And if God has been thus gracious to us in all straits and perils in time past, it would surely be a grievous want of faith not to put our trust in Him for the time to come. Though we know that for sin persisted in the candlestick of a church may be removed, yet we will hope confidingly that where He has preserved His truth so long He will still watch over it and keep it; where, too, in the ordering of His providence, so great a door seems set open before us; where, by our power and extended empire, our vast colonial possessions and daily increasing colonial Church, (all His own gift,) we seem fitted to be the means of His “way being known upon earth, His saving health among all nations,” He will still cause the light of His countenance to shine upon us; where, again, thousands, as we verily believe, come before Him daily in humility, penitence, and prayer, (like Daniel, interceding for his country and his people,) “crying mightily unto Him” for support in all dangers, and aid in all adversities; I say, we will hope indeed that He “will hear their cry and will help them.” Even in the day of thick darkness He can cause that “at evening time it shall be light.” {132} Whatever be our trial we need not, on that account, deem ourselves forsaken. Nay, unless we see it plainly written that for our sins He has turned His face wholly from us, we will not doubt, in all faith though in all humility, that He will allow us to hand on to our children’s children, and to the “generations which are yet for to come,” the same good deposit which we have ourselves received. If ever we seem to be disheartened or ready to faint by the way, we will remember on whose word we rely and on whose arm we lean; we will call to mind His wonders of old time; we will ever with all faith and hopeful trust, knowing how with Him “all things are possible,” make the prayer of the Psalmist continually our own, saying, “Turn us again, O Lord God of Hosts: shew the light of Thy countenance, and we shall be whole.” {133} SERMON VIII. {135} (Preached on Christmas Day.) God Incarnate our Great High Priest. COLOSSIANS ii. 3. “In Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” THE preceding verses will tell us “of whom speaketh” the Apostle this. Having declared what great conflict he had for his converts at Colosse and “for them at Laodicea, and for as many as had not seen his face in the flesh,” he tells them that this his conflict and desire for them was, that their “hearts might be comforted; being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; in Whom,” he adds, “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”