UC-NRLF LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. GIF'T OF" Mrs. SARAH P. WALSWORTH. Received October, 1894. Accessions No. Class Afo. - 34 ... -c-~^vu. g ^ / GOD IN HISTORY; OR, PRESENCE AND PROVIDENCE OF GOD -.. THE AFFAIRS OF MEN. BY REV. JOHN CUMMING, D.D. REVISED BY D. P. KIDDEK. PUBLISHED BY LANE & SCOTT, FOR THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 200 Mulberry-street. JOSEPH LONGKING, PRINTER. 1852. C.? PREFACE. THE basis of the following little work was a lec- ture delivered in Exeter Hall by request of that excellent institution, the " Young Men's Christian Association." It was found impossible to present more than a sketch or outline in a lecture. The present treatise is an attempt to fill up the outline, by embodying in it facts, and incidents, and oc- currences, necessarily omitted, or briefly alluded to, in the lecture. The subject is an intensely in- teresting one rich in suggestive illustrations, and practical in so far as it comes home to the bosom and business of every man. The author has avoided introducing subjects on which his mind is fully made up, but on which there is much difference of opinion among good and wise men. It was his design, and it is his desire, to point out the presence of God rather in facts acknowledged by all, than in discussions raised on those facts by conflicting parties. While some see in such facts accidents others party 4 PREFACE. principles others illnature, intrigue, treachery he sees, and thinks others who look at them impartially will also see, in them or over them the presence of God. While many would drive out of the world the idea of God, there are increasing numbers who see, and recognize, and proclaim His presence with growing earnestness and ecstasy. To the author it appears that all things are cast- ing light on Christianity, or rather verging to- ward that point in the long-continued procession, at which what is now believed will be seen namely, that creation, providence, and revelation, are all of One and to One, who is God over all. CONTENTS. CHAPTER L THE CHRISTIAN EVER DELIGHTS IN TRACES OF GOD GOD THE UNIVERSAL AUTHOR OF GOOD BUT NOT OF EVIL MAN IN HISTORY GOD IN HISTORY ATHEISTIC VIEWS GOD RULES SMALL EVENTS AS WELL AS GREAT CHARACTER OF DIFFERENT HISTORIANS GOD DOES NOT SANCTION ALL THINGS THAT HE SUFFERS MISERIES OF INFIDELITY HUME VOLTAIRE D'ALEMBERT NARROW VIEWS OF HISTORY POETIC VIEWS ENLARGED CHRISTIAN VIEWS THE PERISHING AND THE ENDURING PERIODS OF DISCOVERY GOVERNED BY PROVI- DENCE PAGE 7 CHAPTER H. SACRED HISTORY THE FIRST PROPHECY APOSTASY FLOOD BABEL GREEKS, JEWS, AND ROMANS COMPARED THE GREAT DELIVERER TRIUMPHS OF THE GOSPEL 39 CHAPTER m. PROPHETIC HISTORY HAM ISHMAEL EGYPT, NINEVEH, THE CHAUXEANS, THE JEWS ROMANISM THE INQUISITION RE- SULTS OF THE PAPAL SYSTEM PRESERVATION OF THE SCRIP- TURES LAYARD'S DISCOVERIES IN NINEVEH 66 CHAPTER IV. PROVIDENCE HAS OVERRULED FOR GOOD THE DISPUTES OF THE CHURCH ART OF PRINTING JOSEPH SAUL JOSEPHUS GIBBON TETZEL LUTHER MELANCTHON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION NAPOLEON ERA OF MISSIONARY SOCIETIES SOCIETY... 86 CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. NEW ATTACKS OF INFIDELITY DEPOSITIONS OF THE POPE POPERY IN GREAT BRITAIN FROM QUEEN MARY TO KING WILLIAM MORE RECENT FACTS PEEL'S MEASURES AND FALL POPERY AND CHOLERA EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1848 CIVIL WARS MARAT PAGE 102 CHAPTER VI. RECORDS OF HISTORY, MESSAGES FROM GOD CHRISTIANITY THE STRENGTH OF ENGLAND REFORM BILL FREE TRADE HAPPY CONCESSIONS COMMERCIAL REVULSION POTATO BLIGHT CHOLERA AND SANITARY LAWS BENEVOLENT AGENCIES GOD IN BIOGRAPHY, PERSONAL APPEALS 120 GOD IN HISTORY. CHAPTER I. THE CHRISTIAN EVER DELIGHTS IN TRACES OF GOD GOD THE UNIVERSAL AUTHOR OF GOOD BUT NOT OF EVIL MAN IN HISTORY GOD IN HISTORY ATHEISTIC VIEWS GOD RULES SMALL EVENTS AS WELL AS GREAT CHARACTER OF DIFFERENT HISTORIANS GOD DOES NOT SANCTION ATX THINGS THAT HE SUFFERS MISERIES OF INFIDELITY HUME VOLTAIRE D'ALEMBERT NARROW VIEWS OF HISTORY POETIC VIEWS ENLARGED CHRISTIAN VIEWS THE PERISHING AND THE EN- DURING PERIODS OF DISCOVERY GOVERNED BY PROVIDENCE. THE Christian delights to trace everywhere the foot-prints of his God to hear in every sound the voice of his Father, and to gather new proofs of his love, his power, his acting in, and through, and hy all things for his glory. He sees and hears Him in the Bihle. He thirsts to see and hear Him in creation also ; and the more clearly he is ahle to realize his presence above, around, below, the nearer he believes is that blessed time when the whole earth shall be filled with his glory. It was a fine conception in ancient my- thology, which represented the Muse of History a& the daughter of Jupiter. This fable is a sha- 8 GOD IN HISTOKY. dow of a great fact ; all history is the develop- ment of Christianity, all its chapters find their coherency, and harmony, and issue in Christ. I assume that whatever evil, sin, imperfection, disorder, may appear in history, or in the world, are not of God, but interpolations. God did not make sin, nor is He in any sense the author of it. I assume that all the good that is developed in history all beneficent, holy, happy issues that evolve from the intermingling conflicts of persons, principles, passions is directly from God. I take it for a fixed and sure truth, that when evil is overruled for good, darkness for light, in the progress of events and man's selfish or side- ends for great public and beneficent results, or directly made to originate them ; and when, above all, we discover the creature planning his own purpose, irrespective of law, or duty, or love, and God overruling it for his great designs, and the evil intended working out the good that was not intended we see in all this visibly the foot- prints of God the traces of his Omnipotent beneficence the fact of God in History. One of our own poets has well said : " There's a Divinity that shapes our ends, Bough hew them as we will/' Man is in history its most wonderful, and often its most perplexing phenomenon. Angels are in history opening its mysterious seals, sounding its awful trumpets, and pouring forth GOD IN HISTORY. 9 its dreadful vials. Satan is in history ever active to suggest what is evil, arrest what is good, or overthrow what is holy, pure, perma- nent, divine. But God is in history. It is impossible for any dispassionate mind to turn over the leaves of history and fail to see what many would denounce as a disturbing element, but what the Christian hails as the finger of Deity preventing trains of circumstances, and conspiracies of parties, from bringing forth their natural fruits and ending in catastrophes which would long ere now have de- populated the earth, or made it a scene of wide- spread and growing misery. The evidences of a presiding Providence in the affairs of men, in the biographies of peasants and in the exploits of conquerors, and in the policy of cabinets, and in the rise, and reign, and abdication of kings, is just as patent to a reflecting above all to a Christian mind, as is the sun to the outward eye in the unfolding buds of spring, and in the rich blossoms of summer. Were God to let the world alone, man would become a fiend ; angels would flee as from another Gomorrah, and cease to minister to it ; Satan, wearing his burning coronet of sin, and holding the regalia of hell, would lord it over sea and land ; and time, com- mencing with paradise, would close with pande- monium. Many, however, are anxious to get rid of all idea of God in history or in the world. They do 10 - 0* THE ItJIITBASXTT 10 GOD IN HISTORY. not wish to feel it. They desire to extinguish every sense of his presence or recollection of their own responsibility. " No God" is their wish, and " No God " is therefore their conclusion. An atheistic heart makes atheistic logic. It is not with the feeling of simple aversion, hut with emotions of desperate hostility that they think of God. They are not atheists but antitheists. They are conscious of a latent feeling within that God is, and this feeling they persecute and tear up, just because it torments them in proportion to its strength. . Yet, just in as far as such persons succeed in emptying their minds of all idea of the presence of God in the history of the world, they add to their misery, and increase the chaos and confu- sion already within them. To an unlettered peasant the firmanent on a clear winter evening glows with splendor like the city of God, but it seems nevertheless to his eye a wilderness of tum- bling and eccentric orbs that may any moment come into collision. But to an astronomer's eye, our planets are revolving each on its axis, fixed and sure, and all around the sun ; and that sun, with all his planets, is but a group revolving round an inner and more central sun ; and all that mighty host but sentinels around that throne of Deity, from which they derive their fixity and glory. The latter feels a repose in contemplating the glorious panorama, and a conviction of order and permanence to which the former must be an GOD IN HISTORY. 11 utter stranger. Such is the difference between seeing all the facts of history as accidental occur- rences and seeing them all projected from God, or overruled h j Him for grand and beneficial issues. Others, however, feel it an unspeakable joy to see the shadow of Deity sweep along the currents of time, and to hear the voice of God, as of old, at eventide amid the trees of the garden. They see him, and delight to see him in verses, chapters, and books ; in the youngest children, and in the oldest cherubim ; in the dew-drop dancing on the leaf, or in the ocean girdling the earth with its glorious zone ; in the smallest molecule of light, and in the majestic mountain or the everlasting hills ; in the tripping of an infant's foot, and in the overturning of a mon- arch's throne ; in the flight of Louis Blanc, and in the fall of Louis Philippe. We call certain things little because they seem so to us we judge after the sight. But nothing is little, because nothing exists isolated and di- vided from other things.- A spark from the anvil is little in itself, but falling amid the summer grass it sets prairies on fire, or sends the destroy- ing flame along the streets of a great metropolis. What is apparently so insignificant as an acorn ? and if laid aside on the shelf, and left alone, it moulders and corrupts ; but cast into the earth it germinates and grows up into the mighty oak the monarch of the woods, and in due time it is the strength of the gallant ship that rides the 12 GOD IN HISTORY. sea-billow, and connects distant continents, and carries the word and the messengers of salvation to them that are in darkness. An apple falling from a tree is a very common, and seemingly a very insignificant thing ; yet to Newton's eye it unbosomed all the significance of the solar system it was the exponent of a law which runs from the nadir to the zenith, and binds with unseen, but irresistible cohesion, all worlds, and suns, and stars. So too is God in little things, to guide, direct, restrain, or arrest them. There is in the heart of man a disposition to limit the presence of God to say to his attri- butes, " hitherto and no farther ;" to admit his presence in certain places, and to exclude it in others. The attempt is as foolish as it is weak. There can be no space around us without air, and there can be none without God. A vacuum and atheism are impossibilities. God is, and He everywhere is. God is not confined to Consecrated acres, and hallowed shrines, and ecclesiastical arrangements ; his power is felt where his presence is deprecated or unsuspected. He is in the counting-house, the shop, the exchange, the market on the deck, the battle-field in the parliament, the palace, the judgment-hall. Whether we realize it or not ; " Thou God seest me," may be truly said by prince, and peer, and senator, and lawyer, and mechanic. Forcing none, he adjusts, arranges, GOD IN HISTORY. 13 and directs all; making microscopic points the pivots of gigantic wheels, and a random shot, as recently in Paris, the tocsin of a revolution that has changed the condition, connexion, and pros- pects of almost every nation in Europe. God is in all history, whether he he seen, or not ; in its minutest winding, in its gentlest ripple, and in its roaring cataracts, in its longest chapter and its shortest paragraph, at your festivals and fune- rals, heside the baby's cradle and above the monarch's throne. It is the presence or the proscription in heart of this great truth that gives their tone and coloring to our most distinguished and popular or authentic historians of men, nations, and coun- tries. Robertson writes history very much like an accomplished litterateur more charmed by the sparks struck from its collisions, than arrest- ed by the sense of a present Deity ; more anxious to write elegantly than solemnly. Hume writes as if he were the hired advocate and special pleader of Satan seemingly the patron of reli- gion and virtue, really the desperate enemy of both. Gibbon brings the splendors of a magnifi- cent genius and the drapery of a gorgeous style to do the same work which Hume's dry metaphy- sical diction had failed to do. Alison, whatever may be thought of minor views, is the most faith- ful, eloquent, and correct Christian writer of his- tory. Macaulay sparkles in every sentence, cen- sures and praises rather at the bidding of taste 14 GOD IN HISTORY. than truth. He is a speech-maker of the highest order a writer of the greatest brilliancy. A historian ought to stand like the apocalyptic angel in the sun, and from that central and com- manding foot-hold review the past and record the present. Impartiality in recording, philosophy in arranging, and piety in reflecting ought eminent- ly to distinguish him. He ought to see the facts of history as the astronomer sees the stars in the firmament each in its orbit, and all moving round a central sun. He ought to see God in all, and yet not the author of sin. This is a weighty distinction. A fierce conclave of Covenanters once went out to murder a magistrate, against whose life they fanatically thought they had a commis- sion : the magistrate escaped, but one Archbishop Sharp happened to pass " Truly," they said, " this is of God, and it is a clear call from God to fall upon him." This was adding blasphemy to murder. God permitted them thus to sin, perhaps in order to teach posterity what terrible atrocities may be perpetrated under the garb of religion ; but God was no further in that san- guinary episode at least as far as human eye can discern. We cannot exercise too great watch- fulness in this and in similar events. If we as- sume the presence of a mission from God, where there is only the suggestion of the depravity of man if we confound the sufferance of events with the Divine sanction of them we are guilty of teaching that God consecrates sin. His onini- GOD IN HISTORY. 15 presence is where his approbation is not. He re- strains and overrules what he condemns and pun- ^ ishes. The Jews crucified the Lord of Glory, and that crucifixion is the life and the necessity of the world, and the fulfillment of the promises, and purposes, and prophecies of four thousand years ; and yet the guilt of Judas that betrayed, Pilate that condemned, and the miserable Chief Priests, and Scribes, and Pharisees, and populace that crucified is as distinct as it is distinctly denounced. The important discrimination which we have en- deavored to render apparent, is thus stated by St. Peter in Acts iii, 13-19 : " The God of Abra- ham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus ; whom ye delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go. But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and de- sired a murderer to be granted unto you ; and killed the Prince of Life, whom God hath raised from the dead ; whereof we are witnesses. And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers ; but those things, which God before had showed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled. Kepent ye therefore." Thus man's sins which destroy himself are overruled by man's God to the accomplishment of his designs ; and not only man's sins, but his follies too. Beautifully and piously has the poet sung : 16 GOD IN HISTORY. " God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform ; He plants Ms footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable mines Of never-failing skill, He treasures up his bright designs, And works his sovereign will. His purposes will ripen fast, Unfolding every hour : The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower. Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his work in vain : God is his own interpreter, And He will make it plain." God is in history forgiving, neutralizing, and overruling, and soon about to come forth to extir- pate the evil that is in the world. God is in history creating, upholding, and carrying to glorious victory whatever is good or holy in it. The rejection of the conviction that God is pre- sent acting in, regulating, restraining, or over- ruling all facts, and times, and events has ag- gravated a thousandfold the miseries and per- plexities of skeptical minds. They are adrift from the anchorage-ground of Deity, their hark on an ungoverned and ungovernable sea helm broken, compass cast away, and all is chaos. They can- not see end or beginning, because they w r ant, in order to harmonize all, that which is to history GOD IN HISTORY. 17 what gravitation is to nature God. Thus wrote David Hume (Treatise on Human Nature, vol. i., page 458) : " I am affrighted and confounded with that forlorn solitude in which I am placed by my philosophy. When I look abroad, I see on every side dispute, contradiction, distraction. When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what con- dition shall I return ? I am confounded with these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness." Yoltaire says : " Who can without horror con- sider the whole world as the empire of destruc- tion ? It abounds with wonders ; it abounds also with victims. It is a vast field of carnage and contagion. Every species is without pity pursued and torn to pieces through the earth, the air, the water. In man there is more wretchedness than in all other animals put together. He loves life, and yet he knows he .must die. This knowledge is his fatal prerogative other animals have it not. He spends the transient moments of his existence in diffusing the miseries which he suf- fers cutting the throats of his fellow-creatures for pay in cheating and being cheated in robbing and being robbed and in repenting of all he does. The bulk of mankind are nothing more than a crowd of wretches, equally criminal and unfortunate. I tremble at the review of 18 GOD IN HISTORY. this dreadful picture. I wish I never had been born." We have heard men of skeptic minds protest against Christianity as gloomy, unsocial, exclu- sive, and we have seen them wage war against its existence and spread as if a calamity and curse. The extracts I have given are the reply they re- quire. Their language is as different from the Christian's as is the air of the ice-well from the genial warmth of noon ; wherever we find a true Christian we find one thankful in prosperity, pa- tient in trouble, and beautiful in all. He can say and sing : "Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, nei- ther shall fruit be in the vines ; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat ; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls : yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salva- tion." In the death of Voltaire we have a scene in per- fect keeping with those sentiments of his which we have quoted, well-fitted to show that even in this life God makes felt, in flagrant cases, the re- tributions of the future. The Abbe Baruel wrote soon after Voltaire's death an account of his last moments an account which it was easy to dis- prove on the spot, if it had been capable of dis- proof. The Abbe says, " Voltaire's danger in- creasing, he wrote thus to the Abbe Gauthier : ' You had promised to come and hear me. I en- GOD IN HISTORY. 19 treat you to take the trouble of calling as soon as possible. VOLTAIRE, Paris, Feb. 26, 1778.' A few days after, he wrote the following declaration in the presence of the same Abbe Gauthier, the Abbe Miguel, and the Marquis de Villeveille, copied from the minutes deposited with M. Monier, public notary at Paris : " * I, the underwritten, declare, that for these four days past, having been afflicted with vomiting of blood at the age of eighty-four, and not having been able to drag myself to the church, the Kev. the Eector of St. Sulpice having been pleased to add to his good works that of sending me the Abbe Gauthier, a priest, I confessed to him, and if it pleases God to dispose of me, I die in the holy Catholic Church, in which I was born, hoping that the Divine mercy will deign to pardon all my faults. If ever I have scandalized the Church, I ask pardon of God and the Church. VOLTAIRE, March 2, 1778.' " By the permission of Voltaire this declara- tion was carried to the Eector of St. Sulpice, and to the Archbishop of Paris, to know if it would be accepted as sufficient. But when the Abbe Gauthier returned, he was refused admittance. D'Alembert, Diderot, and others remained with him, and suffered no one. to approach him. To these he often cried, ' Begone ! it is you who have brought me to my present condition.' He com- plained that he was abandoned by God and man, and frequently he would cry out, peatcdly expresses his conviction that the various vicissitudes by which learning has been promoted, are under the control of an overruling Providence ; and he has more than once spoken of the recent discoveries, by which so many remains of anti- quity have been brought to light, as providential dispensations for the increase of our knowledge of God's works, and of His creatures. His convic- tion was, that, though we are to learn in the 36 GOD IN HISTORY. sweat of our brow, and though nothing good can be learned without labor, yet here also everything is so ordered, that the means of knowing what- ever is needful and desirable may be discovered, if man will only be diligent in cultivating and making the most of what has already been be- stowed on him. He held, that to him who has will be given, that not only will he be enabled to make increase of the talents he has received, but that he is sure to find others in his path. This way of thinking has been reproved as pro- fane, by those who yet would perhaps deem it im- pious if a man, when he cut his finger, or caught a cold, did not recognize a visitation of Providence in such accidents. Now why is this ? In all other things we maintain that man's labor is of no avail, unless God vouchsafes to bless it ; that, without God's blessing, in vain will the husband- man sow, in vain will the merchant send his ships abroad, in vain will the physician prescribe his remedies. Why then do we outlaw knowledge? Why do we declare that the exercise of our intel- lectual powers is altogether alien from God? Why do we exclude them, not only from the sanc- tuary, but even from the outer court of the tem- ple? Why do we deny that poets and philoso- phers, scholars and men of science, can serve God, each in his calling, as well as bakers and butchers, as well as hewers of wood and drawers of water ? " It is true, there is often an upstart pride in the understanding ; and we are still prone to fancy GOD IN HISTORY. 37 that knowledge of itself will make us as gods. Though so large a part of our knowledge is de- rivative, from the teaching either of other men or of things, and though so small a tittle of it can alone he justly claimed hy each man as his own, we are apt to forget this, and to regard it as all our own, as sprung, like Minerva, full-grown out of our own heads ; for this, among other reasons, that, when we are pouring it forth, in whatsoever manner, its original sources are out of sight ; nor does anything remind us of the numberless tribu- taries hy which it has been swelled. This tendency of knowledge, however, to look upon itself as self- created and independent of God is much encour- aged by the practice of the religious to treat it and speak of it as such. Were we wise, we should discern that the intellectual, the natural, and the moral world are three concentric spheres in God's world, and that it is a robbery of God to cut off any one of them from Him, and give it up to the prince of darkness. As we read in * The Book of Wisdom/ it is God that 'hath given us certain knowledge of the things that are, to know how the world was made, and the operation of the ele- ments ; the beginning, ending, and midst of the times ; the alterations of the turning of the sun, and the change of seasons; the circuits of years, and the positions of stars ; the natures of living creatures, and the furies of wild beasts ; the vio- lence of winds, and the reasonings of men.' " Thus then does it behove us to deem of in- 38 GOD IN HISTORY. ventions, as instruments ordained for us, by the help of which we are to fulfill God's manifold pur- poses with regard to the destinies of mankind. At the fit time the fit instrument shows itself. If it comes before its time, it is still-born: man knows not what to do with it ; and it wastes away. But when the mind, and heart, and spirit of men begin to team with new thoughts, and feelings, and desires, they always find the outward world ready to supply them with the means requisite for realizing their aims. In this manner, when the idea of the unity of mankind had become more vivid and definite, when all the speculations of history, and science, and philosophy, were bring- ing it out in greater fullness, when poetry was becoming more and more conscious of its office to combine unity with diversity and multiplicity, and individuality with universality, and when re- ligion was applying more earnestly to her great work of gathering all mankind into the many mansions in the one great house of the Eternal Father, at this time, when men's hearts were yearning more than ever before for intercourse and communion, the means of communication and intercourse have been multiplied marvelously. This is good, excellent ; and we may well be thankful for it. Only let us be diligent in using our new gifts for their highest, and not merely for meaner purposes ; and let us beware of man's tendency to idolize the works of his own hands. The Greek poet exclaimed with wonder at the ter- GODffN HISTORY. 39 rible ingenuity of man, who had yoked the horse and the bull, and had crossed the roaring sea; and still, though the immediate occasions of his wonder would be somewhat changed, he would cry, TroAAd ra deiva, ttovdev dvdp&rcov deivorepov Trehei. But, though a heathen, he kept clear of the two- fold danger of worshiping either man or his work. May we do so likewise ! For there is not a whit to choose between the worship of steam, and that of the meanest fetich in Africa. Nor is the worship of man really nobler or wiser. CHAPTER II. SACRED HISTORY THE FIRST PROPHECY APOSTASY FLOOD BABEL GREEKS, JEWS, AND ROMANS COMPARED THE GREAT DELIVERER TRIUMPHS OF THE GOSPEL. AN interesting field for illustrating the proposition before us, is that of early sacred history. The first prophecy was pronounced in Paradise " The woman's seed shall bruise the serpent's head." This was Calvary emerging from the wreck of Eden a shadow thrown back on the past that betokened a bright sun and a blessed day; and in these words, as in a most precious deposit, were garnered up all the hopes of all humanity. God interposed in every fall, and flow, and winding in the history of the human race, to guard this pro- phecy, and guide it to performance. The very in- stincts of self-preservation now felt in our nature 40 GOD IN HIS10RY. were planted there, lest man, weary of the curse, should take his own way of escape from it, and thus frustrate the word and render void the pro- mise of God, whose grand purpose and design it is to subdue all hostile elements to order, and to erect out of the ruins of ancient Paradise a fairer and more glorious Eden, fragrant with amaran- thine flowers. Accordingly, to evolve the first promise in the last Paradise, we see God coming down all but visibly into history, instituting sacri- fice, walking with Enoch as with his friend, and separating and setting apart from the alienated race one family from which the seed of the woman was in due time to issue. When the apostasy of man rose to its height, and the few who continued the faithful depositaries of the first promise were threatened with extinc- tion, God came down yet more visibly again into history, and opened the windows of heaven and the fountains of the deep, and swept the abound- ing wickedness from the face of the whole earth saving that faithful remnant, amid the faithful few ; but lest man's confidence in his great first promise should faint, or waver, or fail, God stood on the highest pinnacle of Ararat, and pointing to the rainbow, assured him, that while it spanned the sky and girdled the earth, no such desolation should overflow the world again. And thus, if you cannot excavate the earth, and gather fossil re- mains of antediluvian life, without tracing God's footprints below, you cannot lift your eyes to the GOD IN HISTORY. 41 heavens, and fail to see God's smile spread over the firmament above ; and thus the sky above and the earth below, like the twin lips of an oracle, proclaim that God is in history. Triumphal arch that fill'st the sky, When storms prepare to part, I ask not proud philosophy To teach me what thou art. When o'er the green, undeluged earth, Heaven's covenant thou didst shine, How came the world's gray fathers forth, To watch thy sacred sign ! How glorious is thy girdle cast O'er mountain, tower, and town ; Or mirror'd in the ocean vast, A thousand fathoms down ! As fresh in yon horizon dark, As young thy beauties seem, As when the eagle from the ark First sported in thy beam. For, faithful to His sacred page,. God still rebuilds thy span ; Nor lets the type grow pale with age, That first spoke peace to man. When, on the ebbing of the flood, men de- termined to raise a vast fabric on which they might be elevated above future floods thus disbelieving God's promise; and to make this idol-tower the centre and hope of human kind, and thus localize and prevent the spread of the population of the earth, God poured confusion into their speech, and by this one act in history arrested the progress of 42 GOD IN HISTORY. the iniquitous structure, and necessitated distinc- tion into nations, and thereby the dispersion of mankind to go forth over all the earth, that amid the snows of Lapland and under African suns in all lands and in all languages worship might ascend as incense to the throne, and all kindreds thus see and adore God in history. When the study of languages first began, and the Sheinitic and Indo-European were alone in- vestigated, the primitive and parental character of the Hebrew was unquestioned. But new dis- coveries of countries and tribes, especially the aborigines of America, induced many of the learn- ed to reject the Mosaic account as fabulous, and others to pause amid the perplexity they felt. But, as the study advanced in maturity, new af- finities between apparently totally distinct lan- guages were detected, and ultimately ethnogra- phers were led to the independent conclusion, which literally confirms the record of the confusion of tongues at Babel, that " all languages," in Dr. Wiseman's words, " were originally united in one, and that the separation between them must have been occasioued by some violent, unusual, and active force, sufficient to account at once for the re- semblances and the differences." In the list of those who have come to this conclusion are skeptics, rationalists, and Christians Herder, Klaproth, Schlegel, Humboldt, and Niebuhr. God thus leads men, as history rolls on, to facts and dis- coveries, which guide them, or rather us, to his GOD IN HISTORY. 43 word. God, in providential history, thus kindles lightj; which conduct to God in his own word. We read subsequently of God speaking aloud in the ear of history, and calling Abraham, and se- parating him and the rest of the patriarchs from the depraved inhabitants of the earth, " raising up the righteous man from the East, calling him to his feet, giving the nations before him, making him rule over kings giving them as the dust to his sword, and as driven stubble to his bow." In the great and protracted age of the patri- archs, we cannot fail to discover a provision for perpetuating religious truths when there was no written document ; and in their insulated position we see a colony amidst the vast multitude of Sodom, and Gomorrah, and Canaan, retained in connection and communion with heaven, and thereby competent to keep alive the channel of the promised seed, and to testify to the world that God was still in its history. We afterwards read of still more vivid evi- dences of the great fact we seek to show. God came down from his throne, and dwelt in the bush in Horeb, scattering around on that desert the burning beams of the inapproachable glory. He next descended in a chariot of fire on Sinai, amid thousands of angels the quaking hill and the agitated earth re-echoing the sound of his foot- steps. We see Him also in the blazing pillar of fire that marched before the hosts of Israel the deep sea attesting God in history, by opening its 44 GOD IN HISTORY. bosom to make a promenade for Israel, and col- lapsing in its fury to be a sepulchre for all the hosts and chivalry of Egypt. In the shortening of human life in the giving of the law in the institution of burdensome ceremonials, sacrifices, rites, oblations in the captivity of Babylon, when the weepers hung their harps on the willows by the Euphrates we see converging on ancient Israel from above, around, below, an accumulating pressure, intended to lead them to remember the first promise, and pray, and sigh, and cry for a deliverer out of Zion a Saviour. Do we not see, in all these facts, design, contrivance, consistent unity God in history? It is in this light that the apostle places the law when he describes it as our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. Its pro- cess was that of driving to Christ as an asylum or shelter from its avenging power, not that of draw- ing to him. One can see this propulsive tendency in all its ceremonial, moral, and comminatory enactments. A very interesting inquiry and evidence of God among the Gentiles, even as among the Jews, is the anticipatory rites and cries of heathendom after a deliverer, and its firm hope that such a de- liverer would come. What is the significance of sacrifice in every land and along all the centuries of time each sacrifice of various degrees of costliness and so- lemnity, according to the guilt it was intended to atone? That some unspent ray of its revealed GOD IN HISTORY. 45 origin may have suggested it, I doubt not ; but nothing would have kept it up and perpetuated it, but a deep sense of danger, demerit, and wrath. An insatiable thirst after emancipation from plagues over which philosophy had no jurisdiction, and human skill no control, must have been at the bottom of it, and that God whom they igno- rantly worshiped must have sustained this aching dissatisfaction this longing after immortality this deep and inner conviction of the necessity of a propitiation ere man could feel peace and God could give mercy. These impressions and influ- ences may have been reflected and indirect, yet are they proofs that God was in the world, causing them to prepare the way for Him whose sacrifice would meet the wants of humanity, and scatter all its doubts, and solve all its difficulties. Just on the eve of the advent of the great Deliverer, hu- manity had come to get sick and weary of its vain rites its unsatisfactory sacrifices and had reached a crisis in its experience, when it must fall back into the waste howling depths of that terrible gulf out of which it had been toiling to extricate itself, or emerge into the true light, and learn what love has provided " a ransom for many." In all this God was in no sense or degree the patron of superstition, or the author of sin ; and yet by a permissive or suggestive Providence he kept alive in man's soul a keen hunger, till the day that the living bread came down from heaven, 46 GOD IN HISTORY. and evoked from its long silent depths piercing and mysterious cries for an interposition equal to its restoration. So far was God in our history, and much farther was He in it in the exercise of forbearance and patience. By-and-by we see less of the driving, and more of the attractive process in God's dealings. David emerging from the sheep-cot, and establishing a kingdom, not the least beautiful type of the true David or Beloved ; Solomon's reign of splendor and glory, to see which Sheba's and Seba's queen came from afar ; the erection of the Temple, and the resting of the glory between the cheru- bim, where it blazed so long, and the Urim and Thummim, that Divine directory, and the blos- soming-rod, the emblem of an enduring priest- hood, and the incorruptible manna are proofs not only of God being but of God acting in history, and writing on its page the continuous fulfillment of his ancient promise. In the long dark eve of that stupendous fact the incarnation we see every human element, under the most favorable circumstances, allowed to reach its perfection, in order to prove that no human element, or pre- scription, or process, could restore mankind to God, and happiness to mankind. Occasionally men appeared in the history of the world before the incarnation, who seemed to have caught some impressions of the character of the sons of God. But the all but universal character of the world GOD IN HISTORY. 47 before the advent of Jesus, is but too faithfully delineated in the first chapter of St. Paul's Epis- tle to the Eomans. In Greece, poetry and painting, and statuary and philosophy had reached their perfection. The very remains the fragments, and all but debris of Greek civilization, art, and literature, are searched out above and below the soil, and ad- mired and applauded, when found, as the evi- dences of genius and taste, and artistic and aes- thetic excellence, to which there can be quoted no modern parallel. Nevertheless, slavery, sui- cide, licentiousness luxuriated under their reign, and sins and abominations were publicly spoken of without shame, and were practised without in- curring any brand of public execration, which the indirect light of Christianity has now driven from the language and the lives of men. Humanity meanwhile thirsted yet more for the knowledge of that God, of whom their greatest and wisest men had the most miserable conceptions. Greece is a lasting evidence how far the wing of unaided humanity can soar, and no less how essential for man is a revelation from God. All the senti- ments and expressions of feeling which have been industriously collected by Grotius, Wetstein, and others, from the writings of the heathens prior to the advent of Christ, are evidences of instincts and deep yearnings in the heart of humanity which God created, as lights of a gray and hazy dawn, teaching us that " far off Christ's coming 48 GOD IN HISTORY. shone," and that God was in the history of heath- endom. All facts and events previous to Christ were overruled or consecrated to introduce him. All philosophy, and literature, and poetry, and architecture, and painting, served to deepen man's sense of the absence of God, and so to make him seek after Him, if per adventure he might find Him, or to prepare men's hearts for the royal vis- itant, or to furnish us on whom the .ends of the centuries have come with irresistible evidence of nature's inability, of herself, to recover herself, just as man, by no strain on his muscles, can lift himself from the ground. As if in contrast with this, the Jews, who knew little of the fine arts who were an unscientific and unsesthetic race cherished the sublimest thoughts of Deity, and so described the Eternal, that the purest conceptions of great intellects are but rays that have wandered from Palestine. How do we explain this ? Only in one way. The Greeks were taught by man ; the Jews by God. Yet the one fact was as necessary as the other. God was in the Parthenon as truly as in Solomon's Temple : working out the experiment in the one, how little man can do ; and showing the great truth in the other, how gloriously God can teach. The Eoman empire, at the eve of Christ's ad- vent, had spread its sway over almost all the known world : the laurels of the orefyavoi, the crowns of its Caesars, were gathered from every GOD IN HISTORY. 49 land ; whatever skillful policy or martial prowess could do, Koine did. But numbers, sick at heart, waited still for the Consolation of Israel. The inscription is legible on the tomb of nations, " The world by wisdom knew not God." Mr. Birks eloquently observes : " The storms which rocked the cradle of Kome, and nursed it into greatness the wars of Carthage, the victo- ries of Hannibal, the proud triumphs of Scipio and Paulus, of Marius and Sylla, of Pompey and Caesar the fall of Greece, and Syria, and Egypt, of Spain, and Gaul, and Britain, with all the fierce convulsions of intestine strife, and the im- perial line of Caesar were all planned out and clearly foreseen in the counsels of the Most High. Where a worldly mind sees nothing but a wild sea of human passions, or the dark workings of subtle policy and ambition, God's word reveals a mightier presence standing in the midst of those proud statesmen and warriors, though they knew Him not. A flood of heaven's light streams down upon the darkest page of Roman ambition and crime. Amid those gloomy scenes of triumphant injustice, foul idolatry, or superstitious pride, al- mighty power was there to control, omniscient wisdom to foresee and ordain, and love and holi- ness were overruling the mighty drama of strife and violence to accomplish their own hidden coun- sel of grace and redemption to a fallen world." EirJcs' Four Prophetic Empires, p. 80. At length the great Deliverer, for whom every 3 50 GOD IN HISTORY. nation had searched and toiled to find a substitute and had failed, for whose advent patriarchs, and prophets, and priests, and kings had prepared the way, whose path to a cross was paved with types, and shadows, and gorgeous ceremonies, whose footfall had been for four thousand years the sweetest note in the chimes of mercy and truth that met together, and righteousness and peace that kissed each other, who was set up from everlasting as the model after which all shall be fashioned, and the end to which all times and things shall contribute : this great Deliverer came, and found only a manger in the world he had made, and hostility instead of hospitality in the hearts he sustained every minute by his power and came to redeem from destruction by the shed- ding of his precious blood. God manifest in the flesh was the noblest apocalypse of God in history. The Christ is the alpha and omega of my subject. His experience, Deception, life, and death, are illu- minated foci, revealing, in unearthly glories, God in history. The malignity of Herod, the hypo- crisy of Pilate, the inveterate hatred of the Phari- sees, the haughty scorn of the Sadducees, Eoman laws and Jewish rites, the helplessness of women, the vacillation of men, the shout of them that re- proached Him " Thou that savest others save thyself," and the cry of human nature in the agony of its irrepressible conviction " Truly this was the Son of God ;" these and innumerable other conflicting and antagonistic forces, coming GOD IN HISTORY. 51 together without preconcert, pursuing their exclu- sive ends without any unanimity of plan or iden- tity of purpose, and giving free utterance to all they felt, conspire and co-operate to accomplish the purposes of God, and to prove to after ages God in history. Discords thus evolve harmony. Sin and pain are thus ironed together like con- victs, and are forced to do God's will. Enemies emit hosannas, and babes and sucklings give glory. The leech likes only blood, but the phy- sician uses it for the health of his patient; out of the corrosive poison God brings forth a precious elixir. What a monument of God in history is Cal- vary ! Ignorance or wickedness alone can blind man's eyes to its glory. Very beautiful it is, also, to see that every miracle that Jesus did was not a mere stroke of power, but an earnest and first-fruit of the rescue of man from, his slavery, and of creation from its curse. When he healed the sick, it was a fore- light of the sickless state. When he raised the dead, it was a foretoken of the first resurrection. Whatever man lost in Paradise, the Son of Man regained in Gethsemane. The wilderness which the first Adam left as our inheritance, the second Adam entered, and out of it educed the outline of Paradise regained. His healing men's bodies, undoing the heavy burdens, raising the dead, un- stopping^the ears of the deaf, was God in history, beginning that process which the ministry of our 52 GOD IN HISTORY. physicians labors to perpetuate, and the voices of our clergy to circulate, and which shall end in the glory of that dawning age in which there shall be " long hours " of joy and " short hours of toil. 7 ' Nature (natura from nascor) is still bringing to the birth. She groans in pain, waiting to be de- livered. At the millennial morn her joy will be great that the man-child is born. Starting at the empty tomb of their risen Lord, the first ambassadors of Christianity went forth to subdue the earth, with no patronage but an open world, and no help but in Him who had pro- mised to be with them. In the varied and so far conflicting tempera- ments of the Apostles, we see the hand of God. In Matthew we read the terse and severe relation of naked facts, with an allusive reference to the Jew throughout. In Luke we see the elegant classic scholar educated, refined in taste, and versed in composition. In John we see the organ and the illustration of love, in whose breast the paternal character of God had made its deepest impression, whose pen appears to have been dipped in love who regarded the manifestation of Eter- nal Love as the lever that is to lift the earth from its aphelion, and replace it in its ancient orbit under a more glorious sun whose last words in the little Church in Ephesus were " Love one another." Peter is seen to be headstrong, bold, eloquent, impetuous ever the spokesman of the rest, and ever mighty through God. Thus, in the GOD IN HISTORY. 53 Acts iii, we find Peter and John performing a miracle Peter the only speaker, and John silent by his side, as free from envy or jealousy as he is full of love. The Jews took notice of both, " that they had been with Jesus ;" the dumb yet expres- sive countenance of the disciple whom Jesus loved preaching as effectually as the eloquent lips of Peter. The look of John reflected the lustre and the love of Jesus, and the words of Peter were the echoes of the words of Jesus, and both, in differ- ent ways, were witnesses to his glory. In Paul we discover a spirit of a still distinct order a powerful reasoner a hero in the highest and holiest sense of that word fitted by nature and filled with grace to carry the Gospel to the utter- most ends of the empire, and isles of the sea. The varied styles of these holy men, while vehi- cles of the same precious testimony, are fitted to interest and conciliate every variety of taste ; and thus while we see God at the commencement of Christianity, too glorious to be misapprehended by any but the blind, we see Him clearly in the selection and consecration of so varied an instru- mentality, to be the exponents of his mind in all ages. These twelve stones are jasper, and sap- phire, and chalcedony, and emerald, and sardonyx, sardine, chrysolite, and beryl, topaz, chrysoprasus, jacinth, and amethyst ; but all are built on one foundation, and reflect from their various surfaces, " the glory of God, even the Lamb." In the earliest days of the Gospel, weakness 54 GOD IN HISTORY. prevailed against might, and few against many, and the lone fishers of Galilee against the soldiers of Ca3sar. Humility overthrew pride, and love triumphed over hatred ; and naked truth, the unarmed child, overcame the Macedonian phalanx, and the Eoman legion, and Satanic hosts, till the Vine of Israel shot up and gracefully wove its tendrils around the sceptre and mingled them with the laurels of the Caesars, and at length the hated religion of a corner of the Eoman empire became the faith of countless nations, and the hope, and stay, and joy of humanity. There is no more conclusive evidence of God's presence in the early centuries of the Christian dispensation. It gently and yet effectually trod down prejudice, and passion, and eloquence, and money, and power ; and rose refreshed hy tempo- rary defeat, to gain eternal victory. There is no proof of God in history more clear or conclusive than the victory of unarmed Christianity the march of the insulted, resisted, and denounced Gospel, and the present all-hut throned position of the Bihle, compared with the past ail-but ac- complished destruction of it. Persecution fanned its flames ; the sufferings of its martyrs convinced their murderers, and added new disciples to the faith. The winds of heaven wafted to distant lands the testimonies of the saints, and the silent subterranean catacombs into which they were crowded were inscribed with the records of the truths clung to in trial, and GOD IN HISTORY. 55 the joys realized by the worshipers within them. All forces helped Christianity, all winds bore her onward. Her records in all lands are the imper- ishable evidence of God in history. The carnal have tried to burst the restraints of the Gospel, and the fierce and violent to tear up by the roots that tree of life whose shadow gives protection even to them ; but, like the banyan tree, the more its upper boughs have been cut and hacked, the wider and deeper the under roots have spread. God stands by it, though we see Him not, and re- strains, with unseen but mighty hand, the fierce passions of mankind, and draws glory to himself from the remainder, and makes the first false prophet and the last false priest undesignedly aid the cause they have studied to betray. I know no more eloquent proof of God in history than this that all the architects of creation have failed to build up a lie, and all the inquisitors of Spain have failed to burn down one truth. God dies not when his children and confessors suffer, and truth is not consumed with her martyrs ; and when the iron hoof of infidelity shall tread down all the churches, shrines, and altars, and holy places of Christianity, there shall be left in every Christian's bosom the chancel of a holy heart, which man can neither make nor mar God's first temple in Paradise, and God's last temple on earth. 56 GOD IN HISTOKY. CHAPTER III. PROPHETIC HISTORY HAM ISHMAEL EGYPT, NINEVEH, THE CHALD2EANS, THE JEWS ROMANISM THE INQUISITION RE- SULTS OF THE PAPAL SYSTEM PRESERVATION OF THE SCRIP- TURES LAYARD'S DISCOVERIES IN NINEVEH. HAVING glanced at this, the main current of evi- dence of God in history, let us look at some of the side streams. Wherever there is prophecy or pro- mise in Scripture, we shall find God in history, watching over its perfect performance. The mi- nutest characteristics of the Babylonian, Medo- Persian, Greek, and Roman empires, were pictori- ally set forth in Daniel, long prior to their cor- porate existence ; and the evidence of God in his- tory is the fact that Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Alex- ander, Pompey, Caesar, and Constantino, all start up in brilliant succession at the moment indicated some thousand years before, and, having done the work predetermined of God, they successively sink into the darkness, out of which, like meteors, they originally emerged. God's sure word of prophecy is the grand fluxion, of which the history of nations is the fluent. God is as truly in the history of modern and ancient Europe, as in the forty years' journeying in the wilderness. A prophecy was uttered in Egypt by the Patriarch Jacob, that " the sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh come." Judah is now literally annihilated. There are no GOD IN HISTORY. 57 proofs of its genealogy. Fifty years "before the advent of Christ it was depressed and ail-but de- stroyed by the Eoman empire a few dim rays of departing royalty flickered around the sceptre of David at the birth of Jesus. In the year 12 it was incorporated with Syria, ai\d made a Eoman province ; and so the sceptre fully departed from Juclah, and the ruins of Jerusalem so glorious in its historic recollections, so guilty in its moral character extinguished all the signs and present possibilities of the restoration of Judah to sove- reignty. It would not be difficult to go over every pro- phecy in the Old Testament Scripture, and point to its indisputable fulfillment as evidence of God guiding or overruling all events, wills, passions, purposes, to the accomplishment of his designs, In vain had Deity spoken in the oracle, if Deity had not acted in the world. Prophecy is history undeveloped, and history is prophecy in full mani- festation, and it is by the light struck out in the transition of the one into the other that we see God clearly. Eead the prediction respecting HAM, that his descendants, the children of Africa, should be bondsmen of bondsmen. England nobly sacri- ficed twenty millions, in order to wash her hands of the heinous crime and horrible abominations of slavery, and sent her cruisers to sweep the seas of every craft that ventured to encourage the inhu- man traffic. But while God is not the author of this sin, nor man irresponsible for his crimes, 3* 58 GOD IN HISTORY. slavery lias grown under the attempts to extin- guish it, and shot up in spite of the power of Britain and the piercing protest of outraged hu- manity, the hour of its extinction not having yet come ; thereby showing that heaven and earth may pass away, but that one jot or tittle of God's word cannot pass away till all be fulfilled. Of the descendants of Ishmael, the Arabs, it was written, some six thousand years ago, that each should " be a wild man his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him ;" and that he should " dwell in the presence of his brethren." Gibbon, the foe of Christianity, unconsciously bears witness to God in history, when he states, " the arms of Sesostris, and Cyrus, and Pompey, and Trajan, could never achieve the conquest of Arabia ;" and when he says, " the Arabs are armed against mankind:" and at this day, says Sir Kobert Porter in his travels, " The Arabs are still a wild people, dwelling in the presence of all their brethren, unsubdued and unchangeable one of those mysterious facts that establish the truth of prophecy ;" and we may add, another evidence that the God who spake in prophecy is the God who acts in history. No doubt such facts, so plainly fulfilling ancient prophecy, are not mere arbitrary and disjointed proofs, either of the truth which passed from the prophet's lips, or of the power which imprints its doings on the historian's page. They have, I GOD IN HISTORY. 59 doubt not, great moral and beneficent issues, not yet evolved. The Arabs so live, not simply and solely because Moses so prophesied. Beyond this they have a part to play a mission to execute, and at the appointed time it will so be seen. Of Egypt it was written upwards of two thousand years ago, " Egypt shall be the basest of king- doms ; I will make the land waste by the hands of strangers : there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt ; it shall be the basest of king- doms." Gibbon, ignorant of the prophecy, and declaim- ing against the very existence of God, thus writes : " Its constitution condemns the native to perpetual servitude, under the arbitrary dominion of stran- gers and slaves" Volney writes : " Deprived, twenty-three centu- ries ago, of her natural proprietors, she has seen her fertile fields successively a prey to the Per- sians, the Macedonians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Arabs, the Tartars." " In Egypt there is no middle class ; a universal air of misery is manifest in all the traveler meets." God's truth was in prophecy, and atheists attest God's presence in the fulfillment : and thus God in history is the echo of God's voice in prophecy. Of Nineveh it was prophesied by Nahum: " Nineveh shall be like a pool of water ;" " to be devoured as stubble fully dry ;" " the Lord will make an utter end of it." Diodorus relates, " it was destroyed partly by fire and partly by water." 60 GOD IN HISTORY. According to Gibbon, " the city, and even the ruins of the city, have wholly disappeared." Tyre was once the London of the ancient world. " It was," says Volney, " the theatre of an immense commerce, the nursery of arts." Upwards of two thousand years ago, God thus spake of it in prophecy : " I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his wave to come up. And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers. I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea." The Chaldseans, and finally the Greeks under Alexander, came up against it. Alexander form- ed a mound from the mainland, out of the mate- rials of old Tyre, and literally, in the words of the prophet, scraped off her dust, and buried it in the sea. There is left scarce a ruin of Tyre. A rock is all that remains, on which modern fisher- men now dry their nets. In the words of Volney, " It contains fifty or sixty families, who live ob- scurely on the produce of their little ground, and a trifling fishery." Thus there is seen in history the shadow of Him who inspired the prophecy ; and while his voice is heard sounding in the one, his hand is seen acting in the other. I might very easily gather similar proofs from the state of Idumaea, Babylon, Judaea. But one race I cannot pass by, whose existence GOD IN HISTORY. 61 is eloquent evidence of God in history. I mean the Jews. The future state of their land is thus described by Ezekiel, vi, 3, 6, 14 : "In all your dwelling-places the cities shall be laid waste, and the high places shall be desolate ;" " Your altars waste and laid desolate ;" " The land more deso- late than the wilderness." Again : " I will bring the worst of the heathen, and they shall possess their houses, and their holy places shall be defiled." In Jeremiah xix, 8, it is written, " I will make this city desolate, and a hissing ; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished, and hiss be- cause of all the plagues thereof." In Micah it is prophesied, " I will make Samaria as a heap of the field : I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations thereof." The author of the " Holy Land Eestored," a work of great interest, by the Rev. Mr. Hollings- worth, thus describes the fulfillment of these and innumerable parallel predictions : " The cities are ashes of the dead. Tombs cover the land. The inhabitants are scattered from each other, and live in single hundreds, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of monuments, each witnessing to the populousness of former genera- tions. The soil is secretly pregnant with a hun- dred teeming harvests, yet there is no one to reap them, none to sow. Birds of prey soar in silent attention over these places. The whole country 62 GOD IN HISTORY. seems abandoned to the robber Arabs. Human life is insecure and uncertain. No one who sows knows who will reap his harvest, and those who hastily gather it with their weapons by their side, hurry it home like men who are stealing from a land which is not their own. The traveler watches every distant cloud of dust, lest it should reveal a glittering gun-barrel, or the spears of a robber horde. In the heart of the best portion of the world, at the head of the most renowned sea, with ports that were originally the mistresses of the most lucrative commerce between East and West, it is inhabited only by necessity, and man snatches a hurried and feverish existence without comfort or settled security for its plains and mountains. The desolation is almost complete. The popula- tion goes on diminishing. The rivers appear to have all diminished in volume and breadth. The springs which in ancient times flowed and wept for very joy, in every ravine and on the sides of all the hills, are parched up and wasted their rocky urns are filled with dust. Yet rains are abundant. ' The whole land thereof is brimstone and salt, and burning, it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, which the Lord over- threw in his anger and in his wrath. 7 Deut. xxix, 23. When from Nebo and its hill Pisgah, Moses be- held that goodly land, how marvelous is it not that he should have been able just before to pen these sentences as features of its present altered GOD IN HISTORY. 63 appearance ? Who could thus obliterate its loveli- ness but God ? Who but God could have foretold its barrenness now ?" Of them God thus spake hundreds of years be- fore the destruction of Jerusalem : " I will scatter you among the heathen :" " Thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations, whither the Lord shall lead thee:" " Among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest." Jerusalem has been " trodden under foot," liter- ally and terribly, till now, by the iron heels of western Christians, who deluged it with blood, by the hoofs of Arab and Moslem horsemen, and by the bare feet of Greek, and Eoman, and Armenian monks. Each sect spared its rival in order % to crush the Jew. To plunder and maltreat the Jew was regarded as the expression of a piety singu- larly acceptable to God. No experience of man can explain this. The Jew is a living mystery, which prophecy alone clears up. Many other predictions, intimate the destinies of this mysterious race till Christ come. All na- tions have homes in Jerusalem, the Jew has none. They have been sifted through all nations, and have taken root in none. They are the sub- jects of every dynasty the victims of every tyranny the scoff of the infidel the scorn of the great. From the Thames to the Tiber, and from the Tiber to the Ganges, and from the Ganges to the Missouri from " Greenland's icy moun- 64 GOD IN HISTORY. tains to India's coral strand" they are found insulated from the sympathies of all men, indi- cating affinities with something above and before, but with nothing around. That once great na- tion has been poured down upon the earth like quicksilver it has split into innumerable scatter- ed and disintegrated globules, which the hand of the Great Proprietor will yet collect, and form into a mighty mass that shall glow with imperish- able splendor and reflect his glory. Many thou- sand years ago, God in prophecy pronounced the future dispersion and doom of the Jews, and God in history has kept them like the bush on Horeb burning and not consumed till that day come when the glory shall return from between the cherubim, and the dry bones rush together from a thousand lands, and the groans of creation, and the oppression of the Jew, and the travail of the Christian, cease together. Do we not hear every morning a deep-toned voice in our streets ? It is the echo of the voice of God in prophecy evidence to a skeptic world that God's word is truth. No man can read the history of the Jews, and the prophecy of which that history is the shadow pro- jected into many years and lands, and not con- clude that the prescience of God pronounced the prediction, and that the presence of God in history superintends its fulfillment. Let any man read the descriptions of Eomanism, as they are delineated in the New Testament Scriptures in the second chapter of 2 Thessa- GOD IN HISTORY. 65 lonians for instance, the reading of which has made Eoman Catholics declare that Protestants must have interpolated the wortls in order to describe their Church and compare with them the de- velopment in history of the features and facts of that terrihle apostasy; the system with which we shall soon have to grapple, a system which refuses to examine a dogma lest it lose faith in it ; which regards prayer as a punishment, and simony as a virtue ; which puts the queen of heaven in the place of the Saviour of sinners, and mechanical ceremonies in the stead of spiritual worship ; a system which speaks all tongues and lives in all lands ; which enters alike royal cabinet and re- publican congress ; whose hundred hands grasp the sceptre and arrange the ballot-box; whose wiles seduce priests and statesmen to endow Popery in Ireland, and open diplomatic inter- course with the Pope in Italy ; whose fine music and dramatic ceremonies draw over young men by thousands to Eomish cathedrals ; and see if Popery, in its creeds, and canons, and history, and deeds, be not a counterpart of prophecy in the pages of the word of God. Romanism, in the nineteenth century, is the echo of its description in the first. Let any one compare the facts that have arisen during the siege of Rome in 1849 with the description of its last catastrophe in Rev. xviii, as I have atttempt- ed to do in my lectures on the Seven Churches, and say if the " First and the Last," who speaks 66 GOD IN HISTORY. in that chapter, be not now acting in this history. Already, writes a correspondent, " four thousand Protestant Bibles (Diodati) have been printed and eagerly bought up, and the spirit of detestation with which the clergy are now regarded renders their doctrines (as held forth by Jesuitical teachers) doubly unpalatable to the people. Important docu- ments, just discovered, reveal a complete system of Jesuitical propagandism in England, and espe- cially in Ireland,, from which country the frequent visits of young priests to this capital (London) were not certainly unimportant." Great Babylon is come into remembrance before God. Her consumption is begun : God is appear- ing in the last chapters of her history, in answer to the prayers of a thousand years. Not the least remarkable proof that Eev. xviii is writing its records in deeds, is the exposure of the persecution and crimes of Rome now coming to light. "In her was found the blood of saints." The office of the "Holy Inquisition " at Eome has been opened up to public inspection. Many of the secrets of that prison-house of misery have perish- ed with its victims, and a large part of the arch- ives have apparently been destroyed by their keep- ers ; nevertheless, enough remains to show the horrors of a past reign of spiritual tyranny. There are relics of the past of various kinds, and especially in the collections of human bones dis- covered under the floor of this vast Pandemonium. How many men and women have perished there ! GOD IN HISTORY. 67 how many deeds of darkness have these walls witnessed ! how many a cry of anguish, or groan of despair, has ascended up to heaven, though un- heard or unpitied by men, from the secret recesses of this place of torment ! Part of the records remain ; and that part is illustrative, to a fearful extent, of the evils of the confessional that hateful engine of Eomish craft and wickedness. In the memorial regarding the exposure of the " holy office" we read the subjoined paragraph : "Attention was especially directed to the book called of "Solecitazione,"(it contains reports,) and to the correspondence. This was done by order of the government, which thereby gave another proof of that moderation which its enemies deny to it. Their results, from a careful examination of these documents, which remain for the inspec- tion of such as desire proofs that the past govern- ment made use of this tribunal, strictly ecclesias- tical in its institution, also for temporal and po- litical objects, and that the most culpable abuse was made of sacramental confession, especially that of women, rendering it subservient both to political purposes and to the most abominable licentiousness. It can be shown from documents, that the cardinals, secretaries of state, wrote to the commissary to the assessor of the holy office, to procure information as to the conduct of sus- pected individuals, both at home and abroad, and to obtain knowledge of state secrets by means of confession, especially those of foreign courts and 68 GOD IN HISTORY. cabinets. In fact, there exists long correspond- ences, and voluminous processes, and severe sen- tences, pronounced upon La Giorine Italia, La Jeune Suisse, the masonic societies of England and Scotland, and the anti-religious sects of Ame- rica, etc. There is an innumerable quantity of information and processes on scandalous and ob- scene subjects, in which the members of regular religious societies are usually implicated." Yet strange ! but true ! and evidence that God in history is not Divine responsibility for human sins ; every new corruption that Eome took to her bosom shot forth into a curse that tormented her, as if to show that while God predicted her he did not make her. The sword with which she evan- gelized smote herself the decretals and chartu- laries which she forged became the witnesses of her crimes the cathedrals she built from the plunder of widows and orphans echoed with her own groans, and, in 1793, flowed with her own blood her doctrine of priestly celibacy has been poison in her veins and her confessional, erected to be the seat of power, has been felt by her as a burning throne. At every stage of her develop- ment, God in but not of her history has cried aloud, " Do it not " as often she has done it and suffered. How remarkable, too, is this fact, that in every country, and in every century, Eomanism has left behind her, or created under her sway, the irre- sistible evidence, that, as she is not from God, so GOD IN HISTORY. 69 she is not a blessing to mankind. I quote from the pages of one who has espoused the political demands of Rome, and has advocated the endow- ment of her priests I mean Babington Macau- lay in his brilliant, but, in many respects, pas- sionate and partial History of England. He " From the time when the barbarians overran the western empire to the time of the revival of letters, the Church of Rome had been generally favourable to science, to civilization, and to good government. But during the last three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human mind has been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, what- ever advance has been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been in inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest and most fertile provinces in Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty, in po- litical servitude, and in intellectual torpor ; while Protestant countries, once proverbial for sterility and barbarism, have been turned by skill and in- dustry into gardens, and can boast of a long line of heroes, statesmen, philosophers, and poets. Whoever, knowing what Italy and Scotland natu- rally are, and what, four hundred years ago, they actually were, shall now compare the country round Rome with the country round Edinburgh, will be able to form some judgment as to the tendency of Papal domination. The descent of 70 GOD IN HISTORY. Spain, once the first among monarchies, to the lowest 'state of degradation the elevation of Holland, in spite of many disadvantages, to a position such as no commonwealth so small has ever reached teach the same lesson. Whoever passes in Germany from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant principality, in Switzerland from a Eoman Catholic to a Protestant canton, in Ireland from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant county, finds that he passes from a lower to a higher grade of civilization. On the other side of the Atlantic the same law prevails. The Protestants of the United States have left far "behind them the Ro- man Catholics of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil. The Roman Catholics of Lower Canada remain inert, while the whole continent round them- is in fer- ment with Protestant activity and enterprise. The French have doubtless shown an energy and intelligence, even when misdirected, which have entitled them to he called a great people. But this apparent exception, when examined, will he found to confirm the rule for in no country that is called Roman Catholic has the Roman Catholic Church, during several generations, possessed so little authority as in France." You have read and heard of the controversies and discussions of the ancient fathers, councils, and ecclesiastical writers. These were frequently fierce, and often turned on some word or syllable of the sacred text. Let the value of some of their discussions be GOD IN HISTORY. 71 placed at as low a rate as you like : their writings, preserved by that Church which was less willing to preserve the Bible, contain almost all the New Testament ; so that, were every copy of the New Testament suddenly to disappear from the earth, I could gather almost the whole volume from the folios of the fathers. It thus appears that God was present in the midst of these controversies, overruling them for the safety and preservation of his word. The fragments of the writings of Porphyry and Celsus, the ancient opposers of Christianity, prove that the passages they quoted fifteen hundred years ago are verbatim in their writings as they exist in our Bibles ; and thus the Bible is proved by infidel evidence to be pure to- day as it proceeded from its Fountain. The preservation of the Old Testament in its uncorrupted purity is evidence of God in history. The distinction of the twelve tribes gave each an interest in preserving their law in its integrity. Their kings had each to write out a copy of the law. The people, in order to obey God's command to teach it to their children, must also have had or written out copies of it. The jealousy of the Jews and Samaritans made the one a check on the other. The translation of the Old Testament into Greek, and its dissemination throughout the world the Chaldee paraphrase the very super- stitions of the Jews, who counted the letters and paragraphs and fixed the middle letter and middle word of each book, are all proofs of the presence 72 GOD IN HISTORY. of God disposing the good and overruling the bad to the preservation of the purity and safety of the sacred records. No part of the Old or New Testa- ment is lost. Of the facts recorded in the Bible, every day, and every land, and every science, furnish evidence. The Andes, the Alps, the Pyrenees, hold in their gigantic bosoms the demonstrative evidences of the flood. Heathen writers witness to the Tower of Babel ; and Tacitus, Strabo, and Josephus, record the destruction of Gomorrah. Young, Salt, and Champollion have drawn from the stony lips of the Pyramids testimonies of the truths of Scrip- ture, and made the hieroglyphics on innumerable fragments to reflect the scenes of four thousand years ago ; and, out of the very tombs of Egypt, Belzoni has raised witnesses, as it were from the dead, to cry in the ear of a skeptic world, " Thy word is truth." Those mysterious hieroglyphic letters which have been so long secret engraven on the temples of deities, the palaces of kings, the tombs of ancient dynasties on the gigantic sphinx and the colossal monolith, by the hierophants of Egypt, in their robes of byssus and their sandals of byblus those scrolls which have been snatched from dead men's fingers, or gathered from sealed sarcophagi, or the dark chambers of the Pyramids have, in the providence of God, been opened up by the genius and the toils of man, and in spite of all that the ancient idolaters could have wished, and in opposition to all they designed, these men GOD IN HISTORY. 73 show the God of Abraham in history, proving by daily additional facts, how frail is human grandeur, how lasting is Divine truth ! What renders these discoveries more conclusive proofs of Divine influ- ence is the fact, that few of those who have been most successful in their excavations intended in any shape to illustrate the word of God. They prosecuted their researches for other ends; they sought their rewards from other sources. Unde- signedly they became commentators on the word some of them scarcely read, many of them scorned, and few cared to confirm. A very remarkable instance of similar investigations is furnished by an admirable, scholar-like, and truly Christian disquisition on St. Paul's voyage and shipwreck, by James Smith, Esq., of Jordan Hall. From the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii coins and medals are still gathered, silently attesting the same fact. A remarkable evidence of God in history is fur- nished in the interesting volumes of Mr. Layard, which describe Nineveh and its remains. Let us hear God in prophecy first, and next see God in history as narrated by Mr. Layard. Nahum i, 8 : " But with an overrunning flood the Lord will make an utter end of the place thereof ;" verse 14, " I will make thy grave." Nahum ii, 10 : " She is empty, and void, and waste." Nahum iii, 7 : " All they that look upon thee shall flee from thee, and say, Nineveh is laid waste." Zephaniah ii, 13 : " The Lord will stretch out his hand against the 74 GOD IN HISTORY. north, and destroy Assyria, and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness ;" verse 14, " Desolation shall be in the thresholds ;" verse 15, " How is she become a desolation !" Let us now read God in history, making visible by His power the word that He spake in wisdom and truth. "Were the traveler to cross the Euphrates to seek for such ruins in Mesopotamia and Chaldea as he had left behind him in Asia Minor or Syria, his search would be vain. The graceful column rising above the thick foliage of the myrtle, the ilex, and the oleander the gradients of the am- phitheatre covering the gentle slope, and over- looking the dark blue waters of a lake-like bay the richly-carved capital or cornice, half hidden by the luxuriant herbage are replaced by the stern, shapeless mound, rising like a hill from the scorched plain, the fragments of pottery, and the stupendous mass of brickwork occasionally laid bare by the winter rains. He has left the land where nature is still lovely ; where, in his mind's eye, he can rebuild the temple or the theatre, half doubting whether they would have made a more grateful impression on the senses than the ruin before him. He is now at a loss to give any form to the rude heaps upon which he is gazing. Those of whose works they are the remains have left no visible traces of their civilization or of their arts their influence has long since passed away. The more he conjectures, the more vague the results appear. The scene around is worthy of the ruin GOD IN HISTORY. 77 he is contemplating. Desolation meets desolation ; a feeling of awe succeeds to wonder, for there is nothing to relieve the mind, to lead to hope, or to tell of what has gone hy. These huge mounds of Assyria made a deeper impression on me gave rise to more serious thought and more earnest re- flection than the temples of Baalhec, or the theatres of Ionia." Layard's Nineveh, vol. i, chap, i, p. 28. The words of the traveler are the echo of the prediction of the prophet; and throughout his statement he conveys what he felt, and what is precisely the impression that is made from reading the words of Nahum and Zephaniah. After describing the human-headed winged lions and hulls, Mr. Layard, struck with the coin- cidence between the prophet's words, uttered near- ly three thousand years ago, and the facts he re- cords, thus expresses himself: " I used to contemplate for hours these myste- rious emblems, and muse over their intent and his- tory. What more noble form could have ushered the people into the temple of their gods ! What more sublime images could have been borrowed from nature by men who sought, unaided by the light of revealed religion, to embody their concep- tion of the wisdom, power, and ubiquity of a Su- preme Being ? They could find no better type of intellect and knowledge than the head of the man of strength than the body of the lion of rapidity of motion than the wings of the bird. 78 GOD IN HISTORY. These winged human-headed lions were not idle creations, the offspring of mere fancy ; their meaning was written upon them. They had awed and instructed races who had flourished three thousand years ago. Through the portals which they guarded, kings, priests, and warriors had borne sacrifices to their altars long before the wis- dom of the East had penetrated to Greece, and had furnished its mythology with symbols long recognized by the Assyrian votaries. They may have been buried and their existence may have been unknown, before the foundation of the eter- nal city. For twenty-five centuries they had been hidden from the eye of man, and they now stood forth once more in their ancient majesty. But how changed was the scene around them ! The luxury and civilization of a mighty nation had given place to the wretchedness and ignorance of a few half-barbarous tribes. The wealth of tem- ples and the riches of great cities had been suc- ceeded by ruins and shapeless heaps of earth. Above the spacious hall in which they stood, the plough had passed, and the corn now waved. Egypt has monuments no less ancient and won- derful, but they have stood forth for ages to tes- tify her early power and renown ; whilst those be- fore me had but now appeared to bear witness in the words of the prophet that ' once the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of a high stature ; and his top was among the thick boughs : his GOD IN HISTORY. 79 height was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long because of the multitude of waters, when he shot forth. All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwell all great nations.' Ezek. xxxi, 3, etc. For now ' Nineveh is a desolation, and dry like a wilder- ness, and flocks lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of the nations ; both the cormorant and bittern lodge in the upper lintels of it ; their voice sings in the windows, and desolation is in the thresholds. 7 Zeph. ii, 13"Layard's Nine- veh, vol. i, p. 75. It is thus that God still acts in history, and that all men are agents, consciously or uncon- sciously executing his purposes. Bather than one evidence be wanting to vindicate his truth, a tra- veler shall be sent from England to Assyria, and Arabs and Mohammedans, and viziers and cadis shall laboriously dig into the earth, and lay bare the irresistible evidence of verbal inspiration of God proclaiming what would be, till history, from the pen of Mr. Layard, shall prove that God has watched the currents of events, and worked out the proofs that He is and reigns. Do we read in Jeremiah iv, 1 : " Take thee a tile and lay it before thee, and portray upon it the city, even Jerusalem?" Mr. Layard finds illus- trations of this custom in the subterranean cham- 80 GOD IN HISTORY. bers of Nineveh. He states, vol. ii, p. 147, " In many public and private collections, there are in- scriptions on tiles and barrel-shaped cylinders of baked clay." This is corroborative proof of the date of the prophecy. In vol. ii, p. 239, Mr. Layard thus writes : " The passage in Ezekiel describing the interior of the Assyrian palaces, so completely corresponds with and illustrates the monuments of Nimrod and Kharsabad, that it deserves particular notice in this place. The prophet, in typifying the cor- ruptions which had crept into the religious system of the Jews, and the idolatrous practices borrowed from nations with whom they had been brought into contact, thus illustrates the influence of the Assyrians: 'She saw men portrayed upon the walls, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed with vermilion, girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativ- ity. 7 Ezek. xxiii, 14, 15. There can scarcely be a doubt that Ezekiel had seen the objects which he describes the figures sculptured upon the wall and painted. The prevalence of a red color shown by the Kharsabad remains, and one elaborate and highly-ornamented head-dress of the Kharsabad and Kouyurijik kings are evidently indicated." Thus the faithfulness and reality of the descrip- tion of Ezekiel, and the evidence that he saw what he delineates, and at the very time at which GOD. IN HISTORY. 81 the Scripture shows that he lived, are made more apparent by these researches among the ruins of Nineveh. In vol. ii, p. 289, Mr. Layard states, that Ezekiel's prophecy of the destruction of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar illustrates the bas-reliefs of Nimrod. " For thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will bring upon Tyrus Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, a king of kings, from the north, with horses, and with chariots, and with horsemen, and companies, and much people. He shall slay with the sword thy daughters in the field ; and he shall make a fort against thee, and cast a mount against thee, and lift up the buckler against thee. And he shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he shall break down thy towers. By reason of the abun- dance of his horses their dust shall cover thee : thy walls shall shake at the noise of the horse- men, and of the wheels, and of the chariots, when he shall enter into thy gates, as men enter into a city wherein is made a breach. With the hoofs of his horses shall he tread down all thy streets : he shall slay thy people by the sword, and thy strong garrisons shall go down to the ground. And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise : and they shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses ; and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber, and thy dust in the midst of the water." Opposite p. 342, vol. ii, Mr. Layard gives a re- presentation discovered in the ruins of Nimrod, 82 GOD IN HISTORY. of heathen deities carried on the shoulders of As- syrian warriors, a bas-relief which illustrates by fact the description in prophecy, " They lavish gold out of the bag, and weigh silver in the bal- ance, and hire a goldsmith ; and he maketh it a god : they fall down, yea, they worship. They bear him upon the shoulder, they carry him, and set him in his place." Isaiah xlvi, 6, 7. In vol. ii, p. 351, Mr. Layard writes : " The re- semblance between the symbolical figures I have described, and those seen by Ezekiel in his vision, can scarcely fail to strike the reader. As the prophet had beheld the Assyrian palaces with their mysterious images and decorations, it is highly probable that, when seeking to typify certain Di- vine attributes and to describe the Divine glory, he chose forms that were not only familiar to him, but to the people whom he addressed captives, like himself, in the land of Assyria. " Ezekiel saw in his vision the likeness of four living creatures, which had four faces, four wings, and the hands of a man under these wings, on their four sides. Their faces were those of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. By them was a wheel, the appearance of which was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. It will be observed that the four forms chosen by Ezekiel to illustrate his description the man, the lion, the bull, and the eagle are precisely those which are constantly found in Assyrian monuments as religious types. The ' wheel within the wheel/ mentioned in con- GOD IN HISTORY. 83 nection with the emblematical figures, may refer to the winged circle or wheel representing at Nim- rod the Supreme Deity." It is very doubtful how far Mr. Layard's con- jecture is correct that the prophet borrowed his figures from the Assyrian sculptures. It is far more likely that the Assyrian sculptures were corrupted traditional or sensuous images of in- spired revelations. The prophet does not borrow imagery. He describes a vision in imagery which God made to pass before his eyes. Besides it is very unlikely he would adopt as emblems of Deity, those very representations respecting which he says, (viii, 10,) "Behold every form of creeping things and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel portrayed upon the walls round about." The evidence however of one set of imagery being connected with the other is abundant ; the minute accuracy of the prophet is thus confirmed by the researches of Mr. Layard, and the impres- sion is more and more deepened that the labors of the latter ware predetermined of God, and that while he thought he was merely illustrating As- syrian history, he was really commenting on the word of God, and what he supposed would prove merely an addition of new and interesting hiero- glyphic bas-reliefs and sculptures to the treasures of the British Museum, was truly new contribu- tions to the Church of Christ. It is thus that Mr. Layard's book is God speaking in history. 84 GOD IN HISTORY. There is a Divine presence evident in the time as well as person and place. Mr. Layard states, vol. ii, pp. 116, 117, "My labors in Assyria had now drawn to a close. The funds assigned to the Trustees of the British Museum for the excava- tions had been expended, and from the instruc- tions sent to me further researches were not, for the present at least, contemplated. On looking back upon the few months that I had passed in Assyria, I could not but feel some satisfaction at the result of my labors. Scarcely a year before, with the exception of the ruins of Kharsabad, not one Assyrian monument was known. Almost sufficient materials had now been obtained to ena- ble us to restore much of the lost history of the country and to confirm the vague traditions of the learning and civilization of its people hitherto treated as fabulous. It had often occurred to me during my labors that the time of the discovery of these remains was so opportune that a person inclined to be superstitious (that is, to recognize God in history) might look upon it as something more than accidental. Had these^palaces been by chance exposed to view some years before, no one would have been ready to take advantage of the circumstance, and they would have been complete- ly destroyed by the inhabitants of the country. Had they been discovered a little later, it is highly probable there would have been insurmountable objections to their removal. It was consequently just at the right moment that they were disin- GOD IN HISTORY. 85 terred, and we have been fortunate enough to ac- quire the most convincing and lasting evidence of that magnificence and power which made Nineveh the wonder of the ancient world, and her fall the theme of the prophets, as the most signal instance of Divine vengeance. Without the evidence that these monuments afford, we might almost have doubted that the great Nineveh ever existed, so completely 'has she become a desolation and a waste. 7 " God is thus collecting and arranging all things to witness to His word. He is in the Pyramids of Egypt in the ruins of Pompeii in the labora- tories of science in literature, in poetry, calling up new heralds of his glory ; and by-and-by the whole earth shall be covered with ten thousand times ten thousand witnesses from every realm, and school, and kingdom, and science, who, Baptist- like, shall point while they preach, " Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world!" 86 GOD IN HISTORY. CHAPTER IV. PROVIDENCE HAS OVERRULED FOR GOOD THE DISPUTES OF THE CHURCH ART OF PRINTING JOSEPH SAUL JOSEPHUS GIBBON TETZEL LUTHER MELANCTHON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION NAPOLEON ERA OF MISSIONARY SOCIETIES BIBLE SOCIETY. IT is worthy of remark, that the disputes and differences among true Christians about minor things, as Church-government, and rubrics, and rites, etc., have been the occasion of preventing the minutest passages of Scripture from the very possibility of alteration, in order to favor a par- ticular view. The watchful controversialist would instantly have exposed the attempt of his oppo- nent to alter a text. Even in the literature and logomachies of the scholastic divines, during the dark and leaden ages of mediaeval Europe, we can trace the presence and providence of God. They kept alive and stimulated mental activity, and their abstruse speculations led to the foundation of noble universities and useful schools ; and their incessant controversial war in which the An- gelic doctor beat the Seraphic, and he the Irre- fragable kept in practice those powers which were destined at the Eeformation to " contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints." The scholastic divinity was the old and worn-out instrument on which the musician prac- tised and acquired the skill that enabled him to GOD IN HISTORY. 87 touch with power and draw forth the harmonies of a nohler one. God was among the schoolmen of the middle ages. Peter Lomhard, Duns Scotus, and Thomas Aquinas had their mission. Those ahstractions of theirs which the eagle's eye could not see, and those fooleries of theirs which a mo- dern dunce cannot tolerate, were not useless. Had Christianity appeared ahroad in its princely and glorious aspect, it had been quenched and banish- ed from the earth by the Eomish autocrat. As it was, these schoolmen wove the ark of dialectic subtleties in which the Babe of Bethlehem was preserved from the Pharaohs of the earth. When the time of the Church's deliverance drew near, it was the scandalous lives of the prominent eccle- siastics, the excesses of their tyranny, the merely- literary character of Leo X., the prevailing igno- rance as well as immorality of the priests, that were overruled by God to precipitate the great Eeformation. Nor can one fail to perceive that the fall of Constantinople, the learned refugees of which covered Europe with the treasures of anci- ent learning, and next the discovery of printing, were God's appointed heralds, crying in the wilder- ness, " Prepare ye the way of the Lord." Thus the fall of Constantinople, which gave new impetus to scholarship, was the evidence of the presence and overruling providence of God. Thus Gutten- berg, the inventor of printing, was not a mere accident an isolated fact. He was as much the creature of God as the highest angel; and his 88 GOD IN HISTORY. work, unconsciously on his part, a contribution to the sovereign purposes of Deity. It is thus seeing all facts as part of a great whole that gives the least so sublime a significance. Lords of science, ye who read Wisely the eternal creed, Writ on sky, and sea, and land, By an ancient author's hand, Chant from stone and starry pages The old laws that rule the ages, Poets, who have bravely striven To o'ershadow earth and heaven, Faint not in your noble duty, Feed the heart of earth with beauty, And with old religion's light Bid her dreaming face grow bright. Statesmen, who have wielded power To give to man a Sabbath hour ; All pure hearts, your task renew, God himself hath need of you. Simple minds, that every day Watch, and wait, and think, and pray, Ye are children of one mother, Save and succour one another ; Each contributing his drop To the increasing sea of good ; Sow, and ye shall reap the crop, Stand, ye cannot be withstood. To pass on to individual instances. In the beautiful and simple story of Joseph, which is worked up with our earliest recollections ; his visit to his brethren in Dotham the pit the purchase the prison the accusation the elevation to Pharaoh's right hand, are evidence that facts are more resplendent than fiction, and GOD IN HISTORY. 89 that God is in the minutest turning of individual biography as much and as truly as in the mightiest pulse of national or European life. Saul of Tarsus, delighted with the work of per- secution serving his sanguinary apprenticeship by watching the outer garments of the murderers of Stephen a persecutor from taste an amateur in blood sets out to Damascus, full of energy and overflowing with prescriptive zeal. Midway a voice sounds from the sky that laid him in the dust, and left him the advocate of the cause he endeavored to crush, and the preacher of that Christianity which he till then had hoped to ex- punge from the face of the earth. Josephus the historian, a Jew, sits down, amid the debris of Jerusalem, to write its history, and to praise, as he felt it expedient, his Koman master, and yet cover as he could the sins and shame of his people, for whom his sympathies still glowed. These were his motives and ends. He writes his history, and therein records, unconsciously and undesignedly on his part, the fulfillment of the Saviour's prediction of the fall of Jerusalem ; so much so, that, if asked to produce a minute and detailed evidence of the strict and amplest fulfill- ment of what is written in Matthew xxiv, and ir- resistible proof that Jesus is the Messiah by a witness no one can suspect of partiality, or accuse of leaning to Christianity I would summon to my presence the Jew Josephus, the faithful chroni- cler of the downfall of his beloved Jerusalem , * * m.^ 90 GOD IN HISTORY. of the utter desolation of his country, and of the sufferings of its guilty inhabitants, and in all this a faithful witness of God in history. Gibbon sits down by the lake of Geneva, and amid the shadows of the Alps, to sketch, in his own magnificent language, the decline and fall of Rome. He casts censure where he can on Chris- tians, and reproach when he dares on Christianity, and turns to caricature, in many a note, its finest and sublimest truths. Christians begin to study prophecy, especially the Apocalypse and lo ! his very sarcasms are important proofs of its truth, and the facts he collects attestations to its inspi- ration ; and the scorn he flings at the Bible bursts into the glory that embosoms and illuminates its history ; and of all commentators on the Book of Revelation, he who set out with a determination to upset Christianity itself is the most important and thus the author of the " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" is, it may be a reluctant, but an irresistible and splendid evidence of God in history. The monk Tetzel wect forth at the bidding of Pope Leo X. to raise money by any process the most productive the best for finishing the Ca- thedral of St. Peter at Rome. The wretched hire- ling sold indulgences and pardons for past, present, and future iniquities. His excesses roused the in- dignation of the good and the inquiries of the thinking. Undesignedly he stirred up the Refor- mation he digs the foundations of a Protestant GOD IN HISTORY. 91 temple, instead of gathering funds for the super- structure of a popish one his voice becomes the requiem of German Popery, and his progress its funeral march. The blasphemies of the monk Tetzel awakened the feelings of the monk Luther, and Pope Leo sending his emissary to collect money for superstitious ends, is connected with the Lord of glory commissioning Luther to " prophesy again," and unfurl that glorious banner which has waved over so many and so noble lands ; and thus Tetzel, the dealer in indulgences, is summoned from his infamous grave, to attest that God is in history. We see God remarkably acting throughout this great era in the appearance of Melancthon, the friend and fellow-laborer of Luther. Luther was irascible and inclined to violent and even rash measures ; so much so, that if left without some regulating and corrective presence he might have ruined the edifice it was his heart's desire to raise. Melancthon was more learned than Luther gentle, amiable, cautious laboring in the study to illustrate and construct again the great truths which ages of superstition had broken up or hid. Melancthon was the best Greek scholar of his age gifted with a rich and impressive eloquence, and fitted to act on the most educated minds. Even Luther's translation of the Bible no mean proof of his scholarship received not a little of its ex- cellence from the revision of Melancthon. Luther, with that superiority to petty jealousy by which 92 GOD IN HISTORY. his noble nature was always characterized, thus alludes to his friend: " I am born to be forever fighting at opponents, and with the devil himself, who gives a controversial and warlike cast to all my work. I clear the ground of stumps and trees, root up thorns and briars, fill up ditches, raise causeways, and smooth roads through the woods ; but to Philip Melancthon it belongs, by the grace of God, to perform a milder and more grateful labor to build, to plant, to sow, to water, to please by elegance and taste." Thus did the son of the miner make his hammer ring on the old fortresses of superstition. Thus Paul seemed risen from the dead in Luther, and John in Melancthon, and God appears present in the arrangement. Nor is God's hand less visi- ble in the providence which brought Melancthon to Luther. Frederic the Wise wanted a Greek professor for his new university at Wittemberg ; and, as we shall see, that want and that university were not accidents. Eeuchlin recommended Me- lancthon, and he was accepted. Melancthon gave his first lecture on the study of Greek. Luther was one of his audience and was delighted. Very soon they found out that they felt common sym- pathy, and in a few weeks Luther's letter to him began, " Mi dulcissime Philippe." Ranke (Book 2, c. 3) observes, " It was an im- portant thing that a perfect master of Greek arose at this moment at a university where the development of the Latin theology already led to GOD IN HISTORY. 93 a return to the first genuine documents of primi- tive Christianity. Luther began to pursue the study of Greek with earnestness. His mind was relieved and his confidence strengthened, when the sense of a Greek phrase threw a sudden light on his theological ideas. When, for example, he learned that the idea of repentance, (pcenitentia,) which, according to the language of the Latin Church, signified expiation and satisfaction, signi- fied in the original conception of Christ and his Apostles, nothing "but a change in the state of the mind, it seemed as if a mist was suddenly with- drawn from his eyes." Melancthon was subse- quently appointed Professor of Theology, and gave a currency to Protestant truths of incalcu- lable value. I need not quote the biography of Martin Luther as evidence of the great truth I am endeavoring to establish. He goes into an Augustinian con- vent in order to prepare himself for the Eomish Church, and finding a Bible, unread before, he gets a fresh ray of truth that directs him out of it. He makes a journey to Borne, in order to be strengthened in his views and convictions as a Eo- manist, and he returns disgusted with the scenes of profligacy he witnessed, and armed with inten- ser indignation against the very system he went to see and admire in its most favorable position. He is sent to Wartburg as a prisoner, and there he translates the Bible. The Pope flings at his head a whole shower of anathemas, and Luther 94 GOD IN HISTORY. reads God's holy word in the light of the bonfire made by the burning of the anathemas of the sovereign pontiff. Every stone thrown at Luther rebounded and hit Pope Leo X. The very plans that were calculated to extinguish the rising light acted on it like the winds of heaven on a forest on fire. God was in that intense and stirring history, and therefore all opposition persecution scheming policy only helped it to culminate in glory in victory. We see sweep along these great historic events the long procession of sol- diers, monks, pilgrims, kings, emperors, prelates, popes ; but these are not the builders they are but the tools in the Builder's hand ; these are not the sculptors they are but the chisels obedient to the Sculptor's touch. It is a very prevalent idea, that certain great and important discoveries such as the discovery of printing, just prior to the era of the Keforma- tion directly gave us that glorious emancipation. I believe that the printing press was no more the cause, or a cause of that event, than the cock- crowing is of the dawn of day. It was God that interposed, and printing and Protestantism were effects that rose out of that interposition. That era was a new epoch created from on high, and out of it and previous to it arose into day innu- merable blessings indicating the presence of Him to whom the glory of it belongs. It is neverthe- less true that a great amount of preliminary pre- GOD IN HISTORY. 95 paration had been made by Reformers before the Reformation. Johan Von Goch, educated at one of the schools of the Brethren of the Life in Common, and foun- der of the priory of Tabor in Mechlin, while out- wardly accepting monastic rules was in all his convictions as expressed by himself a Protestant. He was deeply imbued with the spirit of primitive Christianity, and under its influence rebuked and protested against many of the corruptions of the Papal court and the monastic orders. He died in 1475, eight years before the birth of Luther. Johan Von Wessel, in the year 1450, wrote power- fully against the doctrine of indulgences. Ac- cording to Ullmann, Wessel had proceeded further in his principles when he wrote against indulgen- ces than Luther had done when he wrote on the same subject. As a preacher he made a very deep impression. " The word of the Lord/ 7 he preached, " is bound by human inventions and cannot be freely proclaimed. A tyrannical power rises up against it on all sides it is opposed by the teach- ing of the bishops, to say nothing of the legends of saints, the fraud of indulgences, and the fury of the monks whom one must exalt to heaven if he would live comfortably. But if called to preach the truth do not stand in fear of the anathemas thundered in the Papal bulls, which are but paper and lead. Our souls must waste away with spiritual famine, unless a star of hope shall arise. Deliver us, O God of Israel, from all these distresses." 96 GOD IN HISTORY. But while these and others, whose names are better known, were pioneers of Luther, and were raised up of God for this end, this fact does not diminish the supernatural character of the Kefor- mation itself. " Had I read Wessel's works be- fore," says Luther, "'my opponents would have said Luther has borrowed his ideas from Wossel. This greatly encourages and comforts me. I am therefore no longer in doubt that my teaching is true, because he agrees with me so perfectly in his feelings, in his views, and even in his expres- sions." The most stupendous event since the Beforma- tion its antipode in some respects was per- haps the French Revolution of 1793. The French revolution of last century was the second act in the consuming of the Papacy, and in that consumption Napoleon played not the least effective part. Sovereigns fell before him to make way for his annihilating and victorious march; and having struck down crowned heads in quick succession, he extinguished for a season the Pope's temporal power, and made Eome a part of his empire, and tfie Pope a vassal and stipen- diary of France. God had spoken in the prophecy of Daniel nearly two thousand years before, fore- telling " the taking away of dominion from it to consume and to destroy it unto the end." This epoch of the revolution and subsequent sovereignty of Napoleon terminated the one thousand two hun- dred and sixty years, which began A. D. 530, at GOD IN HISTORY. 97 which last date the Code of Justinian gave a legal standing to the papacy. Ecclesiastical and Papal lands were alienated from the Church, monastic houses were suppressed, and in 1793 the Komish religion was formally abolished in France the churches were many of them razed to the ground their bells cast into cannon the priests were massacred or plundered, and, as if to show that it was the Romish faith alone that was under judgment, England and other Protestant lands were scarcely touched. Finally, in 1807, the ten kings or horns (Britain excepted, which fell off at the Reformation) joined in desolating " the beast/ 7 It is perfectly wonderful to witness how punc- tually all men stand up at the moment fixed in the purposes of God to do his will, and to act out his written, but to them it may be unknown, pre- dictions. Prophecy is every instant rushing into history. History is but the flower and fruit of prophecy, and all men, kings, and statesmen, and priests are unconsciously watering and fostering it. What was prophecy yesterday, becomes per- formance to-day ; what is a word in the Bible to- day, will be a work in the world to-morrow. God's presence thus develops itself in power ; and na- tions, as if they heard the oracles of heaven, leave every occupation and interest, and rush to execute them. Personated and condensed as was the French Revolutionary fury in its terrible exponent and 5 98 GOD IN HISTORY. agent Napoleon, its most powerful energies were ultimately directed against this great land of ours old England. In our policy at home, so finely developed by the great prime minister of that day and, above all, in the master-spirits that crowded every deck, and started up in every field we see God's great intervention in that terrible crisis to save the land of light, and love, and truth, and freedom. In vain France, shouting for ships, colonies, and com- merce, hurried her ships, and admirals, and sailors, to invade or sweep our shores. The very name of Nelson carried terror into all opposing crews ; while with a decision, a speed, and splendor, unde- niably of God, he swept the seas, and disappeared from the scene as soon as at Trafalgar he had struck the finishing blow. Alison no less truly than eloquently says : " In later years, when his achievements had marked him out as the great defender of Christianity, he considered himself an instrument in the hand of Providence to combat the infidel spirit of the Ee- volution, and commenced his despatch on the battle of the Nile, by ascribing the whole to Almighty God. The true crisis of the war occurred at this period. It was the arm of Nelson which delivered In passages relating to his own country our author ex- hibits quite as much the enthusiasm of the Englishman as the impartiality of the historian, or the discrimination of the Christian philosopher : nevertheless, we allow him to express his views in his own way. AM. ED. GOD IN HISTORY. 99 his country from her real danger thenceforth the citadel of her strength was beyond the reach of attack. At Waterloo she fought for victory ; at Trafalgar for existence." Alison, vol. v, p. 368. Having done God's work on the seas by exe- cuting his judgments on them that had provoked them, our country had to complete her mission by her sacrifices, deeds, and victories upon land. If in the hour of need God sent a Nelson to do his behest upon the deck, he sent a Wellington to rival if not eclipse him on the field. The con- queror of Europe was baffled by the genius, and humbled by the heroism of THE DUKE. The tor- rent of military conquest that gathered speed and bulk with progress, and carried on its surging waves whatever religion had consecrated or time had spared, was met and stemmed by Wellington : or rather rolled back in its stormy channel, and the path of havoc turned into the career of vic- tory, till on the field of Waterloo the Tra- falgar of the land Napoleon was struck down ; the fabric of his iron empire was reduced to ruin, his sword was shivered in his grasp, and his diadem torn from his brow, and to crown his degradation, he himself was left to die in chains, an exile in a solitary isle of the Atlantic. Can we doubt that God was in this chapter of our history ? The nations that denied, or blasphemed, or polluted his name by their superstitions, felt each almost omnipotent against the other, but found all com- bined but weakness against that land whose 100 GOD IN HISTORY. monarch reigns DEI GRATIA, by " the grace of God," and whose people, in the main, look beyond the skies to the everlasting hills for strength and victory. During the volcanic outburst of the first French Ke volution, and while God, to whom the thanks were given, carried our country from victory to victory, he stirred up the hearts of our clergy and people at home; and in the decade, extending from 1792 to 1802, nearly all our missionary societies were created as if to show that while Satan raged and smote the Kedeemer's heel, God put forth his glorious cross and crushed the ser- pent's head. While the crashes of falling dynas- ties were echoed from every shore of Britain, there were heard sounding over the main, and awaken- ing glad music amid distant isles and benighted deserts, the silver sounds of the trumpet of jubilee, and God's great voice, felt to be greater and " mightier than the noise of many waters yea, than the mighty waves of the sea." The Baptist Missionary Society first lifted up its head and shone, whilst it was sprinkled with the beams of the Sun of Kighteousness. The London Missionary, the Church Missionary, the Wesleyan Missionary, the Eeligious Tract, and the Bible Societies, raised their heads in glorious suc- cession. There are differences in details, identity in truth, and rivalry only in beneficence. If we look at a series of mountain peaks, on which the first rays of the sun are falling, the intervening GOD IN HISTORY. 101 valleys are concealed and lost, and the illuminated crags and pinnacles alone are visible in the rosy light that illuminates them. So with those noble societies. I cannot see their differences. I can only see their bright heights glowing in the splendor of their common Sun. I cannot hear in them any voice but God's : I cannot see in them any life but love : I cannot trace in their history any one but God, who makes the weakest things monuments of his might, and the most defective things trophies of his grace. During all the revolutionary storms of conti- nental Europe, Britain not only reposed in the quiet sunshine of peace, but more and more girded herself as a Christian people to go forth the ambassadress of heaven, the benefactress of the earth. In the language of William Wilberforce, whose sanctified influence was at that time so eminently blessed, " Amid the din of warlike pre- parations, the foundation stone was laid of the Bible Society, an institution which was to leaven all nations with the principles of peace:" and thus, while other nations were pulling their houses about their ears, ours alike hut and hall stood firm, because upon the Rock of Ages; and our hands were busy, not in pulling down old establish- ments, but in rearing new institutions, which should spread the everlasting gospel from sea to sea, and from the rivers to the end of the earth. 102 GOD IN HISTORY. CHAPTER V. NEW ATTACKS OF INFIDELITY DEPOSITIONS OF THE POPE POPERY IN GREAT BRITAIN FROM QUEEN MARY TO KING WILLIAM MORE RECENT FACTS PEEL'S MEASURES AND FALL POPERY AND CHOLERA EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1848 CIVIL WARS MARAT. IT was about the close of the eighteenth and be- ginning of the nineteenth century that infidelity broke out with increased hostility and bitterness. But in this also was manifest the overruling pro- vidence of God. The violence of the assault stirred up the noblest spirits of Christendom, and the de- fence so completely covered the attack that all felt thankful for so ferocious an onset, because of so splendid a defence. I have seen the sun by his very brilliancy exhale from the earth thick mists that grew into dark clouds, and threatened to eclipse the luminary of day ; but by the intensity of the same beams he dissolved the clouds into showers which refreshed and fertilized the earth they concealed from the sunlight. So the Sun of righteousness draws up, by his very glory, clouds of atheistic and infidel opponents ; but the same glory that provoked their exhalation from the earth, turns them into means of usefulness and progress to his kingdom. What the world's false prophets pronounce the tombstone of Christianity, is the platform on which this Bird of Paradise plumes its wing for a higher flight and wider range. GOD IN HISTORY. 103 While at that time God was so conspicuous in history in the light of the blessings which he showered down his presence was singularly transparent in the judgments, which, like charter- ed emissaries, walked the world around us. The very scenes and spots where nations had sinned with a high hand were those where" God pun- ished them visibly before the world. Judgment tracked the sin, and struck where it had left its trail. The priests of France had stained their coun- try's soil with the blood of slaughtered victims on occasions as melancholy as memorable in history, and on the same soil the priests of France were humbled and cruelly murdered by that rampant infidelity which was just the rebound of their su- perstition. The Pope himself was seized by the soldiers of Napoleon in the Sistine chapel, marched a prisoner amid files of soldiers along the ante-hall, in which are still retained the paintings of the massacre of the French Protestants on St. Bartholomew's eve. So true it is that national sins will sooner or later be visited by national retributions. And what are the news of the passing day? In the Times Newspaper of November 28, (1849,) I read : " The head of the Romish communion, lately the object of furious idolatry, is now more hated and despised than the most worthless of his predecessors, and is only allowed to live be- cause not worth assassination. The patrimony of 104 GOD IN HISTORY. St. Peter is offered in the streets for sale to any set of demagogues." Great Babylon is now coming into remem- brance before God; and she who has murdered men and souls, and canonized the murderers, is now about to drink that cup of judgment which her dreadful iniquities have filled up. There is a great and palpable evidence of God in the history of our own great land, which I dare not omit or dilute. Every time the reigning monarch of this realm fostered or sympathized with papal supremacy and error, our glory faded, our greatness melted away, and ruin stared us in the face ; but just as often as the reigning sovereign displayed and acted on Protestant that is, Bible Christian- ity, the whole country rose in greatness, in pros- perity, in glory. This feature was not the occa- sional but the constant. It alone is proof of God in our history. Queen Mary died, and bequeathed a country replete with embarrassments disquiet at home and desperate hostility abroad. The only plant that positively luxuriated was Popery ; all under and around it was chaos confusion eclipse. Elizabeth ascended the same throne. She acted on the fact that Protestantism is true and Popery a lie. She crushed the powers of Spain en- franchised the Dutch advocated and enforced the liberties of every people, however feeble, that appealed to her ; and made her throne the envy GOD IN HISTORY. 105 of the bad, the admiration of the good, and the rallying refuge for all who felt the tyranny of the oppressor. James VI. of Scotland ascended the British throne as James I. He manfully announced his sympathy with Protestant truth, and his allegi- ance to its cause. From that moment all the strength and cunning of the popedom were con- centrated on his destruction. The horrible con- spiracy of the Gunpowder Plot than which I know no nobler occasion of God interposing in our history was prosecuted with a success that gave way only on the eve of execution. Had this des- perate attempt not been detected by a providential interposition, too plain to be misapprehended, the whole history of our country from that day to this had been changed. God was in the history of that reign, guarding us from Popish treachery, and keeping us for Protestant blessings. Charles I. commenced a reign full of promise. Foreign and domestic wars were hushed, and Britain gave token of a bright and glorious career of political, commercial, and national happiness. But Charles contracted a Popish marriage, ac- quiescing in the requirements of the Infanta, that their children should not be suckled even by Pro- testant nurses, and that till thirteen years of age they should be under Eoman Catholic teachers. What followed ? The star of our country was obscured; insurrection and feuds sprang up among his subjects ; confusion fell like a cloud on his 106 GOD IN HISTORY. councils, and Charles himself perished on the scaffold. Cromwell rose to supremacy when all around and within was faction, disorder, poverty, con- tempt abroad, and confusion at home. Whatever were the flaws or personal character of that iron general, his whole policy was eminently Protes- tant. Wherever Protestantism was crushed under the hoof of the apostasy, his sword and treasure were placed at the command of the sufferers ; to foster Protestant Christianity, and to leave Popery to pine or perish from the earth, was the delight of Cromwell, and the glory of his reign. England forthwith rose as on eagle's wings : she command- ed the reverence of the remotest nations ; and, in the words of Dr. Croly, whose splendid elucidation of these facts is worthy of universal study, " He realized the splendid improbability that, before he died, he would make the name of an Englishman as much feared and honored as ever was that of an ancient Eoman. Charles II. ascended a throne glorious, pow- erful and prosperous, fixed in the conviction and flourishing in the affections of his people. He was a Koman Catholic in disguise : he used every effort to make his subjects and his country Eomish too. Almost in an instant the whole canopy of his country was covered with cloud: fire and pestilence depopulated the capital ; defeat and dishonor fell upon our arms abroad. James the Second avowed himself a Roman GOD IN HISTORY. 107 Catholic. He trampled under foot all law, and trust, and precedent, and the country retrograded still. Determined to be deceived no longer, this Protestant nation rose in its majesty and strength, and swept the Stuart dynasty from the throne, and called William to occupy their place. Acting on Protestant principles, he restored the shattered condition of his country, humbled foreign aggres- sors, quenched Irish rebellion, and aided Protes- tants wherever they were persecuted. I do not prosecute the parallel farther into later times ; I may however be allowed to add an extract from the Record of September, 1849, in which the evidence of God in the more recent his- tory of our country is very strikingly brought out. Without adopting every expression or acquiescing in every conclusion, one cannot but be struck by its facts. " * Show me wherefore Thou contendest with me/ is a natural and proper aspiration. Whether among individuals or communities, a providential visitation ought to lead at once to a searching self-examination, and to an earnest inquiry, even addressed to friends and by-standers, as to the probable cause of such a rebuke and warning. " Yet it may be admitted, on the other hand, that the bystander may err, through party spirit, or from taking too near or too narrow a view of all the facts of the case. The caution, Thinkest thou that these were sinners above all the Galile- ans, because they suffered such things ?' is clearly 108 GOD IN HISTORY. intended to moderate our disposition to dogmatize, when dealing with this class of subjects. " Bearing loth these texts in mind, let us ven- ture to bring together certain facts, in the history of the last twenty years, which may at least serve to be pondered on, at our leisure, as possibly hav- ing some bearing on the subject of our former and our present calamities. " We must premise, however, that in such an inquiry we shall find it necessary to keep in mind the warnings given by Si Paul, in his second epistle to the Thessalonians. The apostle there, guided by the Holy Spirit, very plainly warns the Church, in all ages, * when he who now letteth or hindereth is removed out of the way/ in other words, when the imperial power of Borne disap- peared, ' then should that wicked one be revealed, the man of sin, the son of perdition, the anti- christ, sitting in the temple of God/ i. e., presiding in the visible Church. " Now the imperial power, which did then let or hinder, has been removed out of the way for more than thirteen centuries ; therefore, the man of sin, the antichrist, has been revealed, sitting in the very centre of the nominally Christian Church, but being THE ANTICHRIST the greatest earthly enemy of the Lord Jesus, and of his real Church. All this is confirmed in history, where we find this power, which succeeded the emperors in their Roman seat, persecuting in all ages the saints of God the Albigenses, Waldenses, Lollards, Wiclif- GOD IN HISTORY. 109 ites, Hussites, and all who, like them, rejected idolatry, and worshiped God alone. " This power must be hateful to God ; and he must require his people to contend against it. But more especially must he require loyalty in such a cause from a nation like England, which he has singularly blessed with the light of Divine truth, and placed in the very fore-front of the battle with antichrist and his followers. * To whom much is given, from him will much be required ;' and in- gratitude and unfaithfulness on the part of those who have been greatly favored, will naturally ex- cite indignation and resentment. " Keeping all these things in mind, let us pass in review the history of the last twenty years. " In the year 1829, Sir Eobert Peel, being then at the head of one of the strongest administrations that England had ever known, and feeling no pressure, no necessity, but acting solely on his own inclination, resolved to give up the political defences of Protestantism, and to admit to almost all posts of influence and authority those ad- herents of the Papacy who had for nearly two centuries been excluded. The act was a political one merely, and exhibited no other feeling to- wards religion than that of indifference. It was adopted by Sir Eobert Peel as a measure of poli- tical wisdom. The Divine hand immediately caused it to be seen to be an act of political folly. It destroyed the administration, broke up the party on which that administration rested, and 6 110 GOD IN HISTORY. gave the whole power of the state into the hands of their rivals for a period of more than ten years. " Wonderful as it may seem, this enormous act of fatuity was repeated by the same persons, after an interval of fifteen years. Gaining possession of power once more in 1841, they again proceeded to encourage and aid the Papal party. And the same results followed as were seen in 1829. The conservative party was again broken up, and its leader was once more thrown down from his eminence, never to resume that position. Viewed politically, then, favor shown to the Papacy has twice proved to be ruinous to the party showing it. They imagined it to be the height of wisdom, but it has been seen to be the very depth of folly. " But there are things of more importance than party politics. In the Divine eye it may probably be a deeper guilt to trifle with eternal truths, than to confer on the vassals of Borne political fran- chises. We may presently seem to speak of things apparently small and almost momentary. But a father may be grieved and angered by a disre- spectful word or a scornful gesture. It seemed no great thing when David merely said, < Go, number the people. 7 But for that one word, ' the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel, and there died of Israel seventy thousand men.' " The Act of 1829, which introduced the vassals of the pope among our legislators, soon bore bitter fruit. In the first year after their entrance, it GOD IN HISTORY. Ill became necessary to the government to seek the support of Mr. Daniel O'Connell and his friends. His terms were, ' Give up your Bible schools in Ireland, and place the education of the people in the hands of the priests. 7 His demand was con- ceded ; and on the 9th of September, 1831, it was announced in the House of Commons that the grant to the Kildare-street schools was to be dis- continued, and that the education of the poor of Ireland was to be confided to a board, of which Dr. Murray, the Komish archbishop, was to be a leading member. Not two months had elapsed from that day, when the pestilence the first that England had known for a hundred and fifty years broke out, and before its ravages ceased it had carried off more than fifteen thousand souls. It threatened to be still more extensively fatal ; but even Ahab, when he fasted, and clothed him- self in sackcloth, and went softly, was heard of God : ' Seest thou how Ahab humbkth himself be- fore me ; therefore I will not bring the evil in his days/ said the Lord. The cholera appeared in London on the 13th of February, 1832, and on the 6th of March a day of fasting was proclaimed which was observed with great solemnity. The whole mortality of London, from the pestilence, in that year, extended only to 3,200 persons. " During ten years after this time England was in the desirable condition of having a weak liberal government, and a strong conservative and pro- fessedly Protestant opposition. In this position, 112 GOD IN HISTORY. all further concessions to Popery became imprac- ticable. " In 1845, Sir Eobert Peel was in a situation to commit his second great blunder and sin. Of its political consequences, we have already spoken. But its religious character, as involving an act of national apostasy, was more important, as events soon showed. The Maynooth Endowment Bill passed in July, and not one month had elapsed before a strange, new, and entirely inscrutable disease had attacked the chief article of food in the sister country ! Ireland was to have been tranquilized, and rendered peaceful and happy by this healing measure ;' and Sir Kobert Peel was thus to have relieved himself from what he termed his ' great difficulty. 7 The result showed how God can ' turn wise men backward, and make their wisdom foolishness. 7 Instead of peace and har- mony in Ireland, the repeal agitation grew fiercer than before ; and by the attendant judgment of famine, Sir Robert Peel was led to his remaining measure the abandonment of the corn-laws, which instantly dissolved and scattered his numer- ous supporters, and removed him from power. The brief chronicle of the last three years, imme- diately following Maynooth, may be thus given : 1846, famine, 1847, commercial ruin, 1848, tumults, verging on rebellion, in the sister country. " Yet in the midst of these judgments, or rather on feeling the heavy weight of the first of them, the nation humbled itself, and God immediately GOD IN HISTORY. 113 honored his own ordinance, and showed his faith- fulness to his promise, * Keturn, and acknow- ledge thy iniquity, and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you/ In the spring of 1847, the judgment of famine being then heavily felt in Ireland, our rulers directed the setting apart of a day for national humiliation and supplication. So remarkable was the response, so abundant the harvest granted in the following summer, that it became an immediate and unquestionable duty to offer up special thanksgiving ; and orders to that effect were issued in the October of the same year. " We come, now, to the events which have re- cently occurred, and are still occurring. We can- not help fearing, that our adherence, knowingly and willfully, to a system of education in Ireland which throws the bulk of the rising generation into the hands of the priests, is a national sin, and is treated as such by Almighty God. " The year 1848 was one in which a special and urgent appeal was made to the government on this point. The bishops and clergy of Ireland prepared memorials and petitions, signed by the great body of the parochial ministers. They showed that the Protestants of Ireland were virtu- ally excluded from all public aid in the matter of education ; and that 2,400 of the * National Schools' were under the control of the priests. They were peremptorily refused even the hope of sharing with the Eomanists in the public grant. This was on the 21st of August, 1848. On the 114 GOD IN HISTORY. 4th of September, the Diplomatic Relations Bill received the royal assent, and the pope and the queen of England became, after a breach of three centuries, friends and allies. On the 13th of the same month, the pestilence reappeared in London, after being absent for nearly sixteen years. " Warning was thus given, but it was not taken. * Because sentence against an evil work is not ex- ecuted speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.' The hand was uplifted, but it did not heavily fall. A space for repentance was mercifully afforded. The destroyer was amongst us, but there seemed to be a pause, as though God waited to be gracious ; but the nation ' repented not. 7 " On the 21st of June in the present year, [1849,] the question of a Christian or anti-Christian educa- tion in Ireland was again raised. Neither now, nor at any future time, should the slightest change be even thought of. " In t lie very next week the cholera broke out in all parts of London, and the weekly deaths from this disease augmented, in five successive weeks, in this manner : 124, 152, 339, 678, 1,031. " We were now at the end of July, and the pes- tilence was sweeping off the people of London at the rate of 1,000 per week." The people, impatient at their rulers' apathy, and seeing God's hand, met for prayer, and cried as with one voice, " Lord, save we perish." And GOD IN HISTORY. 115 God arose and rebuked the disease, and from that hour it rapidly decreased. Surely God was here. Let me add with all solemnity, that if our country shall he so infatuated as to give its re- sources our resources, our earnings to the maintenance of Popery and the endowment of its priesthood in any of these lands ; if the minor aberration of 1845, instead of being abjured, shall be persisted in and developed in state endowment of the anti-Christian apostasy ; then I fear that, as on former occasions, confusion will light upon our councils, and civil broils at home and humili- ating disasters abroad accumulate in all direc- tions. Woe ! woe ! to our country, if she deliber- ately take to her bosom what she has so solemnly renounced and abjured. God in her history has heretofore been mercy and goodness, inflicting pa- ternal, not penal chastisement. God in her his- tory will then, I fear, be the consuming fire, and having partaken of the sins of Babylon, she shall receive in terrible measure of her plagues. Was not the year 1848 an appeal to our country to be true to God, and proof that if she be so He will be a shield and buckler unto her ? In January, the opening month of that year of wonders, Sicily demanded a new constitution, and Denmark re-echoed its cry for another. In February, Sardinia obtained its charter, and Paris rose en masse, and displaced its monarch by a republic. In March, Saxony received the freedom of the 116 GOD IN HISTORY. press ; and Metternich, whose wisdom and policy were supposed to be a match for all the diploma- tists of Europe, fell and fled. The fires of revolution blazed in every capital ; chains of iron were snapped asunder like threads of flax; kings, that laid their heads on their pillows at night, safe in the conviction that a hun- dred thousand bayonets were at their bidding, awoke in the morning to find themselves refugees, and their thrones blazing in the flames. A tor- nado swept the whole continent of Europe, and the dust it raised arose from falling thrones and broken sceptres, and the debris of wrecked and shattered dynasties. Great kings seemed sudden- ly paralyzed with terror, while vast masses of their subjects were seized with the fierce instincts of the tiger or the lion ; and this fiery tempest has not yet spent its fury. We can only estimate its havoc by what it has left behind it ; and learn how feeble is man when God rises to punish the in- habitants of the earth, and how loose is that crown, and tottering that throne, which righteous- ness neither adorns nor supports. PARIS has been long on the brink of starvation, and France of national bankruptcy ; and its shat- tered houses, and its bereaved families, are the terrible proofs of the height of that sea of blood which only now begins to ebb away. Berlin was convulsed with revolutionary mobs, and king and people ready to draw the sword on each other, to determine whether law and order, or GOD IN HISTORY. 117 disorganization and distress, should be the order of years to come. Vienna sunk under a terrible eclipse murder perpetrated in cool blood by the insurrectionary mob, and avenged by speedy and righteous retri- bution its walls in ruins its houses torn by grape-shot, and its once peaceful streets lined with military are faint paragraphs from its chapter of recent horrors. SPAIN, overrun with bandits, is kept from na- tional revolution by the constant counter-irritation which is spread over its surface. ITALY, sick of its long night of incubus, is in arms ; and Pope Pius IX., who first set the re- volutionary ball a-going forgetful he was the head of a system which might be revolutionized, but could not be reformed is [1849] a refugee from St. Peter's and ready to fall in with the dy- nasty that will preserve his pontificate. These are the waves that rise and lash the shores of all the countries of Europe. "Civil wars leave nothing but tombs" is a re- mark of Lamartine. All history is a commentary on this aphorism. God designs fellow-countrymen and fellow-citizens to live in harmony, in love, and mutual good offices. Where Christian principle predominates, this will be the case. But as the kingdoms of this world are not yet become the kingdoms of God, it is so far important evidence of the presence of God in the history of nations that we find civil war and internal factions leaving 118 GOD IN HISTORY. only tombs behind them. Sin thus becomes pen- alty history records the crime, and in due course the vengeance that follows. In that remarkable explosion of 1789, in which assassination became a trade, and " ideas germinated in blood " were matured and taught to express their fury those terrible passions which have not been laid by the lapse of years, nor by the successive dynasties under which that otherwise fine country has pass- ed. Crimes against heaven and earth were com- mitted in a few days, which half a century has not laid, and ceaseless sufferings have not expiated. France is still a moral volcano. The fiery ele- ments generated in its bosom are kept in check by the forbearing mercy of God till punishment becomes necessary to vindicate the government of God and the distinctions of vice and virtue, and 1789 expresses itself again in 1848. Nor is there a less instructive lesson deducible from a correct apprehension of the men who either originate or direct the movements of such revolutions. Let us view one of the master-spirits of the first French Eevolution. " Marat thought to sum up in his own person the whole right of the numbers, the cause and the will of the multitude. He adored in himself the divinity of the people. The worship which he had for himself, he had inspired the ignorant and turbulent part of the nation with, and particularly the populace of Paris. Marat was in their eyes the acme of patriotism. Beyond the opinion of Marat, said Camille Desmoulins to GOD IN HISTORY. 119 Danton, all is naught. He goes in advance of every one, and no one can supersede him. His judgment was insurrection. He disdained the judgment of the Convention, and the blade of the law. Devoured by a slow fever and by a hideous leprosy, the visible scum of the ebullition of his blood, he scarcely issued forth from the dark and retired dwelling he inhabited. Hence, unseen and ill, he ceased not to publish proscriptions to the people, to point out the suspected, to mark down victims with his finger, and to promulgate his orders to the Convention itself. The Convention heard his letters with real disgust, but with affect- ed deference. The departments summed up in this man all the terror, all the horror, and all the anarchy of the moment." Such was one of the monsters in human form, a list of whom Lamartine gives, each the personation of some passion- Marat, fury ; Saint Just, the fanaticism of the Re- volution. These, with others whose names are too familiar, were Lamartine's ' workmen in the cause of humanity. 7 " 120 GOD IN HISTOKY. CHAPTER VI. RECORDS OF HISTORY, MESSAGES FROM GOD CHRISTIANITY THE STRENGTH OF ENGLAND REFORM BILL FREE TRADE HAPPY CONCESSIONS COMMERCIAL REVULSION POTATO BLIGHT CHOLERA AND SANITARY LAWS BENEVOLENT AGENCIES GOD IN BIOGRAPHY, PERSONAL APPEALS. THUS God makes these sanguinary civil convul- sions proclaim their own infamy while they last, and shows in history that the only monuments they leave are tombs. The records of history are messages from God to mankind. Facts in national annals are nearly as indelible as texts in the Bible. Tradition may try to explain away their meaning, and party spirit and prejudice to darken them with their glosses, but they emerge again like mountain crags from the mists of night, and re- flect the light of that better Sun who watched their birth, and still overrules their action, to testify that, whoever else was present, God was in his- tory. But why has Old England sat so unmoved upon her throne in the waste of waters ? Why have the waves of revolution crouched and slipped away the moment they approached her ? Why have " kings that saw her marveled, and been troubled, and hasted away? Mark ye well her bulwarks" what are they ? Yes yes, I know and appreciate the wisdom of our constitution, the Saxon energy of our people mighty in its silence and the GOD IN HISTORY. 121 greatness of our navy, whose shadows ere now swept the seas and the heroism of our army, which has never advanced but to victory, and never retreated but to cover the retreat with greater glory than the advance. Why, our horse- guards, if needed, would ride down invading troops like nine-pins, and our 42d Highlanders, who awed Napoleon's imperial squadrons, would frighten all their successors in similar fields. But these are our sinews, not our life means of action, not the sources of strength. It is the living Christianity of our people that is the life-blood of our country it is the grace of God in Old England's heart that is the secret of the fixity and splendor of the crown on the queen of England's brow. Chris- tianity is the cement of our social system. Our people are so loyal because they are comparatively so religious. There are, no doubt, secondary causes of our national peace, some of which I may venture to specify; and I am sure you will not suspect me of expressing party political opinions, if I refer to two or three recent remarkable facts, full of significance to reflecting minds. Some sixteen years ago was passed a celebrated bill, commonly called the " Keform Bill," by which it was understood the equilibrium of our constitu- tion was restored by extending the basis of our representative system. Whatever were its merits and whigs and tories have each their respective convictions on the subject it will be admitted by all that it was a movement in the popular direc- 7 122 GOD IN HISTORY. tion, and an extinguisher of many complaints against our political system. Some two or three years ago, what is called "Free-trade" was carried amid tremendous ex- citement and terrible opposition ; and protection- ism, like the close boroughs, be it for good or evil, is substantially, it is generally believed, among the things that were, and that forever. This also was progression in the direction of popular power and preference. Now, whether these measures be re- garded as intrinsically good or bad in themselves and it is not my province here to pronounce their character what would have been the state of this country last spring, when the sea of revolution that burst out in France sent some of its waves against our shores, if neither of these concessions to popular demand had been made? The dis- affected would have found in the absence of re- form, and in the existence of the corn-laws all the fuel they required for kindling a revolution, which, humanly speaking, would have blazed far and wide, and probably have left its black foot- prints from John-o'-Groat's to the Land's End. I appeal to both parties the advocates and the opponents of these measures and I say, if you suppose and believe they were both radically bad, as pieces of state policy for in this light alone I regard them do not your peaceful homes your standing altars your rooted throne your sur- rounding law, and order, and loyalty, induce you to thank God, that in his providence he permitted GOD IN HISTORY. 123 these sacrifices to popular demand to be made be- fore the stormy tempests of 1848 swept over the surface of the earth? To you who applaud these acts as alike just and necessary, I need not say, Do you not see God's mercy in the chronology, as well as in the character of the measures ? Do you not see they were gained just in time to leave nothing for dis- affection to feed on, and very little for discontent to gnaw at ? Good or bad, these changes had no little influence in saving our country from revolu- tion, and in making Trafalgar Square not, as it might have been, the first of London barricades, but the skirmish of pickpockets the battle of broken windows and cracked skulls the finest relief in the world to Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. I look with interest on some of those recent visitations which we have felt in rapid succession. We were glorying, in 1845, in our success our greatness our brightening prospects of endless prosperity the iron-rail was regarded as the magician's rod, which had only to be waved over one's pocket to fill it with gold. Whole cities rushed to the lottery wheel trade, religion, so- cial duties were superseded by a mania almost unparalleled. God looked down from heaven on our history, and loved us too deeply to leave us alone. He touched the springs of the national phrensy, and he that laid his head upon his pillow at night be- lieving himself rich, awoke in the morning and 124 GOD IN HISTORY. felt himself a bankrupt ; and thousands, who, in the whirl, were destroying their souls, saw God in their affliction and tongues silent in prosperity praised him in loss and ruin. Another year, a destroying angel touched one of the meanest roots, and the food of millions turned to corruption in a night. Irish famine only stirred up English generosity, as Irish rebel- lion has but provoked English forgiveness ; and who knows how many Irish hearts refused to be excited, or how many Irish hands refused to lift one pike against the nation that fed them in famine, and clothed them in nakedness? O'Brien's farce might have been the paralysis of the empire, if our country's liberality had not made many of his sympathizers grateful. Can we fail in all this to see God in history ? May it not be, also, that so severe a judgment falling on this root alone shall prove the means of preventing a whole na- tion leaning for its sustenance on so precarious a vegetable, as well as the occasion of our statesmen doing something not in the wrong way, as threat- ened, but in the right direction, to redress that miserable country's wrongs ; and thus what we began by supposing the action of a destroying angel may have been the manifestation of God's great goodness disguised in our great suffering ? If again I refer to the pestilence, which has so severely visited us, and which I trust is commis- sioned finally to retire in answer to a nation's fervent prayers, I see in its arrival and in its re- GOD IN HISTORY. 125 treat in the localities it has swept, and in those it has spared God in our history. It has stirred up our statesmen to study and to amend the sanitary state of our densely crowded lanes, and courts, and alleys, and to send currents of pure air and streams of clean water where neither had been known for years. It has aroused those selfish rich men who care nothing for the wants of others, however pressing, and all for their own, however few to open their purses if their hearts are still hermetically sealed ; and for self- preservation, if for no higher reason, to regard the cry, and distribute to the necessities of the poor. The improvement of the condition of the destitute is thus the only way to arrest epidemic disease and thus, apart from mere spiritual grounds, the visitation of cholera is proving the occasion of the amelioration and mitigation of the sufferings of the neglected poor ; and the dread pestilence is seen to be mercy in judgment, and in its visitation who reads not God in our history ? Is it not a fact, scarcely less interesting, that for upwards of twelve years prior to 1848, the year of surrounding revolution and approaching pestilence, the laborious agents of the City Mis- sion have been pursuing their subterranean visits, in the course of which they have reached and touched, if they have not transformed, at least half a million of that class of our population, which the policeman alone had visited before, making known their sufferings, and yet leaving 126 GOD IN HISTORY. the sufferer hope. The judgment-day alone will show how deeply our country is indebted for its quiet, and the poor for their elevation, to these unostentatious but ceaseless agencies which the world cannot appreciate and will not support. The agents of the City Mission, and the readers of the Scripture Keaders' Society, and other home missionary institutions have exerted an influence on the outcast and heathen population, of which the cases of conversion recorded in their reports give a very inadequate idea. How many children training up in crime have they sent to schools ! How many poor persons have they guided to cloth- ing societies and saving-banks ! How many poor have they secured partial aid to ! We have thus traced, as far as space would allow, God in history. We see him imperfectly at best. The day comes when we shall see Him no more " through a glass darkly, but face to face." When we gaze at the rainbow, after the shower, we see but a semi-circle if we ascend a loftier height the semi-circle approaches nearer a perfect circle. But when we shall stand on the mount of glory and look down on things below, we shall behold the glorious circle complete. Things now seen in fragments shall be seen whole. The dim lights of time shall be exchanged for the living glory that has no need of " the sun or the moon ;" what we know not now we shall know hereafter. We shall then stand with Christ in the zenith of creation, and all suns and systems shall culminate GOD IN HISTORY. 127 over our heads, and we ourselves, like persons under the equator, shall cast no shadow. Now we see GOD IN HISTORY, then we shall read HIS- TORY IN GOD. God is in our "biography. Is your present place, my reader, what you expected ten years ago? Have you not often set out for a predeter- mined point, and arrived at the very opposite? You have toiled and prayed for some ohject on which you had fixed your heart, and afterwards learned that your success would have been your ruin, and that disappointment was your greatest mercy. Have you not gone to laugh, and remained to weep ? Has not the turning of a corner deter- mined the complexion of your future life ? Let any one remember all the way he has been led in the wilderness, and see if it be not so. " Who knoweth what is good for man in this life, which he spendeth as a shadow?" "A man's heart deviseth his ways ; but the Lord directeth his steps." " Man's goings are of the Lord." " In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct thy paths." There are no trifles in the biography of man. It is drops that make up the sea: it is acorns that cover the earth with oaks, and the ocean with glorious navies. Sands make up the bar in the harbor's mouth, on which rich argosies are wrecked; and little things in youth accumulate into character in age, and destiny in eternity. All the links in that glorious chain, which is in 128 GOD IN HISTORY. all and around all, we can see and admire, or at least admit ; but the staple to which all is fasten- ed, and to which it is the conductor of all, is the throne of Deity. Carry with you, dear reader, into the warehouse the shop the counting-house the market- place this living and plastic conviction "Thou God seest me." It will sweeten, not sadden life. Seek Him, and find Him now, in Christ, your Father, and walk with Him always not as a maniac with his keeper or a slave with his master but as a son with his Father. Be Christians first, and then you will know what it is to be happy. Christianity is God in the sun- shine of mercy. Behold, believe ; look to God in that central page of history that epochal hour of eternity God manifest in the flesh. In Him I hear not the curses of Ebal, or the thunder of Sinai, but the throbbings of the heart of God. Head on that manger, " Though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich." Read on Gethsemane, " On Him were laid the iniquities of us all." Read on that cross, " He bare our sins in His own body on the tree ;" and on that grave, " O death, where is thy victory !" The weakest, poorest, meanest reader has a soul as precious as the queen's more glorious than a thousand worlds immensity its element eter- nity its end so fallen that it tries to satisfy its GOD IN HISTORY. 129 want from earthly things so great that it never succeeds in doing so. That soul of yours, my reader, if that of an un- regenerate young man, is sinking day hy day into depths of ruin. God's great "bright eye is riveted on it in pity, as truly as if Deity and you were the only twain in creation. And a Father's pier- cing remonstrance breaks from the sky " Why will ye die ?" And a mother's tender and holy entreaty from a distant fireside sounds after it " My son, Absalom, my son ; my son, Absalom ! What shall it profit thee if thou gain the whole world and lose thine own soul !" The last shock comes on the last trump is in the archangel's hand. The pause realized in this land, like that given to Jerusalem to allow the Christians to flee to Pella, is now vouchsafed to us. Seize the moments as they rush past. The avenger is at your heels, flee to the city of refuge. The destroy- ing angel has spread his wing upon the blast, and, standing between the living and the dead, I invite you to that blood of sprinkling which alone cleanses from sin and covers from judgment. THE END. GOD IN SCIENCE. A LECTURE . loljn dimming, $. JU., DELIVERED BEFORE THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION, IN EXETER HALL, JAN. 7, 1851. GOD IN SCIENCE. I ONLY wish, ladies and gentlemen, that I had full power to fulfill the predictions that have heen ut- tered by the chairman, who has so admirably ad- dressed you : but I have been so busy, during the last six weeks, in trying to get rid of an archi- episcopal obstruction of the true light in South- wark, that I have had less time than I could have desired to set forth the light that lies more or less latent in the subject that is before me. The fact is, whatever the archiepiscopal visitor who has made so much noise may be himself, his Church has been a stern and unsparing opponent of science in every age. I am not, I confess, surprised that Popery loves midnight, and that Puseyism, her eldest daughter, likes the twilight, and that both prefer candle-light, especially Eoman candle-light, to daylight. A glass bead appears a precious gem in candle-light, while it would be detected to be an imposition in broad daylight ; and some of you that are accustomed to colors know, that a dishonest tradesman, if you ever met with such, 134 GOD IN SCIENCE. can sell a color by gaslight that he cannot at- tempt to sell by daylight. Perhaps you will for- give me, if I say, that the long-hour system, thus viewed, is essentially a child of the Church of Cardinal Wiseman. It is inherently Popish. It prefers always the light of lamps to the light of day. Long-hour employers can scarcely blame me for concluding, that their goods will not al- ways stand daylight, just as Popish dogmas shrink from the full blaze of Scriptural truth. And therefore I think it is a wise resolution for us and ours, however much some dislike it, that we will neither buy goods by candle-light, nor hear ser- mons by Koman candle-light, nor in any other light except bright light. We Protestants, how- ever, love all sorts of light, and glory in it. Healthy plants flourish best in the light. Away, then, with roodscreens, and sedilias, and flower- pots, and candelabras, and all such, or if there be anything more "Catholic" recently introduced, if they keep out the light. God's great sun, shining in the blue firmament, is worth ten thousand of the pope's longest candles any day. Popery, of course, does not like light, whether it come from the mines of geology, or the observa- tory of the astronomer, or the laboratory of the chemist, or from the word of God; and she has good reason for not liking it. The holy coat of Treves was paraded as the very robe worn by our blessed Eedeemer. Thousands rushed to worship it. Chemical tests were applied to it, and it was GOD IN SCIENCE. 135 of course proved by science that its dye was re- cent, and that it was spun and woven not many hundred years ago. Popery lost by the discovery the profits that she desired. How can you expect that the pope will like chemistry? It is our ac- quaintance with electricity and magnetism that explains the phenomena of Lord Shrewsbury's adolaratas and extaticas in the Tyrol. These ladies are simply mesmerized. Mesmerism is the miracle, and science at once shows that it is so. How can Pius IX. be partial to electricity, when it breaks up the income of his priests ? The lique- fying of the blood of St. Januarius at Naples, the red solid substance in the glass bottle becoming liquid from the heat of the priest's hand that holds it, is certainly a miracle in the dark, but a palpable cheat in plain daylight. There is a painted virgin at Rimini, at the present moment, that winks, and is known by the name of " the winking virgin of Rimini." This is very wonder- ful if seen in the " dim religious light," but it is explicable enough when we look behind the scenes, and see the priests pull the strings and work the pulleys. Dr. Cullen, the distinguished archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, and who is at the head of that Church, has boldly de- nounced the astronomy of Sir Isaac Newton, and has denied, with all the force and eloquence of archiepiscopal utterance, that the earth travels round the sun ; and he has actually the heroism to maintain, that the sun is so courteous, so defer- 136 GOD IN SCIENCE. ential, so polite to the earth, that, instead of allow- ing her to go round him, he, (the sun,) like a thorough gentleman, takes the trouble of going round the earth ! At least Archbishop Cullen says so. But it won't do. Light and science travel onward, and truth is not to be put down by any archiepiscopal or Papal interdict whatever. As soon may an owl, by his hooting, try to put out the sun. Popery has done its best to do so, but it has failed ; and you may depend upon it, whatever be the prospects or the prophecies of some, that the experiment that is made of import- ing darkness, duty free, into Westminster, and keeping out the light by all the influence and power of a lofty ecclesiastical dignitary, will not stand. You may depend upon it, that, prop it as you like, Eomanism is in its death struggle, and that the red hat which it has hurriedly put on, in its haste from St. Pudentiana, merrily called by John Bull, St. Impudentia, at Rome, to St. George's, Southwark, will not prevent it making a very pre- cipitate retreat to Italy, and that right soon ; in so far reminding me of a countryman of my own, who took it into his head, contrary to the pre- scription of his catechism, to plunder an orchard. He was detected by the gardener on the wall-top. The gardener asked him very naturally where he was going, and he with the greatest coolness re- plied, " Back again." Our gracious queen lately erected colleges in Ireland, for diffusing light and scientific knowledge. The Eoman Catholic Church GOD IN SCIENCE. 137 met in synod, and denounced them. No sooner were these scientific lights or rather foci of light, for such and so far they were kindled in that benighted and unhappy land, than the Popish primate, Dr. Cullen, spread out his archiepiscopal apron between the light of science and the minds of the benighted peasantry and citizens of Ire- land. All this, however, must fail. We rejoice to feel that the exposure of it is its own condemnation, and, in some degree, its ultimate arrest. The railway, in spite of Archbishop Cullen, is thread- ing Ireland. Its whistle screams amidst the wilds of Munster ; the electric wire stretches over Connaught, and the broad-sheet is seen in Tip- perary. Light of all sorts is rushing in at every chink, and if not yet universally Christian, such as it is, it reveals the jugglery of Eome, it ex- poses its frauds, it stirs up its opposition, and shows, by the attempts made to arrest it, what that system is, and would be. While popes and cardinals, allow me just to a4d, and Popish arch- bishops, and Popish priests, are thus laboring to darken the mind, to enslave the soul, and to plunge our nation again in mediaeval darkness, how delightful is it to witness the contrasts pre- sented by Protestantism, in every place, in every county of every land, that has been lightened by its blessed and its beneficent beams. Let me men- tion just one instance, dear to this association. Whilst an archbishop in Ireland is trying to put 138 GOD IN SCIENCE. out the light that has come in, and other "bishops and archbishops in Italy are trying to keep it from creeping in at all, one single employer, as I am just informed to-day, in St. Paul's Church- yard, has been shortening hours of employment, originating libraries, stimulating intellectual pro- gress, and promoting moral good ; and so charmed are the Protestant young men of this great city, with that good man's efforts, that they are justly seeking to present him with a testimonial, ex- pressive of their feelings of admiration, of grati- tude, and of delight. Justly is this excellent em- ployer entitled to the cheers of every young man, and no less justly does that system of opposition to all light, personated in Pius IX., Primate Cul- len, and even in Cardinal Wiseman, which for three centuries has excited the groans of Europe, deserve from you and from our country, the same expressions of sorrow and disapprobation, deep as the dungeons of that Inquisition on which it is enthroned. Some see in science dim reflections of wisdom, power, and goodness. Others, however, are so blind, that they can see in science no central fact ; they can hear in its lessons no divine teaching ; they cannot see in its object the ultimate end Gfod. I want to elevate the first, by showing that the revelations of science are so plainly demon- strative of the existence and activity of a God, that atheism is utterly inexcusable, and that atheistic views are utterly untenable ; and next, GOD IN SCIENCE. 139 that the absolute and professed atheist is the most absurd, the most credulous, and the most anile creature throughout the length and breadth of God's created universe, while on the other hand, the evangelical Christian, who believes in a God, and that God his Father, is the most rational, the most consistent, and the least superstitious of any. Atheism is folly as much as wickedness. But suffer me, before I show this, to say, that it is ab- solutely impossible that any man can be an athe- ist, in the strict sense of that word. All that any can say is this: "No spot that I have searched does reveal a God ; every organization I have ex- amined does not show traces of wisdom, goodness, and design: 7 ' but that individual cannot say, " There is no God ;" because he cannot say, " I have soared to the farthest star, I have descended to the deepest mines, I have swept all space, and searched all time, and in the realms of infinite space I have not detected any traces of a God." In other words, to be able to say, " There is no God," you must yourself assume to be God, which is a reductio ad absurdum, an utter and a complete absurdity. I proceed now to show, that there are developed in the discoveries and researches of science, traces of design, and wisdom, and beneficence, that prove there is a God, and not merely that there was a God. Take, for instance, a fount of types. Cast these 140 fiOD IN SCIENCE. types upon the floor of Exeter Hall. Is there the least chance that these types will arrange them- selves in the shape of Milton's " Paradise Lost," or of one of Shakspeare's plays ? But if you see these types taken and so arranged that the printer by them strikes off Milton's " Paradise Lost," or one of Shakspeare's plays, are you not constrained, by all the laws of experience and of reason, to infer, that there is here evidence of design and so far of the existence of a designing person, a contriving mind, which arranged these types for a specific and premeditated end? Or, to take Paley's own beautiful illustration, if you went into a desert and stumbled on a watch, and if, on opening that watch, you see that all its cranks and its wheels play apparently in opposition to each other, yet all really combine and co-operate to show the hour of the day, you must infer from this discovery, that there was a contriving person who arranged all for a definite and a distinct re- sult. Were you to cast all the bricks you find in a brick-yard on the streets of London, they will remain still a heap of bricks ; but if you see these bricks arranged into the shape of Exeter Hall, you instinctively infer the presence and plastic energy of design, and therefore of a designing mind. Inspect the world, from the loftiest star that burns in the firmament down to the minutest insect that flutters in the sunbeam ; examine mi- nutely all organization, and the traces of design, beneficence, and wisdom, will appear so many, so GOD IN SCIENCE. 141 varied, and so magnificent, that the man that in- fers there is no Creator and Author of all, must either have a very blind mind, or a very bigoted heart. In the language of the psalmist, it is "the fool" that "hath said in his heart, There is no God." But I take more simple things, and things more intelligible. Let me notice evidence of design in a part of the human economy. Man must eat certain things, in order to live. But I am so con- structed that I must thoroughly know a thing be- fore I am persuaded to eat it. First of all, the organ that is farthest from the object, not likely to be injured if dissatisfied, called the eye, looks at it; if the eye be satisfied, the next organ, the sense of smell, smells it ; if the eye and the nose be satisfied, the next organ, the hand, takes hold of it, and brings it nearer still. If all three wit- nesses give their verdict that the object is good for food, then the man tastes it, eats it, and is nourished by it. The atheist says, all this is a lucky accident ; the Christian says, all this is the pre-arranged contrivance of his God. Which is the fool? which is the most superstitious? which of the twain the most anile ? Again :" the eye of man has behind it a mirror called the retina, in which every object that he looks upon is shadowed. What a wonderful thing, that the retina behind my eye, not so large as the lens of my spectacles, yet can hold upon its ex- quisite surface and reflect perfectly the four or 142 GOD IN SCIENCE. five thousand faces in this vast hall, at the present moment ! But this exquisite organization which constitutes the eye, is so very delicate, that the minutest molecule of matter would seriously, and perhaps fatally injure it ! Well, how is this pro- vided for ? There is a thing called the eyehrow over the eye, which subdues the light or rather slightly shades the eye, and prevents from falling into the eye the grosser materials. There is an- other heautiful hedge upon the lid, called the eye- lash, so exquisitely constructed, that if a fly were to approach my eye, although I were reading a hook, yet instinctively and without asking my permission, the eyelid closes, and keeps the fly at a distance. But lest this organ, called the eye, should he worn out "by the friction of its lid con- stantly ruhhing upon it, it secretes of itself a sub- stance which, like the oil or grease put upon the axle of a railway carriage, keeps the eye from he- ing injured. The atheist says, all this is a con- catenation of lucky accidents ; the Christian says, all this is the creation and result of magnificent design. Which is the most superstitious? which the most credulous ? which the most irrational ? But not only is all this wisdom and this design seen in these ; but each sense that man has is not only fitted to keep man right, hut is also fitted to he a channel to man of exquisite pleasure. God might have so made the eye, that it would have revealed to me the obstructions in my path, hut have done no more ; hut, in addition to this, its Maker GOD IN SCIENCE. 143 has made the eye susceptible of the most beautiful and interesting impressions from the panorama of nature that is around me, and from the splendor of the sky and of the stars that are above me. God might have made the ear simply an organ for warning and giving notice of the approach of danger, and no more ; but, in addition to this, he has made it a little oratorio, full of beautiful sounds ; a little choir-chamber, within which I am capable of giving hospitality to the most exquisite harmonies. He has thus added to its usefulness a sense of satisfaction and pleasure, which indi- cates not only wisdom and design, but also bene- ficence and goodness. So in man's taste: God might have so arranged us, that we must eat whether we like the food or not, in order to be nourished ; but he has not only made that neces- sary, but he has accompanied that eating with an exquisite satisfaction, adapted to the organ of taste. So that man not only eats from stern necessity, but eats with pleasure or delight. The atheist says, all this is a mere accidental arrange- ment of rolling accidents ; the Christian says, all this is the creation and design of a God. Again : the bones and muscles of the human body are so admirably arranged, that there is the com- bination of the greatest strength with the greatest lightness and the greatest elegance. Let me show this in one case. I may remark there are two sorts of levers applicable to the human arm. One lever would be illustrated were the muscles 144 GOD IN SCIENCE. to take hold at one end of my wrist, and the other end to be fastened up to my shoulder ; that is the most powerful lever we know. The other form of lever is, that one end of the muscle should take hold of this part of my arm, near the elbow-joint, but inside, and the other hold of the arm, just above the inside of the elbow-joint; this is the weakest kind of lever. Now, you will at once perceive, that if the strongest were supplied, there would be an immense and unseemly body of mus- cular and other material between my wrist and my shoulder ; and although very strong, it would be very awkward and unprepossessing. The second form of lever is, therefore, had recourse to. But how is it arranged, in order that there may be the most elegant form, the arm be very power- ful notwithstanding, and be enabled to do all the duties devolving upon it ? The bones are made hollow, and are thus strong and light ; and you know the hollow cylindrical shape combines the greatest lightness with the greatest strength. For instance, a bar of iron, twelve inches long, of one pound weight, and solid, is not so strong as a hol- low cylinder twelve inches long of the same weight. Now it is arranged that the bones of man's arm, as well as of other limbs, shall be in the form of a hollow cylinder, combining the greatest strength with the greatest lightness, and thus admirably fitting it to perform the various functions which are allotted to it, so that the weakest, because most elegant and convenient, GOD IN SCIENCE. 145 muscular lever is applicable. The atheist says, these are lucky accidents ; the Christian says, it is the evidence of a God who planned and made it so. In the case of a bird's wing, you have an ex- quisite evidence of design. The feathers of the wings must be very strong, and yet very light, when you consider what the wings of a bird have to do. For this purpose, the quills, at their ends, as you are aware, are hollow cylinders i. e., they are the strongest and lightest ; and if you ever note the feather of a bird and there is nothing, my dear friends, from the cup of the heath-bell, to the fixed star in the firmament, that is not worthy of the minute inspection, investigation, and study of man you will find that the side of the feather which strikes the air to make the bird float, is very long, and being edgewise very powerful ; whereas the other side of the feather, which meets the air when the bird draws it in, in order to strike out again, is very small, so that its resistance may be trifling. Does this look like an accidental thing ? If it be accidental, how is it that one wing is not sometimes the reverse of the opposite wing ? and how is it that the bird of the one century has not a wing malformed, arid the very reverse of the wing of the bird of a previous century? The atheist says, it is all chance ; the Christian says, it is so indicative of design, that he cannot help concluding there must be a Designer at the bottom of it. Nay, more than 146 GOD IN SCIENCE. this: in that wonderful bridge which has been created by the genius of one of our most distin- guished engineers, and that spans a vast arm of the ocean for the railway to pass over the remark was made by an eminent engineer who examined it, that the whole cellular construction of that bridge is excelled infinitely by the construction of the inner material of the stem of a feather in the wing of the commonest bird. For, in the feather- bearing part of the ordinary quill, we have a re- markable example of the strength of the rectan- gular form ; here every dimension is tapered down in proportion to the strain, with an accuracy defy- ing all analysis ; the extended and compressed por- tions are composed of a horny substance of pro- digious strength, though extremely light and elastic; the beam is not hollow, but to preserve its form it is filled with a pithy substance, which replaces the clumsy gusset-pieces and angle-irons of the tube, without interfering with its pliability. The square shaft is peculiarly available for the attachment of the deep vanes which form the feather ; and, as the angular form would lacerate its active bearer, an exquisite transition to the circular quill at the base is another striking em- blem of perfection. The imitation of such me- chanics, so wonderfully adapted to such a medium, appears hopeless ; but we are indebted to the flying philosopher, if his attempt only calls atten- tion to such design, and induces us instructively to contemplate the beauty of a feather. GOD IN SCIENCE. 147 Again: I might notice, in the adaptation of animals to their climes, the color changes as may be most convenient a remarkable evidence of the very same beneficence of design. The animal becomes white in polar regions, because white is the warmest clothing in cold weather. To allude to one very simple thing ; the cell of the bee is a perfect study. Take the cell of the wild bee, or of what we may call the more domestic bee; what do you discover? That the cell of the bee, which man so heedlessly and needlessly destroys when he takes its honey, is constructed on the most accurate of mathematical principles so ex- quisitely constructed, that it combines the greatest strength, occupies the least space, and subserves in every point most completely the great object which is designed by it. So that in the planet in the heavens and in the pebble by the sea-shore, in the bee upon the summer flower and in the behe- moth and the leviathan of the deep in all that is magnificently great, in all that is elegantly little scientific investigation sees the traces of power, beneficence, design ; and we are constrained, in spite of all the conjectures of those who at- tribute all to chance, to say, there is a Creator, who made all after the prescriptions of infinite wisdom, and has inspired all with the deepest and the most striking beneficence. To turn now to another branch of the same subject, and a very interesting and remarkable one connected with the air that we now breathe. 148 GOD IN SCIENCE. After you have breathed the air and expired it from your lungs, the result, as every one will tell you, is carbonic acid gas. The instant this car- bonic acid gas becomes cool it becomes specifically heavier than the atmosphere that is around us. Carbonic acid gas, as you know by a person going down thoughtlessly into a well where it has ac- cumulated, or into a vat where it has been gen- erated, is a most deadly and destructive poison. This carbonic acid gas is exhaled by every person in this assembly in the process of breathing. It is produced by combustion in every dining-room, drawing-room, and kitchen fire, and in every fur- nace throughout the land ; and it is generated by these processes in such quantities, that if there be no way of getting rid of it, that carbonic acid gas must gradually accumulate on the earth, from its great specific gravity, and this in spite of the law of diffusion, until little insects first perish, then serpents, then the smaller animals, then sheep, then oxen, then man, in a sea as deadly as if it were an ocean of water enveloping and cover- ing all. Well, then, the question occurs, How do we get rid of this carbonic acid gas, which is con- stantly generated and produced by every breath- ing man and by every burning fire ? The atheist would say, By a very lucky accident, it happens that all green grass, and flowers, and shrubs, feed upon this very gas that would be absolute poison to man ; so that the gas which man rejects from his lungs, as unfit for his health, the grass and GOD IN SCIENCE. 149 the weeds instantly open a million of mouths to receive, and feed on, and be nourished by. Do not tread down, therefore, with a heedless foot, that little heath or flower ; it is a poison destroyer. Do not despise that little geranium in the flower- pot, in the poor man's garret window; it is destroy- ing the poison that is around him. Perhaps the fact that flowers absorb poison is the reason that a distinguished Tractarian clergyman has flowers upon his altar. He suspects what we know, that there is poison in his Church, which needs to be disposed of, at least in its excess, and therefore near the pulpit are the flowers on the altar. But you may naturally ask : " This may be all very true in the green fields of merry England : but what happens where there is no grass ? How does the carbonic acid gas that is thrown forth from the lungs, and produced by fire, disappear in countries where there are no green fields and no flowers : in Greenland, for instance, in the polar regions of everlasting snow ?" Why, again, by a lucky accident, as the atheist would say, snow, ice, water, absorb the carbonic acid gas, as rapidly as the green fields, the flowers, and the fruits do ; just as in a bottle of soda-water the carbonic acid gas is held ; and you know that all fresh water, if it be kept stagnant a while, ultimately throws out the carbonic acid gas which it had actually absorbed. Now, I say, is it rational, or at all philosophical, to conclude, that this gas which is exhaled from man's lungs by every expiration of 150 GOD IN SCIENCE. those lungs, should have provided for its absorp- tion the green grass and the flowers that grow in the fields, so that what is poison to man, and what he desires and must get rid of, in order to live, is the very food of the beauteous rose, of the ex- quisite heath-bell, of the green grass the poison of man, becoming the food, the strength, and the stimulus of all the vegetable system? The atheist says, it is a lucky concurrence of lucky accidents ; the Christian says, these scientific dis- coveries prove the arrangement of a wise and a beneficent God. Again, and the evidence will become more im- pressive by another fact: There is another gas, which is emitted from decaying matter and from stagnant marshes all over the face of the earth, most deadly if breathed called hydrogen gas. Now, the question is, how do we get rid of this deadly, pernicious hydrogen, generated by decay- ing matter over the whole surface of the earth? By a series of lucky accidents, as the atheist would say; by another wise and beautiful ar- rangement, as the Christian would say. For this hydrogen gas happens to be much lighter than the air that we breathe. The instant it is generated, up it shoots past man, into the loftier regions of the air ; so that it is scarcely possible for him to breathe it before it has gone past him. But you may say, " It may so accumulate in the lofty re- gions of the air, that ultimately it will come down, and man will be constrained to rebreathe it, and GOD IN SCIENCE. 151 perish by the process of rebreathing so unsuitable a gas." The query is, therefore, How is it got rid of in the upper regions of the air ? Again, it is said, By a very luclcy accident, it happens that in the upper regions of the air oxygen is most abundant. It also happens, that this hydrogen, which would be so deadly to man if he were to breathe it, combines with oxygen, and forms water. But, then, in order to make it combine, there is needed intense pressure. Then how are we to get this intense pressure in the uppermost regions of the air, where the hydrogen goes, and where the oxygen is most abundant ? By another lucky ac- cident, there is a thing called electricity, or mag- netism, whichever you like to call it. This elec- tricity, when it passes from one cloud to another cloud, exerts a tremendous pressure, and drives the hydrogen which has escaped from the earth, close upon the oxygen which prevails in the upper regions, and they combine to form water. And hence, when you have a thunder-storm, and see violent flashes of lightning, you notice the great drops of fresh and clear water, that come rushing down upon the earth: most of these are the hydrogen gas which ascended from the earth, combining with the oxygen in the upper regions of the air ; so what was poison to man comes down, like all the gifts of the great and the loving God we worship, in rich benedictions upon the length and breadth of the habitable globe. Just notice the lucky accident, as the atheist 152 GOD IN SCIENCE. would call it, that is here. If this carbonic acid gas had happened to be the lighter gas, and had gone past us into the regions of the upper air, it could have combined with nothing ; there it must have stopped, till it had accumulated, and come down and overwhelmed all. If, on the other hand, the hydrogen had happened to be heavier than the air we breathe, it would have lain on the earth, and nothing would have absorbed it. The grass will not take it it is resisted by vegetation ; and man would have ultimately perished by it. But by a lucky accident it happens, that the heavy gas just falls where there are waiting mouths to feed upon it grass and flower and fruit, and that the light gas ascends just where there is oxygen to combine with it, and form it into refreshing drops of water. The atheist says, this is chance; we Christians glory in the discovery that this is God. Which is the most superstitious ? which the most irrational ? which the least philosophic ? I leave it with you to decide. Since the lecture was delivered, the lecturer has received several letters, either praising or finding fault with it. Such as had signatures he has read and profited by. The only let- ter, however, of any importance is the following, which he thinks it alike just and useful to publish. The lecturer is but a learner in science, he pretends to no originality ; and if he is wrong in this special instance, the exposure of his error will not vex him, and like a wreck in the channel, his blunder, if such it be, will carry his correspondent's buoy floating over it, to warn other lecturers to avoid the reef or sand-bank. The letter is as follows : GOD IN SCIENCE. 158 Now, another fact, which, again, is a lucky ac- cident, as the atheist would say, a "blessed and beneficent argument, as the Christian would say, is this. During the months of June, July, and ST. THOMAS'S HOSPITAL, January 9th, 1851. DEAR Sra, I was present at your lecture in Exeter Hall last Tuesday evening. I need not express to you the pleasure I experienced, in listening to your eloquent discourse upon a subject which is particularly interesting to me ; but there was one circumstance which has induced me to trouble you with this letter. Your lecture will, of course, soon be in print ; and it would be a pity if some glaring errors in natural philosophy, which occurred in it, should appear in the published form. Allow me, then, as myself a scientific man, and connected with the Young Men's Christian Association, to point them out to you that they may be corrected. You attempted to explain why carbonic acid gas does not accumulate on the surface of the earth, and hydrogen in the upper regions of the atmosphere. The real cause is what is termed the law of diffusion of gases. Two gases of different specific gravities never separate permanently, as oil and water; but they soon become thoroughly mixed: thus, if heavy carbonic acid be poured to the bottom of a vessel, and light hydrogen gas placed above it, though they be kept per- fectly still, they will gradually diffuse the one into the other, and, after a while, as much carbonic acid will be found at the top as at the bottom, and as much hydrogen at the bottom as at the top. This property of gases is, of course, itself a beau- tiful proof of design. What you stated about the absorption by plants, of the carbonic acid produced by animals, is cer- tainly the manner in which the air is prevented becoming surcharged by the noxious gas, and is one of the most strik- ing provisions of God's wisdom with which chemistry makes us acquainted. The absorption of carbonic acid by the waters on the surface of the earth must also play some part in the same arrangement. 7* 154 GOD IN SCIENCE. August, the heat of the sun, as you are aware, is so great, that if that heat were to go on increas- ing from nine o'clock in the morning until twelve, exactly in the same ratio in which it increases from six o'clock in the morning till nine, every green thing would he scorched, and the heat would he ahsolutely intolerable. Then, why is it that the heat leaves off increasing about nine that instead of proceeding till twelve o'clock in- creasing and accumulating at the same ratio, at just about eight, nine, or ten, modifying elements come in, that mitigate and reduce the heat. I will show you how, by a simple illustration. In your warehouses and places of business, on a hot June or July day, have you not noticed the por- ter of your establishment take a pail, with little holes bored at the bottom, and sprinkle with water the floor of the shop and the pavement out- side? You may have thought that this was merely to lay the dust ; but that is a great mis- take. It is a law discovered by science, that when Your remarks upon hydrogen gas must, I fear, be entirely altered. Hydrogen is not poisonous ; it is never given off in any quantity, either by vegetables or animals ; it cannot rise and form a stratum at the top of the atmosphere ; and as to the lightning preventing its accumulation there by causing its combination with oxygen that is all pure romance. I wish my letter to you on this occasion had been of a more complimentary character ; yet, I doubt not, you have suffi- cient of that to be often heartily sick of it. I remain, dear sir, yours very truly, Dr. Gumming. J. H. GLADSTONE. GOD IN SCIENCE. 155 water is turned into steam, it absorbs heat from every surrounding object, as it passes from the state of water to the state of steam. Now, by sprinkling your shop floors and the pavement before the door with water, that water, in passing into steam from the excessive heat of the day, ab- sorbs the heat from the surrounding atmosphere, and walls, and pavement ; and you feel the shop cooler, and the floor much more comfortable to tread upon. Now, in this same way, in the sum- mer months, when the sun has got to a certain degree of heat, about nine o'clock, he begins to turn every dew-drop that dances like a gem upon the cabbage-leaf, every streamlet that runs mean- dering to the mighty main, every pool of water, and a part of the great sea itself, gradually, by his heat, from a state of water to a state of steam ; and as the water passes from its water-state into its steam-state, it carries off the excessive heat from the surrounding atmosphere, and leaves the day cooler between nine and twelve, instead of leaving it in a state of intolerable and fervid heat. The atheist says, all this is a lucky chance ; the Christian says, it is indicative of design, pre- arrangement, in short, of God. But there is another interesting fact worth knowing. When the sun goes down, the source of heat, as you are aware, is below the horizon. How is it, then, that there does not take place an excessive cold, that blights and blasts everything ? By another lucky accident, as the atheist would 156 GOD IN SCIENCE. say, those mists which the sun exhaled out of the drops of water by day, in order to keep the day cool, are in the night-time condensed into water again, by the growing coldness ; and you see that water in the shape of the dew-drops, that sparkle and that dance upon the leaves of trees, of flowers, and of fruits. So that the sun all day is turning water into mist, to keep the day nice and cool ; and the same sun all night thinks of you, when you do not think of him, by turning those mists back again into water, thus giving out heat ; pre- senting in this a beautiful symbol of that " Sun of Bighteousness," who shines upon us by day with an ennobling light, and slumbering not nor sleeping by night, thinks of us when we forget to think of Him. The winter comes harder winters than we have had lately. Were the cold of winter to in- crease during the last six hours of the night, as during the first three, every living creature would perish. But why does not this cold increase all night in the same ratio in which it began ? The answer is, when the cold has reached a certain point, the water begins to freeze ; and when water is passing from its liquid state into ice, it gives out heat most rapidly ; so that the intense cold is modified by its own action turning the water into ice. When a thaw comes, on a fine day after there has been much frost, the heat, if there were no modifying elements, would be so intolerable, that no person would be able to stand it. How is it GOD IN SCIENCE. 157 that the heat of a thaw is so gradual? The ice begins to be turned back again into water, and in this transition it absorbs heat ; and thus the ex- cessive cold, in the one case, is modified by water passing into ice, and giving out heat ; and the ex- cessive heat, in the other case, is modified by the ice passing into water, and subtracting or taking off heat. And thus nature works perpetually for man, by a system of exquisite balances and counter- balances, which the atheist says are the results of chance, but which the Christian says are the de- sign and the creation of God. One other fact I notice here. You are aware that sulphur and water cannot be mixed together ; they will not mix. You are equally aware that sugar and water will mix together at once, and very rapidly. Now if our earth were as hard as sulphur, then the showers would never penetrate it, or they would rush down in torrents, and do no good to the plants that needed them. If our earth, again, were as soft as sugar, you would sink in it after every shower; and for all archi- tectural purposes it would be absolutely useless. The dry land, therefore, is partly soft and partly hard. If all the earth were powder, there would be no architecture no buildings ; if all the earth were solid, there would be no vegetation no plants striking their roots. But, by a beautiful arrangement, the loose sand is concentrated by heat, or cement, or some other process ; the hard rock is broken by volcanic agency, upheaved from 158 GOD IN SCIENCE. the sea; and if, a few years after, you visit what was so dry and sterile, you find it disintegrated by the lightning, the rain, and the frost; you find that the fowls of the air have manured it, that the earth-worm has loosened it, and that flying dust and decaying matter have covered that rock with a rich and prolific soil. The atheist says, all this is a lucky accident; the Christian says, all this is the design of God. These are a few of the more prominent facts which I have collected, not created. They are hut instances of a series and line of thought highly instructive. Again : It happens, too, that there are vast coal-cellars arranged for man, without consulting his own opinion upon the subject at all. Large forests were anciently submerged, or swept down by torrents; a mysterious Hand laid up those forests for us ; and the blaze of our winter fires tells us that there was a God in his wisdom and benevolence providing for our winter comfort long before we were born. Iron, and coal, and lime happen also to be always near each other. Coal makes the fire, lime makes the necessary flux, and by the combination of both, the iron ore is smelted, and turned to practical and useful purposes. Thus, there is not a mineral below the earth, or a stone above it, that is not a text, and that text inlaid with God. There is not a palpitating heart in this assembly, every palpitation of which does not pro- claim the existence and the presence of the infinite, the eternal, the all-good and wise God, our Father. GOD IN SCIENCE. 159 Scientific and religious truth may seem some- times opposed the one to the other ; but this is only seeming they are not truly and really so. Get at the truth, wherever truth can he discovered, and have nothing to do with the consequences. Depend upon it that the crow-bar of the geologist will never upheave the Kock of ages, and that the telescope of the astronomer will never see a speck on the Sun of righteousness. Wherever you find truth, seize it; and if you cannot harmonize the truth that comes from the mine with the text that comes from the Bible, do not say there is a contra- diction. Wait patiently; both are beams from the fountain of light, and will meet, and mingle, and coalesce, to the glory of Him that made them, and to the good of the man that thus ac- cepts them. For instance: Geology, instead of obstructing, in my humble judgment, casts light upon the Bible. The favorite dogma of atheists has been, the eternity of this world the eternity of matter. Now geology finds memorials of a period when not one of the existing races of animals was upon the earth. It proves, too, that whole races have been suddenly destroyed, and that new races have been instantly created. In other words, the dis- covery of geology is, that there is no transmuta- tion of species whatever. It is not true that the ape gradually developed himself into the man ; but it is true that the ape was created an ape, just as he now is, and that " God made man up- 160 GOD IN SCIENCE. right," in his own image made he him. Geology shows that whole races have been suddenly de- stroyed, as if by some great judgment of the Almighty, and that whole new races have been instantly created by the interposition of the fiat of God. So that the discoveries of geology de- monstrate, that each link in the chain had a be- ginning, and by just and necessary inference, that the whole chain itself had a beginning. And thus it is true that God's footprints are traced, as Hugh Miller has admirably done, in the red sand- stone, in the subterranean mine, in the fossil re- mains, in the mineral kingdom, in the saurian monster, and in the ancient petrifaction: and though our Saviour said, " They will not believe though one rose from the dead/ 7 a thousand strange and mysterious forms are being extri- cated every day from the bowels of the earth; and these things emerging from the dead pro- claim there is a God, and that God whose word is the Bible, the word of truth. It has been ob- jected by some, that geology disproves such a fact as the flood of Noah. Professor Hitchcock, of America, says, "It is sufficient, so far as revela- tion is concerned, to have shown that no presump- tion is derived from geology against the truth of the history of the deluge, but rather presumption in its favor/' A distinguished professor in Ame- rica has shown that there is no geological evidence demonstrative of such an occurrence. A recent skeptic French writer has declared that the con- GOD IN SCIENCE. 161 elusion is inevitable, that there was such a flood : " I shall be vexed to be thought stupid enough to deny that an inundation has taken place in the world, or rather in the region inhabited by the antediluvians. To me this seems to be as really a fact in history as the reign of Caesar at Kome." Many persons have speculated upon how that flood could have been produced. A favorite account for it is that it was through a comet striking against our earth. Jf the Bible had said so, the discovery of astronomers that comets are gaseous, and not solid, would have been a disproof of the truth of the Bible ; but the Bible just states the fact, leaving the explanation of the phenomenon, because not required ; and while men's theories change, and come and go, God's word remains, in all its integrity, " the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." Astronomy does not impugn, but cast light upon the word of God. The sun and moon and stars were not created for the benefit of the earth, but they were appointed for the benefit of the earth. For instance: at the flood, the rainbow was not then created, but God applied it and ap- pointed it then, as a symbol of his covenant. So, when this earth was created, the sun, moon, and stars were not created in order to enlighten it, but the rays of light were directed to it from them for its enlightenment and its benefit. And it is very remarkable that in the first chapter of Genesis, the word which we translate " lights," 162 GOD IN SCIENCE. " He made two great lights, the sun and the moon," is literally translated " light-bearers." The light was created before the sun was ap- pointed to occupy his relative position to the earth, but was gathered up into the sun, the sun being made, not a creator of light that was not, but a reflector of light that was to the earth then created. It has been objected by some, that this orb is so minute, that they cannot conceive that God should have paid such attention to it, as to send his Son to die on it, when there are orbs infinitely greater and more magnificent in the realms of space. But this objection is not sustained by the analogies of our own experience. The mother who has seven sons, one of whom, the seventh, has played the prodigal, when she hears the winds blow, and the rain and the snow beat against her casement, though her six children are at home, and comfortable and happy around her fire-side, in her heart thinks of the absent prodigal, and prays for him, and even forgets those that are beside her. Again : when a shepherd has a hun- dred sheep, and loses one of them, he leaves the ninety and nine, and goes after what seems so un- worthy of his care the strayed one that has left him. In our own country, the houses of parlia- ment occupy a very little space, yet within their walls are transacted those things that regulate Great Britain, and the vast colonial dependencies that are associated with it. Thus the analogies GOD IN SCIENCE. 163 of our own experience illustrate the fact of making this orb to be the lesson-book of the universe, the exemplar of " mercy and truth, that have met together," and of " righteousness and peace," that "have kissed each other." Infidels and atheists have objected, that the worlds were not originally made by God, but that there is a sort of world-genesis going on in the realms of infinitude, in which worlds are spun by a kind of spontaneous action. The author of " The Vestiges of Creation " said, that he dis- covered in the heavens something which he called fire-mist, and that this fire-mist was gradually condensing itself into little orbs, which little orbs became greater ones, which greater ones became the greatest ones : something after the mode of the Irishman's pistol, which, kept long enough, became a gun, and that, kept long enough, became a cannon. Lord Rosse on hearing of this, resolved to test it. He therefore turned his telescope to that very place in the heavens where the author of " The Vestiges of Creation " had pointed out the fire-mist that was gradually being formed into worlds : and that telescope discovered, that instead of being fire-mist, it was clusters of stars or worlds, each perfect in form, revolving in their orbits, and 11 Ever singing as they shine, The hand that made us is divine." It is not a very ancient discovery of astrono- mers, that the sun is the center of the solar sys- 164 GOD IN SCIENCE. tern. But just conceive this, that our sun, with his solar system, is only a little group round another central sun, who has a thousand solar systems round him ; and this central sun, with his thousand solar systems, is only another group round another central sun, in that vast starry host that shines in the expanse ahove. We see hut the sentinels and the outposts of that mighty army, that glorious host, the creation and the government of God ; and it needs only imagination to spread her wing, and to avail herself of her foothold on the facts of science, to rise, and soar, and form a concep- tion of the vastness, the magnificence, and the glory of Him, of whose grandeur these are hut minute and microscopic specimens. I notice other instances of what atheism calls accidents. Mercury is forty millions of miles from the sun ; he does not want a moon, and by a very "lucky accident," he has not got one. Venus is sixty millions of miles from the sun, and does not need a moon, and hy a very lucky acci- dent she has not got one. The earth, however, is ninety-five millions of miles from the sun, and by a lucky accident the earth has got a moon exactly at the point at which she could not do well with- out one. These are very like acts of Deity. So, again: Jupiter is five hundred millions of miles from the sun ; by a lucky accident he has got four moons, exactly proportionate to his immense dis- tance from the sun. Now, is all this chance that the moons should just come when they are GOD IN SCIENCE. 165 wanted, should not be given when they are not wanted, and that the moons should grow in num- ber somewhat in the ratio of the distance of these worlds from the sun ? The atheist says, all this is accident ; I say, you say, the Christian glories in saying, It is the wise and beneficent creation of God. Let us notice a few more accidents very lucky, I must say. If the moon were much nearer our earth, she would shine much more dimly, because the angle of the reflection of the sun's rays would be more obtuse. If the moon were larger, she would pull the earth out of her orbit, as the tides are moved by the moon already. Were the moon nearer or larger than she is, our tides would be raised till they overflowed the whole earth. If the moon were smaller, or more remote than she is, the tides would be so insignificant that they would be utterly worthless for our purposes. Are not these very lucky chances? Again: if the motion of the earth on its axis were more rapid than it is, our days and our nights would be shortened, and the equatorial regions would be covered with perpetual sea. If the motion were slower than it is, the sea would cover the tem- perate and polar regions, and London, and all in the same latitude, would soon disappear. Now, is not this very lucky that the moon is just of that size and just at that distance that makes our tides useful, lets our earth pursue its course, does its duty to the earth, and does not interfere with the enjoyments of the earth ? Is not this very 166 GOD IN SCIENCE. lucky? If there be no God, it is to me most wonderful most incredible : if there be a God, as there is, what evidence of his wisdom and his goodness towards the children of men ! And hence, in teaching science in teaching all science let us never leave out its ultimate end the existence and the glory of God. A catechism that I have been taught from my infancy, contains the question, " What is the chief end of man ?" The answer is, " To glorify God, and enjoy him forever. That question is not the monopoly of a theological catechism it is a question that we may ask of every object of the whole universe. What is the end of that star that shines in its orbit ? What is the end of that gold that is drag- ged from the bowels of the earth ? What is the end of the bird on its wing, of the cattle upon a thousand hills? What is the end of the flower and the grass ? To glorify God, and reflect the splendor of Him whose breath gave every flower its aroma; whose smiles gave every blossom its tints ; who is the Creator of all, the middle of all, the end of all, the object that they all serve to glorify and honor. To teach a boy science, and not to teach him God, is one of the most grievous inconsistencies I can conceive. I must say, that if I were appointed to a school, to lecture on chemistry, and astronomy, and botany, and all those things, but never to bring in religion, I should be excessively perplexed and exceedingly fettered. I should feel myself in a most awkward GOD IN SCIENCE. 167 position certainly, fettered and chained in the prime function of my office. It would just he as if I were to introduce one of you into one of those grand cathedrals whose spires sparkle in the rays of the rising and setting sun cathedrals which in this land have not, as they have in Italy, dungeons very deep and dark "below them and tell you what is the order of the architecture, what is the compo- sition of the stones, what is their height, what the space they cover, and what the name of the archi- tect, and after you had admired the grandeur and beauty and the order of that great structure, I were to conceal from you the end and the object of it the praise and the worship of God. My duty would be, to seize all connected with the struc- ture its origin, its composition, its uses, and its dimensions and to make these subserve the grand and ultimate end, that this is for the worship of the true God this is for the preaching of the everlasting gospel of the Son of man. It is thus, then, that all science, when looked at as science ought to be looked at, must teach us there is a God, and reveal to us, in its most beau- tiful features, the attributes, and the glories, and the perfections of that God. Hume, as you are aware, the celebrated infidel, in his argument against miracles, says that miracles are incredi- ble, because we have no experience of them. Now, geology comes in to refute this argument ; for we have proofs of miracles, of which we have no ex- perience, by the records of geology. The geolo- 168 GOD IN SCIENCE. gist, like a laborious sexton, digs into the depths of the earth, brings up proofs of phenomena posi- tively miraculous, of which we have no experi- ence, and therefore demonstrations. So that the argument of Hume is absolute and intolerable sophistry. Geology, too, shows that there is no evidence whatever of creation going on without a Creator ; and in the volume written by Mr. Miller, it is proved that every creature was made in its highest state, and then descended. The argument of the author of " The Vestiges of Creation/ 7 is, that every creature was made in his lowest state, and then gradually developed into something better. The demonstration of geology is, that every crea- ture was made in its highest state, and that de- terioration and degradation have been the fact. And Mr. Miller a'rgues with great effect, that man was made in consistency with the universal analogy in his perfect state, that he is degraded by sin, but the very degradation is the foreshadowing of a glorious elevation, when man shall be again the priest and the sovereign of nature the image of that God that made him good at the first, and re- deemed him by his blood when he had forgotten and forsaken him.* Geology has clearly demonstrated that this world is not an orphan world that God has in- * Should I find time, I intend to illustrate this by copious references to that masterly work, " Footprints of the Creator," by Hugh Miller. GOD IN SCIENCE. 169 terposed again and again, by successive acts and creations. I admit that this world gives all the evidence, at this moment, that it is under the pres- sure of a painful and a heavy curse. It groans and travails, as the apostle says, waiting to be de- livered. And I have often thought, when I have looked at the earth in summer, it seems as if the earth were conscious of this very figure of the apostle : in the months of May and June it sends forth from its bosom a magnificent burst of beau- tiful and fragrant flowers ; and after it has done so, as if conscious that this is not the clime for them to bloom forever in, it takes them back into its bosom, and shelters them from the wild winds and the biting frosts, giving token and foreshadow in these its groanings and sufferings, that the hour of its emancipation and deliverance will come, when creation shall no more groan, but join in the everlasting jubilee, the key-note of which is creation's Eedeemer, Christ and him crucified and crowned. But, let me add, while nature tells us all this, and science, interpreting nature, tells us that God is tells us that he is wise and good it cannot answer this question, Will God pardon sin ? Ask every science, and it must be dumb when you put this great question, How shall God be just, and yet the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus ? I was once speaking with my esteemed and excellent friend, that distinguished and devoted minister of Christ, Mr. Baptist Noel. He was arguing how 8 170 GOB IN SCIENCE. much nature showed of the goodness of God. " What a proof have you of that goodness when you see the lark," he said, in his own "beautiful way, " rising on untiring wing, singing as it rises in the heautiful sunshine! Why, that creature shows that it is perfectly happy, and is an evi- dence to you and me, that God, who thus made it and keeps it so, is a truly good God." So far, the reasoning seems conclusive. I took the liberty of adding this remark, which I think meets his argu- ment, "Did you notice, my dear brother, a little speck appearing just below the lark ? That speck blackened and darkened, and grew, until at length you saw unmistakably a hawk. That hawk seized upon the lark, drank its blood, and effected its de- struction. If your lark singing in the sunshine shows how good is God, this ferocious hawk that pounces on it and feeds on it, shows that God must be angry." In other words, nature teaches us contradictions about these things; and we only find the discord harmony, the contradiction peace, when we cast the light of God's word on the face of God's world, and interpret the one in the splen- dors and the glories of the other. Again : Let me show you that the knowledge of science is a most important accompaniment of every missionary effort. You heard, I believe, a very distinguished missionary address you, only a few weeks ago, in this place, whose practical ex- perience in India is long and thorough. Now, it has been found by him, and other missionaries who GOD IN SCIENCE. 171 have labored in the midst of India, that to send a missionary to India without a knowledge of science, is to send him with one positive disqualification for that great and important office. The whole Hindoo system, as you may have heard, is a system that embraces science, botany, astronomy, astrology, and geography ; and every part of it is just as divine as the other. For instance: the Hindoo believes that the earth is a plain, that it is surrounded by concentric belts of ocean, that an eclipse is a great animal coming between the earth and the sun, and he believes these things just as truly as you believe there is a God ; and if you disprove to a Hindoo a single dogma of this kind, you do not merely make him a better philosopher, but you make him cease to have con- fidence in his own religious system. When, there- fore, one of the missionaries predicted to a Hindoo an eclipse, that missionary shook the Hindoo's confidence, not merely in his astronomy, but in his own faith ; and having thus dislodged his own creed by science, the Christian missionary labored and in many instances most successfully to in- troduce into his mind the glorious doctrines of the Son of God. So that, to know science well, in the age in which we live, is to have one qualification for being a good missionary to the heathen not the alone one, nor the chief one, but yet a very valuable one. In this case we see science clothed with a beneficent mission. Having come from God, it clears the way for man seeing and hear- 172 GOD IN SCIENCE. ing, and again meeting God. This is "but an in- stallment of the uses of science an earnest of the part it is yet to play in the great schemes of Providence, religion, and truth. Is the increased velocity of communication taking place all over the earth no preparation for missionary success ? Is the spread of civilization, and of social eleva- tion and intellectual attainments, no contribution to the extension of the Bedeemer's name ? The growing prevalence of the English tongue that storehouse of profoundest science and of purest literature is it not a paving of the path, a lay- ing down of the rails, for the outgoing of the ever- lasting gospel the more extensive recognition of our Saviour Christ ? What wonderful discoveries, contributing to the comfort of man, and making known the beneficence of God, have been made during the last half century now closed! The steam-engine, called into effective existence about fifty years ago, what strength to man's hand ! what ministry to man's comfort ! what diminu- tion of the physical weight and pressure of the curse " In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread !" The vast ship, without a rag of sail, moving in the face of the hurricane, cutting through the waves with gigantic energy, and crossing the Atlantic in less time in 1851 than it took to make a passage from London to Edin- burgh in 1800 ! is this only for the aggrandize- ment of man ? May we not expect that it is for the good of man, and for the glory of God ? The GOD IN SCIENCE. 173 locomotive engine, rushing along at the rate of fifty miles an hour, carrying the contents of one village on its back to the homes of a distant one, with all the comfort of a drawings-room ; and the electric telegraph, reporting the queen's speech in Edinburgh half an hour after that speech has been spoken in London, is this for man's pride only ; is it not for God's glory ? It is not mam- mon, it is not Caesar, it is not aimless accident, that are the end, the inspiration, and the origin of these grand contributions to mankind. They are installments of those wonderful energies that lie buried in the depths of nature, waiting for the approach of science, directed by God, to come forth and speak out their origin and power, and unvail the glory of Him that created them, and minister to the happiness of man, who has so long lost sight of them. Is it only for amusement, that the sunbeams paint the scenes of the earth, and the features of the human countenance on the sensitive but tenacious tablet? Is it no evidence of the interposing beneficence of God, that an anaesthetic agent, called chloroform, has been dis- covered, which destroys all sensation, and makes a man unconscious when doomed to undergo some painful operation ? Even from the very spots on which the pestilence gathered up its most numerous victims, science is collecting, at this moment, facts which will enable us to alleviate, if not totally arrest, the ravages of another visitation. The recent discovery, for such practically it is, that 174 GOD IN SCIENCE. fresh air is as essential to good health as good food, is now fixing Dr. Arnott's valves in over- crowded shops, compelling attention to overcrowded sleeping-rooms, and proving, even to the most avaricious employer, that an hour's fresh air be- fore the business of the day begins, and an hour's leisure after the business of the day is done, will give him the largest return of efficient labor. Geology has made new progress, and shown foot- prints of the Creator, and correspondences between phenomena and texts God in his work and God in his word, truly noble and truly delightful to the Christian mind. Astronomy has discovered new orbs in the last fifty years Pallas, and Juno, and Vesta, and, lately, Victoria, Parthenope, and Hygeia ; and these orbs are not new Californias for enriching man, but gems for the crown of the blessed Eedeemer. Electricity, then, is not an in- sulated jar, geology is not a mere bowlder on the earth, astronomy is not a lofty and lone observa- tory, music is not a mere solo strain, poetry is not a mendicant minstrel, art is not a solitary trades- man set up for himself; but a grand unity binds them all in one, bringing them day by day to be more and more the echo of the Christian's anthem "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men." Steam and light- ning are not secular, but divine powers. They are inspirations from on high, preparing the way of the Lord. All science, worthy of the name, is either a messenger to man, proclaiming God, or a GOD IN SCIENCE. 175 servant coming down from God, to prepare the way of the Lord. All the sciences, like the Magi of old, will come not only to the cradle, but to the cross of our exalted Bedeemer. There is no fear that truth discovered by the philosopher will ever shade or shadow in the least degree the text enunciated in the Bible. It is folly in the philoso- pher to say, this discovery contradicts the Bible ; it is all but fanaticism in the Christian to feel, that anything that is true can possibly do so. It is worse in either to attempt to put down the one, or to repudiate the other. When Galileo saw the oscillations of the lamp that still hangs in the Cathedral of Pisa, he exclaimed, " The earth is in motion :" the cardinals of that day responded, in true cardinal style, " Imprison the heretic ;" but Galileo, when made to recant scientific truth in order to save his life a spectacle humbling enough nevertheless rose from his knees after his recantation, and said, "It moves still, how- ever ;" and the earth, on the other hand, did not stop because these mediaeval monks declared its revolution on its orbit to be heresy ; but on the earth rolled, carrying the cardinals and monks with it, whether they liked it or not, leaving them to protest to the winds, and pursuing in its orbit the career which God gave it. And so, let me say, will it be again. So will old England still pursue her majestic career of splendor, of good- ness, and of victory : let cardinals swear hereticos impugnare, et persequi let Bomish bishops in 176 GOD IN SCIENCE. London comment upon the merits of De Castro, who hesitates to decide whether it be most canoni- cal to throw Protestants into burning oil, or to burn them with fagot and fire let one divine in the east rear his flowers upon his altar, not too many, but just what are canonically sufficient let another in the west re-light his Eoman can- dles behind his roodscreen let the old pope in the Vatican (see John Bunyan's picture) fulmi- nate new anathemas against our beloved queen, as he has done against Elizabeth ; when the car- dinal can catch the four winds in his " red hat/' when his monks can hold the sun in their "hoods/ 7 and the followers of either put out- the stars, only then will old England put off her glorious dia- dem, surrender her Bible to the padlock, and pay Peter-pence again. That celebrated cardinal came in with a celebrated bull, proclaiming, " We govern, and we will continue to govern, the cgunties of Essex," &c. ; he will retire as far as this assump- tion of jurisdiction is involved, exclaiming, "We retreat, and shall continue to retreat." One very short topic I must notice, and I have This expression may seem somewhat light to those who are unacquainted with Romish rites and ceremonies. But in the " Ceremoniale Romanum," vol. i, Romae, 1721, we find the Ruber Galerus as much the distinctive honor of a cardinal as a crown of a sovereign, or miter of a bishop. The pope puts the Red Hat on the cardinal's head, enjoining him, even to the shedding of his blood, to stand for the increase and sta- bility of the holy Roman Church. The Red Hat is the sign of power and fealty in the cardinal. GOD IN SCIENCE. 177 done. There is before us an exhibition which is connected with science. I rejoice, I must say, in spite of the prophecies of some, in the prospect of that noble evidence of peace and harmony among mankind. It seems to me a very noble idea, and such I pray it may prove to be, being a lover of science, as I am, next to a lover of my Bible I pray to God, it may fulfill the prophecies of the sanguine, not the vaticinations of those who augur ill. It will teach us Britons, perhaps, to be more humble, and to cease from measuring ourselves by ourselves, which the apostle says is not wise. It may be a contribution to the peace of nations, by showing a nobler rivalry than arms, better trophies than banners and garments rolled in blood, and a warfare whose field is the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park whose artillery are steam- engines and hydraulic presses whose soldiers are philosophers and engineers and spinners and dyers and its protocols treatises on science, and its traces good feeling, amicable rivalry, and social and universal advancement. Such great movements have always been connected with the elevation and the progress of mankind. It was when the Medes and Parthians and dwellers in Mesopotamia and I speak it with a deep sense of the solemnity of that event were all assembled at Jerusalem, that the Holy Spirit came down, and made them the ambassadors of God and the benefactors of mankind. It may be, that during this great assembly of the nations of the earth 8* 178 GOD IN SCIENCE. of Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, bond and free God may have in store, unknown to us I pray that it may be so social blessings that the world shall not be able to exhaust. It may be a new era. At all events, we may feel persuad- ed that multitudes will witness here what they never dreamt of. Muftis and sultans may return to Constantinople, to make known what Christi- anity has done for, it alone has done it for this great land of ours. Yes ! despots and tyrants from afar may go home to their capitals, never to forget the impression of liberty without license, loyalty in the subject without despotism in the ruler, the omnipotence of law, the majestic might of order, of harmony, and of peace. Pope Pius IX. may himself pay us a visit not enamoured of the sciences any more than of railroads to sympathize with his disappointed archbishop in the borough, and to see with his own eyes the extra- ordinary race that would not thank his holiness for a cardinal, that did not all admire a bull, that think a hierarchy no present, and that have even lost all liking for tractarianism, the least and most amiable form of it. On seeing the streets with- out bayonets, which he is not at present accustom- ed to, and a queen without any other battalions than loving hearts around her ; and a city without an inquisition, which he has never witnessed in his life before ; ministers with families, yet abundant in labors, and homes so much more beautiful than convents and nunneries the pontiff may go GOD IN SCIENCE. 179 back again to the Vatican, and issue a new re- script, taking off his anathemas from the Bible Society, and his padlock from the word of God, and ordering his Eminence on the south of the Thames to lay aside his anulus and r uber galerus, and to become, if approved, a city missionary, a far loftier rank, and preach to those poor people in what he calls the " slums of Westminster," whom he has taken as a special heritage ; and thus the worst that we shall wish Cardinal Wiseman is, that he may change his creed and become a monu- ment of the grace and loving-kindness of our God. In conclusion, nature is a priest of God. Science has shown that she is so. Creation is a living hymn, every sound of which is praise ; a poem, every syllable of which is a star ; a portrait, every touch of which is wisdom, beneficence, and love. Dedicate, my young friends, some of your spare hours to study the rock-crystal, the heath-bell, the beautiful fern, the bright star, the creatures that God has made, and that he made at first very beautiful. They are worth your study. There is health in the pursuit, there is joy in the dis- coveries. Study all the sciences, but O ! study them as they cluster round the cross ; study them in the light of Him that hung upon that cross. The Queen of Sheba came from afar to hear Solo- mon's wisdom ; " a greater than Solomon is here." Let us not go to Christ through Solomon ; let us go through Christ to hear the wisdom of Solomon. The teaching of Solomon alone may precipitate C 180 GOD IN SCIENCE. you into his sins ; the wisdom of the Egyptians alone may make you like the " fleshpots of Egypt ;" the science of the Chaldeans alone may make you worship the heavenly hodies ; but the knowledge of Christ, the science of Christianity, will bring you within the orbit of everlasting love, and to the acceptance of that precious sacrifice which is pardon, and peace, and happiness forever. Study, my dear young friends, the flowers of the fields in the bright light of the Sun of righteous- ness ; read the starry sky beside the effulgence of the bright and morning Star. Bring the aroma of plants, the tints of flowers, the glories of the earth, and the splendors of the heavens, the gold of the mines, the gems and the pearls of the deep bring them, but bring, above all, your own hearts "living sacrifices, which is your reason- able service." I close this lecture, undertaken at your urgent request. Having lectured to you. every year since the commencement of your noble Association, I can now, with a greater grace, commit to others the carrying on in future years the course we have so auspiciously commenced and established. God be merciful to you, and bless you, and cause his countenance to shine upon you! May your pursuit and practice be, whatsoever things are true and just and honest and lovely and of good re- port! And on this, the first lecture evening of 1851, may the bells that have rung out 1850, in the words of a living poet, GOD IN SCIENCE. 181 " Ring out a slowly-dying cause, And ancient forms of party-strife ; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter morals, purer laws. Ring out the shapes of foul disease, Ring out the narrowing lust of gold, Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man, and true, The larger heart, the kindlier hand ; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the light that is to be !" THE END. WORKS PUBLISHED BY CABLTON & PHILLIPS, 200 Mulberry-street, New-York. Fletcher of Madeley, Life of. Life of John Fletcher, compiled from Wesley's Narrative, the Biographical Notes of Mr. Gilpin, from his own Letters, and other authentic Documents, many of which were never before published. By JOSEPH BENSON. Sixth thousand. 12mo., pp. 358. Muslin or sheep $0 65 Many exemplary men have I known, holy in heart and life, within fourscore years ; but one equal to him I have not known, one so inwardly and outwardly devoted to God. JOHN WESLEY. No age or country has ever produced a man of more fervent piety or more perfect charity ; no church has ever possessed a more apostolic minister. ROBERT SOUTHEY. Mr. Fletcher was one of the holiest men that ever lived ; next to Mr. Wesley, he was the ablest advocate of the Methodist truths ; and no man ever adorned them by a purer life, or a more burn- ing, active love. THOS. JACKSON. A man mighty in the Scriptures, and full of the unction of God. DB. A. CLARKE. Fletcher s Letters. Letters of the Rev. JOHN FLETCHER, Vicar of Madeley. Ori- ginally edited by Rev. MELVILLE HORNE, Curate of Made- ley. With a Portrait of Mr. Fletcher. Third thousand. 12mo., pp. 334. Muslin $065 Such sweetness and devotion of love ; such heavenly unction, and so full of Christ they are among the most affecting and engaging of devotional writings, and deserve a place with the letters of Doddridge, Cowper, and Newton. N. Y. Evangelist. These letters are full of the spirit of piety. No man can read them, who has a spark of religion in his heart, without feeling his love enkindled to a flame. Methodist Protestant. Fletcher's Letters are a transcript of his mind a visible embodi- ment of his spirit, and cannot be too strongly studied, or too deeply imbibed. Pittsburgh Christian Advocate. These eminently sweet and spiritual epistles have long been out of print in a separate form, and the agents have performed a good service to the Church in the issue of this beautiful edition. Every Sabbath-school library should be graced with this treasury of purity and piety Zion's Herald. Finley's Memorials of Prison Life. Memorials of Prison Life. By Rev. J. B. FINLEY, Chaplain to the Ohio State Prison. Edited by Dr. TEFFT. 12mo., pp. 354. Muslin $075 4 ftp WORKS PUBLISHED BY CARLTON & PHILLIPS, 200 Mulberry-street, New-York. Dixon's Tour in the U. States and Canada. Personal Narrative of a Tour through a part of the United States and Canada. With Notices of the History and In- stitutions of Methodism in America. By JAMES DIXON, D. D. With a fine Portrait. 12mo., pp. 431. Muslin $0 75 Personal Narrative of a Tour through a Part of the United States and Canada. With Notices of the History and In- stitutions of Methodism in America. Containing, also, the Fifth Part, heretofore omitted in the American editions. By JAMES DIXON, D. D. With a fine Portrait. 12mo., pp. 560. Muslin $1 00 To say that the volume altogether is very interesting, would be what is said of many books of travel ; but this does not come up to our ideas of the work now before us. It is full of interest and instruction, and is written in a style that cannot fail to please every reader of good taste and sound judgment. Nashville Christian Advocate. Dr. Dixon's book is a very great improvement upon those of most English tourists, who have passed rapidly through this country. He judges more correctly of the spirit and character of the peo- ple, and forms a juster estimate of the nature and bearing of our institutions. Watchman and Observer. The many quotations we have made from this book show that we think well of it. The personal narrative is very pleasant ; the descriptions of American scenery, in which it abounds, are often very striking ; its views of American character and customs are liberal and instructive. It is a book calculated to allay pre- judice in our own country, and remove misconception in Great Britain. The second part of the work is devoted to a very full exposition of Methodism in America, its history, institution, present state, &c. National Era. To the Methodist reader, especially, though by no means exclu- sively, the information contained in these notices will be equally interesting and valuable. All who know Dr. Dixon would be led to anticipate this in a work written by him, and we assure them that they will not be disappointed. Wesley an Magazine, Philosophy of Food and Nutrition. The Philosophy of Food and Nutrition in Plants and Ani- mals. By Kev. E. SIDNEY, A. M. 18mo., pp. 198. Muslin $050 One of that valuable class of works in which scientific facts are represented in such a form as to be both comprehensible and interesting to general readers. New-York Christian Advocate and Journal. WOBKS PUBLISHED BY CASLTON & PHILLIPS, 200 Mulberry-street, New-York. Fletcher, (Mary,) Life of. Life of Mrs. Mary Fletcher, Consort and Relict of Rev. John Fletcher. Compiled from her Journal and other authentic Documents. By HENKY MOORE. Eleventh thousand. 12mo., pp. 298. Muslin or sheep $0 70 Do. gilt edges 100 The life of Mrs. Fletcher is too well known to require particular description, and too highly valued to call for renewed recom- mendation. One principle, indeed, was evident throughout Mrs. Fletcher's long life full resignation to the will of God. Another leading trait in her character was faith. Her faith was strong; she " staggered not at the promises through unbelief." May her pure, sound, Scriptural faith prevail among those who may read her memoirs ! Wesley an Magazine. Old Humphrey's Works. Half Hours with Old Humphrey. Revised by Rev. D. P. KIDDEE. 12mo., pp. 278. Muslin $0 60 Old Humphrey is a universal favourite ; he is capable of making the dullest subjects interesting. What is still better, he turns every subject to a religious account. No essay of his fails to exhibit the excellence or the obligations of true piety. Such writings may be recommended with confidence for the use of families. Bramwell, (William?) Life of. Memoir of the Life and Ministry of Mr. William Bramwell, lately an itinerant Methodist Preacher ; with Extracts from his extensive and interesting Correspondence. By JAMES SIGSTON. Fourteenth thousand. 18mo., pp. 341. Muslin or sheep $0 40 It is valuable for the information it gives us of his true yet pain- ful conversion, the conduct of his parents when he became a Methodist, his first interview with Mr. Wesley, his first attempt to preach, his receiving of the blessing of full sanctification, his practice of ecclesiastical discipline, his spirit of prayer, his efficient manner of conducting prayer- meetings, his temptations to give up preaching, his persecution, his treatment of his chil- dren, his preaching especially of the doctrine of entire holiness, his success and his end. He was a " man of God." God's cause was his cause. Christian Guardian. WORKS PUBLISHED BY CARLTON & PHILLIPS, 200 Mulberry-street, New- York. Parkers (Mrs.) Christian Church. Annals of the Christian Church, in Familiar Conversationg for Young Persons. By Mrs. PARKER. Second thousand. 18mo., pp. 324. Muslin or sheep $0 35 This work was especially composed for the use of the young. Its aim is to convey, in a familiar style, such a view of the chief occurrences in ecclesiastical history as may furnish the youth- ful mind with a genera! knowledge of the subject, and prepare the way for more extensive and careful researches. Attention is paid to the order of events, to the external forms whi 'i Christianity has assumed in different ages, and to the great principles which no time or place can change, and which must always constitute the basis of the true Church of Christ. We very cordially recommend this excellent volume. Why should the young have abridged histories of Greece, Rome, &c., ana the history of Christ's Church be withheld from them ? We dc not, however, mean to say that this is only a book for the young. Those who have not time for the perusal of larger works, will find these " Annals " to be far more than a mere sketch of events and dates. Wesley's Letters. Select Letters, chiefly on Personal Eeligion. By Rev. JOHN WESLEY. With a Sketch of his Character, by Rev. SAMUEL BRADBURN. Third thousand. 12mo., pp. 240. Muslin or sheep $0 50 Mr. Wesley's Letters were written not to circulate idle gossip, or to nourish a sickly sentimentality, but to urge forward his correspondents in the divine life, that they might attain all the mind there was in Christ, and make their calling and election sure. They present an agreeable variety of subjects ; and it is hoped they will prove acceptable to a numerous class of read- ers to whom the entire works of the venerable writer are inac- cessible. To the use of the closet, and of private reading, it is presumed, they are especially adapted. The " Sketch of Mr. Wesley's Character," by which the letters are introduced, con- tains several interesting notices concerning the founder of Methodism which are not generally known. Curiosities of Animal Life. Curiosities of Animal Life, as developed by the Recent Dis- coveries of the Microscope. With Illustrations and Index. Revised by Rev. D. P. KIDDER. 16mo., pp. 184. Muslin $050 One of the most novel and interesting books of the times. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY Return to desk from which borrowed. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. SANTA CRU DAN LD 21-100m-ll,'49(B7146sl6)476 YB 72249