and in which all are buried. Our fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live for ever?

From this scene of change and of vanity, let us turn away to the eternity and immutability of God. If God be eternal, the portion of his people must be independent of all the revolutions of time. "This God is our God for ever and ever, and he will be our guide even unto death." Ours is a life of change, and the most appalling of all changes is the dissolution of the body; but as He, whose years are throughout all generations, is the fountain of our blessedness, and the foundation of our hopes, our real inheritance, that alone which meets the desires of immortal beings, cannot be impaired by time or eternity. Happiness cannot perish so long as God lives. He is the first and the last, the first of all delights, nothing before him; the last of all pleasures, nothing beyond him. In his presence is fulness of joy, and at his right hand are pleasures for evermore. The God of perfect goodness and wisdom will have variety to increase our enjoyments, and eternity to perpetuate them.

Hence, the stability and permanency of the covenant of grace, the covenant which is well ordered in all things and sure, and which is all our salvation and all our desire. It rests, together with all the promises it contains, on the eternity and immutability of God. He has pledged those awful attributes of his nature for its fulfilment. Willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, he confirmed it by an oath: that by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God

to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us. It is for this reason that the grace conveyed in this covenant is termed the everlasting Gospel-the eternal life which God promised before the world began. Its stability is denoted by what is most fixed and permanent in nature, by the ordinances of heaven, by the strength of hills, and by the rainbow in the clouds. "God said unto Noah, the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living crea ture of all flesh that is upon the earth." He afterwards expressed, by the prophet, the immutability of this covenant arising from his own unalterable purpose. "As I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee." All the promises of the Gospel, therefore, because their foundation is not in the infirmity of nature, but in the grace of the eternal and unchangeable God, shall surely be fulfilled-fulfilled in securing peace, and life, and joy, to the soul→ fulfilled in preserving all who are interested in them by the power of God through faith unto salvation. He who has begun the good work will carry it on; nor will he suffer the spiritual life which he has communicated to become extinct; for his gifts and calling are without repentance. "I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from

them to do them good, but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me."

How inconceivably great is the portion of him who fears God, and how sure and lasting is its enjoyment! The God of all perfection, who changes not, is his by his own gracious promise-is his dwelling-place in all generations. He is now the sanctuary of our peace, to which we ever may resort amid all the evils of life; and when those evils are no more, and the days of our mourning are ended, he will be our everlasting light and glory. While we contemplate the boundless

mercy and love of the eternal God, even our Father, while our thoughts are engaged on the infinitude of his perfections, who is our exceeding great reward, and in surveying his goodness in the designs of his providence and grace, and especially in the unspeakable gift of his Son, are not our souls drawn closer and closer to him, who is the strength of our heart, and our portion for ever? How delightful and animating is the thought, that to this place of refuge and of strength we can ever have recourse, and that those attributes of eternity and immutability, of omnipresence and omnipotence, to which the universe owes its being, and on which it depends, are exercised for our individual defence, for our present and everlasting good! He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust; his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Because thou hast made the •Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation, there shall no evil befal thee." Is it possible that those who are thus the special objects of divine favour, and to whom God now communicates

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spiritual life, shall fail in enjoying life in his presence for ever? The eternity of God is the security and the pledge of their eternal happiness. "Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One? We shall not die." We have laid up in store for us in the everlasting God, an infinite fulness of good against the time to come. When millions of years have passed away, our enjoyment and the source from which it flows, will be as full and as fresh as at the first. Hence,

II. The duty of making God alone the object of our entire trust and confidence. "Trust in the Lord for ever; for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength." As it is our duty to make the eternal and unchanging God alone the ground of our fullest confidence, so are we bound to cease from relying on weak and helpless man. "Put not your trust in the son of man, in whom there is no help; his breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish. Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God, which made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth for ever." To put confidence in man, is to place our trust in a creature that is fallen and inconstant. We are mutable, and tending to our state of original nothingness, unless upheld by the arm that made heaven and earth:-in consequence of the depravation of our nature, we have become unstable in all good. The truth of God is like himself immutable; but how inconstant are we in regard to it, and how are we carried about with every wind of doctrine! How soon does it lose its hold on our hearts and conscience, notwithstanding our reso

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lutions and promises! How changeable are we in our will and affections, wavering between God and the world, between sin and holiness, looking sometimes with hope and spiritual desire towards heaven, but often thinking and acting with earthly minds. Like the Israelites who promised obedience when they heard the terrors of the law denounced, but who soon made a golden calf, and worshipped it, we now resolve to choose the Lord for our God, and to serve him only, but to-morrow our goodness is as the morning cloud, and the early dew, which passeth away. Like Peter, who denied his Lord a few moments after he had vowed allegiance to him, we now profess our subjection to his authority, and soon we act as if we had forgotten that we had named his name. flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other; so that we cannot do the things that we would. If we do not always dishonour God, do we always glorify him; if we do not forsake the truth, do we make its attainment our chief business? When we would do good, evil is present with us. Our affections and thoughts soon quit the best objects, and wander with the swiftness of the wind in pursuit of vanity. If we are at all preserved in the way of truth and of righteousness, we owe it not to ourselves, but to the grace of the eternal and unchanging God. Without this renewing and sanctifying grace, man is altogether mutable and inconstant, like the chaff which the wind driveth away. How foolish, then, is it to make man in any condition, even the most honourable and exalted, the object of that unreserved and entire trust which