ever was or can be given-" In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth-He said let there be light and there was light-He spake and it was done. He commanded and it stood fast."

The same power which created, is necessary to preserve and uphold the universe. The laws of nature are words without a meaning, if they are not intended to express the will or appointment of the Deity. Whether we do, or do not maintain, that preservation is a constant creation, we must admit that all things depend on God, are ordered according to his sovereign will, exactly fulfil his purposes, and will cease their operations whenever he shall please. The revolution of the seasons; the succession of day and night; the fertility of the earth, and all the secondary causes that produce it; a salubrious or a pestilential atmosphere; winds and tornadoes; thunder and storm; earthquakes, volcanoes, and inundations; are all ordered and directed by the God of providence. Yea, 66 a sparrow falleth not to the ground," nor a hair from our heads, "without our heavenly Father." To believe this, is surely as comfortable as it is pious.

Nor must we forget the illustrious display of the almighty power of God in the glorious work of man's redemption. It was manifested in "laying the chief corner stone, in the union of the human nature with the person of the eternal Son of God; in supporting Him under the inconceivable load of divine wrath, for our sins; and in spoiling principalities and powers, in that very nature which Satan had vanquished at first." Hence the Redeemer is called the "power," as well as "the wisdom of God." Hence he is denominated "the arm of the Lord," and "the man of his right hand."

We proceed to consider the Holiness of God. Holiness is sometimes used to denote the aggregate of the moral perfections of the Deity, and sometimes as indicating a distinct attribute. It is manifestly used in the latter sense, in the answer before us; because the moral perfections of God are immediately and severally enumerated. "Taken in this limited sense, (says Dr. Witherspoon) it is extremely difficult

to define or explain. Holiness is that character of God, to which veneration, or the most profound reverence in us, is the correspondent affection. It is also sometimes expressed by purity."-" Holiness"-say Erskine and Fletcher, in what is called the Synod's Catechism,' and to which I own myself indebted in these lectures, for many useful thoughts-Holiness is that essential rectitude, or integrity of the divine nature, whereby he infinitely delights in his own purity, and in every thing agreeable to his will, and hath a perfect hatred and abhorrence of every thing contrary to it. God is as necessarily holy, as he is necessarily God:-"Who shall not fear before thee, O Lord; for thou only art holy." He hath put, as it were, a peculiar honour on his own holiness, inasmuch as he singles it out as the attribute to swear by for the accomplishment of his promises and threatenings-" Once I have sworn by my holiness, that I will not lie unto David." Finite creatures, even of the highest order, are not able to behold the brightness of this attribute, in their Creator: For when the angels themselves view his infinite holiness, as manifested in Christ, they are represented as covering their faces with their wings. Every thing pertaining to God bears the impress of his holiness. He is said to be holy in all his works -His word is holy; his covenant, or promise is holy; his sabbath is holy; his people are holy; his ministring spirits are the holy angels; and the place where he specially dwells is the high and holy place. The greatest opposite of the holiness of God is sin; and the highest display of his holiness in the hatred of sin was, in hiding his face from his own beloved Son, as bearing our iniquity.

The next divine attribute, in the enumeration before us, is

* In the use of the catechism here mentioned, the author has sometimes taken the language of the book, and at other times he has changed it, or intermixed it with his own. He has placed the marks of quotation where he has made no change in the expression, but not where a change has been made. He wishes it may be remembered that where marks of quotation appear, without a distinct reference to an author, the proper reference is to this catechism; and he hopes that the explanation here given is sufficient to prevent the charge of any unfairness.

the justice of God. Justice has been defined-"an invariable determination to render to all their due."* In the Deity, it is that essential attribute of his nature, by which he is infinitely righteous or equitable in himself, and in all his dispensations and awards towards his creatures. The justice of God is manifested in giving laws, perfectly holy, just and good, to all his rational and moral creatures; and in his rendering to them their due, according to law, without respect of persons. Hence when angels sinned, they were cast down to hell, and are reserved in chains of darkness to the judgment of the great day: And when man sinned, he would inevitably have shared in the same awful doom, if the wisdom of God, in union with his mercy, had not provided a way to answer the demands of his justice, by the vicarious atonement of Christ our Saviour-a way in which God can be just, and yet the justifier of every one that believeth in Jesus-" He who knew no sin, was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”

In speaking of the divine justice, I must take a passing notice of what has been called the vindictive justice of God; but which I would rather call his vindicatory justice, because the term vindictive is now, I think, scarcely used but in a bad sense. The point in debate-for it has been much debatedis, whether we have reason to believe that it belongs to the divine justice, to punish transgression without regard to consequences, that is, to the ultimate benefit of the transgressor, or to the example as a warning to others. On this I remark in the first place, that it is impossible for us to know whether every instance of the punishment of transgression which can ever take place, may not be connected with the good of the whole intelligent and moral creation of God. For aught we know this may be so; although the manner in which it takes. place may not be discernible by us.

Nay, the whole force of

inductive reasoning, seems to me to be in favour of the belief, that such is really the fact. In the mean time, the sense of ill

desert, which natural conscience produces in our minds whenever we do what we know to be wrong, makes guilt, simply in itself, the proper object of punishment. And if guilt, when only imputed, caused such dreadful sufferings as it did, when the sinless Saviour stood in the sinner's place, we cannot rationally believe that it is consistent with the divine justice, that it should ever go unpunished. This, my young friends, is a principle which enters deeply into the whole system of gospel truth. Almost all loose and dangerous opinions in religion may be traced to a light sense of the inherent evil of sin;— to a false notion that the justice of God does not always require its punishment, or expiation. Dr. Owen has written a most able treatise on this subject, which, if it should fall in your way, I advise you carefully to peruse. It was written in Latin, and the English translation is not a good one; but it will serve to give you a view of the powerful arguments by which the vindicatory justice of God is maintained

We come now, in the next place, to consider the goodness of God. This perfection implies a disposition in the Deity to communicate happiness to all his creatures. The goodness of God appears in all his works;-in creation, in providence, and pre-eminently, in the work of redemption.

No one who observes attentively the common appearances of nature; not only the revolution of the seasons and the succession of day and night, but the abundance which the earth produces, for the support both of man and beast; the admirable provision made in the organization of every animal, to enable it to acquire its proper food, to propagate and preserve its species, and to guard itself against its natural enemy; and the actual gratification and enjoyment experienced by every creature that has life;--no one who observes all this, can fail to be convinced of the goodness of the great Creator, in the formation, preservation, and government of the universe. That there is much natural evil, much suffering of pain and distress, none can deny. But still, it is also undeniable that there is, on the whole, an immense balance or preponderance of happiness or enjoyment. "The earth is full of the good

ness of the Lord-He openeth his hand and satisfieth the wants of every living thing." And it belongs to the believer in revelation—and to him only it belongs to give some account of the misery and suffering that exist in our world. He knows that the world now, is not what it was when it came fresh from the forming hand of its Almighty Author. Then, he who made it, on the most perfect survey, saw and pronounced it good. The sin of man has introduced into our world all the natural evil that has marred, and that still mars, the fair creation of the God of goodness. Never was there a fouler slander than that which charges the holders of the sentiments contained in our catechism, with representing the Deity as having made man a sinner; as having doomed him, by a necessity of nature, to misery. No verily, whatever difficulty there may be-and difficulty there is, on every system or hypothesis-in accounting fully for the present guilty and suffering state of man, and the various evils that infest the world, we hold that God created all things good; that he created man in knowledge, righteousness and true holiness; and that it would be entirely irreconcilable with all our ideas of the goodness and perfection of God, if any part of his original creation had not been good-perfectly good. But it is just a plain and undeniable matter of fact, that misery and guilt are in the world. Let those then who object to our catechism tell us how they came into the world, and how and why they continue in it. Do they admit that misery is the consequence of man's sin? If so, they thus far agree with us. But will they dare to say that the Deity could not have ordered it otherwise-could not have formed and guarded a moral agent, such as man, so that he should neither have sinned nor suffered? If he could, and yet did not so form and guard him, then let them reconcile this with the 'goodness of God. If they altogether deny human guilt, then let them reconcile it with the divine goodness, that there is so much suffering where there is no offence. The truth is, that the orthodox sentiments are the most rational and the easiest of belief, as well as the most scriptural. We hold that “God