MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. 823 few who enjoy the highest pleasures, and the most easy circum- stances on earth; but I have infinite reason to adore thy distin- guishing goodness, who hast not suffered me to be one of the miserable millions. VI. The Praise of God. WHAT is praise ? It is a part of that divine worship which we owe to the power that made us : It is an acknowledgment of the perfections of God, ascribing all excellencies to him, and confessing all the works of nature and grace to proceed from him. Now when we apply ourselves to this work, and dress up our notions of a God in magnificence of language, when we furnish them out with shining figures, and pronounce them in sounding . words, we fancy ourselves to say great things, and are even charmed with our own forms of praise : But alas ! the highest and best of them, set in a true light, are but the feeble voice of a creature, spreading before the Almighty Being that made him, some of his own low and little ideas, and telling him what he thinks of the great God, and what God has done. 'When the holy Psalmist would express his honourable thoughts of his Maker, they amount only to this, " Thou art good, and thou dost good ;" Ps. cxix. 68. How inconsiderable an offering is this for a God? and yet so condescending is his love, that he looks down, and is well pleased to receive it. Let us meditate on this a little, and learn how utterly unworthy our highest at- tempts of worship, and our most refined strains of praise, are of divine acceptance. 1. " We can tell God but a very little of what he is, or has done." How small a portion do we know ! and how mean must our praise be f Now to speak of the worth of another so very poorly and imperfectly, would be an affront among men ; yet the great God takes it well at our hands, when we labour to say what we know of his greatness or his goodness. Out brightest ideas of him eclipse his glory, and our highest language sinks beneath the dignity of his nature : " God is great, and we know him not ;" Job xxvi. 26. " He is exalted above our praises ;" Nehem. ix. 5. 2. " We can tell God nothing but what he knows much bet.. ter himself." It is not to increase his knowledge when we spread our own concerns before him in prayer; for he knows what we are, what is our frame, what are our weaknesses and our wants, far better than we ourselves are acquainted with them : Much less When we praise him, can we presume to know what God is, or what he does, or tell him any thing that relates to himself, but what he knew eternally before us, and knows infinitely better than we do; we can add no new ideas to his mind, nor enlarge One of his own ideas.
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