us not, then, neglect this wonderful counsel of God for our
salvation; let us not be unaffected by this most stupendous display of
divine power, love, and mercy; let us not reject the offers of peace and
salvation from the God whom we have offended, and the Sovereign who is
finally to judge us. But, on the contrary, let us gratefully adore the
mercy and the grace of the Godhead in the plan of redemption, effected
in the incarnation, the obedience, the sufferings, the death, and the
triumphant resurrection of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Let it be
our great object to be conformed to the likeness of his death, in
mortifying all our corrupt affections, and to experience the power of
his resurrection in living a new and holy life, that we may enjoy the
new and lively hopes of everlasting glory, which his resurrection
assures to all true believers.

[Footnote 7: An eminent divine and bishop of the Episcopal church; a
native of Pennsylvania.]

* * * * *

=_Lyman Beecher,[8] 1775-1803._=

From the "Lectures on Political Atheism."

=_23._= THE BEING OF A GOD.

It is a thing eminently to be desired that there should be a supreme
benevolent Intelligence, who is the creator and moral governor of the
universe, whose subjects and kingdom shall endure for ever. Such a one
the nature of man demands, and his whole soul pants after.

We feel our littleness in presence of the majestic elements of nature,
our weakness compared with their power, and our loneliness in the vast
universe, unenlightened, unguided, and unblessed, by any intelligence
superior to our own. We behold the flight of time, the passing fashion
of the world, and the gulf of annihilation curtained with the darkness
of an eternal night.

At the side of this vortex, which covers with deep oblivion the past,
and impenetrable darkness the future, nature shudders and draws back,
and the soul, with sinking heart, looks mournfully around upon this fair
creation, and up to these beautiful heavens, and in plaintive accents
demands, "Is there, then, no deliverance from this falling back into
nothing? Must this conscious being cease--this reasoning, thinking power,
and these warm affections, their delightful movements? Must this eye
close in an endless night, and this heart fall back upon everlasting
insensibility? O, thou cloudless sun, and ye far-distant stars, in all
your journeyings in light, have ye discovered no blessed intelli