the sacred records, and not convert them to your own destruction. Should we read them once, twice, or thrice, and understand them not, let us not relax in our assiduity, but still continue reading, praying, asking of others, that by our unwearied knocking, at the last, the door shall be opened. By so doing, the holy Scriptures will teach us patience in adversity, humbleness in prosperity, and will show us to whom we should look for aid and help in all perils; they will unfold to us, that God is the only giver of victory in all battles, and the rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Let us, my brethren, devote some portion of our time in this world, it is but short, to search the Scriptures thus we shall find them profitable in this life, and more profitable in the world to come. "If any man sin, there is no other way of being assured, that we shall not all likewise perish, but that contained in the Scriptures, which acquaint us that we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."-"If, therefore, thou shalt ask, saying, What shall I do to inherit eternal life? the plain answer is, Dọ

what is written in the Law and the Gospel. How readest thou? Seek ye out the book of the Lord, and read therein all the days of your life, that ye may learn to fear the Lord your God, and to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them.” So shall ye advance in the knowledge of salvation, so shall ye live in the fear of the Lord, so shall ye have faith in the atoning merits of Jesus Christ, by whose mercies, a resting-place is prepared for you, after your spiritual warfare shall be accomplished; and a crown of glory in the mansions of your heavenly Father is reserved for you, when your mortal body shall arise into immortality.

SERMON XV.

JOB XXXVii. 14.

"Stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God." THERE is no consideration, that tends more to extol the glory of Deity than that which dwells upon his noble works. Every thing, that he has called into existence, attests the glory and the benignity that belong only to the author. And nothing perhaps tends to establish so firmly the conviction of man's weakness, and God's irresistible strength, as the consideration of his magnificent and wondrous works. This indeed should be the object of all preaching; this the effect of all hearing.

The more we contemplate the wonders

of creation, the more the mind becomes lost; and it feels in an increased degree its inefficiency, as it continues to gaze upon the stupendous and marvellous works of God. It is to this inefficiency that we should be brought, before we can receive the full benefit of God's love and compassion, and appreciate, in its largest extent, the value of the redemption wrought out for his creatures.

But if we would see these works in their original perfection, if we would see the glory and the power of God resting upon them in their highest beauty and grandeur, we must turn our contemplations to the account which is given of them in the first pages of sacred history. From them we find, that at the word of God a world burst into existence, an earth at first "without form and void" became spread with the beauty and loveliness of order and perfection; light penetrated darkness; the sun was set to rule the day, and the moon to rule the night; the gathering of the waters, and the fixing of the firmament took place; the stars also, and every living

thing upon the earth began to be; even

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the herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind," "the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind; and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind;" and last of all, man, the masterpiece of the whole, endued with body and soul, impressed with the image of his Divine Maker, and framed for dominion over the inferior creation, and the attainment of eternal happiness. As the Omnipotent contemplated all that he had made, he pronounced them severally and individually very good; but man, the chief of all, he emphatically blessed, as he conferred the dominion upon him. In Eden, a divinely planted garden, was man's primitive abode; there the attributes of the Godhead were manifested with a clearness which was shortly dimmed; there God directly communicated with his creature, and breathed instruction unto him. Oh! when we contemplate these wondrous works of God, when we muse upon the grandeur and loveliness, that attended the