SERMON S.

SERMON I.

GOD INSCRUTABLE IN HIMSELF.

JOB Xi. 7.

Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?

I ENTER this day, brethren, on a solemn subject. I am to speak to you of GOD! And when I have pronounced that sacred word, and have called up thereby all the various associations of which it is the representative and the expression, I feel a trembling steal upon me, and I sympathize with you in a pause of holy

awe.

For, if there be one thought above others which the doctrine we this day* commemorate Trinity Sunday.

*

B

presses on the mind, it is the Mystery of the Godhead: and if there be one feeling above others which is salutary to the soul; which is deeply practical, and lying at the very foundation of all religion; it is to be penetrated with this mystery, and to bow in adoration before its sacredness. The few glimpses of the Divine Nature which are given us, are vouchsafed, not to invite our scrutiny, but to excite our awe; they do not reveal to us the Godhead, but rather throw around Him a more dazzling blaze of glory.

I hesitate not, therefore, to assert that the Mystery of the Godhead is utterly beyond our comprehension: and that it is salutary, nay even necessary for us that it should be so.

1. The Mystery of the Godhead is utterly beyond our comprehension.-" Canst thou," says Zophar, in our text,-" Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?" where the very form of speech employed, (the interrogative,) declares at once, by the most emphatic method of negation, the impossibility of the discovery.

Nor have we simply this declaration of the sacred book, to assure us of the inscrutableness of God. In whatever way we contemplate the subject; whether by the help of antecedent

reasoning, or according to the testimony of experience; in either case we find it verified that the Mystery of the Godhead is beyond our comprehension.

For, what created being could ever comprehend its Creator? what finite grasp the Infinite? what temporal measure the Eternal? What know we even of the things around us, and within us? and how much less of Him who is the hidden ground and substance of them all! of Him in whom all live, and move, and have their being!

Take even the most common and familiar things around us; take the various objects of which sense appears to give so certain and so clear a testimony. What know we of the essences of these ?-these which are but created like ourselves; which are limited as we are; which lie within the bounds of time and space. It is but their appearances and forms that we discern; they convey to us no notion of their hidden nature: we think we know them, but we know them not.

And how inscrutable is man to man! We speak of friends and intimates; we know them, and we seem well known. But what is it that we see and know, and are familiar with? The manifestations only, the effects, the outward

phenomena, of mind and will.

Who ever saw

his friend himself? Who penetrates, that is, into the inward nature of the man ?-the workings of which nature, the issuings forth of it in word and act, are yet so visible and so familiar.

Nay, who is not a mystery even to himself? Even when we turn our attention inward; even when we dive most deeply into the recesses of our own mind, what see we and what know we there? still but appearances, and still the workings only of our spirit, the thoughts which issue from its silent depth, but not that spirit itself; not the essence of the man.

And if this be so with things created, how much more with the Creator! if with derived and finite minds, how much more with Him, THE MIND, THE SPIRIT, The Original and Underived, The Great First Cause of Being, GOD! Brethren, I believe it impossible for the highest Archangel to find out God; I believe it will continue to be thus impossible to all eternity:—with constant progress towards the source of Being; with growing knowledge of his workings and his will; yet still the Lord Himself will remain shrouded from all created view, and none "shall find Him out unto perfection."

And hence, you may perceive the necessity