are gratified and regaled in various ways? Are not motion and reft, labour and recreation, the works of nature and the works of art fources of most agreeable sensations? Canft thou ever use one of thy limbs, without admiring its pliancy, its manifold utility, its accurate connection with the body, and rejoicing in the many good purposes to which thou canft make it fubfervient? And who has endowed thee with thefe organs of fenfe, with thefe curiously contrived members? Who eftablifhed this relation between them and outward objects? Is it not God, and must not the God who has thus constructed thy body, be love? And thy mind, o man, which can notice, apprehend, enjoy, rejoice in all this; thy foul, which can think, with consciousness think, collect, compare, affociate its ideas, lay them up for future use and increase them to infinity; thy mind, which can inquire, examine, difcover, conclude from vifible objects concerning invifible, from the effects infer the cause, afcend from the creatures to the creator, and at once take in both heaven and earth, time and eternity; thy mind, which is fufceptible of the pleasure that springs from the knowledge of truth and the inceffant advancement in it, is able to entertain the exalted hope of immortality, to procure itfelf, in the most fequeftered folitude, in the profoundest shades of night, the pureft, the fublimeft joys, and feels that it is defigned for ftill fuperior delights: how diftinctly does this testify, that God is love, that he has created thee for happiness and made thee capable of it to an eminent degree? Yes, God is love; this is confirmed alfo by our moral nature. We need not follow the mere impulfe of mechanical forces, not blindly act by irrefiftible inflinct. We may propofe to ourselves aims, pursue, attain them -can chufe between the good and bad, the better and the worse, clearly known principles and perceptions, act upon strive after higher perfection and approach it perpetually nearer. We are capable of adopting a legitimate rule of conduct, of generous fentiments, of difinterested, magnanimous actions, of fpiritual, empyreal pleasures - can continually enlarge our fphere of action, improve our condition, strengthen and increase our abilities by exercife, refine and dignify our nature, and become ever wiser, ever better, ever more godlike; we can participate with the deity in the pleasure of pure beneficence. Could our mind and our heart more diftinctly fay, God is love? Yes, affuredly he is love, for, Likewife within us, his creatures and children, he has implanted a love for one another, has affociated with every fentiment and exertion of love, felicity and joy, with every defect and every violation of it grief and mifery; has fixed in our hearts the ftrongest propenfity to fociability, to intercourfe, to intimate connection with one another, the strongest propenfity to compaffion, to relief, to beneficence, to the mutual communication of our fatisfactions and plea pleasures; has made every true friend of humanity honourable to his brethren, and impreffed him as it were with the stamp of divinity, and whenever, hoodwinked by felf-intereft and paffion, we act contrary to it, we thus put ourselves in an unnatural, violent, extremely difagreeable state, cease to be contented and happy, and feel, more or less, that we have thereby obfcured the fairest lineament of the divine fimilitude in us, and belied our celeftial origin. Thus clearly, my dear friends, does all nature, and particularly the nature of man, attest that God is love! And the fame thing is loudly proclaimed to us by religion in general and by chriftianity in particular. God is love: this we are taught by the scope and defign; this we are taught by the whole fubject-matter of religion. Or what may be the defign of religion? Is it to impose burdens upon us, to make us melan. choly, faint-hearted, to forbid us all pleasure, or to mingle it with bitterness, to infpire us with dread and horror of God, to render us gloomy, fullen, unfocial, to make us felf-tormentors? Nay but exactly the reverse of all this. It is designed to alleviate to us the unavoidable burdens of life, to level and cheer the path of it, to fweeten its bitterness, to refine and multiply its innocent pleafures, to preferve us from folly and fin and thereby from the generality and the greatest of evils, to lead us to wifdom and virtue, and by their means to the enjoyment of the pureft fatisfactions, to give us hope and confidence in God, to teach us moderation and contentment, to form us into fincere and active friends of humanity, and even to make the afflictions of life beneficial and the thoughts of death confoling. Such, my dear friends, is the defign and appointment of religion: fuch the affectionate purpose of the God from whom we received it! And what is the tendency of its doctrines, its precepts, its promises? Are they not all calculated to diffufe life and joy and happiness within us and without us? Or, Is the deity not love, who reveals himself to us as the creator, the preferver, the fovereign, the father of the universe and of all mankind; who certifies us that his watchful eye of providence extends to all, even beneath the minutest affairs of mankind, to the feemingly lefs important actions of the fenfible and inanimate world; that the lilies of the field owe their little honours to his forming hand; that the fall of the meaneft fparrow is not disregarded by his ob. ferving eye; and that in his book, not only the lives of men, but the very hairs of their heads are numbered, that he knows our neceffities and defires before they are formed into prayer, that he is never far from any one of us, though far indeed removed from us in his effence, he, by his influence furrounds us all; that this paternal affection is not confined to any one fect or nation, but diffufed in one common care over all the fons of men: that in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted of him: that he inhabits inacceffible - light, undifcerned, indifcernible by men; that yet he is not indolent and inactive to neglect or forget us, but that without his confent nothing can befall us, that he is conftantly near us with grace and help? Is that God not love, who allows us, who commands us, with filial frankness to approach him, to pour out our hearts without referve before him, and always to expect the best of his paternal providence? Who like a tender parent recalls even his prodigal, guilty children from the error of their ways, giving them to know, that he is ready to receive them again, to fpare them, to forgive them their fins and failings, to fave them from their fatal confequences, to conduct them to happiness, if they will only turn to him, change their temper and their courfe of life and submit to be led and guided by him? Is that God not love, who prohibits us nothing except what is hurtful to ourselves and our brethren, what would be degrading both to them and us, would diminish and difturb more elevated pleafures, rob us of more lafting fatisfactions, and bring pain and mifery upon us; and enjoins us nothing but what is good and profitable in itself and in its confequences, what procures to us and to others health and life, vigour and vivacity of mind, tranquillity of heart, contentment and joy, what may promote and confirm the general intereft equally with our own, our present and future happiness? Is that God not love, who is fo entirely defirous that all men. hould come to the knowledge of the truth, and |