ADDENDA TO THE NOTES.

SERMON I. (pp. 13-23.) It will be observed that no reference is made in this Sermon to the modern German discussion concerning the authorship, integrity, and date of the books of the Hebrew Canon here quoted. Such criticisms were partly unknown to the writer at the time when the Sermon was composed (1855); but they do not so much affect the question here discussed concerning the conceptions to which the Jews attained about God as the respective dates at which those conceptions became known. The view taken in the Sermon, being the one prevalent in England, supposes the general integrity of the Masoretic Canon, and assumes also that the different conceptions of Deity, commonly called the Elohistic and Jehovistic, related more to difference of thought than of time,--not being so much restricted to particular epochs of Jewish literature, but rather marking respectively different aspects of belief, — the priestly and the prophetic, the ethnic and the revealed. (The reference, however, in p. 21, of the authorship of the 139th Psalm to David on the strength of its title is most probably erroneous, on account of the Aramaisms which it contains.) This interesting subject of the Jewish names for Deity may be studied in Hengstenberg's "Authentie des Pentateuches" (vol. i.); De Wette's "Introduction to the Old Testament" (Eng. Trans., Part III. B. 1. ch. 1); Keil's "Lehrbuch" (p. 82); and Donaldson's "Christian Orthodoxy" (Appendix III.).

SERMON IV. P. 120 note, line 2, for "after" read "about," and for "50" read "40."

Pp. 124 et seq. The integrity of the writings of Isaiah, Zechariah, and the other prophets is here assumed without discussion, as it is not one of the questions in dispute with the Jewish interpreters. The Christology of the Old Testament, to which allusion is made in this Sermon, may be studied in Hengstenberg's work on the subject.

SERMON V., p. 152, line 11. Probably, however, Philo did not stand alone, but was merely one of a school, of which the other writers are now lost.

Pp. 155 (last line but one). For "western France" read "southern."

b

لمی

SERMONS

&c.

SERMON I.

THE GRADUAL DISCOVERY OF THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES
THROUGH SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE.

(PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY, MARCH 4TH, 1855.)

ISAIAH lvii. 15.

Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

In these words the prophet combines the majesty of God with His mercy, the magnificence of His infinite power with the tenderness of His unbounded condescension. It is this combination of attributes which men are apt to regard as almost incredible,— that He who inhabiteth eternity can yet dwell with a

B

being so inconsiderable as man. If

you tell them

of the greatness of God's nature, they think it impossible that He can concern Himself with reviving the spirit of the humble; or inform them that He stoops to dwell in the heart of the contrite, they can hardly imagine that He is the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity. If the Deity be exhibited as busied with what they deem insignificant, their inference is that He cannot be attentive to what is vast; or if He be represented as occupied with what is great, there is an immediate apprehension that the minute must escape His observation.

Nor is this disposition to separate the properties which the prophet combines more observable than the variation which it has undergone in different ages and under different circumstances. The progress, or alteration, which takes place in human opinions and belief is, though less observed, as real as that which occurs in the world of events. A rise and fall of empires is as truly going forward in the intellectual as in the historical world. Nor can there be a more instructive mode of viewing a truth than by showing the fluctuation of human thought in relation to it. Thus in reference to the present doctrine, there have been ages of the world when

1 It is probable that the sole permanent contribution to knowledge which the philosophy of Hegel will be found to have made, will be in its creation of the historic method of studying opinions,

those who held fast their faith (imperfect though it was) in Providence, have failed to ascend to the idea of a Being of infinite greatness, while those, on the other hand, on whose minds speculation had forced the conviction of man's unmeasured inferiority, have doubted that an unwearied Providence could be engaged on his behalf.1 And, in the present age, it is often found that those who believe in a special Providence on the authority of Scripture, do not understand that general Providence which is established by the evidence of science; or, that conversely insisting upon the administration of the universe by a system of general laws, they fail to reconcile it with the revealed account of God's interposition by miracles and special Providence.

It will not, therefore, I should hope, be an unprofitable employment if we trace by what means and with what degree of increasing evidence the two doctrines of the greatness of the Divine attributes and His condescending mercy have been made known to man; and, afterwards, attempt briefly to deduce from the subject lessons for our religious improvement.

a method which was in his system a necessity arising from his point of view, but which is worthy of imitation by those who differ from his motives and principles.

1 These doubts marked the philosophy of the early part of the last century which followed on the great discoveries which Newton had made in the preceding age. Pope's "Essay on Man" gives expression to such doubts, borrowed probably from Bolingbroke.