a regimen as this-and well may we rejoice in the strict order of the goodly universe which we inhabit, and regard it as a noble attestation to the wisdom and beneficence of its great Architect.

But it is more especially as an evidence of his truth, that the constancy of Nature is adverted to in our text. It is of his faithfulness unto all generations that mention is there made-and for the growth and the discipline of your piety, we know not a better practical habit than that of recognising the unchangeable truth of God, throughout your daily and hourly experience of Nature's unchangeableness. Your faith in it is of his working-and what a condition would you have been reduced to, had the faith which is within, not been met by an entire and unexcepted accordancy with the fulfilments that are without! He has not told you what to expect by the utterance of a voicebut he has taught you what to expect by the leadings and the intimations of a strong constitutional tendency-and, in virtue of this, there is not a human creature who does not believe, and almost as firmly as in his own existence, that fire will continue to burn, and water to cool, and matter to resist, and unsupported bodies to fall, and ocean to bear the adventurous vessel upon its surface, and the solid earth to uphold the tread of his footsteps; and that spring will appear again in her wonted smiles, and summer will glow into heat and brilliancy, and autumn will put on the same luxuriance as before, and winter, at its stated peri. ods, revisit the world with her darkness and her storms. We cannot sum up these countless varieties of Nature; but the firm expectation is, that throughout them all, as she has been established,

so she will abide to the day of her final dissolution. And I call upon you to recognise in Nature's constancy, the answer of Nature's God to this expectation. All these material agents are, in fact, the organs by which he expresses his faithfulness to the world; and that unveering generality which reigns and continues everywhere, is but the perpetual demonstration of a truth that never varies, as well as of laws that never are rescinded. It is for us, that he upholds the world in all its regularity. It is for us, that he sustains so inviolably the march and the movement of those innumerable progressions, which are going on around us. It is in remembrance of his promises to us, that he meets all our anticipations of Nature's uniformity, with the evolutions of a law that is unalterable. It is because he is a God that cannot lie, that he will make no invasion on that wondrous correspondency which he himself hath instituted between the world that is without, and our little world of hopes, and projects, and anticipations that are within. By the constancy of Nature, he hath imprinted upon it the lesson of his own constancy-and that very characteristic wherewith some would fortify the ungodliness of their hearts, is the most impressive exhibition which can be given of God, as always faithful, and always the

same.

This, then, is the real character which the constancy of Nature should lead us to assign to him who is the Author of it. In every human understanding, he hath planted a universal instinct, by which all are led to believe, that Nature will persevere in her wonted courses, and that each succession of cause and effect which has been observ

ed by us in the time that is past, will, while the world exists, be kept up invariably, and recur in the very same order through the time that is to come. This constancy, then, is as good as a promise that he has made unto all men, and all that is around us on earth or in heaven, proves how inflexibly the promise is adhered to. The chemist in his laboratory, as he questions Nature, may be almost said to put her to the torture, when tried in his hottest furnace, or probed by his searching analysis, to her innermost arcana, she by a spark, or an explosion, or an effervescence, or an evolving substance, makes her distinct replies to his investigations. And he repeats her answer to all his fellows in philosophy, and they meet in academic state and judgment to reiterate the question, and in every quarter of the globe her answer is the same-so that, let the experiment, though a thousand times repeated, only be alike in all its circumstances, the result which cometh forth is as rigidly alike, without deficiency, and without deviation. We know how possible it is for these worshippers at the footstool of science, to make a divinity of matter; and that every new discovery of her secrets, should only rivet them more devotedly to her throne. But there is a God who liveth and sitteth there, and these unvarying responses of Nature, are all prompted by himself, and are but the utterances of his immutability. They are the replies of a God who never changes, and who hath adapted the whole materialism of creation to the constitution of every mind that he hath sent forth upon it. And to meet the expectation which he himself hath given of Nature's constancy, is he at each successive instant of time, vigilant and ready

in every part of his vast dominions, to hold out to the eye of all observers, the perpetual and unfailing demonstration of it. The certainties of Nature and of Science, are in fact the vocables by which God announces his truth to the worldand when told how impossible it is that Nature can fluctuate, we are only told how impossible it is that the God of Nature can deceive us.

The doctrine that Nature is constant, when thus related, as it ought to be, with the doctrine. that God is true, might well strengthen our confidence in him anew with every new experience of our history. There is not an hour or a moment, in which we may not verify the one-and, therefore, not an hour or a moment in which we may not invigorate the other. Every touch, and every look, and every taste, and every act of converse between our senses and the things that are without, brings home a new demonstration of the steadfastness of Nature, and along with it a new demonstration both of his steadfastness and of his faithfulness, who is the Governor of Nature. And the same lesson may be fetched from times and from places, that are far beyond the limits of our own personal history. It can be drawn from the retrospect of past ages, where, from the unvaried currency of those very processes which we now behold, we may learn the stability of all his ways, whose goings forth are of old, and from everlasting. It can be gathered from the most distant extremities of the earth, where Nature reigns with the same unwearied constancy, as it does around us—and where savages count as we do on a uniformity, from which she never falters. The lesson is commensurate with the whole system of

things-and with an. effulgence as broad as the face of creation, and as clear as the light which is poured over it, does it at once tell that Nature is unchangeably constant, and that God is unchangeably true.

And so it is, that in our text there are presented together, as if there was a tie of likeness between them-that the same God who is fixed as to the ordinances of Nature, is faithful as to the declarations of his word; and as all experience proves how firmly he may be trusted for the one, so is there an argument as strong as experience, to prove how firmly he may be trusted for the other. By his work in us, he hath awakened the expectation of a constancy in Nature, which he never disappoints. By his word to us, should he awaken the expectation of a certainty in his declarations, this he will never disappoint. It is because Nature is so fixed, that we apprehend the God of Nature to be so faithful. He who never falsifies the hope that hath arisen in every bosom, from the instinct which he himself hath communicated, will never falsify the hope that shall arise in any bosom from the express utterance of his voice. Were he a God in whose hand the processes of Nature were ever shifting, then might we conceive him a God from whose mouth the proclamations of grace had the like characters of variance and vacillation. But it is just because of our reliance on the one, that we feel so much of repose in our dependence upon the other-and the same God who is so unfailing in the ordinances of his creation, do we hold to be equally unfailing in the ordinances of his word.

And it is strikingly accordant with these views,

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