obscurity, a shelter for the horror of their blasphemy? And all the future magnificence of the Gospel was then to be limited to the formation of the detestable sect of an impious Socinus?
O God! how wise and reasonable doth the faith of thy church appear, when opposed to the absurd contradictions of unbelief? And how consoling for those who believe in Jesus Christ, and who place their hope in him, to behold the abysses which pride digs for itself when it pretends to open new ways, and to sap the only foundation of the hope of Christians.
Behold, my brethren, how the doctrine of Jesus Christ, with relation to his Father, establishes the glory of his eternal origin. Thus, when the prophets speak of the God of heaven and of the earth, their expressions are too weak for the magnificence and the grandeur of their ideas. Full of the immensity, the omnipotence, and the majesty of the Supreme Being, they exhaust the weakness of the human language, in order, if possible, to correspond with the sublimity of these images. That God is he who measures the waters of the ocean in the hollow of his hand, who weighs the mountains in his balance, in whose hands are the thunders and the tempests, who speaks, and all is done; who faints not, neither is weary, in upholding the universe. It was natural for simple men to speak in this manner of the glory of the Most High; the infinite disproportion between the immensity of the Supreme Being and the weaknesses of the human mind must strike, dazzle, and confound it; and the most pompous expressions are too feeble to convey its astonishment and admiration.
But when Jesus Christ speaks of the glory of the Lord, it is no longer in the pompous style of the prophets; he calls him a holy Father, a righteous Father, a merciful Father, a Shepherd who pursues a strayed sheep, who kindly bears it home himself; a Friend who yields to the importunities of his friend; a Father feelingly affected with the return and the amendment of his son: it is clearly seen that this is a Child who speaks a domestic language; that the familarity and the simplicity of his expressions suppose in him a sublimity of knowledge which renders the idea of a Supreme Being familiar to him, and prevents him from being struck and dazzled, as we are, with his majesty and glory; and, lastly, that he only speaks of what is laid open to his view, and which he possesses himself. A person is much less struck with the eclat of titles which he has borne, as I may say, from his birth: the children of kings speak, without emotion, of sceptres and crowns; and it is likewise the eternal Son alone of the living God who can speak so familiarly of the glory of God himself.
Behold, my brethren, seeing we participate with Jesus Christ in all his blessings, the right which he hath acquired for us, of considering God as our Father, of daring to call ourselves his children, and of loving rather than of fearing him. Nevertheless, we serve him like slaves and hirelings; we dread his chastisement, but we are little affected by his love and his promises: his law, so righteous, so holy, has nothing pleasing for us; it is a yoke which op-
