" We are the clay, and thou our potter." - Isaiah 64:8.

Happy are they who can use this language; - who have renounced the mad enterprise of fashioning themselves, and, ceasing to play presumptuously the part of potter, have come to the original Author of their being, that he may create them anew in righteousness and true holiness. Even Christians are sometimes long in understanding what part they are to play in the divine laboratory. The idea of the divine agency in the transformation of their souls, is shadowy; that of their own obligation, painfully distinct. Let them learn to use the language of Israel of old. " Thou art the potter, and we are the clay." There is no more sublime function of the Godhead, none that more inapproachably exalts him above all created efficiency, than the metamorphosis of unholy souls. It were a less preposterous thing for us to undertake to create a globe like this, and find a planetary path for it, than to dream of substituting the similitude of angels for that of devils, in our characters. It is not merely the love of God, but also his power, that challenges the praises of the universe for the accomplished work of redemption (Revelation 5:13.)

" But, the clay has no volition of its own." True. But it is a fact, whether it be a doctrine or not, and a fact that we ought not to be so long in learning as we mostly are, that our own volitions utterly fail of themselves to effect the purification of our natures. It is God that worketh to will and to do, of his good pleasure.

" Thou art our potter.' What words of tender confidence are these. What a representation of God. Our potter, - mine, yours. He has taken up this as his vocation, - namely, the redemption and glorification of your nature, and of mine. Between your soul and God there is a wonderful relation established. All nature looks on in admiration, to see the Creator at work upon the clay of your soul. The sculptor is not more enchained to the marble he is employed in chiseling, nor the gardener to the spot which he is converting into a garden.