A Goodly Heritage

Exod. iii. 13, 14.—“And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” We are now about this question, What God is. But who can answer it? Or, if answered, who can understand it? It should astonish us in the very entry to think that we are about to speak and to hear of his majesty whom “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of any creature to consider what he is.” Think ye that blind men could have a pertinent discourse of light and colours? Would they form any suitable notion of that they had never seen, and which cannot [pg 036] be known but by seeing? What an ignorant speech would a deaf man make of sound which a man cannot so much as know what it is but by

" I remembered God, and was troub1ed " Psalm 77:3 God is a being, whom it is impossible to contemplate with indifference. His character is so interesting, our dependence on him is so complete, and his favor is so indispensably necessary to our happiness, that a distinct recollection of him must always excite either pleasing or painful emotions. We must view him with dread and anxiety, or with confidence and joy. Agreeably we find, that the recollection of God always produced one or the other of these effects upon the mind of the Psalmist. It was usually productive of delight. My soul, says he, shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips; when I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches. But sometimes the remembrance of God produced on his mind very different effects. An instance of this we have in the psalm before us. My soul refused to be comforted; I remembered God and was troubled; I complai

“ The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet? ”– Matthew xix. 20. IN the preceding discourse from these words, we discussed that form and aspect of sin which consists in “coming short” of the Divine law, or, as the Westminster Creed states it, in a “want of conformity” unto it. The deep and fundamental sin of the young ruler, we found, lay in what he lacked. When our Lord tested him, he proved to be utterly destitute of love to God. His soul was a complete vacuum, in reference to that great holy affection which fills the hearts of all the good beings before the throne of God, and without which no creature can stand, or will wish to stand, in the Divine presence. The young ruler, though outwardly moral and amiable, when searched in the inward parts was found wanting in

“ The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet? ”– Matthew xix. 20. IN the preceding discourse from these words, we discussed that form and aspect of sin which consists in “coming short” of the Divine law, or, as the Westminster Creed states it, in a “want of conformity” unto it. The deep and fundamental sin of the young ruler, we found, lay in what he lacked. When our Lord tested him, he proved to be utterly destitute of love to God. His soul was a complete vacuum, in reference to that great holy affection which fills the hearts of all the good beings before the throne of God, and without which no creature can stand, or will wish to stand, in the Divine presence. The young ruler, though outwardly moral and amiable, when searched in the inward parts was found wanting in