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We all need more of this implicit, childlike submission to God. We need to see him in all the doctrines of the Bible, as well as in all the wonders of creation and providence, as the life and soul of all that is true, and good, and enduring. These doctrines are indeed the expression to the creature of God's being and character. And they are nothing to us, unless we so understand them, unless we recognize in them the voice of God, speaking to us in accents that admit of no question, of no resistance, and of no appeal. We need to perceive God as an every where present and living reality, the beginning, middle and end of all things,-the life of all that lives, the strength of all that is strong, and the truth of all that is true. Then will our religion be not a dead and barren orthodoxy, a lip service, but a union and communion with the Divine nature. Then we shall look to God, and lean on God, and live in God. We shall then learn the secret of man's true life. God will be the centre of our being, the spring of our activity, the source of all our comfort, and of all our joy. Then God in Christ will not be a mere name, by which we distinguish ourselves from the heathen and the infidel, "but as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." We shall make better speed in obtaining Divine knowledge, we shall achieve greater things in the

Divine life, if laying aside self-confidence and self-will, we not only allow in words the authority of God, but in very deed, bow meekly before Him, as the Lord of reason and the Lord of life. "Great peace have they that love thy law, and nothing shall offend them;" (margin, They shall have no stumbling block). In such a spirit of strong faith in God, in self-surrender, to have our emptiness filled from the treasures of infinite wisdom and knowlege, should we ever open the book of Truth. Here God speaks: let all creatures believe and obey.

We know too little of this- we that are called believers, know too little of this simple, docile spirit of faith. Crafty readers of the word of God are we—very attentive when it falls in with our prevailing humor, when it does not disturb our self-complacency; but when it corrects our vain fancies and foolish thoughts, when it crosses our carnal appetites, our worldly interests, our darling lusts; then, "like the deaf adder, we stop our ears." Adders are we, in more senses than one -by the unbelief and disobedience of our perverse and ungrateful hearts, stinging the hand that warmed us into life. Surely the LORD is not God, or we would give ourselves up in more profound submission of mind and will. The one requires more than his declaration, the other more than his command. Sad hypocrites, we, that cry, Lord, Lord, while we practically reject his word. His word, the

ground of all confidence, we reject, and yet wonder that we have no peace.

If our faith fails here, at the very ground and foundation; if we require stronger warrant than the word of him that cannot lie, then nothing in the universe can suffice. If we can find no sure anchor of hope in the word of God, then our souls must be tossed upon the wild and fearful billows of doubt, until, as foundered wrecks, they sink into the dark depths of everlasting despair.

The LORD, he is God. Let us hear what God the LORD will speak; yea, let God be true, and every man a liar. There must be no misgiving here, for if God is not true, the next sentence is, there is no God,—a sentence full of despair to all these myriads who have been feeling after God, if haply they might find him, who have had some longings after immortality. Poor orphans, and worse than orphans. If the oft repeated sentence of sin and unbelief is true, there is an end of all their longings, "having no hope, and without God in the world." But what if that sentence be the saying of a fool, and he who utters it, whether by word or deed, be convicted of sinning against his own soul!

The LORD, he is God. He will live. He will assert his right to speak and to rule, in spite of our folly. Let us close our ears to every creature voice. Let all the earth keep silence before God. Who or what

are we that we should doubt the word or dispute the authority of him, "whose counsels of old are faithfulness and truth." Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever he had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting he is God. "By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him, for he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast." His word be our light! His word be our law! His word be our hope and confidence forever more!

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