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to their natures, adapted to their powers, and conducive to the preservation of the species. They neither regret the past, nor tremble under apprehensions of the future. It is far otherwise with man. His boasted

pleasures end with a sting, and often he cannot bear his own reflections on them. He suffers almost as much from imaginary fears, as from real afflictions. The more he possesses, the more are the sources of his anxieties multiplied and enlarged. And after having been long wearied with a train of mortifications, pains, and inquietudes, he must at last, however unwilling, yield to that stroke of death, the thought of which, when strongly realized to his mind, was always sufficient to embitter the happiest hours of his life.

But publish the glad tidings from the mountains, and let the joyful sound diffuse over the plain-" Your "God cometh." MESSIAH establishes a new, a spiritual kingdom upon the earth, and his happy subjects are freed from the misery in which they were involved. They commit all their concerns to him, and he manages for them. Their fears are removed, their irregular desires corrected, and all that is really good for them, is secured to them by his love, promise, and care. Afflictions still await them, but they are sanctified. To them the nature of afflictions is changed. They are appointments graciously designed for their advantage. Their crosses, no less than their comforts, are tokens of God's favour*; they have them only because their present situation requires discipline, and they could not be so well without them. They are assured of support under them, and a final deliverance out of them all, for there is a happy hour approaching, when all their

Heb. xii. 6, 7.

t 2 Cor. xii. 9.

troubles shall cease, and they shall enter upon a state of eternal, uninterrupted, inconceivable joy*.

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For these purposes the Son of God was revealed. The prophets saw his day afar off, and proclaimed his approach" Thy God cometh!" Though truly a man, he is truly God. Neither man nor angel could remove our guilt, communicate to us a spiritual life, relieve us from misery, and give us stable peace in a changing world, hope and triumph in death, and eternal life beyond it. But his wisdom and power are infinite, and his purpose unchangeable. He would not have invited the weary and heavy laden to come to him, if he was not able and determined to give them rest. None that seek him are disappointed, or sent empty away: a sufficient proof that his compassion, his bounty, his fulness, are properly divine. Therefore the apostle, speaking of the riches of his grace, uses the epithet, "Un"searchablet." His treasury of life and salvation is inexhaustible, like a boundless, shoreless, bottomless ocean; like the sun, which having cheered the successive generations of mankind with his beams, still shines with undiminished lustre, is still the fountain of light, and has always a sufficiency to fill innumerable millions of eyes in the same instant.

Does the language of my text cause joy to spring up in your hearts? or is it nothing to you? (If you heard the Messiah, you were, perhaps, affected by the music of the passage; how much are you to be pitied, if you are hitherto unaffected by the sentiment! Yet once more, hear;" Thy God cometh!" He did come in the fulness of time, according to the prophecy; and the word of prophecy assures us, that be will come again.

* Isa. lx. 20,; Rev. xxi. 4.

† Ephes. iii. 8.

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"Behold he cometh in the clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also that pierced him."-" Prepare to meet thy Godt."

SERMON VII.

THE MORNING LIGHT.

ISAIAH Ix. 1-3.

Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee: and the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.

ONE strong internal proof that the Bible is a divine

revelation, may be drawn from the subject matter; and particularly that it is the book, and the only book, which teaches us to think highly and honourably of God. I say, the only book; for there is no right knowledge of God where the Bible is not known. What is the Jupiter of Homer, compared with the God of Israel, as he is represented to us by his servants the prophets? And if the Heathen philosophers, in some detached passages, have sentiments not altogether unworthy of him, history honestly tells them how they obtained them. They travelled, and they are generally said to have travelled into Phoenicia or Egypt, to the confines of that people who alone thought rightly of God, because to them only he had made himself known by a revelation. If such a description as we have in the fortieth chapter of Isaiah,

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from the twelfth verse to the end, had been known only of late years, recovered, we will suppose, out of the ruins of Herculaneum, there is little doubt but it would have engaged the attention and admiration of the learned world. For the most admired writings of antiquity, upon a candid comparison, are unspeakably inferior to it. The inimitable sublimity of the prophets is natural, just, and unforced, and flows from the grandeur of their subjects, because they were influenced by him who alone can speak worthily of himself.

A song so vast, a theme so high,

Calls for the voice that tun'd the sky.

With them, the whole compass of the creation is but as dust upon the balance, in respect of the great Creator. His purpose is fate, his voice is power. He speaks, and it is done. Thus he called the universe into being; and thus, as the great Lord and Proprietor of all, he still maintains and governs it, directing the frame of nature, and every particular event and contingence, to the promoting of his own glory, the last and highest end of all his works.

The principal of these is, the exhibition of his perfections in the person of his Son. The prophecies we have already considered, announce this event with a gradual increase of clearness and precision, as the period of accomplishment is supposed to draw nigh. We lately heard the command to proclaim his approach from the hills and tops of the mountains. Here the prophet begins to contemplate the effects of his actual appearThe earth is considered as involved in a state of gross darkness; but the sun, the Sun of Righteousness, is about to arise, and to fill it, by his beams, with light,

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life, and glory. These effects, indeed, will not extend to all, for many will love darkness rather than light. But he will not shine in vain. There will be a people prepared to receive him, and to rejoice in his light. They shall arise as from sleep, as from the grave, and his light reflected upon them shall cause them to shine likewise. Darkness shall still cover those who reject him; their darkness will be increased. But the glory of the Lord shall be seen upon all who believe, and their numbers from age to age shall be enlarged. Nations shall come to him; and kings shall be subservient to the spreading of his kingdom. Such is the scope of the passage before us. I shall briefly consider a few of the leading particulars contained in it.

yea,

I. As the sun is the source of light to the natural world, so is MESSIAH to the moral and spiritual world. Light, and its opposite, darkness, are figuratively used in Scripture. The latter is applied to a state of ignorance, sin, and misery, as in the following texts: "He that walketh in darkness, knoweth not whither he "goeth*." "If we say that we have fellowship with him, "and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truthf.” "Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness; "There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." The former, therefore, signifies true knowledge, holiness, and happiness. "Ye were sometime darkness, but now are ye

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light in the Lord: walk as children of light§." When "I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me." Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright " in heart**.” I select but one instance of each kind;

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