is there in the universe nothing which is fixed and permanent? Yes! there is a Rock upon which we may safely rest. There is a Being who knows no alteration by time, who is eternally good, wise, and powerful, and under the shadow of whose wings we may repose with calm security, amidst all the storms and tempests of mortal life. In seasons of the greatest depression, when the mind is sinking under the weight of accumulated distresses, let us raise our eye from this evervarying scene to that self-existent, eternal, and immutable Being who formed, who preserves, who directs the whole, with a view to the highest ultimate moral perfection and happiness.

"From partial evil still educing good,.
And better thence again, and better still,
In infinite progression."

Under a dissolution I mean under a short suspension only of those friendships which have virtue for their basis, let us, as the wisest part we can

act, make a friend of the Eternal God. Let us never forget that Eternity is the character not only of his Existence not only of his Power and Wisdom but of his Goodness and his Mercy. Let us then cease from placing confidence in man, whose breath is in his nostrils; let us cease from placing confidence in any thing below; let us not put our trust in princes, nor in the greatest of the sons of men, but let us have that Being who is from everlasting to everlasting for our help, and let our hope for ever be in the Lord our God.

LECTURE XXXIII.

THE Omnipresence of God is that awful Attribute of his Nature which next claims our attention. It must be confessed, that this likewise is a subject too exalted for our finite understandings fully to comprehend. We may however collect, both from Reason and Scripture, sufficient proofs that it is an attribute of the Divine Nature, and at the same time form such conceptions of it as are sufficient to answer the various purposes of Religion. This therefore, we shall attempt in the present Lecture.

Let us, in the first place, briefly consider some of the arguments which are usually brought to prove the Omnipresence of God.

And here we may observe, that all created beings, whether they be material or spiritual, have only a limited existence. The space upon which a material being is extended, and in which a spiritual being acts, is not immense but circumscribed. And who is it who hath settled the bounds within which the Sun, Moon, and Stars, and all parts of matter exist, as well as appointed a sphere of action for spiritual and immaterial beings? This they could not do of themselves, any more than bring themselves at first into existence. It must therefore have been effected by that Being who originally created them. But the original Creator of the world, and the first Cause of all things is himself uncaused and independent. It follows, therefore, from there being no Cause of his Existence, and consequently no cause to limit his existence, that he must be omnipresent, or infinite.

Again, God is from all Eternity. He is therefore necessarily existent. Now for

the same reason that a necessarily existent Being must be any where, he must be every where; for if he might be absent from one place, he might from all, and consequently could not be necessarily existent. God therefore, who is possessed of necessary existence, must be present in all parts of the universe.

But of all the arguments which the light of Nature affords for the Omnipresence of God, the most obvious and convincing, is that which is taken from the consideration of his works. The same arguments which prove his Being, his Power, and his Providence, prove likewise his Omnipresence. Since He at first called all things into existence; since He still continues to move the wheels of universal nature, and to uphold and direct all things by His Power, He must be present in all parts of his vast dominion. As it is impossible that any being should act where it is not, and as God