dispensed. We need but examine the course of nature to convince us of the fallacy of such an opinion. When any great calamity is impending over a city or nation, how often is it in the power of one or more persons to step forward and avert the blow! When an individual is on the eve of ruin, how common for a friend to interpose and prevent the danger! To look merely at the age of infancy, what instances have we in the kind offices of parents, guardians, and instructers, of continual mediation and benefaction. In these cases, surely God is the fountain of mercy: it is God that preserves the nation,-it is God that relieves the individual,-it is God that watches over the infant and rears it to maturity. But all this beneficence of the Deity is dispensed through the mediation of others. Indeed this is a mode of action characteristic of the Deity. We cannot see where the direct communication of his benevolence begins. Wherever we see the tide of mercy,-whether in the moral or the natural world,-we behold it flowing through a mediator. The arrangement is most wise, most gracious. It gives consistency and mutual dependence of parts in the natural creation; and it cements the moral creation in a union, the bonds of which are formed of love and gratitude, and all the amiable affections of the soul.

PERFECTIONS OF CHRIST'S CHARACTER.

NEVER was a character at the same time so commanding and natural, so resplendent and pleasing, so amiable and venerable, as that of Christ. There is a peculiar contrast in it be

tween an awful dignity and majesty, and the most engaging loveliness, tenderness, and softness. He now converses with prophets, lawgivers, and angels; and the next instant he meekly endures the dullness of his disciples, and the blasphemies and rage of the multitude. He now calls himself greater than Solomon; one who can command legions of angels; the giver of life to whomsoever he will; the Son of God who shall sit on his glorious throne to judge the world. At other times, we see him embracing young children; not lifting us his voice in the streets; not breaking the bruised reed, nor quenching the smoking flax ; calling his disciples not servants, but friends and brethren; and comforting them with an exuberant and parental affection. Let us pause an instant, and fill our minds with the idea of one, who knew all things heavenly and earthly; searched and laid open the inmost recesses of the heart; rectified every prejudice, and removed every mistake of a moral and religious kind; by a word exercised power over all nature; penetrated the hidden events of futurity; gave promises of admission into a happy immortality; had the keys of life and death; claimed an union with the Father, and yet was pious, mild, gentle, humble, affable, social, benevolent, friendly, affectionate. Such a character is fairer than the morning-star. Each separate virtue is made stronger by opposition and contrast; snd the union of so many virtues forms a brightness, which fitly represents the glory of that God who is invisible, who dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unte, whom no man hath seen

or can see.

CHRIST AND MAHOMET COMPARED.

Go to your natural religion, lay before her Mahomet and his disciples arrayed in armour and in blood, riding in triumph over the spoils of thousands and ten thousands, who fell by his victorious sword. Show her the cities which he set in flames, the countries which he ravaged and destroyed, and the miserable distress of all the inhabitants of the earth. When she has viewed him in this scene, carry her into his retirements: show her the prophet's chamber, his concubines and wives, and let her see his adulteries, and hear him allege revelation and his divine commission, to justify his lusts and his oppressions. When she is tired with this prospect, then show her the blessed Jesus, humble and meek, doing good to all the sons of men, patiently instructing the ignorant and the perverse. Let her see him in his most retired privacies; let her follow him to the Mount, and hear his devotions and supplications to God. Carry her to the table, to view his poor fare, and hear his heavenly discourse. Let her see him injured, but not provoked! Let her attend him to the tribunal, and consider the patience with which he endured the scoffs and reproaches of his enemies. Lead her to his cross, and let her view him in the agonies of death, and hear his last prayer for his persecutors, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." When natural religion has viewed both, ask which is the prophet of God?But her answer we have already had, when she saw part of this scene through the eyes of the centurion, who attended him at the cross; by him she said, "Truly this is the Son of God."

COMPASSION OF CHRIST.

How multiform are the miseries of human life! Yonder stands one, waiting for a hand to guide him. The eye is extinguished; and while day smiles on the face of nature, night gathers for ever round his head. There is another, whose ear never drank in a stream of melody-the organ is closed against strains which steal through that avenue into the heart of his neighbour-" he never heard the sweet music of speech," nor perceived the tones of his own unformed, untuned, unmodulated voice. Here is a third, who appears before me, without the power of utterance-the string of the tongue was never loosed, and he never spake the organs of speech are deranged, or were never perfectly formed-he hears tones which vibrate on his heart;-but he cannot impart through the same medium the same pleasurable sensation. These could not escape the compassionate eye of Jesus. He gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, limbs to the maimed, health to the sick, strength to decrepitude.- -But yonder is the chamber of death. Darker is the cloud that broods there. Where the tongue was silent, the eye was eloquent-when the palsied limb refused to move, the ear heard, and discriminated sounds which melt the passions, and stir the spirit within us: it was sad to tend the couch of sickness-but still we seemed to have some hold upon the sufferer, and he to have some interest in life. But that is the bed of mortality, and the young, the beautiful, the only hope of her family is stretched there and there is Jesus also, rousing her from death as from a gentle slumber, and restoring her

to the arms of her parents. There is yet another class of suffering worse than death. It glares in the eye, it raves in the voice, struggles in the limbs of that man, whose throne of reason imagination has usurped, and over the whole empire of his mind madness reigns in all its accumulated horrors. Visions-horrible visions of unreal and inconceivable objects float before his disordered senses, while he hears not, he distinguishes not, he regards not the voice of parent, or of wife, or of child, or of friend. The spirit sits surrounded by the ruins of nature, terrified amidst shattered, and useless, or perverted organs; and covered with the midnight of despair. Oh, let the compassionate eye of the Saviour fix upon this object!-and it does he meets him coming from among the tombs-he speaks the word-he calms the tempest-behold "the man sitting at his feet, clothed, and in his right mind." He gave "reason and understanding to the distracted, and release from the power of Satan, to those who were possessed by him."

THE UNSPEAKABLE GIFT.

WHEN God gave us his Son, he gave us an infinitely greater gift than the world, the Creator is infinitely more glorious than the creature, and the Son of God is the Creator of all things. God can make innumerable worlds by the word of his mouth; he has but one only Son, and he spared not his only Son, but gave him to the death of the cross for us all.

God's love to his people is from everlasting to everlasting; but from everlasting to everlasting