which peopled their woods and streams and fountains with guardian divinities, and personified in the form of gods even the passions of the human heart; and sometimes, by a still more fatal misapprehension, identified the great "spirit" and "soul of the world" with the world itself, and degraded the dignity of the creator by confounding him with the works of his creation. While even in modern times, in ignorant and badly regulated minds, this instinct has been diverted from its proper use, and been made to sanction many of the wildest dreams of a disordered fancy in the absurdities of popular superstition.

Revealed religion does not, perhaps, in any case entirely overlook these, and such as these, the universal apprehensions of nature. The reason of man was given to prepare the way, like John the Baptist, for the more full declaration of God's will. It could not indeed penetrate into the inmost sanctuary of his secret counsels, but it could wait at the portals, and clear the access, and point the way to the assembled multitude. And that general fulfilment of man's reasonable anticipations which is so eminently to be found in many parts of the Mosaic, and especially in the gospel scheme, was not wanting in the instance before us. If nature knew her God in the great but mysterious spirit that animated the world,

revelation pointed him out, defined his attributes, declared his will, pronounced his denunciations and his promises. If there were a kind of silent homage that went up from her remotest solitudes, from the whole face of creation, or from that still more dreary wilderness-the untaught and unenlightened heart of man, revelation gave that homage an audible voice, and taught it to resound in the mighty choruses of praise that re-echoed through the courts of the temple. And, in every sense of the words, we may truly assert that God's revealed word has completely fulfilled the expectations of nature on the subject of spiritual existence ;-that it has done so in a manner equally removed from superstition on the one hand, and a cold materialism on the other; and that it has developed them, and carried them out into principles of a most practical and consolatory kind, by its doctrines of an omnipresent God, a particular providence, a sanctifying spirit, and a merciful Saviour, cheering, by his perpetual presence, the hearts of his faithful followers.

Some of those doctrines are acknowledged even by the old testament writers in very explicit and striking terms. The religion of the Patriarchs and the Jews was singularly calculated to cherish in their hearts the most lively consciousness of the omnipresence of their God. Nor was

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it from any flights of fancy or long deductions of speculative reason that they gathered the evidences of this truth, when, in his miraculous communications to his people, their very outward senses were perpetually made to see and hear the signs of the Almighty's presence. Thus we find their writers continually expressing, although with very mingled feelings of alternate apprehension and cheerful joy, their deep conviction of this important truth. "Whither," asks the Psalmist,*"shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me." Jacob, when, in his distant pilgrimage, he was visited by a dream and vision of angels, heard the voice of God crying unto him, "behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest." And when he awoke, under the sense of that strong impression of God's immediate presence which such a scene was calculated to produce, he broke out into that deep-toned and solemn exclamation,-"Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not." "And he was afraid,

* Psalm cxxxviii. 7.

and said, How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."* Jeremiah too declares that "his eyes are upon all the ways of the wicked; they are not hid from his face, neither is their iniquity hid from his eyes." And Job confesses past finding out;

that "he doeth great things yea, and wonders without number. Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not; he passeth on also, but I perceive him not." And I need scarcely add how clearly these doctrines of the old testament are continued and confirmed in the new. Not only are they distinctly implied in the very first rudiments of the gospel scheme, but on some occasions they were expressly pointed out by our Lord himself, who assured his hearers of God's distinguishing and personal concern in the welfare of each individual man, declaring that "the very hairs of their heads were numbered," and that he who clothed the "lilies of the field" in such a garb of glory, was not the less minutely provident in his particular superintendance of the human race.

But important as is the principle of the omnipresence and particular providence of God, there is a force of meaning yet more significant and full of comfort in the doctrine specified in *Gen. xxviii. 15. + Jer. xvi. 17. Job ix. 10.

the text. To the disciples, to whom these words were immediately addressed, this must indeed have been felt to be the case in an eminent and distinguished degree. It was a trying hour for them, when, on the occasion mentioned in the text, their master parted with them on the mountain of Galilee, and left them, weak and irresolute as they then were, the victims of all the persecutions that the malice of their enemies could devise. But from his parting words they learned that he did not leave them comfortless or alone. His former promise to be present with them in the more immediate exercises of prayer, namely, “where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them," was here, in still more definite terms, continued to every incident and moment of their lives, "lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." And from these united assurances they could gather the purport of a merciful provision by which, in unbroken continuity, the congregations of the faithful, (scanty and persecuted as they have sometimes been,) have been sustained for ages in the "unity of the spirit and the bond of peace;" and from which the Christian, even in these latter times, can derive spiritual strength and confidence and comfort. He would never,

*Matt. xviii. 20.