Of all the impossibles which ever were attempted, there is none so wild and so irrational as to attempt an independence upon God. It is in virtue of him that you are held together. He measures out to you every moment of your existence. He gives you not merely the air you breathe, but he gives you the faculty of breathing. He provides for you not merely the external goods which are scattered around you in such bounteous profusion, but it is he who furnishes you with the capacity of enjoying them. You talk of the pleasures of the world, and fly to them as your refuge and your consolation against the displeasure of an offended Deity, but think that it is only by a continuance of his unmerited favor that you have these pleasures to fly to. He can take them away from you; or, what perhaps is a still more striking demonstration of his sovereignty, he can make them no longer pleasures to you. He reigns within as well as without you. To him you owe not merely what is external, but to him you owe the taste and the faculty which enjoys it. He can pervert these faculties. He can change your pleasures into disgust. He can derange the constitution of the inner man, and make you loathe as tasteless and unsatisfying what you at present indulge in with delight or look forward to with rapture. He is all in all. The whole of our being hangs upon him, and there is no getting away from his universal, from his ceaseless, from his unexcepted agency. Now, do the Almighty the same justice that you would do to an earthly benefactor; measure the extent of his claims upon you by the extent of his benefits; think of the authority over you which, as your Creator and as your constant preserver, he has a right to exercise; think of your perpetual dependence, and that all around you and within you, for every moment and particle of your existence is upheld by God; and tell me, if either in the thoughts of your hearts or in the actions of your life you come up to the demand which his justice and his authority have a title to prefer against you?—_From Dr. Chalmers._ [_January 18._]