TEXT.--"I will be a God unto thee."

      THIS is the fullest of all the promises; for when God is promised, what is it that is not promised?

      1st. All that God is is promised ; his power for protection, his wisdom for direction, his grace for acceptation, his mercy for commiseration, his justice for recompense, his holiness for sanctification, his love for delight, his unchangeableness the guarantee of our privileges, his eternity the period of their enjoyment.

      2d. All that God has is promised. His creatures on earth to serve us, his angels in heaven to guard us, his ordinances to make us holy, his recompenses to make us happy, his comforts to support us, his graces to adorn us, his glory to crown us.

      3d. It is the surest, being in itself a strong bond and a firm seal to all his other promises. It is the most precious of all the promises, inasmuch as it puts us in possession of the most precious property.

      God is light without obscurity; how precious is that light to the mind! God is life without mortality; how precious is such life to the soul! God is peace without perplexity; how precious is such, peace to the conscience! God is love without mutability; how precious is such love to the heart! [205] inasmuch as it is the foundation of the most precious relations, the tender and endearing charities of Father, Son, and Brother.

      Like the tree that the Lord showed Moses in the wilderness, which, being cast into the bitter waters, rendered them wholesome and palatable, this promise is a remedy for all the bitterness of our fallen state; for, by virtue of this new covenant grant, the bitterness of wrath is passed from thee, O believer! for God is there to love thee; the bitterness of sin is past, for God is there to pardon thee; the bitterness of death is past, for God is there to unsting death, by turning the grim tyrant into a messenger of peace to thee, making the day of thy death better than the day of thy birth.

      To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.

      These, then, are some of the covenant blessings contained in this clause of the promise, "I will be a God unto thee." [206]

[METC 205-206]