time reflect upon my manifold delinquency, I can only express my sensibility and gratitude with tears which more than speak !

u After all that I have done,

Does he no longer chide ?

“ Tears of joy my eyes o'erflow,

That I have any hope of heaven;
Much of love I ought to know,

For I have much forgiven.”

I would here entreat the reader to take a counter-march into the rear of time, and recapitulate the abundant mercies of God, that he also may participate the joys of heaven, which are the offspring of gratitude. Angels have nothing to give the Almighty but gratitude, and man may make the same offering. For grateful angels and grateful men are the same as the minor and mature children of the same kind parent. Perhaps it would be insulting the understanding of the reader, to suggest even a doubt of his ingratitude to God. If, for

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instance, a certain man received for many years, innumerable favours and benefactions, from a certain benevolent ruler; if, after all these participations of his liberality, this man should unhappily forfeit this ruler's favour and friendship, by repeated acts of hostility and delinquency; if instead of punishing his base ingratitude with unrelenting severity, he followed him in all his wanderings, preserved him from ten thousand dangers, provided for all his wants, and used cvery method which wisdom and power could invent, to cause him to return to his own happiness: if after receiving every insuit abuse and injury, froin this ungrateful man, this faithful friend should rescue him from a premature death, which his guilt was bringing upon him, by offering himself an expiatory sacrifice for the atonement of his complicated guilt, the just for the unjust; I say, after all these tokens of infinite love, would it not be offering an insult to the common sense of the man, who received all these favours, to solicit him to love his friend and benefactor; most assuredly it would. According to the old adage, “ seeing is believing, but feeling is the naked truth ;" who then, I would ask, has not felt that God is good, that has not participated the plenitude of his divine liberality? not one!! The similitude therefore, needs no application, it is obvious to the meanest capacity. Well might Epictetus affirm, that “ the only foundation of true piety is this, to have right opinions and apprehensions of God.” Hence, “ there is a dead faith and a living faith, one of which overcomes the world, and the other is overcome by the world.” How, I would ask, can a man possess true faith, who entertains the most erroneous, and contemptible apprehensions of the true, and triune God; that self-existent being, who only is absolute in dominion, infinitely benevolent, supremely just, pure, holy, happy and beautiful, the source of all being, and the

sum total of all excellence. His mode of existence is impenetrable, as his immensity and essence, are indiscribable; his boundless goodness, and inimitable beauty, known only to himself; he is at once the most sublime, and the most simple of all intelligences ! he cannot err nor do any thing but what is both just and good ; this is the being I both love, admire and fear, and whose impartial justice and goodness I feel the most cogent desire to vindicate. But alas ! it is impossible for me, or even all the men in the world, in conjunction with all the angels in heaven, to exhibit or delineate the thousandth thousandth thousandth part of the immutability of his justice, the infinitude of his goodness, and the magnitude of his sovereign beauty. In attempting to display even a particle thereof in these strictures, I feel like a child endeavouring to exhibit the brilliancy of the sun with the light of a candle. The divine goodness must be infinite, amazing and divine, or it never could endure such ingratitude, rebellion and manifold delinquencies, as have been observable in my life and conduct for many years. His amazing power is permanently displayed in the planatory system;

“ The unwearied sun from day to day,
Doth his Creator's pow'r display,
And publishes to every land,
The works of an Almighty hand.”.

It has been ascertained almost to a mathematical certainty, that our sun and its attendant planets, are but a very small part of the works of God. The fixed stars are considered the centre of systems, as magnificent as our solar system, with an appropriate number of planets moving round each of them ; as therefore the fixed stars are innumerable, we may fairly conclude from analogy, that there are innumerable systems in creation. When we consider for a moment, the prodigious number of stars to be seen, with a good telescope, on