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nise it or not.

These glories exist in him like his eternity and almightiness. He is this glorious Being at all times and in all circumstances, whether ten or ten millions of worlds and spirits exist to become conscious of his being so or not. This reality of glorious nature appertains to himself, as he is, independently of every thing else. But the other species and sources of his glory must arise to him from what is external to himself, and depend upon the impressions, perceptions, and opinions of his sentient and reasoning creatures; and it is with these forms and kinds of glory to him, that we are concerned, and to which the sacred history of the world naturally and necessarily leads us, as its noblest study and most rational result.

For this glorious reality in himself, like genius or power of any sort in man, is not known to others until it makes such impression on them as will cause them to form some related or correspondent conceptions of it. Thus the Deity is always what he is; but what he is must be unknown by us, and we must remain unconscious of him, until by such ways or means as he shall think proper, he makes himself to be felt, perceived, and understood by us.

No great or glorious beings have really any sensation in themselves of their own perfections. They are what they are. It is natural for them to be so. They cannot be otherwise. Their feelings must therefore in this respect be the same as they would be if they were little or ignoble. The elephant is what he is, without any more sensation of his own greatness than the ant has of her petty size. Each is every thing to itself, and feels itself to be what it is; nothing more and nothing less. It is only by artificially comparing themselves with others, that they have any sensations or ideas of their greatness or superiority. We shall find this to be true if we compare ourselves with what we have been; we did not feel our mind or our natural self to be less as a child, than it is after we have become of mature age. No mind in itself and of itself feels at all greater in its manhood than it did in its play-ground or school-room. It is only by the comparison of memory that we discern, or rather infer that difference, of which we have really no positive sensation. Naturally, therefore, and abstractedly, from the factitious comparison which we may choose to make of ourselves with others, no one has any interior sense of his being either great

or small, either in mind or body, or of being superior to any other; although the deductions of our experience or selflove may soon begin to raise within us ideas and feelings of this description.

But the moral perfections of God are equal to all his other glorious qualities, and therefore in him, and in him alone, all that is most grand and transcendent is for ever subsisting without altering his magnanimous equanimity and prideless excellences. In him is all the fulness of the most glorious nature, but without any selfishness, egotism, arrogance, or vanity. He makes no ostentatious display. He creates, preserves, and governs in imperceptible quietude, silence, and chosen invisibility. Man loves parade. The Deity abstains from it.

But such a being cannot act or exist without effects, and operations, and intimations of his glorious nature becoming impressive in some mode or other, and in numerous ways, to his percipient creatures wherever they may be residing. If he creates, his power, skill, and goodness must be manifest in his creation. The sun cannot appear in the heavens unclouded, without our perceiving that he is shining, or without our receiving impressions from his radiance. A Napoleon or a Wellington cannot have great military talents without displaying them by his actions when in military commands. Thus impressions of the divine glory, and ideas of it from these impressions, must arise in the human mind as its senses become affected by the manifestations which nature, revelation, and daily providence make to us of it.

These impressions will be of two sorts, sensorial and intellectual. The sensorial will chiefly arise from the effulgence in which light is capable of appearing, and in which the noonday sun in a transparent sky causes it to appear; and from ethereal agencies on our other senses.

The Deity displays his sensorial glories to us, those of which we can have impressions by means of our bodily senses, in these ways:

1st. By effulgent light. This, however, he does not display by his own personal appearance with it, as that would annihilate our sense and life. But he displays it circuitously to us by the splendour of the stars, by the nearer and more diffused silver brightness of the moon, and by the overpowering radiations of the sun. It is from these sensorial

impressions that we form our strongest sensation-knowledge of his glory.

In this form it is accompanied with beneficence, quietude, and pleasure. In the lightning the same impression is made by light, under circumstances which intimidate; as also in the volcanic and other mighty conflagrations. Here light produces the sensations of what is glorious, but always commingled with awe and terror.

We imitate the effect of light in all our endeavours to display glory in human things. We attach splendour to them, radiations of light, in some degree or other.

In painting glory as an appendage to sacred things, it is always represented as encircling light.

2d. By awing sound. This excites a dismaying feeling within us. It produces a sensorial terror in the thunder and the tempestuous wind. Whether we will or no, it shakes our frame, it agitates our nervous system, and was meant to do so. The 29th Psalm describes his glory as thus exhibited, asserted, and conveyed to us.

This impresses on us the sense of that portion of his glory which arises from his power and dreadful might. The effulgent light exhilarates and pleases. The destructive lightning and the dismaying thunder and storm alarm, intimidate, and make us feel a dread of his formidable power. Both invest him and our sensations of him with the highest degree of majesty that we can feel and be conscious of.

3d. But there are another character and cause of his glory, and source of impressions of it in us, of a different kind, in the BEAUTIES and skilfulness exhibited, in such vast multiplicity, in his natural kingdoms. In studying these, we perceive and feel that he is the cause and creator of beauty, and of all that is beautiful; and likewise of all the admirable forms and motions that are visible in living things. Here we see beauty of figure, beauty of colour, beauty of position and arrangement, and every grace and beauty of all species of motion; of all that implies vigour, alacrity, majesty, soft. ness, and elegance of movement.

4th. From the same source arises a sense of his glory in his transcendent and universal GOODNESS, in the delicious, and useful, and delightful things which he has made in order to give us pleasure.

ALL these impressions are meant to lead our minds to

create and compose from them THAT GLORY which is his actual glory among us-our perceptions, and inferences, and opinions, and expressed judgments, and sentiments of it. It is we who must make this glory to him which is due from us, and which consists in our impressions, and opinions, and declarations, feelings, and descriptions of him.

Meaning that we should form conclusions and notions of this sort, and make them a part of our intellectual conceptions, thought, and language, he has selected the subjects, modes, and species of the glory of this sort which he chooses to have from us; and has therefore put those causes and means into action which lead us to our sensations of it, in its various compartments, as he wishes.

Our mind from the impressions and actions of these causative means will, if it be right principled, have the proper ideas and feelings of glory to him corresponding with his meaning

and wishes.

III. BUT the glory which arises to the Deity from these sensations and emotions of the human soul, will be in truth rather his productions than ours. They occur to us from his operations upon us; and our sense of his glory thus derived is quite different from that SPONTANEOUS tribute and offering of it which the human spirit alone on this earth has the capacity to give, and which, as our own voluntary formation, and as the conviction and homage of an intelligent judgment and decision, he desires most to receive.

THIS is the grand production which the sacred history of the human world should incline and prepare us to present gratefully and dutifully to him.

And THIS will be our actual perception and conviction of his wisdom, his goodness, his greatness, his moral and intellectual perfections, and therefore of his unceasing benevolence, beneficence, righteousness, and sanctity. We must feel that he is glorious in these, as he is in his material creations and celestial effulgences. We must convince our reason that he is "good to all, and that his tender mercies are over all his works."* We must study his principles, and providence, and sacred revelations, until we individually and distinctly perceive that he "is gracious and full of compassion slow to anger, and great in mercy." And above

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all things, that he is "righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works."* These last-mentioned feelings are those which we should be most careful to acquire and most steadily cultivate. For a conviction of the justice of God, of his perfect equity and righteous dealings with us all, and of his being pure from all partial wrong, or capricious, malign, and selfish motives, is that impression which is the most vacillating and imperfect in the minds of many of our fellowbeings. Yet it is that from which his greatest glory will always arise from his intelligent creatures.

He is so tremendously great and so irresistibly omnipotent, that nothing but his most perfect righteousness offers to the human spirit any safety or protection from destruction or undue infelicities. We see and feel that pain is abroad in this world, and that we are very sensitive to it here, and frequently suffer from it. What we thus know to be here may also be elsewhere. It becomes, therefore, of vast consequence to us to discern and know, however petty we are compared with him, yet that he is so perfectly just that we never shall receive pain from him or under his administration that is either unnecessary or unequitable to us. He must be as perfect in his righteousness as he is in all his other moral and intellectual qualities. For us, therefore, to perceive this, and to present our conviction and acknowledgment of it to him, as the decided, and firm, and abiding conclusion of our knowledge, experience, and reason, will be the highest tribute of glory which the human soul can offer to him, and which, as far as what we do can please him, is most likely to be the most acceptable to him, most desired by him, and most honouring on our parts to him.

Let us then at all times do him this justice; to cherish in our minds an unrelaxing certainty, that we shall always find him perfect in his justice to us all, and in every thing, and individually to each of us, as soon as we obtain sufficient knowledge of his operations with respect to us. Let us wait with patience, until what we do not perceive or cannot comprehend shall be satisfactorily elucidated to us. We expect this equity and consideration in our intercourse with each other. Let us also so conduct ourselves in all our thoughts and feelings with reference to him, whatever may be his pres

* Psalm cxlv. 17,

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