Page images
PDF
EPUB

to the subject now before you, which is of infinitely more importance than any in which you can engage.

We have already seen that the revelation which God dispensed to Abraham was clear and definite; but we have no reason to believe that it was attended with any very extraordinary display of the Divine majesty. The events foretold could only have been foreseen by Divine omniscience, they could only have been accomplished by Divine power: Abraham had a full conviction that they were revealed by God, and this conviction was all that was requisite.

And here I must request you to observe the remarkable correspondence which appears between the ordinary and extraordinary dispensations of Providence; evincing that the general laws by which they are regulated are (if upon such a subject I may presume

presume so to express myself) con ducted upon the same principles.

By those who have turned their observation to the works of God in the wonders of creation, it is universally allowed that nature bestows nought in vain. Her frugality has excited an equal degree of astonishment and admiration. Throughout all her works, nothing superfluous, nothing unnecessary, is to be found; and so fully is this now understood, that, among the investigators of nature, none are so presuming as to pronounce any thing useless, because they have not been able to discover its use such presumption would be considered as a proof of ignorance; but humility is the companion of knowledge and of wisdom.

The works of nature are therefore to be considered as a revelation of the Divine power and wisdom.

All

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul;

That chang'd through all and yet in all the

same,

Great in the earth, as in th' æthereal frame; Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, Lives through all life, extends through all extent,

Spreads undivided, operates unspent,

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;

As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns;
To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.*

The same God who spake in thunders from Sinai feedeth the young ravens when they call upon him. And if from all we see and know we have reason to be convinced that he doth nothing in vain, we ought to be assured that if he ever made an extraordinary display of his power,

VOL. II.

* Pope.

D

it

it would be upon the same principle; that it would be intended to answer some specific purpose; and that it would be adapted to the end proposed.

To such acts of Divine power as are out of the common course of nature, and are wrought for any particular purpose, we give the name of miracle; but we should do very wrong to imagine that it required any effort in the Divine Being to operate in one way more than in another. Who shall presume to say that we, or any living creatures, nay that the world itself, or any of the thousands of worlds that roll around, could continue to exist for a single moment without a special act of Divine power?

The general laws that govern the universe give such an appearance of regularity, that we are apt to forget that these laws are only modes of acting

I

acting-to be employed, or to be suspended, or to be abrogated, as it shall seem good to him who has appointed them. We expect the return of day and night, of summer and winter, because we have been accustomed to see them return; but that they do thus return, is no less the act, the special act of Omnipotence, than that will be which shall arrest the planets in their course, when the mighty angel from Heaven shall "swear by Him

that liveth for ever and ever, that "time shall be no more."*

God, in mercy to sinful man, saw fit to preserve a knowledge of himself in one particular nation; and not only so, but to preserve in that nation the expectation of an event which was in its consequences of universal and of infinite importance to the human race. God, in revealing himself to Abra

*Rev. of St. John.

D 2

ham,

« PreviousContinue »