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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;

Pope.

VOL. II.

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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 to be employed, or to be suspended,

pended, 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 hu

man race..

God, in revealing himself to Abra

* Rev. of St. John.

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ham, renewed the promise of salvation. But the faith of Abraham's posterity concerning the fulfilment of that promise, depended on their experiencing the accomplishment of the promises in which they were immediately concerned. It was therefore necessary that this should be so fully established as to remove the possibility of doubt; and that infidelity might have no excuse, the descendants of Abraham, now multiplied into a great people, were brought forth from the country which had been their residence for so many years, by a miraculous interposition of divine power.

Moses was chosen by God to be the messenger of his will, and the leader of his people; but that he was so,

they did not believe till after many and repeated proofs. Now it is evident that God might have given them this assurance by means of a miracu

lous

lous impression made on every individual mind; but he who in the works of nature displays his wisdom in the apparent simplicity of the means, his power in the grandeur of the effect, ordained that the Israelites should be convinced of the divine authority of his messenger, by proofs submitted to the investigation of the senses.

Having led them into the wilderness, to a distance from all that might disturb their attention, the Almighty now proceeds to institute those laws which were to serve the several purposes of enlightening them concerning the divine nature and government, of confirming all that reason had ascertained of moral truth; of keeping them a distinct and separate people, appropriated to the special purpose of being the conservators of the promise of redemption; and of preserving in the world the knowledge of the one

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