On Thy Glory

“From, everlasting to everlasting thou art God.” — Ps. xc. 2.

My Soijl! Seek to fill thyself with thoughts of the Almighty! Lose thyself in the impenetrable tracts of His Glory! “Canst thou by searching find out God?” Can the animalcule fathom the ocean, or the worm scale the sMes? Can the finite grasp the Infinite — the mortal Immortality? “We can do no more than stand on the brink of the shoreless sea, and cry, “O the depth!” ‘From everlasting!” — shrouded in the great and awful mystery of eternity! Before one star revolved in its sphere — before one angel moved his wing — God was! — the shadow of His own infinite presence filling all space. All time to Him is but as the heaving of a breath — the beat of a pulse — the twinkling of an eye. The Eternity of bliss, which is the noblest heritage of the creature, is in its nature progressive. It admits of advance in degrees of happiness and glory, llot so with the Eternity of the Great Creator; He was as perfect before the birth of time as he will be when “time shall be no longer” — as infinitely glorious when He inhabited alone the solitudes of immensity, as He is now with the songs of angel and archangel sounding in His ears! But “who can show forth all His praise?” We can at best but lisp the alphabet of His Glory. Moses, who saw more of God than most, makes it still his prayer, “I beseech thee, show me Thy glory.” Paul, who Jcnew more of God than other men, prays still, “that I onay know Him.” “Our safest eloquence,’’ says Hooker, “concerning Him, is our silence, when we confess without confession, that His glory is inexplicable.”

And is this the Being to whom I can look up with sweetest confidence, and call “My Father F” Is it this Infinite One, whom “the Heaven of Heavens cannot contain,” I can call “My God?” My soul! contemplate the medium through which it is thou canst see the glory of God, and yet live! “Ko man hath seen God at any time, the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” He, who dwells in light inaccessible, comes forth from the pavilion of His glory in the person of “Immanuel, God with us.” In Christ, “the Image of the invisible God,” the creature — ay, sinners — can gaze unconsumed on the lustres of Deity! Reader! be it thine to glorify Him. Seek thus to fulfil the great design of thy being. Let all thy words and ways, thine actions and purposes, thy crosses and losses, redound to His praise. The highest seraph can have no higher or nobler end than this — the glory of the God before whom he casts his crown. But He has a claim on thee, which he has not on the unredeemed angel. “He gave Himself for thee!” This mightiest of all boons which Omnipotence could give, is the guarantee for the bestowment of all lesser necessary blessings, and for the withholding of all ?necessary trials. Whilst thou art called to behold “His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father,” remember its characteristic; it is not a glory to appal thee by its splendors, but to win and captivate thee by its beauties — it is “full of grace and full of truth.” He is thy God in covenant. “Underneath and around thee are the everlasting arms.” Thou mayest compose thyself on thy nightly pillow, with the sweet pledge of security, and say —

“I WILL BOTH LAY ME DOWN IN PEACE AND SLEEP; FOR THOU, LORD, ONLY MAKEST ME DWELL IN SAFETY 1”