for can man look on God and live? but you see him in the manner best adapted to your feeble powers, to the station which you hold among his creatures. You behold him in his works; in the happiness of the beings which he has formed; in the course of human affairs; even in the midst of your afflictions. Does not this suffice you? Is it not enough to inspire you with gratitude, to dispel doubt, to enjoin resignation, to awaken hope, and confirm faith?

What proofs or evidences, my brethren, can we desire? Because God does not make himself more fully known to us, shall we not thankfully receive the knowledge which we have? Is it not an immense privilege of our being that we know any thing of the Father at all? and, when we consider the prodigious disproportion between the Creator and the creature, how wonderful is even that little knowledge which we possess! How much this knowledge has been improved by the revelation of Christ, I propose hereafter to explain; but, at present, can we be deaf to the voice of nature herself? and is it possible that we should not behold her august form rising and addressing us in the very same words of tacit reproof with which our Lord addressed his disciples ? "Have I been so long time with you, and yet have ye not known me? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how say ye, then, Show us the Father?"

These reflections have been suggested to me from contemplating the character of the age in which we live as an age of philosophical inquiry. Men are no longer satisfied with surveying the outward appearances of things; they follow nature into her deepest recesses ;

and, both in the material system and in the course of human affairs, they are eager to explore those leading and general laws, by which many detached and apparently contradictory particulars may be connected and reconciled. The attempt is great, my brethren, and worthy of man; and the success which it has met with in every department of human knowledge encourages him to proceed. Yet why should it have happened, that the noblest of all the occupations in which the mind of man can be engaged, should ever be suspected to have any alliance with the lowest and most degrading imagination which he can form; and why should those whose great object it is to elucidate the fair volume of creation, while, with one hand, they point to the order and wisdom which it displays, be supposed capable of forming the vain and impious design to blot out, with the other, the name of its gracious author? Why should philosophy and religion, which are so closely joined, ever be imagined capable of disunion? or why should those who are followers of the one ever miss the path which leads them to the other?

I doubt not that the popular suspicion which pursues the philosophical character, is in a great measure to be ascribed to the mean jealousy of narrow and bigotted opinions; and I know that, in this country at least, there are men, the purity of whose devotion is commensurate with the extent of their science. It is, however, melancholy to reflect, that any foundation should have been given for so black a stigma on the philosophy of our age, that any "stars should have shot madly from their spheres," or that any name which the votaries of science repeat with gratitude and veneration, should be

associated in our minds with the dark impressions of impiety. It is sad to think that "offences have come." "But woe to those by whom the offence cometh!" These prophetic words, my brethren, have, in our time*, been fulfilled; and in those countries in which the investigations of philosophy have been more productive of pride than of piety, the fury of the sword is at last giving instructions which all the beauty and beneficence of nature had inculcated in vain. Driven out from the

scene of his domestic repose, a wretched outcast on a miserable world, more than one" dark idolater of chance" is, I doubt not, at this hour raising his eye to heaven, and crying in the bitterness of his soul, "show us the Father." Our day, my brethren, is not yet come; and may that paternal arm which has hitherto been held over us, still cover our heads with its protecting shield! Yet the decree may have gone forth, and the hand-writing may already have appeared upon the wall." Thou, too, hast been weighed in the balance, and art found wanting."

These reflections call upon us all to be serious. They call upon those who are advanced in life to root out from their minds every sentiment or opinion which may oppose itself to the knowledge of God, to open their hearts, and to contemplate, with renewed spirits, that mighty display of wisdom and love which everywhere surrounds them. If they have not yet known the Father, these reflections call upon them to know him now; and they send them, not to any hidden fountain of knowledge, to any dark inquiry, but to that book of

* 1807.

nature which is open to every eye, and which many are so curious to explore. Parents are called upon to impress the principles of piety on the hearts of the young; to "show them the Father;" and while they supply them with the means of instruction in every branch of liberal knowledge, to point out to them those traces of wisdom and benevolence in nature, of which all science is full, and without the perception of which all science is unsatisfactory and dead. Teach your children to have minds superior to that miserable folly which would represent religion as the refuge only of the weak and ignorant; show them, by your own example, and by the example of the great and good in every age, that it is the true source of all genuine dignity of mind. Be not too anxious about their success in the paths of worldly ambition, or in the acquisition of external and fallacious accomplishments; inspire them, above all things, with the love of God and of virtue; "show them the Father, and that will suffice them."

F

SERMON VI.

ON REVEALED RELIGION.

ST. JOHN, xiv. 9.

"Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou, then, Show us the Father ?"

THE request of Philip to our Lord led me, my brethren, in a former discourse, to point out that reply which it might have received from the suggestions of nature, even if he to whom the request was addressed had not give the answer which you have now heard. "Show us the Father (said Philip), and it sufficeth us." Nature, as we have seen, might have replied, you behold him "wherever you live, and move, and have your being" in "the heavens, the work of his fingers, the sun, and the moon, and the stars, which he hath ordained" in the earth, which he "hath founded upon the seas, and established upon the floods." in "the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas:" in "man, of whom he is mindful, and the son of man whom he hath visited, whom he hath made a little lower than the angels, ana hath crowned with glory and honour."