will be one in Christ. To establish this glorious UNITY, was the object of our Saviour's mission into the world. Such is the word of prophecy. "He shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his own vine and under his figtree; and none shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it." The ferocious dispositions of men will be changed. "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice's den."

What a peaceful termination of all this strife! This great earthly drama winds up in UNITY and PEACE! Who, standing behind curtains of darkness, has caused the long, intricate and doubtful affair to turn out such a perfect drama, in which God and man, and man and man are united? Whoever that Power may be, whose law of unity is discoverable at so many points, throughout the entire Bible, we may feel assured He himself is ONE, and not a plurality. A plurality of agents could never have created and governed with such unity. And whoever that Power may be, He is

the self-same Being, whom we have seen exhibiting a similar unity in the government of nature. No where else, but in nature, do we find this law of unity, recognized in the Bible, thus proving that the two volumes, nature and revelation, are from the ONE only living and true God, with whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning.

Thus, the Christian, standing on the summit of the spiritual Zion, with the light of God's own face, glowing upon the pages, can read from both volumes,-"There is one God and there is none other but he." The Bible is true, for its one God is the same with the one God of nature.

LECTURE XIV.

THE GOODNESS OF GOD, AS TAUGHT BY NATURE AND BY THE BIBLE.

THE LORD IS GOOD TO ALL.-Psalms 145: 9.

What disposition does the Great Creator entertain towards his creatures? This question is one of vast interest to every human being. Is he good or is he malevolent? Or is he good to a part and malevolent to a part? Or is he good to all and malevolent to none? We well know how the Bible decides the question, and at first thought we might, perhaps, reply that his goodness to all could admit of no doubt. But then, we are met with the fact, that all the heathen represent him as decidedly malevolent. How is this, if nature, so manifestly, teaches his goodness? Man, in a state of nature, has so frequently erred respecting the character of God, that many have utterly discarded nature, as total darkness and corruption, and refer to the Bible as the only reliable authority on the subject. The truth appears to lie directly between such an opinion, and that of those who suppose they may always rely upon their deductions from nature. It is no more strange, that the mass of men should misinterpret nature, than that multitudes

of men should misinterpret the Bible; and it is only by bringing the two volumes into connection, that we are able to check our own mistakes, and prove our own true deductions from either. We shall, therefore, examine nature with the Bible in our hand.

We form our opinion of individuals by their works. Works are a manifestation of the worker. The house bespeaks the skill of the architect, the machine of the machinest, and the book of its author. In like manner, God is known by his works.

Neither is it needful that a work should be in a state of primitive perfection, in order that it may reveal its author. We apprehend a good architect could make a very exact calculation, from a dilapidated building of its former magnificence, and of the skill of its builder, and from several small chapters of a shattered volume the scholar could form a very correct idea of what the book was, and of the parts of its author. In like manner, though a work of God may have been greatly marred since coming from his forming hand, we may still form some idea of what it originally must have been, and what are the powers of its Divine Creator.

Now, of all the works of God, it is supposed that the human mind is the most degenerated from its primitive state, and yet, with all its depravity, it is the most noble, and the most like God of any thing in the earthly universe. Its very depravity attests the presence of a self-determining causal will, which will is one of the grandest features, in which man resembles his Divine Maker. We shall, therefore, draw our arguments, in this lecture, from the human mind. The nature God has given us, affords the most striking proof of his universal goodness.

1. Just as soon as man becomes a creature of reason, he has an idea of the finite and the imperfect. He knows himself, and he knows others about him, to be finite and imperfect. It matters not how great a savage, or how great an idiot a man is, if capable of reasoning at all, he knows. and admits himself to be finite and imperfect. Now the finite and imperfect are the correlatives of the infinite and the perfect, and one cannot think of the former, without also having an idea of the latter, any more than he can think of an object without having an idea of space. The idea of object necessarily suggests space, and space is a reality, so the finite and the imperfect necessarily suggest the infinite and the perfect, and hence the infinite and the perfect must be a reality. Now, the infinite and the perfect are God. God, then, is a necessary idea, and God is a reality.

If, therefore, man, necessarily, has an idea of an infinite and perfect God, and all necessary ideas are realities, it follows, that there is really a God of perfect goodness, and whose infinity enables him to be good to all. However little this argument may affect the minds of some, we must confess that, to us, it possesses all the certainty of demonstration. No matter how confusedly some may reason and contradict themselves on this subject; no one can exist without having the idea of an infinite and perfect God. Some men have denied their senses, and even their own existence; but should all men do this, and do it repeatedly, we should still believe that the reality of sight and being, were necessary ideas to all who could see and think.*

*See Cousin's History of Modern Philosophy, Vol. 2, page 419, &c., where this subject is beautifully and elaborately argued in his examination of Locke.