thing could rise up out of it; nothing could ever have existed since; nothing could exist now." God is, therefore, a self-existent God.-Paley's Theology. mensions. 3rd. "From the consent of all civilized nations some idea of a superior Being, and some species of Divine Worship having always prevailed." The following is a specimen of the high veneration with which the Supreme Being was regarded by the Hindoos :-"Brahma," that is, the Supreme God, from whom Brahma is only an emanation, existed from all eternity, in a form of infinite diWhen it pleased him to create the world, he said, "Rise up, O Brahma !" Immediately a spirit of the colour of flame issued from the deity, having four heads and four hands, emblematical of the four elements, and the four quarters of the world. Brahma, gazing round and seeing nothing but the immense image out of which he had proceeded, travelled for a thousand years in the anxious endeavour to comprehend its dimensions. But after all his toil he found his conceptions on that subject as dark as before. Lost in amazement, Brahma gave over his journey. He fell prostrate and praised what he saw with his four mouths. The Almighty then, with a voice like ten thousand thunders, was pleased to say, "Thou hast done well, O Brahma, for thou canst not comprehend me!" And a heathen. philosopher being asked by Hises, of Syracuse, "What is God?" demanded a day to consider of it. He returned and asked two. When they were passed he required four, and when they had elapsed, he requested eight. Thus he continued until Hises inquired the reason of such delays. Simonides then acknowledged," the more he considered the subject, the less he was able to reply." There is, therefore, the supreme and only God.- Vedas Maurice, Indian Antiquity. 4th. "From the creation of the world, and the order and usefulness of its several parts." "God is everywhere present by his power. He rolls the orbs of Heaven with his hand; He fixes the earth with his foot; He guides all the creatures with his eye; and refreshes them with his influence. He hardens the joints of infants, and confirms the bones when they are fashioned beneath secretly in the earth. He it is that assists at the numerous productions of fishes, and there is not one hollowness in the bottom of the sea but He shows himself to be Lord of it by sustaining there the creatures that come to dwell in it; and in the wilderness, the bittern and the stork, and the elk, live upon his provisions, revere his power, and feel the force of his Almightiness. Let everything you see represent to your spirit the presence, the excellency, and the power of God; and let your conversation with the creatures lead you unto the Creator, for so shall your actions be done more frequently with an actual eye to God's presence, by your often seeing him in the glass of the creation. In the face of the sun you may see God's beauty; in the fire you may feel his heat warming; in the water his gentleness to refresh you; it is the dew of heaven that makes your field give you bread." We never can exhaust the riches of nature in searching out the beautiful unity, harmony, adaptation, and variety displayed in the creation, and to maintain equally as to create this creation, there must be a power directed by a knowledge of all and every part, which implies that He is everywhere present, and all-seeing, is therefore Omnipotent or Almighty, Omniscient or All Seeing and All Wise, Omnipresent or everywhere present. "In the creation his divine goodness rests upon two propositions, which we may ourselves prove by giving a little attention to the aspirations of nature; that in most cases where his contrivance is visible, the design is beneficial. Second, that the Deity has superadded pleasure to animal sensations beyond what was necessary for any other purpose, or when the purpose, so far as it was necessary, might have been effected by the operation of pain."-Paley's Theology. Thus we see that God loveth to be gracious; He delighteth in the happiness of his creatures, nor would afflict any unnecessarily; let us trust Him that when he afflicts us it is as a father who chasteneth the son he loveth. Have you never felt your heart ravished with the merry burst of infant laughter? with the busy labours of the insect world, humming and buzzing and darting about in very ecstasy of possessing life? That heart is hard in nature, and unfit Nor feels their happiness augment his own. 66 5th. From the force of conscience, which reproves us when we do ill, and commends us when we do well.” Conscience is moral sensation. It is the instantaneous perception of good and evil; the peremptory decision of the mind, to adopt the one or avoid the other. By cherishing this quick feeling of rectitude, light and sudden as the flash from Heaven, and which is, in fact, the motion of the spirit, we instinctively reject what is wrong before we have time to examine why it is wrong, and seize on what is right before we have time to examine why it is right. An enlightened conscience, if kept tenderly alive by a continual attention to its admonitions, would especially preserve us from those smaller sins, and stimulate us to those inferior duties, which we are falsely apt to think are too insignificant to be brought to the bar of religion, too trivial to be weighed by the standard of Scripture." Yet by convincing us of sin in these particulars, conscience ever whispers, be ye holy, for God is holy, "without holiness, no man shall see God." Then God is a God of holiness.-H. More. 6th. "From prophecies and miracles, which could not have been if there had not been a God." God is then a being who has condescended to reveal himself. But a more direct proof of the being of a God may be derived from the universe itself; we are not only conscious of our own existence, but we also know that there exists a great variety of other things, both material and spiritual. It is equally inconceivable that these things should have fallen into this state by chance; and, conse→ quently, as there was a time when these things did not exist, and as it was impossible for them to produce themselves, it follows that there was some exterior agent or Creator to whom the world owed its beginning and form; that agent or Creator we call God." It is certain that all parts of the creation are suited to each other, as the eye is suited in every respect to the power of sight; the construction of a bird is suited to the power of flight. Also all the parts of creation are necessary to one another; the mineral kingdom is necessary to the production of the vegetable, the vegetable is necessary to the support of the animal, the animal returns to the mineral in one mysterious round. All this, as in the construction of a piece of mechanism, denotes contrivance by the maker to some end; now, "there cannot be design without a designer, contrivance without a contriver, order without choice, arrangement without anything capable of arranging, subserviency and relation to a purpose without that which could intend a purpose; means suitable to an end, and exceeding their office in accomplishing that end without the end ever having been contemplated, or the means accommodated to it. Arrangement, disposition of parts, subserviency of means to an end, relation of instruments to a use," imply the presence of intelligence and mind.—Paley's Theology. "No man hath seen God at any time." And this I believe makes the great difficulty. Now it is a difficulty which chiefly arises from our not duly estimating the state of our own faculties. That is, of the smallness of our capacities in relation to unseen things. We should feel very much provoked if, when we told a blind man that the earth on which he walked teemed with beautiful gay things called flowers, and noble stately trees covered with fruit delicious to look upon, he said he did not believe us, because he had never been able to see them so our capacities are confined, we can see nothing beyond the objects by which we are surrounded; yet let us not harden our hearts and distrust the word of One who can see all things. The learned know that all the great energies of nature, such as gravitation (whose laws cause the earth undeviatingly to revolve in its track |