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SERMON III.

DELIVERED AT ARCH STREET MEETING-HOUSE, ON FIRST-DAY EVENING, SECOND MONTH, EIGHTEENTH, 1838.

The mind of God is unchangeably holy and benevolent.

It never was the doctrine of christianity, nor the doctrine of this religious Society, as a part of the christian church, that the mind of God was changed by the sacrifice of his well-beloved Son. The doctrine of truth is clear; that this sacrifice was the consequence of the unchangeable holiness and love of God; the result of the purposes of his mercy, for the restoration of fallen man; a consequence flowing from the unfathomable fountain of Perfect Wisdom; a means appointed by that Wisdom, into the depth of which, angels and archangels cannot scrutinize; much less can it be examined by the limited intellectual powers of poor, fallen, bewildered man. God has his own way and his own counsel. "For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? or who hath first given to him,

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and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things." Who art thou, who darest to sit in judgment upon the counsels of Infinite Wisdom, to dispute the declarations of that Being who is the very fountain and spring of all truth? "Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea." And wilt thou persist in bringing all things of a spiritual nature, and which have respect to the eternal and incomprehensible counsels of the Lord, as revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures, to the plumbline of thine own judgment? wilt thou have all things squared to the limits of thy powers of comprehension, thou, who art one of the bewildered and blinded race, whom the inspired writer so justly compares to the wild ass's colt?

The very first lesson to be learned in religion, is the lesson of our own blindness. Pride is our ruin; the pride of our own righteousness; the pride of our own wisdom; the pride of our own intellect. "The day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up, and he shall be brought low: and upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan, and upon all the high mountains, and upon the hills that are

lifted up, and upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall, and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures. And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low; and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day."

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The attributes of Jehovah subsist, individually, in infinite perfection; they can never thwart or interrupt each other; they are blended in the scheme of redemption, but not confused. There he has displayed to the rational universe, his perfect holiness and his perfect love, in glorious union, without confusion. In Christ, and Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness, mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." O, beloved friends, was it not a conspicuous sign and evidence of the holiness of our God, of the unbending and unalterable claims of his righteous law, that no less a sacrifice was sufficient to purge away the stains of the guilt of our fallen race, than the sacrifice of his well-beloved Son, incarnate in the nature of man? Is there not the motto of holiness, inscribed upon that mysterious dispensation, for the instruction of the admiring universe?—no; beloved friends; man could by no means give to God a ransom for his friend; mere man, no; not the highest of angels or archangels, the loftiest and most dignified of the creatures of God, could purge away the guilt of our lost and

fallen race. The eternal Word which was with God in the beginning, and was God; he by whom the worlds were made, and without whom was not any thing made that was made; he who dwelt in the bosom of his Father, before the world was; he who said, "Before Abraham was, I am ;" and again; “I and my Father are one;" he before whom the once doubting, but now believing Thomas, in reverent prostration spake, and said unto him, "My Lord, and my God;" he of whom the apostle spake, when he said, "without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh;" he, according to the eternal counsel of a perfectly holy God, could alone bear the burden of thy sins, my brother, my poor, wretched, unbelieving brother, whoever thou art, and the burden of the sins of the whole world; a burden which Omnipotence alone could bear.

And if there be in this assembly, those who are convinced of sin, and know the terrors of the Lord, and are baptized into a sense of the malignity of sin, they dare not take refuge in any thing short of an omnipotent Saviour; there is no peace for their spirits, in any mere creature of God; they dare trust in no arm but the arm of Jehovah. They know the truth of the language, "I am God, and beside me there is no Saviour."

And there are those in this strange deluded world, who frequently call Jesus, our Saviour, and yet utter

ly deny that divine character, nature and power, by which alone he can be our Saviour. And, friends, I well remember what a noble testimony was borne upon this subject, by our honorable elder, George Fox, when he was a very young man, and when, by a long course of suffering and conflict, he had been baptized into a living sense of the suffering of his Lord; and when the priest of the parish asked him the question, What could be the meaning of our Lord's agony and bloody sweat in the garden of Gethsemane, and of that awful cry in nature's dark hour upon the fatal cross," My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"-he answered and said, that Jesus was then bearing upon himself, the burden of the sins of all mankind. And the priest acknowledged that it was indeed a very good answer. And so it was, a very plain, simple, noble testimony to the eternal truth as it is in Jesus, which the cavil of the skeptic, and the artillery of the unbeliever, shall never, never shake.

And beloved friends, if ever there was a proposition at variance with the soundest principles of true philosophy, it is the proposition current in this evil day, That no man is required to believe that which he cannot comprehend. O strange fatuity! What, my brother, canst thou not perceive the difference between those things which are contrary to reason, or in other words, disproved by reason, and those things which are beyond reason; beyond the

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