and deliver up the Kingdom to God even the Father," the Author of the whole-" that God may be all in all." Glorious Consummation! These are the views which the Gospel exhibits. It appeals to every rational principle of our nature. It appeals to our Hopes: it appeals also to our Fears. "Know on ing then the terrors of the Lord"-by these terrors, and not by imaginary, in-. operative terrors, "we persuade men.' The Punishments which God inflicts proceed solely from his Goodness. In opposition to a refinement Manicheism, which places at the Head of the Universe the evil Principle and not the good one, we will proclaim the joyful truth-may the vaulted Heaven re-echo it, and all created Nature swell the Chorus, GOD IS LOVE! DISCOURSE III. 1 John iv. 8. GOD IS LOVE. My Christian Friends and Brethren ! We this day present to the World an interesting, and I trust not an unedifying spectacle. In the prosecution of the subject, on which I announced my intention of delivering to you a series of discourses, we are now come to a part, in the management of which, if we were not acquainted with each other's motives, a peculiar delicacy of address would be necessary to preserve our mutual affection. I am not ignorant, and I wish not to conceal my knowledge of the fact, -that there are some among you, with whom, upon almost every other subject of Religion, I have the happiness to coincide in opinion, who have adopted that particular hypothesis respecting future punishment, which, in obedience to the commands of duty, I shall in this discourse endeavour to confute. If I know those friends, the general principle by which both they and myself are actuated the Love of Truth-will dispose them, whatever be the result, to approve my conduct; to hear me with favour and candour; and to weigh the arguments which I shall lay before them (many of which I apprehend never occurred to them before) in the impartial scale of Reason and Scripture. Immediate Conviction (which indeed is not the character of patient Examination) may perhaps be more than can reasonably be expected; but if final Conviction be not produced, I shall fear the cause cause has suffered, not from its own weakness, but from the incompetency of its advocate. At all events, I must clear my conscience from the self-reproach of having "shunned to declare unto you" what appears to me to be "the whole counsel of God." All other objects of fear, to a person whose day of life is drawing to its close, are undeserving a serious regard; but HERE, my friends, is a solid foundation for fear, (and that I may escape it, let me request that your prayers may ascend to heaven with mine,) lest some omissions of known duty should darken the concluding scenes of life, and deprive the mind, at that season, of this delightful consciousness, I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness that fadeth not away." Agreeably to the plan laid down at F 2 the |