SERMON I.

CREATION OF THE WORLD.

GENESIS i. 31.

And God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good.

If ever it might be said of any combination of words, that they bore upon their surface the stamp of a Divine original, of the first chapter in the Book of Genesis, we should be justified in making the assertion. There is no straining after effect throughout the whole passage,no effort, as it were, to rouse our curiosity or excite our wonder; but a statement of facts, delivered in language the very simplicity of which comes home both to our conscience and our understanding, and

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forces us to worship. Observe how the chapter opens: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." How perfectly simple is this, yet how sublime, how wide the range over which it carries our imaginations, how lofty the ideas which it stirs up in our minds. when we pass onwards, following, if I may so speak, the Divine Architect from stage to stage, and tracing his handiwork in each new creature as it arises, how tumultuous are the thoughts that crowd into our minds,-how deep, how profound, the reverence with which we are oppressed. I repeat, that if ever there was stamped upon the surface of human language proof that it came directly from God's dictation, in the first chapter of the opening book of the Bible we may clearly trace it.

Not, however, on this account alone, nor even chiefly, will the right-minded man choose to linger over the threshold of holy writ. There are lessons taught

in it so important, that without a just understanding of them, we need not hope to make the slightest advances towards a knowledge of God's will, and of our own duty.

I conceive, therefore, that the purpose which the following series of discourses is meant to serve, could not be effected at all, were I not to call in an especial manner the attention of my fellow-soldiers in Christ Jesus, to the great truths which are here shadowed forth, and to the moral considerations arising out of them.

The first lesson which we are taught in the opening chapter of the Bible is this, -that there was a period when earth, and air, and sea, and sky, were not,when time itself had no existence,—when the universe was God, and God the universe,-when the great First Cause of all things existed alone. I am well aware that though it is very easy to speak of these things, though it is no hard task so to fashion our words as that we shall seem

not only to possess knowledge ourselves, but to be able to convey it to others, the ideas excited in our minds, are, after all, vague and unsatisfactory; for of a state of existence so different from our own, and of a Being to whom there is neither past nor future, we neither are nor ever will be able to form any distinct notion. Men start and pretend that they see insurmountable difficulties in the doctrine that there are three persons in the one Godhead. I admit that we cannot comprehend that doctrine,-though I deny that the fact is either impossible or incredible. But I am quite sure that it is not more beyond the reach of our comprehension than that which forms the groundwork of all religion,—namely, that there is and must be, some being who never had a beginning, who never will have an end, and from whose will have arisen all the objects that the eye beholds, that the ear hears, that the hand touches, that the senses severally perceive.

At what precise moment this great Being began to exercise his goodness, by calling other beings into existence, we are no where informed. Moses neither enters nor was permitted by his Divine instructor to enter upon that subject at all. It may have been millions and millions of years ago, or it may have been as many thousands; that it was certainly long prior to the day when this earth was reduced from chaos into order, both nature and revelation assure us,-for the first, that is nature, gives evidence that the globe is of much older date than the era of man's creation; and the last, that is revelation, tells us very plainly that when the foundations of the world were laid, "the morning stars shouted for joy." Who were the morning stars? Unquestionably creatures possessed of reason and sense-probably the glorified spirits which surround God's throne; and if so, beings, who perhaps, having had, like ourselves, their period of trial, are now advanced to