The Constancy of God in His Works an Argument for the Faithfulness of God in His Word

For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. Thy faithfulness is unto all generations: thou hast established the earth, and it abideth. They continue this day according to thine ordinances: for all are thy servants.

In these verses there is affirmed to be an analogy between the word of God and the works of God. It is said of his word, that it is settled in heaven, and that it sustains its faithfulness from one generation to another. It is said of his works, and more especially of those that are immediately around us, even of the earth which we inhabit, that as it was established at the first so it abideth afterwards. And then, as if to perfect the assimilation between them, it is said of both in the 91st verse, “They continue this clay according to thine ordinances, for all are thy servants;” thereby identifying the sureness of that word which proceeded from his lips, with the unfailing constancy of that Nature which was formed and is upholden by his hands.

The constancy of Nature is taught by universal experience, and even strikes the popular eye as the most characteristic of those features which have been impressed upon her. It may need the aid of philosophy to learn how unvarying Nature is in all her processes — how even her seeming anomalies can be traced to a law that is inflexible — how what might appear at first to be the caprices of her waywardness, are, in fact, the evolutions of a mechanism that never changes — and that the more thoroughly she is sifted and put to the test by the interrogations of the curious, the more certainly will they find that she walks by a rule which knows no abatement, and perseveres with obedient footstep in that even course, from which the eye of strictest scrutiny, has never yet detected one hair-breadth of deviation. It is no longer doubted by men of science, that every remaining semblance of irregularity in the universe is due, not to the fickleness of Nature, but to the ignorance of man — that her most hidden movements are conducted with a uniformity as rigorous as Fate — that even the fitful agitations of the weather have their law and their principle — that the intensity of every breeze, and the number of drops in every shower, and the formation of every cloud, and all the occurring alternations of storm and sunshine, and the endless shiftings of temperature, and those tremulous varieties of the air which our instruments have enabled us to discover, but have not enabled us to explain — that still, they follow each other by a method of succession, which, though greatly more intricate, is yet as absolute in itself as the order of the seasons, or the mathematical courses of astronomy. This is the impression of every philosophical mind with regard to Nature, and it is strengthened by each new accession that is made to science. The more we are acquainted with her, the more are we led to recognise her constancy; and to view her as a mighty though complicated machine, all whose results are sure, and all whose workings are invariable.

But there is enough of patent and palpable regularity in Nature, to give also to the popular mind, the same impression of her constancy. There is a gross and general experience that teaches the same lesson, and that has lodged in

Bg every bosom a kind of secure and steadfast confidence in the uniformity of her processes. The very child knows and proceeds upon it. He is aware of an abiding character and property in the elements around him — and has already learned as much of the fire, and the water, and the food that he eats, and the firm ground that he treads upon, and even of the gravitation by which he must regulate his postures and his movements, as to prove, that infant though he be, he is fully initiated in the doctrine, that Nature has her laws and her ordinances, and that she continueth therein. And the proofs of this are ever multiplying along the journey of human observation: insomuch, that when we come to manhood, we read of Nature’s constancy throughout every department of the visible world. It meets us wherever we turn our eyes. Both the day and the night bear witness to it. The silent revolutions of the firmament give it their pure testimony. Even those appearances in the heavens, at which superstition stood aghast, and imagined that Nature was on the eve of giving way, are the proudest trophies of that stability which reigns throughout her processes — of that unswerving consistency wherewith she prosecutes all her movements. And the lesson that is thus held forth to us from the heavens above, is responded to by the earth below j just as the tides of ocean wait the footsteps of the moon, and, by an attendance kept up without change or intermission for thousands of years, would seem to connect the regularity of earth with the regularity of heaven. But, apart from these greater and simpler energies, we see a course and a uniformity everywhere. - We recognise it in the mysteries of vegitation. We follow it through the successive stages of growth, and maturity, and decay, both in plants and animals. We discern it still more palpably in that beautiful circulation of the element of water, as it rolls its way by many thousand channels to the ocean — and, from the surface of this expanded reservoir, is again uplifted to the higher regions of the atmosphere — and is there dispersed in light and fleecy magazines over the four quarters of the globe — and at length accomplishes its orbit, by falling in showers on a world that waits to be refreshed by it. And all goes to impress us with the regularity of Nature, which in fact teems, throughout all its varieties, with power, and principle, and uniform laws of operation — and is viewed by us as a vast laboratory, all the progressions of which have a rigid and unfailing necessity stamped upon them.

Now, this contemplation has at times served to foster the atheism of philosophers. It has led them to deify Nature, and to make her immutability stand in the place of God. They seem impressed with the imagination, that had the Supreme Cause been a being who thinks, and wills, and acts as man does, on the impulse of a felt and a present motive, there would be more the appearance of spontaneous activity, and less of mute and unconscious mechanism in the administrations of the universe. It is the very unchangeableness of Nature, and the steadfastness of those great and mighty processes wherewith no living power that is superior to Nature, and is able to shift or to control her, is seen to interfere — it is this which seems to have impressed the notion of some blind and eternal fatality on certain men of loftiest but deluded genius. And, accordingly, in France, where the physical sciences have, of late, been the most cultivated, have there also been the most daring avowals of atheism. The universe has been affirmed to be an everlasting and indestructible effect; and from the abiding constancy that is seen in Nature, through all her departments, have they inferred, that thus it has always been, and that thus it will ever be.

But this atheistical impression that is derived from the constancy of Nature, is not peculiar to the disciples of philosophy. It is the familiar and the practical impression of every-day life. The world is apprehended to move on steady and unvarying principles of its own; and these secondary causes have usurped, in man’s estimation, the throne of the Divinity. Nature in fact is personified into God: and as we look to the performance of a machine without thinking of its maker, — so the very exactness and certainty, wherewith the machinery of creation performs its evolutions, has thrown a disguise over the agency of the Creator. Should God interpose by miracle, or interfere by some striking and special manifestation of providence, then man is awakened to the recognition of him. But he loses sight of the Being who sits behind these visible elements, while he regards those attributes of constancy and power which appear in the elements themselves. They see no demonstration of a God, and they feel no need of him, while such unchanging, and such unfailing energy continues to operate in the visible world around them; and we need not go to the schools of ratiocination in quest of this infidelity, but may detect it in the bosoms of simple and unlettered men, who, unknown to themselves.

make a god of Nature, and just because of Nature’s constancy; having no faith in the unseen Spirit who originated all and upholds all, and that, because all things continue as they were from the beginning of the Creation.

Such has been the perverse effect of Nature’s constancy on the alienated mind of man: but let us now attend to the true interpretation of it. God has, in the first instance, put into our minds a disposition to count on the uniformity of Nature, insomuch that we universally look for a recurrence of the same event in the same circumstances. This is not merely the belief of experience, but the belief of instinct. It is antecedent to all the findings of observation, and may be exemplified in the earliest stages of childhood. The inflmt who makes a noise on the table with his hand, for the first time, anticipates a repetition of the noise from a repetition of the stroke, with as much confidence as he who has witnessed, for years together, the invariableness wherewith these two terms of the succession have followed each other. Or, in other words, God, by putting this faith into every human creature, and making it a necessary part of his mental constitution, has taught him at all times to expect the like result in the like circumstances. He has thus virtually told him what is to happen, and what he has to look for in every given condition — and by its so happening accordingly, he just makes good the veracity of his own declaration. The man who leads me to expect that which he fails to accomplish, I would hold to be a deceiver. God has so framed the machinery of my perceptions, as that I am led irresistibly to expect, that everywhere events will follow each other in the very train in which I have ever been accustomed to observe them — and when God so sustains the uniformity of Nature, that in every instance it is rigidly so, he is just manifesting the faithfulness of his character. Were it otherwise, he would be practising a mockery on the expectation which he himself had inspired. God may be said to have promised to every human being, that Nature will be constant — if not by the whisper of an inward voice to every heart, at least by the force of an uncontrollable bias which he has impressed on every constitution. So that, when we behold Nature keeping by its constancy, we behold the God of Nature keeping by his faithfulness — and the system of visible things, with its general laws, and its successions which are invariable, instead of an opaque materialism to intercept from the view of mortals the face of the

Divinity, becomes the mirror which reflects upon them the truth that is unchangeable, the ordination that never fails.

Conceive that it had been otherwise — first, that man had no faith in the constancy of Nature — then how could all his experience have profited him? How could he have applied the recollections of his past, to the guidance of his future history? And, what would have been left to signalize the wisdom of mankind above that of veriest infancy? Or, suppose that he had the implicit faith in Nature’s constancy, but that Nature was wanting in the fulfilment of it — that at every moment his intuitive reliance on this constancy, was met by some caprice or waywardness of Nature, which thwarted him in all his undertakings — that, instead of holding true to her announcements, she held the children of men in most distressful uncertainty, by the freaks and the falsities in which she ever indulged herself — and that every design of human foresight was thus liable to be broken up, by ever and anon the putting forth of some new fluctuation. Tell me, in this wild misrule of elements changing their properties, and events ever flitting from one method of succession to another, if man could subsist for a single day.

when all the accomplishments without, were thus at war with all the hopes and calculations within. In such a chaos and conflict as this, would not the foundations of human wisdom be utterly subverted? Would not man, with his powerful and perpetual tendency to proceed on the constancy of Nature, be tempted, at all times, and by the very constitution of his being, to proceed upon a falsehood? It were the way, in fact, to turn the administration of Nature into a system of deceit. The lessons of to-day, would be falsified by the events of to-morrow. He were indeed the father of lies who could be the author of such a regimen as this — and well may we rejoice in the strict order of the goodly universe which we inhabit, and regard it as a noble attestation to the wisdom and beneficence of its great Architect.

But it is more especially as an evidence of his truth, that the constancy of Nature is adverted to in our text. It is of his faithfulness unto all generations that mention is there made — and for the growth and the discipline of your piety, we know not a better practical habit than that of recognizing the unchangeable truth of God, throughout your daily and hourly experience of Nature’s unchangeableness. Your faith in it is of his working — and what a condition would you have been reduced to, had the faith which is M^thin, not been met by an entire and unexcepted accordancy with the fulfihnents that are without! He has not told you what to expect by the utterance of a voice — but he has taught you what to expect by the leadings and the intimations of a strong constitutional tendency — and, in virtue of this, there is not a human creature who does not believe, and almost as firmly as in his own existence, that fire will continue to burn, and water to cool, and matter to resist, and unsupported bodies to fall, and ocean to bear the adventurous vessel upon its surface, and the solid earth to uphold the tread of his footsteps; and that spring will appear ag-ain in her wonted smiles, and summer will glow into heat and brilliancy, and autumn will put on the same luxuriance as before, and winter, at its stated periods, revisit the world with her darkness and her storms. We cannot sum up these countless varieties of Nature; but the firm expectation is, that throughout them all, as she has been established, so she will abide to the day of her final dissolution. And I call upon you to recognize in Nature’s constancy, the answer of Nature’s God to this expectation. All these material agents are, in fact, the organs by which he expresses his faithfuhiess to the world; and that unveering generaUty which reigns and continues everywhere, is but the perpetual demonstration of a truth that never varies, as well as of laws that never are rescinded. It is for us, that he upholds the world in all its regularity. It is for us, that he sustains so unviolably the march and the movement of those innumerable progressions, which are going on around us. It is in remembrance of his promises to us, that he meets all our anticipations of Nature’s uniformity, with the evolutions of a law that is unalterable. It is because he is a God that cannot lie, that he will make no invasion on that wondrous correspondency which he himself hath instituted between the world that is without, and our little world of hopes, and projects, and anticipations that are within. By the constancy of Nature, he hath imprinted upon it the lesson of his own constancy — and that very characteristic wherewith some would fortify the ungodliness of their hearts, is the most impressive exhibition which can be given of God, as always faithful, and always the same.

This, then, is the real character which the constancy of Nature should lead us to assign to him who is the Author of it. In every human understanding, he hath planted a universal instinct, by which all are led to believe, that Nature will persevere in her wonted courses, and that each succession of cause and effect which has been observed by us in the time that is past, will, while the world exists, be kept up invariably, and recur in the very same order through the time that is to come. This constancy, then, is as good as a promise that he has made unto all men, and all that is around us on earth or in heaven, proves how inflexibly the promise is adhered to. The chemist in his laboratory, as he questions Nature, may be almost said to put her to the torture, when tried in his hottest furnace, or probed by his searching analysis, to her innermost arcana, she by a spark, or an explosion, or an effervescence, or an evolving substance, makes her distinct replies to his investigations. And he repeats her answer to all his fellows in philosophy, and they meet in academic state and judgment to reiterate the question, and in every quarter of the globe her answer is the same — so that, let the experiment, though a thousand times repeated, only be alike in all its circumstances, the result which cometh forth is as rigidly alike, without deficiency, and without deviation. We know how possible it is for these worshippers at the footstool of science, to make a divinity of matter; and that every new discovery of her secrets, should only rivet them more devotedly to her throne. But there is a God who liveth and sitteth there, and these unvarying responses of Nature, are all prompted by himself, and are but the utterances of his immutability. They are the replies of a God who never changes, and who hath adapted the whole materialism of creation to the constitution of every mind that he hath sent forth upon it. And to meet the expectation which he himself hath given of Nature’s constancy, is he at each successive instant of time, vigilant and ready in every part of his vast dominions, to hold out to the eye of all observers, the perpetual and unfailing demonstration of it. The certainties of Nature and of Science, are in fact the vocables by which God announces his truth to the world — and when told how impossible it is that Nature can fluctuate, we are only told how impossible it is that the God of Nature can deceive us.

The doctrine that Nature is constant, when thus related, as it ought to be, with the doctrine that God is true, might well strengthen our confidence in him anew with every new experience of our history. There is not an hour or a moment, in which we may not verify the one — and, therefore, not an hour or a moment in which we may not invigorate the other. Every touch, and every look, and every taste, and every act of converse between our senses and the things that are without, brings home a new demonstration of the steadfastness of Nature, and along with it a new demonstration both of his steadfastness and of his faithfulness, who is the Governor of Nature. And the same lesson may be fetched from times and from places, that are far beyond the limits of our own personal history. It can be drawn from the retrospect of past ages, where, from the unvaried currency of those very processes which we now behold, we may learn the stability of all his ways, whose goings forth are of old, and from everlasting. It can be gathered from the most distant extremities of the earth, where Nature reigns with the same unwearied constancy, as it does around us — and where savages count as we do on a uniformity, from which she never falters. The lesson is commensurate with the whole system of things — and with an effulgence as broad as the face of creation, and as clear as the light which is poured over it, does it at once tell that Nature is unchangeably constant, and that God is inichangeably true.

And so it is, that in our text there are presented together, as if there was a tie of likeness between them — that the same God who is fixed as to the ordinances of Nature, is faithful as to the declarations of his word; and as all experience proves how firmly he may be trusted for the one, so is there an argument as strong as experience, to prove how firmly he may be trusted for the other. By his work in us, he hath awakened the expectation of a constancy in Nature, which he never disappoints. By his word to us, should he awaken the expectation of a certainty in his declarations, this he will never disappoint. It is because Nature is so fixed, that we apprehend the God of Nature to be so faithful. He who never falsifies the hope that hath arisen in every bosom, from the instinct which he himself hath communicated, will never falsify the hope that shall arise in any bosom from the express utterance of his voice. Were he a God in whose hand the processes of Nature were ever shifting, then might we conceive him a God from whose mouth the proclamations of grace had the like characters of variance and vacillation. But it is just because of our reliance on the one, that we feel so much of repose in our dependence upon the other — and the

same God who is so unfailing in the ordinances of” his creation, do we hold to be equally unfailing in the ordinances of his word.

And it is strikingly accordant with these views, that Nature never has been known to recede from her constancy, but for the pin*pose of giving place and demonstration to the authority of the word. Once, in a season of miracle, did the word take the precedency of Nature, but ever since hath Nature resumed her courses, and is now proving, by her steadfastness, the authority of that, which she then proved to be authentic by her deviations. When the word was first ushered in. Nature gave way for a period, after which she moves in her wonted order, till the present system of things shall pass away, and that faith which is now upholden by Nature’s constancy, shall then receive its accomplishment at Nature’s dissolution. And O how God magnifieth his word above all his name, when he tells that heaven and earth shall pass away, but that his word shall not pass away — and that while his creation shall become a wreck, not one jot or one tittle of his testimony shall fail. The world passeth away — but the word endureth for ever — and if the faithfulness of God stand forth so legibly on the face of the temporary world, how surely may we reckon on the faithfulness of that word, which has a vastly higher place in the counsels and fulfilments of eternity.

The argument may not be comprehended by all, but it will not be lost, should it lead any to feel a more emphatic certainty and meaning than before in the declarations of the Bible — and to conclude, that he, who for ages, hath stood so fixed to all his plans and purposes in Nature, will stand equally fixed to all that he proclaims, and to all that he promises in Revelation. To be in the hands of such a G od, might well strike a terror into the hearts of the guilty — and that unrelenting death which, with all the sureness of an immutable law, is seen, before our eyes, to seize upon every individual of every species of our world, full well evinces how he, the uncompromising Lawgiver, will execute every utterance that he has made against the children of iniquity. And, on the other hand, how this very contemplation ought to encourage all who are looking to the announcements of the same God in the Gospel, and who perceive that there he has embarked the same truth, and the same unchangeableness, on the offers of mercy. All Nature gives testimony to this, that he cannot lie

—and seeing that he has stamped such enduring properties on the elements even of our perishable world, never should I falter from that confidence which he hath taught me to feel, when I thintv of that property wherewith the blood which was shed for me, cleanseth from all sin; and of that property wherewith the body which was broken, beareth the burden of all its penalties. He who hath so nobly met the faith that he has given unto all in the constancy of Nature, by a uniformity which knows no abatement, will meet the faith that he has given unto any in the certainty of grace, by a fulfilment unto every believer, which knows no exception.

And it is well to remark the difference that there is between the explanation given in the text, of Nature’s constancy, and the impression which the mere students or disciples of Nature have of it. It is because of her constancy that they have been led to invest her, as it were, in properties of her own; that they have given a kind of independent power and stability to matter y that in the various energies which lie scattered over the field of visible contemplation, they see a native inherent virtue, which never for a single moment is slackened or suspended — and therefore imagine, that as no force from without seems necessary to sustain, so as little.

perhaps, is there need for any such force from without to originate. The mechanical certainty of all Nature’s processes, as it appears in their eyes to supersede the demand for any upholding agency, so does it also supersede, in the silent imaginations of many, and according to the express and bold avowals of some, the demand for any creative agency. It is thus, that Nature is raised into a divinity, and has been made to reign over all, in the state and jurisdiction of an eternal fatalism; and proud Science, which by wisdom knoweth not God, hath, in her march of discovery, seized upon the invariable certainties of Nature, those highest characteristics of his authority and wisdom and truth, as the instruments by which to disprove and to dethrone him.

Now compare this interpretation of monstrous and melancholy atheism, with that which the Bible gives, why all things move so invariably. It is because that all are thy servants. It is because they are all under the bidding of a God who has purposes from wiich he never falters, and hath issued promises from which he never fails. It is because the arrangements of his vast and capacious household are already ordered for the best, and all the elements of Nature are the ministers by which he fulfils them. That is the master who has most honour and obedience from his domestics, throughout all whose ordinations, there runs a consistency from which he never deviates; and he best sustains his dignity in the midst of them, who, by mild but resistless sway, can regulate the successions of every hour, and affix his sure and appropriate service to every member of the family. It is when we see all, in any given time, at their respective places, and each distinct period of the day having its own distinct evolution of business or recreation, that we infer the wisdom of the instituted government, and how irrevocable the sanctions are by which it is upholden. The vexatious alternations of command and of countermand; the endless fancies of humour, and caprice, and waywardness, which ever and anon break forth, to the total overthrow of system; the perpetual innovations which none do foresee, and for which none, therefore, can possibly be prepared — these are not more harassing to the subject, than they are disparaging to the truth and authority of the superior. It is in the bosom of a well-conducted family, where you witness the sure dispensation of all the reward and encouragement which have been promised, and the unfailing execution of the disgrace and the dismissal that are held forth to obstinate disobedience. Now those very quaUties of which this uniformity is the test and the characteristic in the government of any human society, of these also is it the test and the characteristic in the government of Nature. It bespeaks the wisdom, and the authority, and the truth of him who framed and who administers. Let there be a King eternal, immortal, and invisible, and let this universe be his empire — and in all the rounds of its complex but unerring mechanism, do I recognize him as the only wise God. In the constancy of Nature, do I read the constancy and truth of that great master Spirit, who hath imprinted his own character on all that hath emanated from his power; and when told that throughout the mighty lapse of centuries, all the courses both of earth and of heaven, have been upholden as before, I only recognize the footsteps of him who is ever the same, and whose faithfulness is unto all generations. That perpetuity, and order, and ancient law of succession, which have subsisted so long, throughout the wide diversity of things, bear witness to the Lord of hosts, as still at the head of his well -marshalled family. The present age is only re-echoing the lesson of all past ages — and that spectacle, which has misled those who by wisdom know not God, into dreary atheism, has enhanced every demonstration both of his veracity and power, to all intelligent worshippers. We know that all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. We know that the whole of surrounding materialism stands forth, to this very hour, in all the inflexibility of her wonted characters. We know that heaven, and earth, and sea, still discharge the same functions, and subserve the very same beneficent processes. We know that astronomy plies the same rounds as before, that the cycles of the firmament move in their old and appointed order, and that the year circulates, as it has ever done, in grateful variety, over the face of an expectant world — but only because all are of God, and they continue this day according to his ordinances — for all are his servants.

Now it is just because the successions which take place in the economy of Nature, are so invariable, that we should expect the successions which take place in the economy of God*s moral government to be equally invariable. That expectation which he never disappoints when it is the fruit of a universal instinct, he surely will never disappoint when it is the fruit of his own express and immediate revelation. If because God hath so established it, it Cometh to pass, then of whatsoever it may be affirmed that God hath so said it, it will come equally to pass. I should certainly look for the same character in the administrations of his special grace, that I, at all times, witness in the administrations of his ordinary providence. If I see in the system of his world, that the law by which two events follow each other, gives rise to a connection between them that never is dissolved, then should he say in his word, that there are certain invariable methods of succession, in virtue of which, when the first term of it occurs, the second is sure at all times to follow, I should be very sure in my anticipations, that it will indeed be most punctually and most rigidly so. It is thus, that the constancy of Nature is in fullest harmony with the authority of Revelation — and that, when fresh from the contemplation of the one, I would listen with most implicit faith to all the announcements of the other.

When we behold all to be so sure and settled in the works of God, then may we look for all being equally sure and settled in the word of God. Philosophy hath never yet detected one iota of deviation from the ordinances of Nature — and never, therefore, may we conclude, shall the experience either of past or future ages, detect one iota of deviation from the ordinances of Revelation. He who so pointedly adheres to every plan that he hath established in creation, will as pointedly adhere to every proclamation that he hath uttered in Scripture. There is nought of the fast and loose in any of his processes — and whether in the terrible denunciations of Sinai, or those mild proffers of mercy that were sounded forth upon the world through Messiah, who upholdeth all things by the word of his power, shall we alike experience that God is not to be mocked, and that with him there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

With this certainty, then, upon our spirits, let us now look not to the successions which he hath instituted in Nature, but to the successions which he hath announced to us in the word of his testimony — and let us, while so doing, fix and solemnize our thoughts by the consideration, that as God hath said it, so will he do it.

The first of these successions, then, on which we may count infallibly, is that which he hath proclaimed between sin and punishment. The soul that sinneth it shall die. And here there is a common ground on which the certainties of divine revelation meet and are at one with the certainties of human experience. We are told in the Bible, that all have sinned, and that, therefore, death hath passed upon all men. The connection between these two terms is announced in Scripture to be invariable — and all observation tells us, that it is even so. Such was the sentence uttered in the hearing of our first parents; and all history can attest how God hath kept by the word of his threatening — and how this law of jurisprudence from heaven is realized before us upon earth, with all the certainty of a law of Nature. The death of man is just as stable and as essential a part of his physiology, as are his birth, or his expansion, or his maturity, or his decay. It looks as much a thing of organic necessity, as a thing of arbitrary institution — and here do we see blended into one exhibition, a certainty of the divine word that never fails, and a constancy in Nature that never is departed from. It is indeed a striking accordancy, that what in one view of it appears to be a uniform process of Nature, in another view of it, is but the unrelenting execution of a dread utterance from the God of Nature. From this contemplation may we gather, that

God is as certain in all his words, as he is constant in all his ways. Men can philosophize on the diseases of the human system — and the laborious treatise can be written on the class, and the character, and the symptoms, of each of them — and in our halls of learning, the ample demonstration can be given, and disciples may be taught how to judge and to prognosticate, and in what appearances to read the fell precursors of mortality — and death has so taken up its settled place among the immutabilities of Nature, that it is as familiarly treated in the lecture-rooms of science, as any other phenomena which Nature has to offer for the exercise of the human understanding. And, O how often are the smile and the stoutness of infidelity seen to mingle with this appalling contemplation — and how little will its hardy professors bear to be told, that what gives so dread a certainty to their speculation is, that the God of Nature and the God of the Bible, are one — that when they describe, in lofty nomenclature, the path of dying humanity, they only describe the way in which he fulfils upon it his irrevocable denunciation — that he is but doing now to the posterity of Adam what he told to Adam himself on his expulsion from paradise — and that, if the universality of death prove how every law in the physics of creation is sure, it just as impressively proves, how every word of God’s immediate utterance to man, or how every word of prophecy is equally sure.

And in every instance of mortality which you are called to witness, do we call upon you to read in it the intolerance of God for sin, and how unsparingly and unrelentingly it is, that God carries into effect his every utterance against it. The connection which he hath instituted between the two terms of sin and of death, should lead you from every appeal that is made to your senses by the one, to feel the force of an appeal to your conscience by the other. It proves the hatefulness of sin to God, and it also proves with what unfaltering constancy God will prosecute every threat, until he hath made an utter extirpation of sin from his presence. There is nought which can make more palpable the way in which God keeps every saying in his perpetual remembrance, and as surely proceeds upon it, than doth this universal plague wherewith he hath smitten every individual of our species, and carries off its successive generations from a world that sprung from his hand in all the bloom and vigour of immortality. When death makes entrance upon a family, and, perhaps, seizes on that one member of it, all whose actual transgressions might be summed up in the outbreakings of an occasional waywardness, wherewith the smiles of infant gaiety were chequered — still how it demonstrates the unbending purposes of God against our present accursed nature, that in some one or other of its varieties, every specimen must die. And so it is, that from one age to another, he makes open manifestation to the world, that every utterance which hath fallen from him is sure j and that ocular proof is given to the character of him who is a Spirit, and is invisible; and that sense lends its testimony to the truth of God, and the truth of his Scripture; and that Nature, when rightly viewed, instead of placing its inquirers at atheistical variance with the Being who upholds it, holds out to us the most impressive commentary that can be given, on the reverence which is due to all his communications, even by demonstrating, that faith in his word is at unison with the findings of our daily observation.

But God hath further said of sin and of its consequences, what no observation of ours has yet realized. He hath told us of the judgment that Cometh after death, and he hath told us of the two diverse paths which lead from the judgment seat unto eternity. Of these we have not yet seen the verification, yet surely we have now seen enough to prepare us for the unfailing accomplishment of every utterance that cometh from the lips of God. The unexcepted death which we know cometh upon all men, for that all have sinned, might well convince us of the certainty of that second death which is threatened upon all who turn not from sin unto the Saviour. There is an indissoluble succession here between our sinning and our dying — and we ought now to be so aware of God as a God of precise and peremptory execution, as to look upon the succession being equally indissoluble, between our dying in sin now, and rising to everlasting condemnation hereafler. The sinner who wraps himself in delusive security — and that, because all things continue as they have done, does not reflect of this very characteristic, that it is indeed the most awful proof of God’s immutable counsels, and to himself the most tremendous presage of all the ruin and wretchedness which have been denounced upon him. The spectacle of uniformity that is before his eyes, only goes to ascertain that as God hath purposed, so, without vacillation or inconstancy, will he ever perform. He hath already given a sample, or an earnest of this, in the awful ravages of death; and we ask the sinner to behold, in the ever-recurring spectacle of moving funerals, and desolated families, the token of that still deeper perdition which awaits him. Let him not think that the God who deals his relentless inflictions here on every son and daughter of the species, will falter there from the work of vengeance that shall then descend on the heads of the impenitent. O how deceived then are all those ungodly, who have been building to themselves a safety and an exemption on the perpetuity of Nature! All the perpetuity which they have witnessed, is the pledge of a God who is unchangeable — and who, true to his threatening as to every other utterance which passes his lips, hath said, in the hearing of men and of angels, that the soul which is in sin shall perish.

But, secondly, there is another succession announced to us in Scripture, and on the certainty of which we may place as firm a reliance as on any of the observed successions of Nature — even that which obtains between fliith and salvation. He who believeth in Christ, shall not perish, but shall have life everlasting. The same truth which God hath embarked on the declarations of his wrath against the impenitent.

he hath also embarked on the declarations of his mercy to the believer. There is a law of continuity, as unfailing as any series of events in Nature, that binds with the present state of an obstinate sinner upon earth, all the horrors of his future wretchedness in hell — but there is also another law of continuity just as unfailing, that binds the present state of him who putteth faith in Christ here, with the triumphs and the transports of his coming glory hereafter. And thus it is, that what we read of God*s constancy in the book of Nature, may well strengthen our every assurance in the promises of the Gospel. It is not in the recurrence of winter alone, and its desolations, that God manifests his adherence to established processes. There are many pe-, riodic evolutions of the bright and the beautiful along the march of his administrations — as the dawn of morn; and the grateful access of spring, with its many hues, and odours, and melodies;, and the ripened abundance of harvest; and that glorious arch of heaven, which Science hath now appropriated as her own, but which nevertheless is placed there by God as the unfailing token of a sunshine already begun, and a storm now ended — all these come forth at appointed seasons, in a consecutive order, yet mark the footsteps of a beneficent Deity. And so the economy of grace lias its regular successions, which carry liovvever a blessing in their train. The faith in Christ, to which we are invited upon earth, has its sure result, and its landing-place in heaven — and just with as unerring certainty as we behold in the courses of the firmament, will it be followed up by a life of virtue, and a death of hope, and a resurrection of joy fulness, and a voice of welcome at the judgment-seat, and a bright ascent into fields of ethereal blessedness, and an entrance upon glory, and a perpetual occupation in the city of the living God.

To all men hath he given a faith in the constancy of Nature, and he never disappoints it. To some men hath he given a fliitli in the promises of the Gospel, and he is ready to bestow it upon all who ask, or to perfect that which is lacking in it — and the one faith will as surely meet with its corresponding fulfilment as the other. The invariableness that reigns throughout the kingdom of Nature, guarantees the like invariableness in the kingdom of grace. He who is steadfast to all his appointments, will be true to all his declarations — and those very exhibitions of a strict and undeviating order in our universe, which have ministered to the irreligion of a spurious philosophy, form a basis on which the believer can prop a firmer confidence than before, in all the spoken and all the written testimonies of God.

With a man of taste, and imagination, and science, and who is withal a disciple of the Lord Jesus, such an argument as this must shed a new interest and glory over his whole contemplation of visible things. He knows of his Saviour, that by him all things were made, and that by him too all things are upholden. The world, in fact, was created by that Being whose name is the Word, and from the features that are imprinted on the one, may he gather some of the leading characteristics of the other. More expressly will he infer fi’om that sure and established order of Nature, in which the whole family of mankind are comprehended, that the more special family of believers are indeed encircled within the bond of a sure and a well-ordered covenant. In those beauteous regularities by which the one economy is marked, will he be led to recognize the “yea” and the *’amen’* which are stamped on the other economy — and when he learns that the certainties of science are unfailing, does he also learn that the sayings of Scripture are unalterable. Both he knows to

D2 emanate from the same source; and every new experience of Nature*s constancy, will just rivet him more tenaciously than before to the doctrine and the declarations of his Bible. Furnished with such a method of interpretation as this, let him go abroad upon Nature, and all that he sees will heighten and establish the hopes which Revelation hath awakened. Every recurrence of the same phenomena as before, will be to him a distinct testimony to the faithfulness of God. The very hours will bear witness to it. The lengthening shades of even will repeat the lesson held out to him by the light of early day — and when night unveils to his eye the many splendours of the firmament, will every traveller on his circuit there, speak to him of that mighty and invisible King, all whose ordinations are sure. And this manifestation from the face of heaven, will be reflected to him by the panorama upon earth. Even the buds which come forth at their appointed season on the leafless branches; and the springing up of the flowers and the herbage, on the spots of ground from which they had disappeared; and that month of vocal harmony wherewith the mute atmosphere is gladdened as before, with the notes of joyous festival; and so, the regular march of the advancing year through all its footsteps of revival, and progress, and maturity, and decay — these are to him but the diversified tokens of a God whom he can trust, because of a God who changeth not. To his eyes, the world reflects upon the word the lesson of its own wondrous harmony; and his science, instead of a meteor that lures him from the greater light of Revelation, serves him as a pedestal on which the stability of Scripture is more firmly upholden.

The man who is accustomed to view aright the uniformity of Nature’s sequences, will be more impressed with the certainty of that sequence which is announced in the Bible between faith and salvation — and he of all others, should re-assure his hopes of immortality, when he reads, that the end of our faith is the salvation of our souls. In this secure and wealthy place, let him take up his rest, and rejoice himself greatly with that God who has so multiplied upon him the evidences of his faithfulness. Let him henceforth feel that he is in the hands of one who never deviates, and who cannot lie — and who, as he never by one act of caprice, hath mocked the dependence that is built on the foundation of human experience, so, never by one act of treachery, w411 he mock the dependence that is built on the foundation of the divine testimony. And more particularly, let him think

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of Christ, who hath all the promises in his hand, that to him also all power has been committed in heaven and in earth — and that presiding therefore, as he does, over that visible administration, of which constancy is the unfailing attribute, he by this hath given us the best pledge of a truth that abideth the same, to day, and yesterday, and for ever.

We are aware, that no argument can of itself work in you the faith of the Gospel — that words and reasons, and illustrations, may be multiplied. without end, and yet be of no efficacy — that if the simple manifestation of the Spirit be withheld, the expounder of Scripture, and of all its analogies with creation or Providence, will lose his labour — and while it is his part to prosecute these to the uttermost, yet nought will he find more surely and experimentally true, than that without a special interposition of light from on high, he runneth in vain, and wearieth himself in vain. It is for him to ply the instrument, it is for God to give unto it the power which availeth. We are told of Christ, on his throne of mediatorship, that he hath all the energies of Nature at command, and up to this hour do we know with what a steady and luifaltering hand he hath wielded them. Look to the promise as equally steadfast, of “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” — and come even now to his own appointed ordinance in the Uke confidence of a fellowship with him, as you would to any of the scenes or ordinations of Nature, and in the confidence that there the Lord of Nature will prove himself the same that He has ever been.* The blood that was announced many centuries ago to cleanse from all sin, cleanseth still. The body which hath borne in all past ages the iniquity of believers, beareth it still. That faith which appropriates Christ and all the benefits of his purchase, to the soul, still performs the same office. And that magnificent economy of Nature which was established at the first, and so abideth, is but the symbol of that higher economy of grace which continueth to this day according to all its ordinances.

“Whosoever eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood,’* says the Saviour, “shall never die.” When you sit down at his table, you eat the bread, and you drink the wine by which these are represented — and if this be done worthily.

* This Sermon was delivered on the morning of a Communion Sabbath.

if there be a right correspondence between the hand and the heart in this sacramental service, then by faith do you receive the benefits of the shed blood, and the broken body; and your so doing will as surely as any succession takes place in the instituted courses of Nature, be followed up by your blessed immortality. And the brighter your hopes of glory hereafter, the holier will you be in all your acts and affections here. The character even now will receive a tinge from the prospect that is before you — and the habitual anticipation of heaven will bring down both of its charity and its sacredness upon your heart. He who hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as Christ is pure — and even from the present, if a true approach to the gate of his sanctuary, will you carry a portion of his spirit away with you. In partaking of these, his consecrated elements, you become partakers of his gentleness and devotion, and unwearied beneficence — and because like him in time, you will live with him through eternity.