the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, and shall gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other! Oh! Lord God, our Saviour and ONLY King, prepare us to meet thee at that, thy last and glorious appearing, and tune our hearts and lips, around thy throne, to the eternal song of Moses and the Lamb! Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth; the kingdoms of the WORLD are become the kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ. Glory be to Him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb for ever and ever! HALLELUJAH !

419

SERMON XVII.

1 Cor. xv. 28.—" And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.”

HERE is plainly declared a change in the government of God toward his creatures, or, at all events, towards the inhabitants of this lower world, who, having been bought by the blood of his Son, and sanctified by his Spirit, shall be raised to the inheritance of the saints in light. And this shall be immediately consequent upon the resurrection from the dead, and the final award of bliss and woe which shall then issue to the wicked and the just, from the mouth of Him that shall sit upon the throne. God shall be all in all.

We mean not that the eternal and self

subsistent Deity, who is, and was, and is to be, in his ineffable and all-containing essence, has suffered, or can suffer, any the minutest change in himself. If He could experience the smallest shadow of turning, or diversity in his essence, He would cease to be what he is, GOD. The universe would have nothing to rest upon! And being removed from the adamantine and everlasting foundation on which, through all its orders, animate and inanimate, it is built, it would sink into the abyss, and become nothing-mere shadow and emptiness. But, albeit almighty God changes not, absolutely and in himself, and admits of no succession, yet there is succession in his outward dealings and dispensations; as, each in its own place and order, they issue forth out of the depths of his secret counsels, and obtain their existence in time.

All things, material and immaterial, are lifted up into stages of order and beauty in a ladder whose top is lost in the com

ing glories of eternity, each higher than the former! And though each, as it mounts into a loftier sphere, grows out of its former self, yet, being in many ways distinct, it involves, necessarily, new laws, and new manifestations of God! And even if, instead of rising, a world, material or intellectual, should sink towards the pit, the perfect fitness and harmony of things, ever tending to unity and consistency, still involve a corresponding change in relation to the Godhead.

It is the same sun which pours forth a full flood of light and glory, and makes manifestations of God's creative power in ways inconceivable to us, to the orbs that roll nigh to him; and which sheds a comparatively wan and feeble light upon the planets, which, like our own, with duller energies and a more meagre creation, are further from the fountain of light and life. It is the same sun, in the glories of the sunset, and the power of the noonday, in the obscurity of the mist or of the cloud, and the thousand diversities to

which, in the eyes of men, his aspect and influences are always subject. The change is relative-it lies not in Him, but in us.

The world in which we live, though alike in all its forms, under the laws and government of the Supreme, is subject to them, not only with difference of degree, but an essential difference of nature. God looks, with a diverse aspect, upon each of its orders! He lays his almighty hand, with a varying pressure, upon them. Under one set of laws, strictly resistless and mechanical, is put that mysterious work of his creative will, matter, the condition, as it would appear, and substratum of the universe, from which, by reason of its subtle intercourse with spirit, even souls and intelligences receive their first impressions, and are wakened into conscious

ness.

Under a constitution, built upon the first, yet greatly more complicated, and in some respects wholly distinct, are placed the living things, with which the whole material universe is tenanted and quick