to his will, saying, "I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." All this facts confirm, not less clearly than Scripture declares it. It is alike demonstrated under both dispensations, that, if the Lord have a people on the earth, it is the doing of the Lord. The more largely any man is a subject of mercy, the more readily he ascribes it to God's good pleasure. No nation has first sent up its cry to Heaven for mercy until the gospel has been sent to it; and, with individuals as with nations, where their cry has ascended for mercy, the grace of God. has been beforehand, prompting its utterance,

It is, indeed, the frequent suspicion and complaint of the ignorant and proud heart, that such exercises of sovereignty is arbitrary and capricious, or cruel and unjust. But, as regards those who are not included in the election, it is enough to silence all such dishonouring sentiments, that, if they, have not been made the objects of especial electing love, yet neither are they dealt with but in perfect righteousness, according to their works; and, while there is to others a manifestation of peculiar favour, yet, instead of denouncing it as partiality, in any sense which would insinuate the charge of caprice, it were wiser and better far to infer that, because derived from himself, the grounds of his election are all worthy of his perfection, grounds of highest reason, though too high for us to reach; of most perfect rectitude, which, in due time, he shall most fully vindicate.

It.

This election of one people as a peculiar people has, indeed, been regarded by the enemies of Revelation as inconsistent with his greatness and his grace, as the God and Father of all the family of man. narrows our conceptions of his nature, it has been said, to see him represented first as a household God, as the God of Abraham, and to the last, when Abraham's seed had become a nation, a mere national God, as, like the gods of the heathen, confined in his possessions, and confining his care and kindness to a chosen few. But the specialty of this relation to his

people does by no means countenance the idea of limitation, either in his nature or his dominion and providence. It is certain that he was known to Abraham, as God, all-sufficient-the possessor of heaven and earth. When the announcement was made afterwards to his seed, of the signal distinction conferred upon them as God's peculiar people, it was introduced by the solemn consideration of his sole Divinity and universal Lordship: "Behold, the heaven of heavens is the Lord thy God's; the earth also, and all that is therein. Only, the Lord thy God had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and to choose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day." The language of the law asserted the same name and property for him, as the Maker of heaven and of earth. Even the Jewish worship, in addition to the sacrifice connected with the covenant of peculiarity, required the offering of other sacrifices to him as the universal Lord. And, in later times, when the Spirit of God had dictated the songs of Zion, and introduced them into the service of his worship, the courts of God's house resounded with anthems and hallelujahs to him as God of gods, and Lord of lords-as God himself alone. To these songs Christians still have recourse when they would find terms the best fitted to express their most enlarged and exalted conceptions of God's glorious majesty, as over all, blessed for ever. It is, therefore, most unjust to object that the choice of a peculiar people exhibits the God of Israel as little, if at all, distinguished from the gods of the nations, and as only sharing, along with them, the empire of the earth; and, if it seem to limit his love and benignity, that he should thus visit one nation with an especial favour, which he withheld from the human family at large, the fact must be admitted, nor are we able to show its accordance with an infinite love. But that does not alter the fact, which is as Scripture has testified. Men are not all on an equality, in respect either of natural or spiritual advantages; and though this, in man's fallen state, is easily reconciled with equity, and, if he knew all,

might be found in equal harmony with love, we can only now resolve it into the sovereign pleasure of our God, and ought, as taught by the Redeemer, to say, in adoring acquiescence, "Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight."

II. It is now time to proceed to the consideration of those events in the history of the Jewish people, by which, in carrying out the designs of their election, they were formed into a distinct and independent people. Their peculiar relation to the Lord, as their God, was not merely nominal. In making them a people, he would distinguish and bless them above other nations; and, accordingly, at the time of the promise, as you well know, he brought them forth by a mighty outstretched arm from a state of abject and oppressive bondage-led them through the wilderness of Sinai, amid signs and wonders of great power and goodness, and at length established them as a free and independent nation, in the land which he had promised to their fathers to give it to them for an inheritance. I need not here enter into a detail of these events. Nehemiah thus recounts them with devout and admiring gratitude, before the Lord, saying, "Thou art the Lord who did choose Abram, and broughtest him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees, and gavest him the name of Abraham, and foundest his heart faithful, and madest a covenant with him, to give him this land of the Canaanites, and hast performed thy word, for thou art righteous! And didst see the afflictions of our fathers in Egypt, and heardest their cry by the Red Sea, and showedst signs and wonders upon Pharaoh, and on all his servants, and on all the people of his land; for thou knewest that they dealt proudly against them. So didst thou get thee a name, as at this day.. And thou didst divide the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea as on dry land, and their persecutors thou threwest into the deeps, as a stone into the water. Moreover, thou leddest them in the day by a pillar of cloud, and in the night by a pillar of fire, to give them light in the way they should go; and gavest

them bread from heaven for their hunger, and broughtest water out of the rock for their thirst. Yea forty years didst thou sustain them in the wilderness, so that they lacked nothing: their clothes waxed not old, and their feet swelled not. Moreover thou gavest them kingdoms and nations, and broughtest them into the land concerning which thou hadst promised to their fathers, that they should go in to possess it. And thou subduedst before them the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, and gavest them into their hands, with their kings and the people of the land, that they might do with them as they would. And they took strong cities, and a fat land, and possessed houses full of all goods, wells digged, vineyards, and olive yards, and fruit trees in abundance. So they did eat and were filled, and became fat, and delighted themselves in thy great goodness."* As we read these rècords of the history of the chosen people, we are forcibly struck with the evidence they afford, that the God of Israel is of great power-that there is no might nor counsel against Him-that, while heaven and earth and sea are all under his control, his resources are independent of, and superior to, them all—and that, without and beyond their instrumentality, he is able to defend and deliver and provide for his people, according to his pleasure.

But, not to dwell on the display of his almightiness, which the frame of the heavens and earth, as originally established by him, may be said yet more signally to illustrate, we must not overlook the love of God to his people, which appears in these acts of his power. While yet they lay sunk in the depth of misery and debasement, his love is seen melting in compassion over their sorrows, and working out deliverance from their grievous bondage. When now they have been redeemed in his love and pity, and have gone forth under his charge and guidance on their journey to the promised land, his love appears towards them in the great wilderness, providing for

*Neh. ix., 7-26.

their preservation from every danger, and for their supply in every want. When, again, amid all the proofs of his watchful and faithful care over them, they persist in their murmurings, and their rebellions, and their unbelief, and show neither gratitude for past mercies, nor confidence in his faithfulness for their future need, his love is manifested in the riches of his patience and long-suffering and forbearance toward them. And, still, when neither judgment nor mercy prevented their backslidings and their breach of covenant, instead of casting them off, his love continued unchanged and undiminished, and he wrought for his name's sake, to bless them and do them good, according to the design and tenor of the covenant that he had made with their fathers.

Under the new covenant, which he has since estáblished with his spiritual people in Christ Jesus, this feature of Jehovah's nature is yet more signally glorified. In the forms of compassion for the miserable and the lost-of patience with the perverse and ungrateful and disobedient-of rich and boundless beneficence toward the guilty and undeserving-he manifests the exceeding riches of his grace and mercy. In his goodness to the house of Israel, as regards their national experience, it may be truly said, that, whether you regard their redemption from Egypt, their conduct through the wilderness, or their establishment in Canaan for an inheritance, he has never so dealt with any nation. And his spiritual Israel have to record and acknowledge a goodness closely analogous to, but infinitely surpassing it; a redemption from spiritual foes, achieved not by the sacrifice of Egypt, but of God's own Son in the flesh- -a safe conduct through the great wilderness of the world, amid dangers the most formidable to the soul, and in circumstances naturally destitute of all that is required for the support and comfort of a spiritual life and a promised inheritance, equally sure, and as far surpassing the glories of Canaan as the substance exceeds the shadow, and heaven earth, and eternity time: these are the parallel, but far more precious expressions of