Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMOIV IV. DUTY OP THE PRESENT, TO THE COMING GENERATION. Psalm cxlv, 4. One generation shall praise, thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts. In bringing into existence angels and men,-? the only orders of intelligent creatures with which we are acquainted,?the all-wise Creator saw fit to adopt two very different methods of proceeding. The angels, we have reason to believe, were all created at the same time, and in the full maturity of their intellectual powers. But men are brought into existence successively; and a small part only of the whole race inhabit this world at the same period. One generation gives birth to another, and then passes off the stage of life, to give place to its descendants. From the mode which God has thus adopted of bringing mankind into existence in successive generations, many most important consequences result. Of these consequences one is, that they all originally possess the same moral nature; for it seems to be an established law, and universal so far as this world is concerned, that every thing which is productive shall produce its own likeness.?Again; in the mode of bringing mankind into existence, all the natural relations which subsist among them have their origin. No similar relations, it is evident, can subsist among angelic beings. Among them the titles of parent, child, brother, and other names expressive of relationship, are not known.?Once more; from the mode of bringing mankind into existence, which God has adopted, result most of the social and relative duties- which he requires them to perform. Of these duties one of the most important is described in our text. One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts. This passage may be understood either as a prediction, or …
