DISCOURSE X. 217 safe in his hands, and shall never fail while I am so near him. This is' jóy unspeakable and a-kin to glory." 6. Let us meditate also on the immensity of God, which I think is much better expressed by his omnipresence. God is where- soever any creature is or can be ; knowing immediately by his own presence all that belongs to them, all that they are or can he, all that they do or can do, all that concerns them, whether their sins or their virtues, their pains or their pleasures, their hopes or their fears. It implies also that he doth by his immediate power and influence support and govern all the creatures. In short, this immensity is nothing else but the infinite extent of his know- ledge and his power, and it reaches to and beyond all places, as eternity reaches to and beyond all time This the blessed above know and rejoice in, and take infinite satisfaction therein : having God as it were surrounding them on all sides, so that they cannot be where he is not, he is ever present with his all- sufficiency ready to bestow on them all they wish or desire while he continues their God, that is, for ever and ever. They are under the bles- sing of his eye, and the care of his hand, to guard them from every evil, and to secure their peace. " Let thy flesh or spirit be surrounded with never so many thousand dangers or enemies, they cannot do thee the least damage without his leave, by force or by surprise, while surit an Almighty being is all around thee : nor hast thou reason to indulge any fear while the spring and ocean of life, activity, and blessedness thus secures thee on every side. If thou hast the evidences of his children on thee, thora possessest an eternal securityof thy peace." 7. The sovereignty and dominion of the blessed God is a further meditation and pleasure which becomes and adorns the inhabitants of the heavenly world. There he reigns upon the throne of his glory, and the greater part of the territories which are subject to him are less in their view than our scanty powers of nature or perception can now apprehend, and a proportionable degree of pleasure is found with the saints above in these con- templations. But in our present state of mortality our souls can only look through these lattices of flesh and blood, and make a few scanty and imperfect inferences from what they always see and hear, and feel ; and yet the glorious sovereignty and domi- nion of the blessed God may so penetrate the soul with a divine sense of it hereon earth as to raise up a heaven of wonder and joy within. " Adore him, O my soul, who surveys and rules all things which he has made with an absolute authority, and is for ever uncontroulable. How righteous a thing is it that he should give laws to all the- beings which his hand hath funned, which his breath hath spoken into life, and especially that rank which his favour bath furnished with immortality ? How just that he
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