the earth before thee, fhall not the fentiment of thy infinite grandeur and our infignificance overwhelm us with a facred awe whenever we meditate on thee, on thee, the eternal fource of all that is and ever will be, on thee, the Potentate, the Almighty, the Onlywife, the Creator, the Sovereign and Ruler of all times and all worlds. Yes, we feel the immense distance that is between thee and us, feel that thou art all in all, and how vain and impotent we are, and penetrated by this fentiment we adore thee in the profoundest reverence, as men, as the offspring of the dust are able to adore thee. Oh that this sensation might never entirely forfake us! Might we never be unmindful of thy greatness and our nullity! Never forget who thou art and who we áre! Never forget, how far thy thoughts and ways are above our thoughts and ways! In what a totally different light would all thy regulations and inftitutions then appear to us! With what obedience fhould we then revere thy commands! With what refignation and confidence fubmit to all thy difpenfations! How much more equitably fhould we judge of thy decrees and of thy doings! God, do thou thyself raise and strengthen our minds now that we are going to meditate on thefe exalted objects. Let a ray of thy glory illumine the night that ftill •furrounds us. Teach us as truly and as reverentially to conceive and judge of thy thoughts and ways as they can be conceived and judged of by children of men. We implore it of thee as votaries of thy

fon

fon Jefus, our faviour, and addrefs thee farther in his name: Our father, &c.

ISAIAH, lv. 8, 9.

My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, faith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, fo are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

EVER, my devout audience, never does man

betray more weakness, never is he in greater jeopardy of falling into the groffest errors, never is he guilty of more ridiculous vanity, of more culpable perverseness, than when he makes his thoughts, his judgments, his views, his procedure a standard for the thoughts, the judgments, the views, the procedure of the Almighty, the Eternal and Infinite, the fupremely perfect mind. And how often notwithstanding is he guilty of this folly! How frequently does he not endue the supreme being with his limitations, his weaknesses, his paffions! How often does it furprise and perplex him, that the world, that the fortunes of himself and his brethren are not regulated in fuch a manner, as he thinks just and proper! How frequently does he require, expect, demand certain things unconditionally of God, because they to him feem fit and neceffary, and then surrender himself to murmurs and difcon

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tent, if they do not fall out exactly as he had determined they fhould! How frequently does he find fault with the regulations, the difpenfations of the Allwife, because they coincide not with the plans which he has chalked out, because instead of being fquared by the rules of his human, narrow and fallible way of thinking, they are r eu lated by the laws of infallible wifdom and infinite love! Hear

ye, who are so prone to forget the greatness of God and your nullity, and thus are liable to fall into fuch deviations, what the Lord himself declares to you by his prophet in our text, and learn from thence to think and judge more humbly. My thoughts, fays God, my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, fo are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Oh might this grand, this important truth be ever prefent to our minds, might it be the leading principle of all our thoughts and determinations on matters of divine concern, the conftant rule of our deportment! Come then, my pious hearers, let us at present bestow our whole attention on it, and deeply engrave it in our hearts. To this end we will on one hand inquire, how and wherein the thoughts and ways of God are different from our's; and on the other hand examine, what obligations we thence lie under in regard to our judgments and our conduct.

God's thoughts, my dear friends, God's thoughts what an unfearchable abyfs to the human intellect!

Who can form the leaft idea of the manner how God thinks! Is our own faculty of thinking an unfathomable mystery to us! Are we lost even in the labyrinth of our own thoughts! Do we at all understand how one thought arifes, how one thought begets another, how one is connected with another, how they all fubfift together, fucceed each other; how they congregate, accumulate, fettle, wax faint and obfcure, brighten up, retreat, prefs forward in our mind; how they become judgments, principles, determinations, motives to numberlefs different actions; how they create in us defire or averfion, pleasure or pain, ecftatic joy or agonizing torment; how they fet us and through us fo many other things in motion and activity! And how should we be able to fathom, ascertain the manner how God thinks? No, but this we know, that his thoughts are not our thoughts, that his mode of thinking is not our's, that the feveral limitations and effects of our apprehenfion must be far from him. But this we know, that in him, the confummately perfect mind, no fuch toilfome generation, no fuch tedious, oft interrupted progrefs, no fuch mixture of light and darkness, of certainty and doubt, of truth and error can have place, as is in our and more or lefs in every created intellect. No, to him must all appear at once, all immediately, all in the brightest luftre, in the most natural order and connection, without the leaft pains or exertion. In his infinite intellect must be pure light, unclouded truth, pure infallible certainty.

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certainty. His ideas must comprehend with equal perfpicuity all worlds, all æras, all the poffible, all the actual, the small as well as the great, the course of the planets and the fall of the withered leaf, the intellectual system of the foremost of his heavenly ministers and the invifible motion of every animated and inanimate atom. This we learn from reafon, this we are taught by fcripture, of this the conception of a first, eternal, all animating and ruling caufe, the conception of the most perfect mind, the father of fpirits, allows us not to entertain a doubt. But at present we are encompaffed by impenetrable fhades, that conceal the Infinite, the Incomprehenfible from our prying eyes. Yes, his thoughts are not our thoughts, they are as far fuperior to our's as the heavens are higher than the earth. If we are humiliated by this truth, if it oblige us to feel our abfolute nullity, it likewife raises and fooths us again, by calling us to admire and adore an intelligence, incapable of error, of weakness, that furveys all, embraces all, beholds and judges all according to truth, that never needs to alter its plans and never can fail of its defigns.

And the ways of God, my dear friends! How far are they too above our ways! How different is his mode of proceeding from ours! What quite other means he ufes to attain his ends, than we? How far his adminiftration differs from the admini ftration of the wifest and best of earthly monarchs! This is a neceflary confequence of his infinite intel