Thine eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men. No truth more forgotten than this. Men assent to it, but it has no power over the vast mass of men, and far too little power even over religious men. How different it is with the presence or absence of our fellow creatures! We have often much to conceal from them, and we would often make great efforts to prevent them knowing much of our lives. Hence it makes all the difference in the world to us whether they be with us or away from us. It regulates our conduct, our words, our looks, our very tone and movement. But how little of such effect does the thought of the Divine eye seeing all and always what we are and do, even to the understanding of our thoughts afar off! Therefore such forgetfulness of God's presence as that which we are all of us so liable to be guilty of requires that we should diligently consider the many proofs of the truth declared in this verse. Note some of them.

I. HE HAS LAID DOWN LAWS TO REGULATE AND GOVERN THE WAYS OF MEN. He has done this not only for those that are open and manifest, but those that are most secret as well. He is a "discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" (cf. Psalm 139.). "God looketh at the heart." Now, he could not thus largely and minutely lay down these laws if he did not know completely the ways which they concern.

II. HE DISCOVERS THEM. If we have been engaged in some secret way, or such as we thought was secret, where no eye was upon us as we imagined; if afterwards some one meets us and tells us all that we did, we know that, unseen to us, he must by himself or by others have been present at that secret hour. Now, thus we know that God has been ever present. For:

1. He tells us all about them. What is memory? what, especially, is conscience, but God telling us that he is perfectly acquainted with all that we thought unknown?

2. He tells others of them. He told David (1 Samuel 23:12) that the men of Keilah would deliver him up into the hand of Saul. He told Joseph of Herod's purpose to kill the infant Saviour. He warned the wise men from whom Herod hoped to have acquired the knowledge he needed. And again, he warned Joseph about Archelaus. And many such instances there are. Now, they all show that God knows all the ways of men.

III. HE TURNS THEM WHICH WAY HE WILL. Sometimes he gives men their heart's desire, satisfying the longing soul. Sometimes he overrules them for ends far other than the doers of them designed. As when they crucified our Lord (Acts 2:23), God ordered which way their sin should issue, which was quite other than they thought (cf. history of Joseph). Sometimes he baffles and denies them altogether. If he did not, this world would be hell. What if all the sin men conceive of they were to commit! Hence (Genesis 20:6) God says he withheld Abimelech from sinning against Abraham, and suffered him not to touch Sarah. And God is forever graciously strangling sin in its very birth. But all this shows that "his eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men."

IV. HE RECOMPENSES THEM.

1. When our secret ways have been evil, cannot we tell in the darkening of the face of God that he knows all? And when they have been such as the Lord delighteth to see in secret, do not our hearts know when we come to him that there is the answering smile?

2. And he recompenses them in his present outward dealings with us. The sinner's most secret sin finds him out not seldom in this world. And the patient continuance in well doing, however humble and obscure, rarely fails to meet with its reward.

3. And God will judge them in the last great day. Then the thoughts of all hearts shall be revealed. "God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil." Again is it made evident that he knows all. He is "the Father who seeth in secret." CONCLUSION. Understand what is the right use of this great doctrine. Not that we should be trying every hour of the day to be thinking of the all-seeing eye of God. We cannot, and God does not intend that we should, be ever thus conscious of his presence. Children are not of the presence of their parents. They are utterly unconstrained. But should need arise for their parents' help, should they be tempted to do what they know their parents would forbid, then in a moment they become conscious of their presence, and the needed aid is asked for, and the tempting sin is resisted. Now, thus should we remember the continual presence of God. "The right state of mind plainly is to have the thought of God's presence so perpetually at hand that, as with Joseph in his great temptation, it shall always start before us whenever it is wanted." This is living with God and communion with Christ; and it is won by prayer and close walking with him, and blessed are they who win. - C.

I. CONSIDER THE SUBJECT SPECULATIVELY.

1. My first proofs shall be taken from the nature of God. The nature of God proves that He is great in counsel. Consider the perfect knowledge that He hath of all possible beings, as well as of all the beings which do actually exist. The knowledge of all possible beings, diversified without end by the same intelligence that imagines them: What designs, or, as our prophet expresseth himself, What greatness of counsel doth it afford the Supreme Being? But let us not lose ourselves in the world of possible beings; let us confine our attention to real existences. I am willing even to reduce them to two classes. Let each of you imagine, as far as his ability can reach, how great the counsel of an intelligence must be, who perfectly knows all that can result from the various arrangements of matter, and from the different modifications of mind. The Supreme Being perfectly knows what must result from every different arrangement of the parts of bodies infinitely small; and He perfectly knows what must result from every different arrangement of the parts of bodies infinitely great. What treasures of plans! What myriads of designs! or, to use the language of my text, What greatness of counsel must this knowledge supply! But God knows spirits also as perfectly as He knows bodies. If He knows all that must result from the various arrangements of matter, He also knows all that must result from the different modifications of mind. Human spirits, of which we have but an imperfect knowledge, are thoroughly known to Him. He knows the conceptions of our minds, the passions of our hearts, all our purposes, and all our powers. But what is this object of the Divine knowledge? What is this handful of mankind, in comparison of all the other spirits that compose the whole intelligent world, of which we are only an inconsiderable part? God knows them as He knows us; and He diversifies the counsels of His own wisdom according to the different thoughts, deliberations, and wishes of these different spirits. We have proved then, by considering the Divine perfections, that God is great in counsel, and we shall endeavour to prove by the same method that He is mighty in work. These two, wisdom and power, are not always united; yet it is on their union that the happiness of intelligent beings depends. In God, the Supreme Being, there is a perfect harmony of wisdom and power: The efficiency of His will, and the extent of His knowledge are equal Carry your thoughts back into those periods in which the Perfect Being existed alone. Sound reason must allow that He hath so existed. What could then have been the rule or model of beings which should in future exist? The ideas of God were those models. And what could cause those beings, that had only an ideal existence in the intelligence of God, actually to exist out of it? The efficiency of His will was the cause. The will of the same Being then, whose ideas had been the exemplars, or models, of the attributes of creatures, caused their existence. The Supreme Being therefore, who is great in counsel, is mighty in work. This being granted, consider now the ocean of God's power, as ye have already considered the greatness of His counsel. God not only knows what motion of your brain will excite such or such an idea in your mind, but He excites or prevents that idea as He pleaseth, because He produceth or preventeth that motion of your brain as He pleaseth. God not only knows what objects will excite certain passions within you, but He excites or diverts those passions as He pleaseth. God not only knows what projects your passions will produce, when they have gained an ascendency over you, but He inclines you to form, or not to form, such projects, because, as it seems best to Him, He excites those passions, or He curbs them.

2. Let us take another method (and here I allege the second proof of the truth of my text, that is, the history of the world, or of the Church): Let us take, I say, another method of proving that God, who is great in counsel, is also mighty in work. What counsel can ye imagine too great for God to execute, or which He hath not really executed? Let the most fruitful imagination exert its fertility to the utmost; let it make every possible effort to form plans worthy of an infinite intelligence, it can invent nothing so difficult that God hath not realised.(1) God hath the power of making the deepest of His children's afflictions produce their highest happiness.(2) God establisheth His Church by the very means that tyrants use to destroy it.(3) God turneth the victories of Satan to the ruin of his empire. Here fix your attention upon the work of redemption, for the perfections of God, which we celebrate to-day, are more illustriously displayed in it than in any other of the Creator's wonders.

II. CONSIDER THE GREATNESS OF GOD'S COUNSEL, AND THE OMNIPOTENCE OF HIS WORKING, IN A PRACTICAL LIGHT. When we have proved that God is great in counsel, and mighty in work, in my opinion, we have sufficiently shown, on the one hand, the extravagance of those madmen who pretend to exercise wisdom and understanding, and counsel against the Lord: and, on the other, the wisdom of those who, taking His laws for the only rules of their conversation, commit their peace, their lives, and their salvation, to the disposal of His providence. Only let us take care that we do not flatter ourselves into an opinion that we possess this wisdom while we are destitute of it: and let us take care, while we exclaim against the extravagance of those madmen, that we do not imitate their dangerous examples. But what! Is it possible to find, among beings who have the least spark of reason, an individual mad enough to suppose himself wiser than that God who is great in counsel, or, is there one who dare resist a God mighty in working? But who then, ye will ask me, who are those men, who presumptuously think of overcoming God by their superior knowledge and power? Who? It is that soldier, who, with a brutal courage, defies danger, affronts death, resolutely marches amidst fires and flames, even though he hath taken no care to have an interest in the Lord of hosts, or to commit his soul to His trust. Who? It is that statesman, who, despising the suggestions of evangelical prudence, pursues stratagems altogether worldly; who makes no scruple of committing what are called State crimes; who, with a disdainful air, affects to pity us, when we affirm that the most advantageous service that a wise legislator can perform for society is to render the Deity propitious to it; that the happiest nations are those whose God is the Lord. Who? It is that philosopher, who makes a parade of I know not what stoical firmness; who conceits himself superior to all the vicissitudes of life; who boasts of his tranquil expectation of death, yea, who affects to desire its approach, for the sake of enjoying the pleasure of insulting his casuist, who hath ventured to foretell that he will be terrified at it. Who? It is that voluptuary, who opposeth to all our exhortations and threatenings, to the most affecting denunciations of calamities from God in this life, and to the most awful descriptions of judgment to come in the next, to all our representations of hell, of an eternity spent in the most execrable company, and in the most excruciating pain; who opposeth to all these the buzz of amusements, the hurry of company, gaming at home or diversions abroad. Let us abhor this disposition of mind; let us entertain right notions of sin; let us consider him who commits it as a madman, who hath taken it into his head that he hath more knowledge than God, the fountain of intelligence, more strength than He beneath whose power all the creatures of the universe are compelled to bow. When we are tempted to sin, let us remember what sin is. Let each of us ask himself, What can I, a miserable man, mean? Do I mean to provoke the Lord to jealousy? Do I pretend to be stronger than He? Can I resist His will?

(J. Saurin.)