to the distance which existed between the two parties. The poor man would feel, that, whilst his all was at stake upon the issue of his application, he should either never gain an audience, on account of his poverty, or, if he did, that any petition about his own puny affairs would be too trivial and insignificant to arrest the eye of majesty, and to make a king a listener. And we know

it, indeed, to be a matter of fact and experience, in the kingdoms of this world, that the monarch who has a boon to confer, is considerably influenced, not only by the rank and consequence, but by the number of the petitioners; the united strength of a thousand suppliant voices, imploring some common boon, seems to augment the aggrandisement of the giver.

But, now, dearly beloved, if you will fix your eye stedfastly upon the great truth contained in the text, you will see clearly, that God, the King of kings, deals with us upon a principle totally opposite to what we act upon towards each other. It is a wonderful truth, at least to us finite beings, that the Deity will listen to the voice of one as well as a thousand, and will regard as minutely and attentively the cry of the feeblest suppliant upon earth as the adoring homage of the seraphim or archangel in heaven.

But we would first invite your attention to the fact, not only that God is ready to hear the solitary petitioner, or the voice of two or three in union, but that, considering him as God in all his majesty,

he should condescend to listen to creatures of human dust at all. We are so accustomed to hear, from our very cradle, that if we pray to God he is sure to hear us, the certain communication between the creature and the Creator is so associated with all our ideas,-that we forget to dwell upon the vast distance which exists between the two parties; and we omit to measure the amazing condescension, that the Omnipotent should stoop from his throne, and direct his eye, and open his ear, to one of the atoms in the universe.

Let us take the case of a creature who had not yet sinned, such as Adam, for example, before he fell, when he had not yet thrown a bar across the road of communication between himself and God. We view the creature, on the one side, in his highest state of perfection-a pure and spotless image, unmarred by the spirit of evil, and a fit companion for beings of the highest order of intelligence; but still he is a creature, a mere atom amongst the countless myriads of the created. And when we view, on the other side, the stupendousness of the Deity, or rather, (for who can reach an adequate conception of Godhead ?) when we attempt to view the might and majesty of Omnipotence, and the immeasurable distance which must ever separate Him from the creature whose life is but a span, it does appear strange, and almost, at first sight, inconceivable, that such a Being should deign to vouchsafe an audience to every

creature of the dust, and to regard each, as it were, with separate attention. The Psalmist seems full of this idea when he is comparing one part of the creation with another. Whilst surveying, with wonder, the more gigantic structures of the Almighty workmanship,-the heavens, the moon, and the stars, he bursts forth into the exclamation-"What is man, that thou art mindful of "him? and the son of man, that thou visitest "him ?" Now this very thought of the greatness of the Deity, when contrasted with the vileness of the creature, has been abused, alas! by the sceptic, and turned into an argument against the doctrine of a particular Providence. We are ready to admit, he argues, the truth of a general Providence; that the Deity may direct with his finger the revolution of worlds, the rise or fall of empires, and the sublimer operations of the universe. But is it likely, if God is so stupendous, and the throne of heaven so lofty, that he would deem it worthy of his majesty to inspect the atom, or to hold converse with the worm? But the sceptic, who thus throws a doubt upon the fact of a particular Providence, is plunging into an egregious mistake; for he is measuring the attributes of God by the standard of his own feeble conceptions of what is great or small, important or insignificant. For what is great to the eye of man, cannot appear great to God. The only thing great to Jehovah is Himself! And, therefore, if the greatest thing

on earth is most poor and insignificant in his sight, there cannot be such a vast distinction between the greatest human thing and the smallest human thing, since both, as regards bulk or importance, are, to Him, like the small dust in the balance ; so that the all-seeing eye may equally regard the insect or the worm as the giant or the volcano. For the same finger which rolls the thunder, poured every note into the warbling of the birds. "Not

a sparrow (says the Son of God) falleth to "the ground without the cognizance of our "Father; yea, the very hairs of our head are all "numbered." We should be robbing the Deity of half his power if we supposed that it was derogatory to his majesty to examine the minutest, and to communicate with the meanest of his creatures. But, oh! does it not wonderfully augment our conceptions of the Godhead, to know that the same Being, whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain-who is throned in eternity, and encircled with seraphim, and adored with angelic minstrelsy, can equally listen to the crying of the babe or to the whisper of the feeblest petitioner?

We have hitherto been considering God in his character as the CREATOR, listening graciously to the supplications of his creatures; and we have shewn that, in the case even of an unfallen creature, it is a matter of wonder and astonishment that so great a Being should vouchsafe to watch him with a paternal eye. But we now enter upon the

essence of our text, and we view GOD the SON in the character of a REDEEMER and INTERCESSOR, when he declares of himself" Where two or three "are gathered together in my name, there am I in "the midst of them." Let us take, therefore, the next case of the fallen creature, and we ask, How is it that God still continues to listen to the voice of the sinful and the polluted? If it was a matter of wonder that so august a Being should have vouchsafed perpetual audience to man when he came forth a pure and stainless image, is it not ten-fold more amazing that he should deign to hold communication with beings whose nature has become totally opposite to the purity and holiness of his own? Man has alienated himself from God, and striven to cut off the heavenly communication; but God, in his boundless mercy, would not permit the chain to be eternally severed; and therefore it was that he discovered a link-the divine link of Redemption-which should bind the creature again to the Creator for ever.

God determined to maintain the character of his own holiness, and to exhibit his abhorrence of sin, and yet to continue a listener to the voice of the sinner; and the only way, therefore, to effect this, consistently with his own attributes of holiness and justice, was, to receive the petitions of the imperfect, through the name and medium of perfect humanity. But sin must first be atoned for and cleansed; and nothing human alone, however perfect, could accom