He proceeds with his subject--_God is love_. His object, as announced, is not so much to elucidate the thought or idea of the text, as to dislodge from the minds of his hearers, the dread and aversion for God, existing in all unregenerate men. He insists, in the first place, that it is not as a God of love, that the Deity is regarded by mankind--but simply as God, as a being mysterious and dreadful, a being who has displeasure towards them in his heart. This arises from two causes--the first, that they are ignorant of this great and awfully mysterious Being--the second, that they have sinned against him. This feeling then is displaced first by the incarnation of the Deity in the person of his Son, so that we may know him and love him as a Father and a friend; and secondly, by the free pardon of our sin, through the sacrifice of the Cross. The division is rather awkward; but it serves the purpose of the preacher, who thus brings out some of the most sublime peculiarities of the Gospel, and applies them with overwhelming force and pathos to the sinner's heart. Under the first head, he shows, in language of uncommon energy, that it is impossible for man, in his present state, to regard a being so vast, so mysterious, and so little known as God, except with superstitious dread. "All regarding him," says he, "is inscrutable; the depths of his past eternity, the mighty and unknown extent of his creation, the secret policy or end of his government--a government that embraces an infinity of worlds, and reaches forward to an infinity of ages; all these leave a being so circumscribed in his faculties as man, so limited in his duration, and therefore so limited in his experience, in profoundest ignorance of God; and then the inaccessible retirement in which this God hides himself from the observation of his creatures here below, the clouds and darkness which are about the pavilion of his throne, the utter inability of the powers of man to reach beyond the confines of that pavilion, render vain all attempts to fathom the essence of God, or to obtain any distinct conception of his person or being, which have been shrouded in the deep silence of many centuries, insomuch that nature, whatever it may tell us of his existence, places between our senses and this mighty cause a veil of interception."