaps the ruins of a former economy-was moving along an eccentric track in the heavens, in wild and dark disorder; when the renovating energies of the Almighty awoke upon it; when "God said, Let there be light, and there was light;"-when he arched the blue firmament of heaven around it, divided the waters above from those beneath, and the waters beneath from the land; when he subsequently called into existence the vegetable kingdom, then the animal, and last of all man, in his own likeness.

The mineral kingdom, formed by the slow process of ages, is superior to a state of absolute chaos, inasmuch as it discovers organization, symmetry, beauty, and design. The vegetable kingdom is superior to the mineral; for it is endued with the properties of life, of