ward, the irresistible energy which seems to dash the several elements of being one against another, the more does our sense of dependance become oppressive and we crouch before the Invisible as a slave before his master, a captive before his conqueror. Hence the costly expiations by which the terrified savage endeavours to propitiate the spirit of the storm, the demon of the various ills in which he is involved. Hence the trembling awe with which the more enlightened Greek contemplated the march of inexorable fate, and whispered to himself, "O never may my spirit dare to set itself against His stern decrees!" Hence the "fear which hath torment," into which even the mind of Job began to sink when he mused on his calamities and exclaimed, "He breaketh me with a tempest, he multiplieth my wounds without cause; let him take his rod away from me, and let not his fear terrify me. Is it good to thee that thou shouldst oppress, that thou shouldst despise the work of thine hands?" And hence," the spirit of bondage," which made the Israelites "remove and stand far

off from God," and cry to Moses," Speak thou with us and we will hear, but let not God speak with us lest we die." When we bring together in our minds the greatness of God, and the littleness of man, we feel that we must be at an immeasurable distance from Him; that there can be no recipro

city, no communion, no friendship, no affinity between the Strong and the feeble; the Everlasting and the momentary, the tremendous Creator and the abject creature. "The consideration of nature," says Neander, in his History of the Church, "raised, indeed, in the minds of thinking men, the dim suspicion of an infinite and Almighty Spirit not to be judged of by the limits of the human understanding. But this sense of Deity did not strengthen, elevate, or animate their minds, but rather abased and prostrated them, for there was involved in it the accompanying sense of their own littleness and nothingness, and they knew no mediating truth by which these two conflicting feelings might be reconciled and held together in peace. They saw nothing but the gulph which stretched between the finite and the Infinite, the mortal and the Immortal, the Almighty and the impotent; and they knew no means by which that gulph might be filled up. The God whom they imagined to themselves was only a being elevated infinitely above degraded man, not a being related to him, inviting him to his bosom, nay stooping condescendingly to his infirmities. Only the Majesty, not the Sanctity, nor the Love of God, filled their souls."

Some other element, therefore, besides the fear of God's authority, and the recognition of his ever

present working, is essential to a healthy piety. The sense not only of dependance and subjection, but of affinity and friendship; the spirit not of a slave but of a child; the knowledge not of one who looks on merely, on the workings of a stranger, but who communes with, and enters into, the mind and purpose of a friend. We must know God not as our Creator only, and our governor, but as our Father; not as above us only, but within us; as connected with us, not merely as he is connected with unconscious matter or unreasoning life, but as a parent with his offspring, as mind with mind and soul with soul.

And this is just that other element of Piety which revelation supplies us with, and which Christianity makes alive and predominant within the heart. The Scripture doctrine of the origin, the nature, and the destiny of man, and the Scripture promises of the spirit which the Gospel should infuse into him, exactly meet the difficulty, answer the demand, and do away the terrors, of natural Piety. They afford the supplement it needs: the reconciling truth; the animating assurance, the new-creating life, which tempers veneration with love, abasement with elevation, and sacred awe with filial confidence. Him whom we ignorantly worship they declare to us. God that made the world and all things therein, they proclaim not

far from every one of us, for we are his offspring.

For it is carefully to be noted that the Scripture doctrine concerning man takes him out of the mechanism of material things, and elevates him far above the rank of a mere animal creature into that of a son of God. All things were made by God, but man, we are

told by revelation, was made moreover, like God. All other living creatures the earth brought forth at God's command, but concerning man He said, "Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness;" and though his body was formed of the dust of the ground, yet his soul was breathed into him by the Spirit of God. "The Spirit of God," says Job, "hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life." "The dust, indeed," says Solomon, "shall return to the earth as it was; but the spirit shall return to God who gave it." "He," says St. Paul," is the Father of spirits." And it is the great object of that Apostle in his address to the Athenians, to raise their minds above the grossness of idolatry by reminding them that God was to be found, not around them and above them only, but within them, in their own souls," for in him we live and move, and have our being, and we are all his offspring,” — of his race, bearing affinity to him, so as no material things can do, partakers

of his spirituality, and the image of his eternity. Which truth is expressed by St. Luke, when he calls Adam the son of God; and is constantly brought before us by our Lord, by the favourite appellation which he uses and encourages his followers to use for God; " heavenly Father."

your Father," your

In the consciousness then, of this relationship to God-the assurance that we are not the mere insects of a moment, and of the race of earth alone, but members of that whole family in heaven and earth, which constitutes the intellectual sphere in which the Father of spirits dwells,—in this assurance, and in the elevation of mind, the expansion of heart, the energy of will which it inspires, consists the proper piety of man that piety which connects us in heart and will with the God whom we adore, and has its conversation in heaven as its home, and brings us to dwell in God and God in us. With this Adam was created, and this he enjoyed when God communed with him in the holy garden, and the divine wisdom rejoiced in the habitable part of the earth, and her delights were with the sons of men. And this, Jesus, the second Adam, exhibited in all its quiet grandeur, when he walked in uninterrupted communion with his Father, and the angels of God ascended and descended upon the Son of man, and though he had come down from heaven he was still in heaven," speaking and acting not