a moment, this would entirely meet the want of which
I have been speaking. It is possible, certainly, to look upon the face
of nature without being reminded of God; yet it is surely true, that in
the outward creation, in the order of the seasons, the laws of the
heavenly bodies, the wonderful wisdom and goodness displayed in the
constitution of every living thing in its order, there is a tendency at
least to impress us with, the thought of God, if nothing else obstructed
it. But there is a constant obstruction in the state of man. Looking at
men, hearing them, considering them, it is not only possible not to be
reminded of God; but their very tendency is to exclude him from our
minds, because the moral workmanship which is so predominant in them has
assuredly not had God for its author. We all in our dealings with one
another, lead each other away from God. We present to each other's view
what seems to be a complete world of our own, in which God is not. We
see a beginning, a middle, and an end; we see faculties for acquiring
knowledge, and for receiving enjoyment; and earth furnishes knowledge to
the one and enjoyment to the other. We see desires, and we see the
objects to which they are limited; we see that death removes men from
all these objects, and consistently with this, we observe, that death is
generally regarded as the greatest of all evils. Man's witness, then, as
far as it goes, is against the reality of God and of eternity. His life,
his language, his desires, his understanding appear, when we look over
the world, to refer to no being higher than himself, to no other state
of things than that of which sight testifies.

Now, Christ's Church, the living temple of the Holy Ghost, puts in the
place of this natural and corrupt man, whose witness is against God,
another sort of man, redeemed and regenerate, whose whole being breathes
a perpetual witness of God. Consider, again, what we should see in such
a Church. We should see a beginning, a middle, but the end is not yet
visible; we should see, besides the faculties for knowledge and
enjoyment which were receiving their gratification daily, other
faculties of both kinds, whose gratification was as yet withheld; we
should see desires not limited to any object now visible or attainable.
We should see death looked to as the gate by which these hitherto
unobtained objects were to be sought for; and we should hear it spoken
of, not as the greatest of evils, but as a