the creation, and degrade ourselves to the condition of brutes ?

God declares that he is a jealous God, and that he will not fuffer worship or adoration to be paid to any thing in heaven above, nor in the earth beneath, nor in the waters under the earth: no created being is to receive fuch honors. Had our Saviour, therefore, been any other than the only begotten Son of God, could worship and adoration be paid him, confiftently with the law of God? Yet David, writing under the influence of the Holy Spirit, fays of the Meffiah, (Pfalm xciii. ver. 2.) Thy throne, O God, is established of "old: thou art from everlasting;" and, (Pfalm ii. ver. 7.) “I will preach the law

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whereof the Lord has faid unto me: "thou art my fon, this day have I begot

ten thee." St. Paul, in his epiftle to the Hebrews, in the firft chapter, is ftill more explicit. I would recommend to fuch of my readers as may have any doubts on this fubject, an attentive perufal of this chapter, which feem to have been written purposely

purposely to remove fuch doubts. For the fake of brevity, I fhall confine myself to the second and fixth verfes. In the for

mer, we learn that God hath in these "laft days fpoken unto us by his Son, "whom he hath appointed heir of all

things, by whom alfo he made the "world;" and, in the fixth verse, " And again, when he bringeth in the first begotten into the world, he faith, and let "all the angels of God worship him.”

To all thefe forcible confiderations, I cannot help adding one, which may make a great impreffion upon fome people: that when hereafter we fhall be in the prefence of the Author of all our happiness, and remember what he fuffered to purchase it for us, it will be impoffible not to pay the trueft worship; and God will never, we may hope, impose upon his creatures a prohibition of what the best feeelings of their nature will dictate.

him

Let us, then, refign ourselves entirely to God, who will, in his own good time, fully fatisfy us on all thofe points at present

hidden from us, nor expect in this world the knowledge reserved for us in another. How delightful it is to a pious and inquifitive mind, to contemplate on an eternity, employed in the conftant acquifition of wifdom! We fhall then have a more perfect knowledge of our God than even our first parents had in their state of innocence.

When we confider how fin has darkened our understandings, fhall we proudly contend with the Almighty, and reject thofe mercies and bleffings he offers us, because they are fo great as to exceed our comprehenfion! We are all ready enough to exert ourselves, nay, even to risk our lives, in the fupport of our worldly interests: let us not, then, tamely fuffer ourselves to be deprived of those glorious advantages offered us under the characters of the adopted fons of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, by a fenfelefs idea of the all-fufficiency of human reafon! let us hold faft our faith in Him, who is able and willing to fave us; let us, in all fituations of life, endeavor to prove ourselves

his true and faithful fervants, nor suffer any trials or difficulties, much less the vain arguments of those who would fet up their own reason as an unerring guide, in oppofition to revelation to induce us to facrifice that character of our Lord, without which all our most valuable privileges would fall to the ground.

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5. And the light shined in darkness, " and the darkness comprehended it not."

The Jews were under the peculiar care of the Almighty, and styled his own people: they were intrufted with the divine law from God himself: this law was a type or shadow of good things to come. The ceremonial part was a reprefentation of what our bleffed Saviour was to fuffer, to redeem loft mankind; but, in procefs of time, those bleffings which were intended to make the Jews more virtuous and humble than the reft of mankind, had a contrary effect, and they became noted for their pride and hypocrify. They trusted

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more to the outward ceremonial than to the fpiritual part of their religion; therefore, when the fubftance was come, they refused to give up the types and fhadows. They expected that their Meffiah fhould have been a powerful fovereign, and that their government, inftead of continuing under the yoke of the Romans, fhould become the first of empires. Under this delufion, when the true Meffiah came, clothed in meeknefs, without any worldly pomp or grandeur, they rejected him, although he offered to release them from a far greater bondage than that of the Romans. With fuch prepoffeffions, it is not furprizing that "the light shined in darkness, and the "darkness comprehended it not.'

The blindness of the Jews to the fcriptures which were intrufted to their care, and all the punishments they have drawn down on themselves for their want of proper attention to them, may furnish us with a good leffon.

To be inattentive to so great a blessing as is bestowed upon us in the holy writings,

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