only; not his greatness and his power, and his sovereign authority, alone; not his general character of wisdom and benevolence merely; but "his Will," in that particular sense in which the term is used by Ananias to St. Paul, and by the Apostle himself in his Epistles,-his gracious Will, his purposes of condescending and forgiving love, his will to save sinners, and justify the ungodly, and bless the undeserving, and receive back to his arms the most desponding penitent who feels he is no longer worthy to be called his Son, and cries, "Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee." That Will which St. Paul extols to the Ephesians when he tells them "God has predestinated us unto the adoption of children to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace;"* and to the Galatians, when he says that Jesus "gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from the present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father." Such was the Illumination which St. Paul had need of, notwithstanding all his previous knowledge, and conscientiousness, and zeal, to render him a child of God indeed; such did he receive when "it pleased God who separated him from his mother's womb, and called him by his grace, to reveal his Son in him;" and such do we need also, such * Eph. i. 5. + Gal. i. 4.

we must by similar means receive, if we would rise into the faith, the love, the dignity, and the devotedness, of Christian men. O indeed we need it! Far more, all of us, than we have yet attained to! With far more comprehension of the breadth and length, and depth, and height, of that love of Christ which passeth knowledge, if we would be filled with all the fulness of God!

And how, then, let us thirdly ask, is this removal of our natural ignorance of God, this Illumination of the mind, which is so essential to the first upspringing of filial Piety in the heart, to be effected? In proportion, I reply, as we contemplate that full manifestation of God which has been vouchsafed to us in his own beloved Son, Jesus Christ. "The God of our fathers hath chosen thee," said Ananias to Saul," that thou shouldst know his will, and see that Just One and shouldst hear the voice of his mouth." He is the source of all true Illumination. From his countenance stream forth those rays of the Father's love, which fire the heart, and melt the will, of man. "As no man knoweth the Son, but the Father, so no man knoweth the Father, but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son shall reveal him." ""* "God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined into our hearts to give the light of the Knowledge of the glory of God in

*Matt. xi. 27.

"No man hath seen

the face of Jesus Christ."*

God at any time; the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." + "The Word was made flesh and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth"- that is, resplendent with just that peculiar glory which constitutes the very being of God, changeable grace or love. I might refer you simply to the history of man, to show you how, before the coming of Christ, this feature of the Father's character was dim and doubtful — how, among the benighted Heathen, fear made Gods, and cruelty invested them with attributes of fierceness and implacability-how, even among the Jews, though for the spiritual penitent there was many a ray of mildest pity gleaming through the darkness and the tempest of Mount Sinai, yet the general aspect of the law-giving, and the law-avenging Jehovah, was austere and stern, so that St. John declares "The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." But I would go farther than historical deduction, and assert broadly and beforehand, that it is not in Nature, in Events, or in Reason, to unveil to us, with a certainty sufficient for our Peace and Hope, the love of God towards man; and that in the personal communicaJohn i. 14.

the fullest, truest, most un

* 2 Cor. iv. 6.

+ John i. 18.

tions only which the Father has vouchsafed us by his Son can we truly know him as he is. What is called Natural Religion, is indeed, the ground-work of Christianity, but it can never be the substitute for it. It is the awakening of those feelings which prepare for, anticipate, nay demand, a Revelation from Heaven; but so far from rendering such a Revelation unnecessary, so far from having within itself the power of self-expansion so as of itself to grow up and unfold into Christianity; it is the

very

fact of its existence which renders a Revelation indispensable, as the supplement to its incipient, but insufficient, workings-it is the chaos of emotion which it stirs within the mind which requires the influence of the all-regulating and informing Word of truth. Because darkness covers the face of the earth and yet over that darkness the Spirit of life sits brooding, therefore God hath said "Let there be light!" The glimpses of the Divine character afforded to mankind by Nature and Providence, teach them indeed those preliminary lessons to which the fuller manifestations of Revelation are supplementary. But all those lessons of Nature and of Providence are dark, imperfect, perplexing, without the key which Christianity presents. They are the component letters of the Alphabet, but flung abroad without arrangement; and even when we do laboriously collect them

together, and piece out with them some few words and sentences; we find that we have only just begun the language, and got fragments only of the truths of God, and we instinctively cry out for more more definite, more extensive, more systematic, revelations of his will. All we reach is mere conjecture; and only by the interpretation of the Author of these fragments, only by the plainer history of the books of God, can we make full sense of-even if we can at all decypher the puzzling hieroglyphics on the vast and awful Pyramid of Nature, and the vague mysterious legends of Tradition.

Nay, yet more than this. Not only do the deductions of the understanding from the things and events around us, not tell us clearly of the gracious, Fatherly, character of God; but they tell us the reverse. We learn from them, not so much the truth of pardoning mercy, as of avenging justice. The world is full of punishment-prolonged, and often inexorable punishment. Almost every transgression and disobedience, manifestly receives its just recompense of reward. Not only wilful, but even involuntary or heedless infractions of the laws of Nature and Society, are by the natural course of things continually bringing with them trouble, pain, disease, and death. The voice of God concerning transgression, if spoken forth at all in Nature, is a