This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
GOD SPEAKING.
167

ance of a whole people from bondage, and their introduction into a new country. And this was done, not from any partial preference of one nation over another (for God is "no respecter of persons,") but to the end that, among the people thus selected, there might be established a new and purer Church or Dispensation, and especially that they might become the depositaries of the Sacred Word, which was about to be revealed for the instruction of all mankind.

Thus much, then, in regard to the Being of God: in the passage just quoted it is declared not only that God exists, but that He is Being Itself, and that His very name is I AM. The same is signified by the name JEHOVAH, which is derived in Hebrew from the word To Be.

Next, in regard to His Power. Is not the whole historical portion of the Sacred Volume a continued description of the displays of God's Almighty power? The very opening of the Book presents Him as the great Creator of all things. How simple yet all-comprehensive is the language: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." If a monarch be called powerful, who merely governs the inhabitants of a small portion of the earth's surface,—then is not He, who not only governs, but created and made those people, and the monarch himself, and the land on which they live, and the whole earth, and all the other worlds in the universe—is not such a One to be called All-Powerful? Moreover, that God not only created, but rules and directs, the world and the affairs of men, (and not, according to the notion of some of the ancient philosophers, merely created the universe, and then retired into a corner of it, and left it to take care