very numerous; and, in your speaking to the people, what an easy opening is this to the nature of the gospel! how often will this give an illustration that cannot be misunderstood !

2. Compare the church of God to the moon, &c. Her light is borrowed, imperfect, variable, inconstant, spotted with corruptions. From Jesus the church receives all her light of inspiration, ordinances, and grace. Amidst various changes of outward circumstances, amid numberless spots and imperfections, she, during the night of time, communicates the light of life to our darkened earth. The righteous also shall shine as stars for ever and ever. Ministers are compared to stars: Rev. i. 20. Christians, children of light, hold forth their light to the world, as stars do.

3. The air is that thin, dilatable, and compressible body in which we breathe, and which surrounds the earth to a great height. We could not live a moment without air : the action of the lungs administers it to the body, and, as a means, it is by this we "live, and move, and have our being." That the air may be preserved in a proper state to support life, it is not stagnant, but is put in motion by the wind, which in fact is nothing else but air in motion: but what propels it forward, or pushes it in this or that direction, no philosopher can tell; such is its mystery that it mocks the wise man of the world as it passes by him: John iii. 8. This element, like light, is an admirable means of instruction, no doubt ordained to a spiritual as well as a natural use; it is, I apprehend, impossible to think otherwise. Neither of these can be supposed accidental resemblances. "In the air," says Mr. Jones, “ we have a figure of the Holy Spirit, which worketh imperceptibly as it listeth, while we cannot tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth. As air is necessary to natural life, the operations of the Divine Spirit are necessary to the spiritual life. As the air gives the breath of speech, so the

Holy Ghost gives the utterance of inspiration as on the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit came upon the disciples like a rushing mighty wind, &c."

4. Water and fire are equally to be found comparable to spiritual objects; both are applied as emblems of purification, and water is also employed to signify that which refreshes and comforts. Divine grace is emphatically called living water, as that water is which is taken from a spring, because it brings with it new life and spirit, which it has derived from the subterraneous chemistry of nature, and which is always found to contain a large quantity of air. The element of water which washes and purifies the body, is used to signify the inward cleansing of the soul from sin by the washing of regeneration; and all the purifications by water under the law had a like meaning, as applied in those words of the prophet: "Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your filthiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse you; a new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you." This new heart and new spirit, as the work of God's grace, was always signified by every act of religious purification, according to that of the psalmist : "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."

5. The earth, that solid mass of matter which has in itself the necessary powers of vegetation, is by our Lord likened to the heart, the good ground which brings some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred fold. The renewed soul, so to speak, has its vegetative qualities, and brings forth fruit unto God; while it has its contrast in the wicked, unrenewed heart, which brings forth briars, thorns, thistles, &c., only fit to be burned.

6. Next to these the clouds of the lower heavens, the rain and dew, all have their likenesses in the benign king

dom of grace, and, as well as some other products of the air, are as clearly referred to in Scripture as such.

7. To inspire holy fear, thunders, lightnings, storms, and tempests, are images of divine anger, and are admirably adapted to a popular discourse.

8. The various products of the earth-as woods, trees, shrubs, corn, seeds, flowers-have spiritual resemblances assigned them in Scripture.

9. The various tribes of birds and animals, some bearing resemblances to the saints, some to the wicked, and that of various kinds to which may be added the reptile class; and here we have reason to remember the serpent. There are also the flying and crawling insects, and the tenants of the watery element: most of these receive notice of one kind or another in God's book.

10. The human body is compared to the church of Christ, 1 Cor. xii.; and distinct parts of the body represent spiritual acts. Man's food, of various sorts, is spiritualized, and also the liquid elements that contribute to his sustenance; his various movements, actions, and motions; the faculties of the senses, appetites, and passions; his habits; his occupations; his constitutional state as to health and sickness; his enjoyments and his diseases; every thing that happens to him from his birth to his grave-his times and seasons, his relationships and dependencies, his civil, his political, his religious, his commercial, his social character, as an inhabitant of earth and as an expectant of heaven-admit of comparisons as entertaining as they are instructive.

11. It has been said that even doctrines of the highest class might be learnt from visible nature; allow me to add that man's eating of the flesh of animals, to which we are so reconciled that we scarcely give it a thought, exposes to our view the similitudes of "the derivation of a principle of spiritual life by the death of Christ, and the remission of sin

by the shedding of his innocent blood, which are doctrines essential to the gospel, and every way agreeable to the condition of man's natural life; for we live by the death of innocent animals, which are compelled, without any fault of their own, to lay down their lives for our sustenance. Thus thoughtless men exercise a practice without understanding it, as Caiaphas prophesied without knowing what he said: It is expedient that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not:' John xi. 50. It is expedient that the innocent should die to feed our bodies-let any man deny it if he can; and it is equally expedient that Jesus Christ should die to feed our souls. The animals before referred to are no doubt doomed to die by the wise appointment of God; as Jesus Christ the righteous, with the meekness and innocency of the lamb, was brought to the slaughter, that through his death we might have eternal life."*

12. I shall lastly advert to that light which nature sheds on another and the last doctrine that man is called on to believe. "Some animals after a torpid state, scarcely distinguishable from death, recover the power of life at the proper season by the influence of the sun; some after submersion in water during the whole winter. Some crawl for a time as helpless worms upon the earth, like ourselves; then they retire into a covering, which answers the end of a coffin or a sepulchre, where they are invisibly transformed and come forth in the proper season in glorious array, with wings and painted plumes, more like the inhabitants of heaven than such worms as they were in their earthly state. This transformation is so striking and pleasant an emblem of the present, the intermediate, and the glorified state of man, that people of the most remote antiquity, when they buried their dead, embalmed and inclosed them in an artificial covering, so figured and painted as to

* Jones, p. 334-336.

resemble the caterpillar or silkworm in the intermediate state" and when renovation is to be insisted on from the works of nature, we can refer safely to St. Paul's critical observations on a grain of wheat (1 Cor. xv.), which seems to perish, but which in due season springs up to life. Do not these things contain matters that may well throw light on the glorious doctrine of the resurrection? and surely God, who made man at the first of the dust of the earth, can form him afresh from the same material.

The objects of comparison thus briefly set before you may be sufficient to give impulse to your thoughts, and to excite you to pursue the subject, not as philosophers but as divines; and I recommend you to cherish this study for the enlargement of your own minds in the knowledge of nature and the word of God. In the course of your study ideas may present themselves in two ways: by beginning with the works of nature, and then rising to the spiritual and scriptural sense; or commencing with any scriptural allusion to the objects of nature in the course of your reading, and then descending to the thing pointed out.

Leaving it undetermined how far the ancient world were able to derive spiritual ideas from natural things, yet now that the key is presented to us by the Scriptures, we should surely be unpardonable if we did not avail ourselves of it; and to what extent this Topic may with propriety be pursued it is impossible to say. In general it may be observed that the whole volume of nature is available, and that by the several particular objects presented to our notice an easy ascent is afforded

"From nature up to nature's God,"

and to the several truths he desires us to know, and wherein we shall find part and counterpart more aptly indented than is generally supposed. While however the book of nature lies open before you, and invites your attention, the