you engage with your whole souls m securing the blessings which the Redeemer's triumphs, as on this day, have obtained for us ]
Deut. xviii. 13. Thou shalt be perfect ivith the Lord thy God.
IT seems strange that any who have ever heard of Jehovah, should need to be put on their guard against alienating their hearts from him, and placing their affections on any created object in preference to him: but the Israelites, who had seen all his wonders in Egypt and in the wilderness, were ever prone to depart from him, even as we also are, notwithstand- ing all that we have heard respecting that infinitely greater redemption which he has vouchsafed to us through the incarnation and death of his only dear Son. Permit me, therefore, to remind you, as Moses reminded the people committed to his charge, that you must on no account, and in no degree, transfer to the creature the regards which are due to your Maker alone ; since his injunction to you, and to every child of man, is, " Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God."
In order to bring home to your hearts and con- sciences this solemn injunction, I will, I. Unfold its import —
As for absolute perfection, there is no hope of attaining it in this world. Job himself, whom God pronounced a "perfect mana," declared, that if he should arrogate to himself a claim of absolute per- fection, his own mouth would condemn him, and prove him perverse b. But uprightness there is, and must be, in all who shall be approved of their God. In this sense, we must be perfect with the Lord our God:
1. In love to his name — [We are commanded to " love God with all our heart
a Job i. 1, 8. b Job ix. 20, 21.