exclaims, O Lord, how manifold are thy works :— the earth is full of thy riches ;- —so is the great and wide sea;-thou stretchest out the heavens like a curtain ;—thou makest the clouds thy chariot, and walkest upon the wings of the wind;—thou hast planted the hills with thy forests;-thou givest food to the lions and space to the leviathan ;-life and death are in thy hand. The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever;-I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live;-my meditation of him shall be sweet. But is this all? Are these songs and meditations only concerning the aspects and movements of lifeless matter;-the life and death of brute beasts? Far from it: these contemplations lead up to a more solemn thought; "Let sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord, O my soul!" The loftiest notions of God the Creator lead us on to God the Judge. We cannot rest satisfied with acknowledging the Divine Power, except we also believe it to be the awful enemy of sin and wickedness. All living things wait upon Him that He may give them their meat in due season; if He hide His face they are troubled; if He take away their breath they return to dust: and we cannot but recognise, in the Lord of life and death, the guardian of that separation of sin and holiness to

which our reason points. When in our moments of inward brightness we consider Him who clothes himself with light as with a garment, we are solemnly impressed with the psalmist's persuasion that "justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne, mercy and truth go before his face*.

Once more, not to dwell on what is so plain; -all will recollect the nineteenth Psalm, in which, after the sun and the moon, day and night, the earth and the firmament, have been called upon to declare the glory of God; we are in the next verse (v. 7.) told, suddenly and abruptly, as it might appear to those who have not looked for the moral character of God in his creation ;—" The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul." And in order that we may have no doubt that this connexion of thought belongs to all men, St Paul bids us remember, that those who had not the law of the Jews, were a law unto themselves. They had the work of the law written in their hearts; and therefore it was that their thoughts turned not only to a powerful, but in their better moods, to a just divinity;-not only to a hand which held the thunderbolts, but to a divine purpose which prepared punishments for the wicked, and looked

*Psalm lxxxix. 17.

with complacency on the virtuous man in the midst of his apparent adversity.

We are now, we hope, enabled to bring clearly into view the meaning of the argument in the text. Not only the eternal power, but also all the other attributes of the Godhead, have, as we have seen, been understood among men by the things which - are made. But this was because, among the works of the Divine Maker, they recognized that part of human nature,-the conscience of a distinction of right and wrong,—the law written on the heart. And thus it was that His invisible but most glorious properties were clearly seen by the mental eye of His moral and religious creatures.

That the faculty which guided them to this view of their Creator, is grievously obscured and perverted in man's present condition, is too surely true. That it wants force to constrain the corrupted will and enlighten the blinded heart ;-that in the wisest it requires to be unfolded and cultivated; that in the best it stands in need of a better strength;-that the Christian must seek to assist its researches, and to supply its defects, by the study of a plainer and more powerful teaching; -that he has an inestimable privilege in the hope of obtaining from on high, aid to his obedience, and pardon to his failures;-all this we know full

well. But yet man's moral faculty, though defaced and darkened, is not destroyed: though it may be shorn of its power, it does not lose its right even in its abasement it retains traces of its divine origin and descent: and its voice, often overborne and drowned by louder and more vehement cries, is still heard at intervals, ever speaking the language of a region which lies above the tumult and dissonance of appetite and passion.

How

We need not use many words to show how, from the things that are made, thus explained, the invisible things of Him, the Maker, are clearly seen;-how the holiness and justice of God are made known to us by the conscience of man which is His work, by the law of the heart which is His writing. If these portions of the constitution of man be not part of the design and purpose of the Creator, how came they into being? came man to have a universal faculty, an unconquerable tendency, to judge of actions as right and wrong, while such endowments are denied to all creatures besides? How came man, not only to acknowledge laws as made for his own guidance, but to regard them with a profound and mysterious reverence ;-to bear their impress in the depths of his thoughts;-to extend his condemnation to the will and purpose ;-to proceed in

his estimate of actions and intentions, far beyond the utmost demands of legality or perceived advantage? How came this, but that God has given to him, and him alone, a perception of a supreme law of rectitude in will and act? And how came man's heart to bear this indelible inscription, of such clear and weighty import, if He whose hand traced the characters had no meaning or object while he wrote? And if the conscience of man is part of that work which Almighty God designed from the foundation of the world and executed with consummate care and skill, how can we imagine that the Divine thoughts are not the perfect archetype of all which conscience approves and admires? The Author of man is the author of his moral constitution, as well as of his corporeal frame; and it is impossible for us to believe, that He has stamped upon His work a contradiction of His own nature. It is impossible for us to conceive that the Creator of the world, having placed in us a faculty, which, duly developed and faithfully consulted, condemns and loathes all that is base and vile and unjust and wicked, is himself an indifferent spectator of good and bad, of vice and virtue, of pollution and purity, of the highest and the most degraded impulses of our nature. We cannot but deem otherwise than this;