1. His eternity. This Moses proposeth, to bring the souls of be- lievers to submission, trust, and Avaiting: Ps. xc. 1, " From everlast- ing to everlasting thou art God ;" — " One that hath his being and subsistence not in a duration of time, but in eternity itself" So doth Habakkuk also, chap. i. 1 2, " Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One?" and hence he draws his conclusion against making haste in any condition, and for tarrying and waiting for God. The like consideration is managed by David also, Ps. cii. 27. How inconceivable is this glorious divine property unto the thoughts and minds of men! How weak are the ways and terms whereby they go about to express it ! One says, it is a " nunc stans;" another, that it is a " pei-petual duration." He that says most, only signifies what he knows of what it is not. We are of yesterday, change eveiy moment, and are leaving our station to-morrow, God is still the same, was so before the world was, — from eternity. And now I cannot think what I have said, but only have intimated what I adore. The whole duration of the world, from the beginning unto the end, takes up no space in this eternity of God : for how long soever it hath continued or may yet continue, it will all amount but to so many thousand years, so long a time; and time hath no place in eternity. And for us who have in this matter to do with God, what is our continuance unto that of the world? a moment, as it were, in comparison of the whole. When men's lives were of old prolonged beyond the date and continuance of empires or kingdoms now, yet this was the winding up of all, — such a one lived so many years, " and he died," Gen. v. And what are we, poor worms, whose lives are measured by inches, in comparison of their span? what are we before the eternal God, God always immutably subsist- ing in his own infinite being? A real consideration hereof will sub- due the soul into a condition of dependence on him and of waiting for him.
2. The immensity of his essence and his omnipresence is of the same consideration: " Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the
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Lord/' Jer. xxiii. 24. " The heavens, even the heaven of heavens," the supreme and most comprehensive created being, " cannot contain him," saith Solomon. In his infinitely glorious being he is present with, and indistant from all places, things, times, all the works of his hands ; and is no less gloriously subsisting where they are not. God is where heaven and earth are not, no less than where they are; and where they are not is himself Whei"e there is no place, no space, real or imaginary, God is; for place and imagination have nothing to do with immensity. And he is present everywhere in creation, — where I am writing, Avhere you are reading; he is present with you, indistant from you. The thoughts of men's hearts for the most part are, that God as to his essence is in heaven only; and it is well if some think he is there, seeing they live and act as if there were neither God nor devil but themselves. But on these apprehensions such thoughts are ready secretly to arise, and effectually to prevail, as are expressed Job xxii. 18, 14, " How doth God know? can he judge through the dark? Thick clouds are a covering unto him, that he seeth not; and he walketh in the circuit of heaven." Apprehensions of God's dis- tance from men harden them in their ways. But it is utterly other- wise. God is ever3rwhere, and a man may on all occasions say with Jacob, " God is in this place, and I knew it not." Let the soul, then, who is thus called to wait on God, exercise itself with thoughts about this immensity of his nature and being. Comprehend it, fully understand it, we can never; but the consideration of it will give that awe of his greatness upon our hearts, as that we shall learn to tremble before him, and to be willing to wait for him in all things.
o. Thoughts of the holiness of God, or mfinite self-purity of this eternal, immense Being, are singularly useful to the same purpose. This is that which Eliphaz affirms that he received by vision to reply to the complaint and impatience of Job, chajx iv. 17-21, After he hath declared his vision, with the manner of it, this he affirms to be the revelation that by voice was made unto him: " Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his Maker? Behold, he put no trust in his servants; and his angels he charged with folly. How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before the moth?" If the saints and angels in heaven do not answer this infinite holiness of God in their most perfect condi- tion, is it meet for worms of the earth to suppose that any thing which proceeds from him is not absolutely holy and perfect, and so best for them ? This is the fiery property of the nature of God, whence he is called a " consuming fire" and " everlasting burnings." And the law, whereon he had impressed some representation of it, is called a " fiery law," as that which will consume and burn up whatever