being called a day, it would be rash, absolutely to limit it to the duration of one of our days; yet this term, so frequently applied to it, appears inconsistent with the supposition, that it will have a duration of any considerable time. Some have thought that it shall last a thousand years; and as the multiplicity of business seems to them to demand such a length of time, they have contrived to find it in the Word of God: "One day is to the Lord as a thousand years." This passage, however, cannot bear on the point at all. Whatever be its import, it does not say that one day is a thousand years, much less does it say that the day of the Lord is a thousand years. It is called the last day; and this seems plainly to import, that it is the last of those days allotted to this world. It is called the day of the Lord, and the day of Christ, because all the other days of this world, since the fall, have been given to man. He has been permitted to work all iniquity, as if there were no God to rule over him. But this will be the day of God, in which he will have to account for all his works of unrighteousness.

To many it appears absurd, that the judgment should be transacted in a very short space of time. Were the trials to proceed as in our courts, ten thousand years would be insufficient to finish them. To expedite the business, Doctor M'Knight has contrived to discriminate the righteous from the wicked at the general judgment, not by any formal inquiry into the character and actions of each individual, but by the kind of body in which each will appear. But this would not be a judgment. The dress of a culprit is not his trial. Besides, it is mere hypothesis, against which also many passages of Scripture seem to militate. Indeed, almost every passage that refers to the subject, seems to take for granted, that particular crimes will be charged. For every idle word, men shall give account. The dead are said to be judged out of the things written in the books; and though this be figurative, it still implies particular investigation.

How, then, can this be done in a moderate space of time? All I would reply is, that what is impossible with man, is possible with God. He can make us per

ceive at once a million of facts, as easily as we now perceive one, according to our present constitution. The trial of each individual of the whole human race might be going on at the same time; the whole might be perceived by all, and the business might be finished, not in a day, but in an hour. Men err, not knowing the Scriptures, neither the power of God. Instead of receiving the plain testimony of the Word of God, they spend their time in reconciling apparent inconsistencies by their own vain speculations. Upon every point we should ask, what saith the Scriptures? When we have found its answer, let us receive it, however improbable in the estimation of human wisdom.

Disciples of Jesus Christ, let this great day be much in your contemplations. Cherish your hearts with the prospects it presents. While this is before you, the concerns of this world will appear trifling, and your sorrows will be mitigated. To the world it may appear as a dream, but to you it is a comforting reality. This will be your day, as well as that of your Lord. You are now the fools, but on that day you will appear to have been wise. Remember that it is one of the characteristics of a Christian, "to love his appearing." All who are taught by the gospel, are "looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God, even our Saviour Jesus Christ." They who hate him may dread his coming; but the loving, faithful bride must rejoice in the coming of the bridegroom. Fly round, then, ye sluggish years; complete the destined period of this world's duration. Time, roll on, roll on; haste, make way for the coming of our Lord. O! when shall we behold on earth his lovely countenance?

OBSERVATIONS

ON THE

INCOMPREHENSIBILITY OF GOD.

THE wise men of this world have laboured to make themselves ignorant of things known to every child, and have pretended to fathom the deep things of God. While they have doubted and even denied the existence of the world, they have dared to soar in regions of impious conjecture far beyond the reach of the human faculties. They have arrived at the utmost verge of the opposite extremes of madness. Some have denied all certainty of knowledge, and others have presumed to guess at the manner of the existence and knowledge of the incomprehensible Jehovah. Rejecting the knowledge divinely afforded them, they speculate on the secrets of inscrutable wisdom.

The character of the God of the universe, even as discoverable by the light of reason, is invested with attributes which the highest human intellect in vain attempts to comprehend. Our assent is commanded as perfectly as by mathematical axioms, yet our mind recoils at the result of its own operations. We not only cannot but admit that such things are so, but we see the contrary to be absurd, contradictory, and impossible. At the same time when we attempt to contemplate the truth which forces itself on our belief, we are utterly confounded; we find it to be altogether beyond the grasp of the human mind.

That God is immense and eternal is admitted by every one who believes in his existence. Indeed immensity and eternity are attributes essential to the

Y

nature of God. To question this is to doubt his existence, for whatever is limited in time or place cannot be a perfect Being. If there was a time when God was not, then he must either have been the author of his own being, or he must have been produced by some other cause. Both of these suppositions are absurd. It is impossible that any thing could be the cause of its own existence, and nothing can be supposed to be before him, as the cause of his Being. However far we trace back the cause of created existence, we must at last come to a cause that is uncaused, or the great First-Cause of all things. If then there is a God, he must be eternal. But that there is a God is as clear as there is a world. As something now exists, there must have been something previously existing to confer that existence. Nothing cannot create something. This is the necessary conclusion of reason. It is also the dictate of inspiration. The Apostle Paul shews that the Gentile world was without excuse. For the invisible things of God are clearly seen from the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.

That God is immense is equally clear from the light of reason. If there be a place where God is not, then in that place it may be said there is no God. If his presence is bounded then he is an imperfect Being, which is inconsistent with our idea of God. On this supposition he is not as great even as the human mind could conceive him to be, for whatever admits of limits might be greater. And if God's presence admits of limits there is actually something greater. Space admits of no limits, and if God fills not the immensity of space, space is greater than God, which is absurd.

Let us then try to contemplate a Being immense and eternal, and we shall find that we may as well try to look on the meridian sun with the naked eye. Is there any thing in the revealed character of God more beyond the grasp of human intellect? When once an Almighty and an all-wise Being is supposed to exist, we have no difficulty in conceiving how he could make every thing that is in the universe, and every thing we can suppose possible? But how can we conceive of a Being existing from eternity? Our minds can

go back, and back, and back, one step after another, until we arrive at the utmost limit of any given time, but still at last we come to a point where we must stop, and when we examine that point it is as far from eternity as where we started. When we have gone back as far as the mind can reach, still there is an eternity behind us undiminished by any thing we have taken from it. To form an idea of a being without a beginning is a task no less difficult than the creation of a world. We have no difficulty in conceiving that Almighty power may do any thing, but whence is the origin of power? How can we conceive power without an engine? A child will admit that God hath made all things, and this relieves his mind from its labour in conceiving how they began to exist. But he cannot stop here, the thought, how God began to exist himself, suggests itself to his mind, presses on him, and overwhelms him. When he is told that God never began to exist, he may stop his inquiries, but he has received no light that can satisfy reason. He is delivered from his perplexity only by ceasing to think on the subject. He receives the report just on the same evidence that the Christian believes what the Scriptures testify of the Godhead of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He can no more conceive how God never began to exist, than he can conceive how one God subsists in three persons. And the child is put on a level with the greatest philosopher on this subject. The perplexing question about the unoriginating existence of God that occurs to the child is perpetually presenting itself to the mind of every man that thinks. The only way to get relief from it is to cease to listen to it. In matters within the comprehension of the human mind, difficulties will be gradually overcome by labour and study. But here to labour and study is to increase our perplexity. Too much study of this point, would literally make a man mad.

Should any man be inclined to deliver himself from these confounding thoughts, by taking refuge in atheism, even here they will pursue him and give him no rest. Even although it were granted that there is no God, still there is an eternity and immensity. To suppose that there was a time before time is a contradiction.