by making "the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the strong." He has guarded us by the very character of the doctrines of his unsearchable wisdom-for they were such as to appear to the learned Greeks, and to all who trust in their own human wisdom, and endeavour to search by it the deep things of God, but foolishness.

Guarded, therefore, by God's carefulness for us, and lessoned by his word, let us, my brethren, learn to cast down our high things of human attainment before God's everlasting wisdom. Let us remember, that the day is coming when many who are first in men's estimate, will be last in the standard of God's judicial scale-when the humblest peasant, who knows his God and his Bible, will be exalted above the prince or the philosopher, who knows them not. Be it ours, then, to sit down at the feet of Jesus, with our Bibles in our hands, and in the spirit, fearfulness, and filial dependence of little children, learn of Him who is meek and lowly; and then, whatever be our human learning, however high our attainments in natural knowledge, that awful thanksgiving of Him who is the wisdom of God, will not be written for our condemnation, but descend upon us with the sweetness of its promise" I

thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." Amen.

159

SERMON IX.

Hebrews x. 28, 29.

“HE THAT DESPISED MOSES' LAW DIED WITHOUT MERCY UNDER TWO OR THREE WITNESSES: OF HOW MUCH SORER PUNISHMENT, SUPPOSE YE, SHALL HE BE THOUGHT WORTHY, WHO HATH TRODDEN UNDER FOOT THE SON OF GOD, AND HATH COUNTED THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT, WHEREWITH HE WAS SANCTIFIED, AN UNHOLY THING, AND HATH DONE DESPITE UNTO THE SPIRIT OF GRACE?"

THE book of God is the great discovery of God to man, and the great discovery of man to himself—if that indeed can be called a discovery of God, which yet wraps up the Deity in such unsearchable mysteriousness—if that can be called a discovery of God, which overshadows the principle of his conduct, and the measures of his dealings with souls, in intense obscurity, and bows the eye of reason before the height and depth of that abyss which rests upon the bosom of eternal wisdom, and compels us at every moment, as we move through the page of revelation, to cry out, "Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself!"

"Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself." My Christian friends, you, upon whom the shinings forth of the eternal presence have descended, in this book of wondrous discovery, do ye not feel this? Do ye not feel it, at times, coming over your heart in awe and in terror, and giving a pause to those self-flatteries and easy confidences, with which, in the moment of carelessness, we are apt to say, "surely no harm shall happen us?" Do ye not feel it knocking at the conscience, or stealing over the pulse of the soul with strange misgivings, respecting that eternity in which God resides, and in which you yourselves must yet reside, under the sweet lighting down of his love, or the dark goings forth of his judgment for ever? I think you have felt this; I am sure I have often felt it in the very deep of my inmost soul; and seldom do I open this book of God, without being made sensible in one measure or other, that the wisdom of God is a "hidden wisdom," "a wisdom hid from ages and from generations"—and still but partially, and in broken and detached fragments, and in ways fitted to humble the reason, and check the aspirings, and bring down the high things of man, revealed,

The two first great facts respecting the ways of God, which stand before us in Scripture,