name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name."* Let us pray for its extension, for its peace, for its purity, for the accomplishment of all the promises made to it.

3. The distressed of every description have peculiar claims to our prayers. Indigent christians, who ever appear to be in a peculiar manner the objects of compassion, will share in our petitions to a throne of grace. To pray for others is the best salve and relief of powerless benevolence. For where can we turn our eyes without seeing persons misled by error and delusion which we wish in vain to arrest; made wretched by vices which we cannot reform; or oppressed with misery it is out of our power to avert? Must it not, in such circumstances, furnish the greatest incitement to go into the presence of that Being to whom it is infinite mercy to heal the maladies of mind and body, and to do "for us, and for all men, above all we can ask or think?" When we have thus commended the case of our distressed fellow-creatures to the divine notice-when we have thus committed them, as it were, into the arms of our heavenly Father-we feel calm: our compassion grows softer, while it loses its anxiety, and our benevolence, like his, becomes strong and glowing, without solicitude.

4. Our friends and relatives.

Application.

*Isaiah lxii. 1, 2.

371

XXXVIII.

GOD'S ETERNITY CONSIDERED, IN REFERENCE TO THE SUSPENSION OF HIS PROMISED PURPOSES.

2 PET. iii. 8.-But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.*

THAT spirit of prophecy with which the holy apostles were endowed, enabled them to foretell the principal defections from the christian faith which should distinguish the last days, the papal superstition and infidel impiety.

We have long witnessed the fulfilment of both these predictions: the gross idolatry, cruel edicts, and tyrannical claims of the church of Rome, have been for ages promulgated; and now that superstition appears to be in its dotage, and falling fast into decay, a new progeny has arisen—a scoffing, infidel spirit.

They founded their disbelief of Christ's coming to destroy the world, to judge the wicked, and to reward his servants, on the pretended uniformity of the course of nature. No event which bears any resemblance to that which the gospel foretells, they pretend, has ever taken place. In affirming this, the apostle charges them with "wilful ignorance" [of the destruction of the world by water.]

He then proceeds to declare that the heavens, which at present subsist, are reserved for a similar

* Preached at Leicester, Sunday, January 6th, 1811; the first Sunday in the new year.

catastrophe, and are doomed to undergo a more signal overthrow. Nor can any argument be deduced against the certain accomplishment of the divine declaration, from the seeming length of the time during which their execution is delayed: since "one day is with God as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."

In attempting to improve these words, we shall, I. Endeavour to illustrate their import, and establish the truth of the proposition which they

contain.

II. Shew to what particular uses the truth which they exhibit may be applied.

I. Let us attempt to illustrate the assertion, "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."

It is necessary, in order to enter into the sense and meaning of the apostle in these words, to consider on what occasion they are introduced.

They are designed as an answer to the objections which irreligious scoffers advance against the certainty of the accomplishment of the divine declarations, founded on its long delay. Impatient and short-sighted mortals are apt to suppose that what is delayed long will never take place; that an event, placed at the distance of many ages, will never arrive; that an evil which has been long apprehended, but through a series of ages has never actually taken place, need be dreaded no more, but may be safely classed among the phantoms of a vain terror.

In reply to this, the apostle states that "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years;" and that long and short, when applied to a part of duration, are not the same in his apprehension as ours that what appears a long time to us, does not appear so to him, whose estimate is so different, and whose views are so much more extended. A thousand years seem to us a very long period, but in his eyes appear extremely short; they are but as a day.

This idea of the different apprehension which God has of time from what we possess, is exhibited in several passages of scripture: "A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night."* To the same purpose spake the royal Psalmist, in the 39th Psalm: "Make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am. Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine and mine age is as nothing before thee."+

1. Every portion of duration is something real, and has a true and proper existence; but the epithets great and small, when applied to this, (as well as to any thing else,) are merely comparative. They necessarily imply a comparison of one quantity with another, without which they can never be applied with justice; for what is great compared with one quantity, becomes, at the same moment, little when compared with another, and vice versâ. Psalm xxxix. 4, 5.

*Psalm xc. 4.

Thus fourscore years are, at present, considered as a great age; but would not have been called so before the [general deluge]. That age is now styled great with propriety, because it is so, compared with the usual term of life, which is considerably less; and, for an opposite reason, it would, before the Flood, have been styled small, because it would have been so compared with the average term of human life at that period, which was much greater. We should consider fifty years as forming a very large portion of human life; but the same number of years in the history of an empire would be justly considered small. Thus is the same quantity either great or small, as you place it by the side of something much inferior to it in magnitude, or much superior.

2. Hence it results that absolute greatness belongs only to what is infinite; for whatever falls short of this, however great it may appear, its supposed greatness is entirely owing to the incidental absence of another object that is greater. It may be, it will be, infallibly reduced to insignificance, the moment it comes into comparison with that which is so prodigiously superior to it.

3. In duration, absolute greatness belongs only to eternity. The epithet great, or whatever other is most expressive of the profoundest astonishment, is, with the utmost propriety, applied to that unfathomable abyss. Incapable of being placed in any light, or brought, even by imagination, into any comparison which should reduce it to