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grateful sense of His goodness towards them, is a trutli wliich 

 believers are not ashamed to confess. And for the outward 

 expression of such feelings on the part of men, they use the 

 word ''praise/^ but not ''adulation." The word ''praise/' 

 however, would not have answered Mr. Spencer's object, and 

 therefore he prefers to call it " adulation." Now, adulation 

 means flattery, which is a very different thing from praise. 

 If I might venture to explain the difference, the word " adula- 

 tion" includes in the idea expressed by it, the notions of 

 servility and insincerity on the part of the flatterer, together 

 with the supposition that the flattered person is so vain as to 

 swallow all that is said to him, and so weak as to be induced 

 to confer favours without reference to the question whether 

 the object of them be deserving or not. Praise includes none 

 of these elements. It is the outcome of admiration of the 

 divine attributes, among" which are right and justice, and 

 freedom from all those weaknesses to which human beings 

 are liable. This word therefore would not have served Mr. 

 Spencer's turn. "Adulation" suits him much better; only 

 it has this disadvantage, that it is utterly inapplicable to the 

 Deity in whom Christians believe. I hope, therefore, we 

 may no more hear believers charged with worshipping a God 

 who loves adulation. 



The next charge brought against the God whom Christians 

 acknowledge is, that they consider punishment to be a divine 

 vengeance, and that divine vengeance is eternal. Now it 

 may be fully admitted that the Scriptures often use such 

 words as "vengeance," "anger," "wrath," &c., when 

 speaking of punishment inflicted by God. But inasmuch as 

 the God in whom Christians believe is described by them as a 

 Spirit, "without parts or passions," as already observed, it 

 is evident that they do not understand the words in question 

 in the sense in which they are used when applied to human 

 beings. They are used to signify that God does what in a 

 man would be looked upon as the result of one of those 

 passions, but it is not meant that the Deity acts upon any 

 such impulse, or from any other motive than to do what is 

 right. When the Scriptures say that the eyes of the Lord are 

 over the righteous, and His ears open to their prayers, no one 

 imagines them to mean that the Deity has the bodily parts 

 there mentioned, inasmuch as they always represent Him 

 as pure Spirit. Similarly when they say His hand is stretched 

 out, or His arm uplifted, no one is so absurd as to think they 

 attribute to Him literally the possession of arms or hands. 

 Why, then, should they not be understood in a somewhat 

 similar manner when they speak of divine vengeance ? The 



