these mercies be perverted to his dishonor, these deliverances abused, and this forfeited life, so long preserved, never honestly devoted to him by whose visitation it is thus cared for?

God is your Father. He has loved you, and instructed you, and chastened you, and borne with you, and guided you with his eye, and carried you in his bosom. He has not left you to be an atheist, nor an infidel, nor a Mohammedan, nor a Pagan. He has reared you in his sanctuary, and given you a place near his altars. Every morning and every evening, you have heard his voice of love, and seen him going forth to direct the arrangements of his providence for your benefit. "If I be a father," says he, "where is mine honor? and if I be a master, where is my fear?" It is no unreasonable, or unfilial duty, and no unreasonable, exacting service that he calls for: it is your own good he is consulting, when he would have you glorify and enjoy him forever.

And what is more than all, God is your Redeemer. From the bondage of sin, from all that is terrible in apprehension and agonizing in despair, from corroding guilt and dreadful wrath, from the sting of death and the curse of the law, he sent the Son of his love to rescue you, with a strong hand and a stretched-out arm. When your feet were going down to death, and your steps took hold on hell, he kept you from falling,

and snatched you from the pit of destruction. The Destroyer was commissioned to go through your coasts and smite the mother with her children, and lay the first-born low; but the blood of the Paschal Lamb was on your door-posts and on the lintels, and he did not come nigh your dwelling. The enraged foe was in hot pursuit after you; you were foiled and crushed; but this great Deliverer spoiled principalities and powers in order to save you harmless. He spoiled the grave, disappointed hell of its prey, brought hope to the hopeless; and now, with unutterable tenderness, he invites those who are the children of wrath to become the sons of God. And shall the ransomed slave not think of his Deliverer? Shall not the redeemed sinner instinctively say, "O Lord, I am thy servant; I am thy servant; thou hast loosed my bonds!"

In every view, therefore, God is before all things; and in every view he deserves this preeminence. The obligation thus to regard him is absolute; it is universal and everlasting. We have but to hold up this infinite Deity before the mind of the most benighted Pagan, and he is forever bound to give God this high place. There is no absolution from this bond; and there is no such thing as violating it without peril. It binds the highest and the lowest as truly as it bound Gabriel; as truly as it did the first man before

his apostasy; as truly, and just as much as it did the Israelites, when those words were first promulgated, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." It has never been revoked; nor has its great Author ever said or done anything to lower this high standard of human thought and conduct, but the rather everything to elevate it and give it perpetuity.

Yet, in contemplating this single truth, well may we say, "If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquity, O Lord, who shall stand?" There is not one of us but must lay his hand upon his mouth. There is not one of us who is not conscious that many a favorite idol has usurped the throne which belongs to God; and who is not constrained to confess that infinitely inferior claims have been allowed to jostle with the claims of the living Deity. We may well try ourselves by this standard, if it were only to learn how pure and searching it is, and how vile we ourselves are. One reason why multitudes remain so thoughtless in sin, and so unconcerned about their soul's salvation, is that they make light of this great truth. They make light of God, and therefore they make light of his law; and because they make light of these, they make light of sin; and because they make light of sin, they make light of the great salvation. "I was alive," says the apostle, "without the law once; but when the commandment

came, sin revived and I died." Sin revives then, and the sinner feels its power; the law utters its penalty, and he sees his danger; his strength withers, and his hopes die. He is condemned; the penalty is death; the day of execution is hastening on; nor is it any marvel that he looks round for some way of escape, and cries out, "What must I do to be saved?" It is no new thing for men to be sensible of their lost condition as sinners; and it is no surprising thing. Resist not these convictions, if the Spirit of God is thus striving with you. Do not stop them, though they make the world look dark, and though they hold your eyes waking.

There is forgiveness with God. There is hope. Yes, there is forgiveness with God that he may be feared. There is hope for the chief of sinners, because "the Son of Man came to seek and save that which is lost." "The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ." While he lives, and when he dies, this is the Christian's glorying; and this too is his holiness; he lives to Christ and to Christ he dies. This, also, is his greatest joy. For while it is his greatest grief that he has done so little for Jesus Christ, it is his greatest joy that Jesus Christ has done so much for him.

The apostle once said, "I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God."

This is the way in which God is enthroned in the heart; and it is this enthroning which constitutes the sum and substance of true religion. It is from this inward obedience, that all outward obedience flows. True morality originates in a supreme regard for God. Morality without, and not within, is a fiction-a dream. Sin began in turning from God; piety begins in turning to him. The point at which men turn to him is giving him the supremacy he claims. Whether the living and true God shall have this supremacy, or whether they give it to another, is the question on which their eternity is suspended. This is the great controversy between man and his Maker. You must yield this controversy, gentle reader; for you cannot help seeing that God is right and you are wrong. God cannot yield it; not because he is arbitrary and will not, but because he is right and may not. Truth is with him; error is with you. His is the rectitude; yours the sin. The throne is his; the footstool yours. You are a creature of yesterday; he is from everlasting. You are abject; he is before all things. Yours is the relenting, the penitence, the submission, the trusting confidence; his the forgiving love, the gracious acceptance, the free salvation.