too great to be measured by the short line of any created understanding.

How comfortable is it, that this eternal God is your God, yours in all that he is and hath! He is an eternal good and possession to them whose God he is. Earthly enjoyments and comforts are but perishing things, so that they are miserable who have their portion in these: but O, how happy are ye in the enjoyment of him whose " years cannot be searched out!" It is that God who hath neither beginning nor ending, that is your God; and your interest in him abides firm. He is from everlasting to everlasting God; and so long as he is God, he will be your God: " For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even unto death." He is your God, not for a year, or an age; yea, not for millions of years or ages only, but “for ever and ever." Hence it is that he makes over himself to you in the covenant of grace under the notion of the eternal God: "The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” He is the eternal God; and so long as he is God, he will be a never-failing spring of joy and peace to your soul. He will be your God while he hath any being; and when all earthly comforts fail you, he will be your abiding portion. "My flesh and my heart faileth," says the psalmist," but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever." Yea, even when you are dead he will be your God still; as he is "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," now some thousands of years after these patriarchs are dead. And he will be your God to all eternity. In heaven you shall fully reap the blessed fruits and advantages of a covenant interest in God. Hence it is said, "And God himself shall be with them, and be their God: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. Then shall you be ever with the Lord." Your happiness in the enjoyment of him

will be eternal.

O how comfortable is this! What a blessedness is it to have a saving interest in an eternal God.

Seeing he is the eternal God, let this engage you, who are believers in Christ, to trust in him, and depend on him for the accomplishment of his promises. God's eternity is a great ground of trust. "Trust ye in the Lord for ever; for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength." As his truth, so his power is eternal; they always have been, and will be to eternity, the same: so that what he hath promised he cannot fail to perform. Therefore, when his people despond, as if he had forgotten his promises, or are weary of doing good, he calls them to reflect on what they had heard of his eternity: "Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?" His eternity is the assurance of his ability to make good his promises. Men may be sincere in making promises, yet death may soon put them out of all capacity to perform. But God cannot fail of making good his word, because he is "the Eternity of Israel." So it is said, "The Strength of Israel (Orig. the Eternity of Israel) will not lie." The psalmist beats us off from trusting in men, because of their frailty and mortality, and infers the happiness of such as trust in God from his eternity: "Put not your trust in princes," says he, "nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish. Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God;-who keepeth truth for ever." When men die, their purposes and promises die with them, but God lives for ever. Therefore trust in him, and

depend on him through Christ for the performance of what he hath promised.

It is a great support to faith and hope, to take frequent views of God's eternity. His power, wisdom, goodness, mercy, truth, are matter of comfort to his people; but what comfort were there in any of these, if he were not eternal? Without eternity, all his other perfections were but as glorious withering flowers.

Is he not worthy of our choicest affection and perpetual love, who is not only lovely in himself, but eternally lovely, and is from everlasting the centre of all excellency and perfection? Indeed he alone is worthy of our love. We lose our love when it is laid out on perishing things: therefore our interest, as well as our duty, obligeth us to set our love on him; for he is an object that cannot deceive our affection, but will be eternally possessed by all them that love him.

THE GLORY OF GOD.

The excellency, majesty, and glory of any person doth exceedingly heighten the offence committed against him. O then, of what a horrid and heinous nature must sin be, seeing it strikes against the glorious majesty of God, in comparison of whom the whole creation is less than nothing! Hence it is that there is an infinite evil in sin, in regard of the object against whom it is committed, viz. the glorious God. It is a dishonour done to him whose name alone is excellent." Hence the apostle says, Through breaking the law, dishonourest thou God!" It is a despising and vilifying him as unworthy to be obeyed or regarded; a preferring base things and sinful satisfactions, to his favour and communion with him. Sin strikes against the glory

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of all his attributes. It is a despising his power, a contempt of his justice, a disparaging his wisdom, a rebelling against his sovereignty, and a disgrace to his holiness, which is the glory of all his attributes. If the glorious God should appear to you, and give you but one glimpse of his excellent glory, you would then entertain other thoughts of sin, and of yourselves for sin, than ever you had formerly. O, how would you loathe yourselves, as base, vile, and unworthy before him! The truth is, it cannot be conceived, much less expressed, what a dishonour sin is to God. And this is that which every gra cious soul doth chiefly notice in his sad reflections upon his sin. So did David; Against thee," says he, "thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight."

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The consideration of the divine glory may comfort believers against the sense of their unworthiness, in their addresses to God. You are sometimes under such a deep sense of your own vileness and unworthiness, that you cannot think to find favour in the eyes of the Lord. But be not discouraged; for, though you find nothing in yourselves to be a ground of your confidence and hope, yet God finds enough in his own glorious name, as an argument for doing you good, when you come to him through Christ. His great aim, in all the dispensations of his grace, is "the praise of his glory." His design is to manifest and set forth his glory. Therefore he pitches upon such vile and unworthy creatures to be the objects of his grace, that he may be the more glorified. God would not have so much glory, if the poor creatures, to whom he shows favour, were not so vile and unworthy. And sometimes he brings sinners under a deep sense of their own vileness and unworthiness, that the glory of his grace may be the more manifest to them.

The Lord's being the God and Lord of glory, gives

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believers ground to expect a glorious and happy state in the world to come. He is our God, and he is the King and Lord of glory, infinitely glorious in himself, and the fountain of all glory. O then, what glory may you expect in the life to come! All that are his, are made like himself: they are the partakers of the divine nature." He puts a glory upon them, even in this world: They are glorious within, and perfect through his comeliness, which he puts upon them." But he will put a far greater glory upon them in the world to come. Then you shall find him a Lord of glory; then you shall be like this glorious God, after another manner than you are now. He will then put such a glory upon you, as will be admired by all beholders, "when he shall be glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that believe." Ye who are the children of this glorious God shall, on that day, be clothed in garments of glory; you shall be wholly glorious, in soul and body. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." Your bodies shall then be “raised in glory." How beautiful and glorious shall they be, when they shall shine like the sun in its meridian lustre? And your souls shall be apparelled with glory; not the least scar or blot of sin shall be upon them, but the work begun in sanctification, shall then be perfected in glorification.

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GOD'S GLORY OUR CHIEF END.

The glory of God is the chief end of our creation and being. It was this God chiefly intended and aimed at in making man. For seeing every rational agent proposeth some end to himself in what he doth; therefore God, being an infinitely wise agent, must have some end in the creation of man; and there being nothing higher or better than his own