2. Endeavour more and more to make a suitable improvement of it —
["Hallelujah" stands as the introduction to the contem- plations of David. Let all your contemplations lead to, and terminate in, a similar acclamation. Such luill he the result of all
the knowledge which we shall possess in heaven and such
should be our improvement of all that we attain on earth ]
Ps. cxiii. 5 — 8. Wlio is like unto the Lord our God, who dwell- eth on high, ivho humhieth himself to behold the things that are in heaven, and in the earth ! He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifleth the needy out of the dunghill; that he may set him with princes, even with the princes of his people.
VERILY, God is to be praised : " from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same, his name" should be glorious : " He is above all bless- ing and praise." Whether we consider what he is in himself, or what he is to us, we cannot but ex- claim, " Who is like unto the Lord?" If men be not filled with admiring and adoring thoughts of him, it is because they know him not, neither contemplate him: but we can scarcely fail of being in some mea- sure suitably impressed with his excellency, if we consider those perfections of his which are set before us in our text :
L His greatness —
[But how shall we convey any idea of this ? If we speak of created things, however great, we can give some kind of state- ment, which, though very inadequate, will convey a slight notion at least of the subject. However great the disparity between a monarch and a worm, or between the globe and a grain of sand, there is something whereon we may ground a comparison be- tween them, and something to which we may affix tolerably definite ideas. But between the Creator and the creature there is no point of contact. If we attempt to declare his immensity, and say, that in all the boundless regions of space God is every where, and as entirely present in every different spot as if he were no where in the universe besides, what are we the nearer to any just apprehension of him ? Our intellect is not capable of ' conceiving of him aright. Were a peasant told respecting the
motions