sacred. Let the rights of the meanest insect, which are the gift of its Creator, and which imply life and enjoyment, when they do not interfere with the happiness of other beings, be scrupulously attended to. But are there no rights which belong to God? Are there no Duties incumbent upon us in consequence of these? Are the rights of God to be disregarded, and are the duties which they command to be neglected with impunity? If there be a right which belongs to God, it is the sincere worship of his creatures. If there be a duty incumbent upon Man as his creature and beneficiary, it is to pay Him this worship. To violate this right to withhold this duty — I tremble when I think on its malignity. If there be any who act in this manner, it is impossible that they can see their conduct in its true light. I am not speaking of persons, but of things. I am not applying this censure in any degree to those who are sincere, however erroneous their opinions may be, however faulty their

practice. I am speaking of insincerity to God, of which, as God, the searcher of hearts, is perhaps the only witness, let God the searcher of hearts be the only Judge. Let us not judge our brethren, but let us take care, above all things, that the judgment do not fall upon ourselves. Whatever be our intellectual imperfections, whatever our moral defects, let us not be chargeable with insincerity to God in any the least instance. Let us ever remember that God is a Spirit, and that they that worship him, must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.

LECTURE XXXII.

THE subject of the present Lecture being the Eternity of God, it becomes us to enter upon it with the utmost modesty and diffidence. We have nothing in our minds which bears the least analogy to Eternity or Infinity. We must, therefore, expect to meet with difficulties whenever our thoughts are employed on these awful characters of the Divine Mind. The difficulties present themselves to us in every step of our progress. Thus, for instance, an Eternity now past is what our feeble understandings cannot conceive. It appears to us that every point of duration which is now past was once present, and that if it were once present, it was once future. The same dif

ficulty occurs in conceiving of an eternity to come. It appears to us that every point of duration which is future will be present, and that if it will be present, it will also be past. Thus are we involved in insurmountable difficulties whenever our thoughts are employed on so exalted a subject as Eternity. At the same time the idea of Eternity will force itself upon our minds, and we cannot but receive it, how vague and imperfect soever it may be. In this case we must suppose that the reasoning which is applied to a part, which is all that our minds can conceive, does not apply to the whole, which they cannot grasp. The difficulty, however, does not lie in conceiving of God as eternal, but in forming a notion of Eternity in the abstract; and if we can satisfactorily prove the former, any objection or difficulty which may be brought against the latter ought not in the least to affect our belief, as it is, in fact, no argument against the Eternity of God, much less against his existence and his

other perfections, but only an argument of the weakness and imperfection of our understandings, which cannot but aspire at an object too great for their capacity.

Now that God is, in the strictest sense, from everlasting, will evidently appear from the following considerations. Every being in the universe must either be underived, which is all that we mean by self-existence, or owe its existence to some other being. That neither we ourselves, nor the material system around us, are self-existent, is too obvious to need to be insisted upon. Every thing that we behold is both derived and dependent, and nothing more so than ourselves. But to imagine an infinite series of derived and dependent beings is evidently absurd, and instead of solving the difficulty in any one case, only increases it to infinity. The first Cause of all things, therefore, must himself be underived, and if this be the case, He must have existed from all eternity; for as his existence is without a cause, it must likewise be without a be