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MEDITATIONS 
 
 IN ADVENT, ON CREATION, AND 
 ON PROVIDENCE 
 
 By HENRY ALFORD, D.D. 
 
 DEAN OF CANTERBURY 
 
 ALEXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER 
 LONDON AND NEW YORK 
 1866 
 
 Third, Thousand 
 
 M 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 with funding from 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 https://archive.org/details/meditationsinadvOOalfo 
 
7W? /U c+J. dL'. 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 These Meditations, which were originally 
 preached as Sermons in Canterbury Cathedral, 
 all follow one course and form of thought. 
 I have taken some of the great familiar truths 
 of our religious belief or life, and, stripping 
 them of accidents and conventionalities, have 
 endeavoured to lay them forth in their reality, 
 face to face with our ordinary thoughts and 
 habits. The first result of this procedure 
 naturally has been, that the two appear incom- 
 patible with each other. Truth has been so 
 much wrapped up in the conventional terms 
 ^)f theology, that when disengaged from them, 
 its most familiar examples assume a strange 
 
 802351 
 
IV 
 
 PREFACE . 
 
 aspect, and break in abruptly on the tenor of 
 our thoughts. 
 
 Then, working from this point, I have tried 
 to shew that the contrast is in fact apparent 
 only: that matters of the same kind as these 
 great truths are recognised in our ordinary 
 lives: and that a fair and candid mind is no 
 more justified in refusing credence to these 
 articles of our faith, than it is in ignoring the 
 every-day phenomena of man’s existence. 
 
 In tracing out these analogies, I have been 
 occasionally led to touch on some common 
 ways of speaking and thinking, which usually 
 meet with severe reprobation, and to maintain 
 that such reprobation is undeserved. In this 
 case also, the facts of human nature have been 
 obscured by our craving after systematic pre- 
 cision. While the teachers of theology have 
 been careful to draw their lines of demarca- 
 tion sharply, and to satisfy the expectations 
 of public religious opinion, the great currents 
 of human instinct and desire have been flowing 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 v 
 
 on, irrespective of their teaching, and for the 
 most part, unrecognised by them. Yet it is 
 by their instincts and desires that our per- 
 suasion must lay hold of the hearts of our 
 hearers. And it is to these that our Blessed 
 Lord in His discourses, and His Apostles in 
 their writings, constantly make appeal. 
 
 It seems plain that, in order to render our 
 pulpit ministrations effective, we must con- 
 descend to make use, far more than we do, of 
 men’s ordinary thoughts and words: and to 
 enter into and deal with, not imaginary states 
 of mind and affection, not imaginary difficulties, 
 but those really felt by our hearers. 
 
 Bochastle, Callander, 
 September , 1865 . 
 

CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 I. THE LORD’S COMING 1 
 
 II. THE GREAT ACCOUNT 18 
 
 III. PRACTICAL EFFECT ON LIFE 37 
 
 IV. NO CHANGE IN NATURE 50 
 
 ON CREATION 71 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE 
 
 I. DIFFICULTIES OF THE MAIN SUBJECT 131 
 
 II. god’s guidance of us for good 150 
 
 III. TESTIMONY FROM THE COURSE OF THE WORLD 167 
 
 IV. DIVINE AND HUMAN AGENCY 186 
 
 V* EFFECT ON MEN OF GOD’S ORDINARY AND 
 
 EXTRAORDINARY DEALINGS 204 
 
 VI. GOD’S ESTIMATE OF HIS OWN WORKS 223 
 

 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 i. 
 
 THE LORD’S COMING. 
 
 It seems very difficult to conceive that the 
 usual course of this world should ever be 
 broken in upon by such an event as the 
 coming of our Lord. It forms one of the 
 most startling contrasts possible, to place side 
 by side the common every-day thoughts of 
 all of us about things around us, and the 
 reality of the appearance of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ in the midst of us. Of what is this 
 a sign ? On the one hand, do not let us 
 press it further than is fair. I suppose some- 
 thing of the kind is the case with us about 
 all very solemn things. We all know we 
 B 
 
2 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 must die ; but a sentence of death, or the 
 discovery of that fatal necessity imminent on 
 us, would be to any of us a rude shock to 
 our ordinary habits and thoughts. We all 
 believe the holy articles of our faith ; but 
 there are times in the lives of us all, times 
 of which we have no reason to be ashamed, 
 when the mention of these solemn points of 
 our belief would come in strangely and in- 
 congruously. So that I think we must not 
 hold the fact with which we set out to 
 be in itself a sign of irreligion. It is 
 rather, perhaps, a necessity of our nature. 
 God has so made us, that we are neces- 
 sarily taken hold of and possessed by the 
 things about us. The things that are not 
 seen are of infinitely more importance : but 
 it is the things that are seen which are 
 present and nearest us. We must make 
 an effort to look at the one ; the other 
 we cannot help seeing. And so it is, that 
 while God has constituted us beneficently in 
 
IN ADVENT . 
 
 3 
 
 this respect, so that this tendency of our 
 nature is good for us in the main — good for 
 our preservation in life, good for our enjoy- 
 ment of life, good for our success in life — 
 yet, like all our other natural tendencies and 
 habits, it needs correcting, needs elevating, 
 needs to be interfered with, for the purposes 
 of our best and highest life. For we are 
 not, while in this present state, to be the 
 slaves of outward things ; and by far the 
 greater part of our existence will be passed 
 in another state than this, even an eternal one. 
 
 Thoughts like these, naturally arising out 
 of the great subject of Advent, seem to lead 
 us to shape our meditations thus : — The diffi- 
 culty of realizing our Lord’s coming, as ne- 
 cessarily belonging to our ordinary life in 
 this world ; and the necessity of realizing the 
 Lord’s coming, as belonging to the better part 
 of our life here, and to our higher life here- 
 after. May God guide and bless us while we 
 think on these two things. 
 
4 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 “ Yet a little while, and He that shall come 
 will come.” This is our belief. But when ? 
 and how ? How many centuries have sped 
 by since these words were written ! . How 
 many more may drag on before they are ful- 
 filled ! Where in our own days, where in 
 days future, can we assign a time when we 
 can realize the fact of His coming ? Shall 
 it be while earth is at peace, amidst the 
 steady labours of the arts, and while man’s 
 thoughts are even and undistracted ? Shall 
 the merchant on the exchange, the student 
 at his desk, the traveller on his journey, the 
 mother in her family duties, the children in 
 their school or at their play, be startled with 
 the cry of His approach ? So seem some 
 places in Holy Scripture to teach us ; and 
 yet how difficult to imagine it ! What do 
 any of us expect less, than such a surprise 
 in such employments ? What seems more un- 
 like God’s ways of dealing with man during 
 all these centuries, than that such a sudden 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 5 
 
 crash should break in upon this settled order 
 of things, which He has so far established, that 
 it is our duty to Him to see it maintained, 
 and to keep its place among ourselves ? Well, 
 but let us then take the other alternative. 
 Shall that day come upon us amidst fierce 
 wars and distresses, when men’s passions are 
 let loose, and their thoughts have lost balance ? 
 Shall the ears of the wild combatants in the 
 battle-field be pierced by the shout of the 
 archangel rising over the din of their conflict ? 
 Shall the lurid glare of burning homes usher 
 in the conflagration of the heaven and the 
 earth ? Shall anguish and mourning be already 
 upon mankind, before that sign shall appear 
 in heaven at which all the tribes of the earth 
 shall mourn ? This again seems not incon- 
 sistent with the testimony of Scripture in 
 other places. But in that case how difficult 
 to imagine God’s faithful people waiting and 
 praying ; how must their thoughts be dis- 
 tracted, and their Saviour put out of their 
 
6 
 
 IN ADVENT . 
 
 sight, by the dire necessities of the time ! If 
 the Christian prays against sudden death, if he 
 dreads the passing from perhaps a light jest, 
 or a trifling thought, or a festal moment, to 
 the presence of his God, who would expect 
 that the Church shall then, so to speak, be 
 taken at a disadvantage, when fierce passions 
 are raging even in bosoms whose law is for- 
 giveness, and the ordinary means of grace are 
 suspended ? Again, if we put the alternative 
 as to different times of our ordinary life, we 
 shall find it equally difficult to give reality 
 to our expectations of the Lord’s coming. 
 Hear what the poet sings of it : — 
 
 “ At midnight, when mankind is wrapt in peace, 
 
 And worldly fancy feeds on golden dreams : 
 
 To give more dread to man’s most dreadful hour, 
 
 At midnight, ’tis presumed, this pomp will hurst 
 From tenfold darkness : sudden as the spark 
 From smitten steel : from nitrous grain the blaze. 
 
 Man, starting from his couch, shall sleep no more ! 
 
 The day is broke, which never more shall close ! ” * 
 
 Young, “ Night Thoughts.” 
 
IN ADVENT . 
 
 7 
 
 Now as to this, — we know that “that day 
 will come as a thief in the night ; ” and to 
 some it must, like the thief, come in the 
 night itself. But it is impossible to apply 
 this to all mankind, seeing that night and 
 day share our globe alike, and such a con- 
 sideration entirely prevents any general ap- 
 plication of such a description, or of any 
 description of men’s occupations, except on 
 the largest scale, when it shall overtake them. 
 They shall be “ eating and drinking, marry- 
 ing and giving in marriage, buying and sell- 
 ing, planting and building ; ” these shall be 
 their general employments over the whole 
 earth : on such things shall their thoughts 
 be; but to give any detailed description of 
 the circumstance as applicable to all men 
 is, from the above reason, impossible. Then, 
 again, as to the place where the Lord shall 
 come, how difficult it is to form any idea in 
 our minds which may at all accord with the 
 facts and laws of nature to which we find 
 
8 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 ourselves subjected! He shall come and be 
 seen by all ; by all at the same moment ; so 
 that the very conditions of our senses will be 
 changed, the very foundations of the earth 
 broken up, all present hindrances removed. 
 All the channels of thought and perception 
 must be different, before such a thing can 
 be. And here we seem to have arrived at 
 the true reason of the difficulty which we 
 find in conceiving this matter, — that it does 
 not belong to our present state or perceptions ; 
 we shall be changed before we are conscious 
 of it ; in that change, all incongruity will pass 
 away ; after it, all surprise will have vanished 
 in its surpassing greatness. Our eyes will see 
 the Lord : but not these eyes, whose vision is 
 limited by so brief a space; not these, which 
 find obstacles in matter intervening ; not these, 
 which weep earthly tears, and glance aside at 
 earthly vanities. Our ears will hear the voice 
 before which heaven and earth shall flee 
 away ; but not these earthly organs, ever 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 9 
 
 hearing amiss, unable to distinguish the good 
 
 from the vain. Our hearts shall beat high at 
 
 » 
 
 the joy of our Lord’s approach; yet not these 
 feeble ones, the strongest of which would be 
 arrested in its vital course by terror at the 
 very adjuncts of his coming; but other and 
 more blessed ones, even new hearts, able to 
 welcome all his glory, and to respond to all 
 his love. We shall be changed — through the 
 grave or without the grave — all changed, so 
 that earth will be different to us, time will 
 be different, other men will be different, our- 
 selves will be different ; for He that sitteth on 
 the Throne will have made all things new. 
 
 The difficulty, then, in conceiving the 
 coming of the Lord, is incident to our pre- 
 sent state, belongs to the imperfection of our 
 present faculties, and to their necessary con- 
 nection with the things of sense and of this 
 world. We shall never lose it. As long as 
 we are in this state, it will be a strange 
 thing to us that the Lord should come and 
 
10 
 
 IN ADVENT . 
 
 put an end to this state, and break up all 
 the habits and associations of the world which 
 lies about us. 
 
 Now this difficulty affects the unbeliever in 
 one way, and the Christian in another. It con- 
 firms the unbeliever in his unbelief. “ Where 
 is the promise of His coming? for all things 
 remain as they were from the beginning of 
 the creation.” This is the language of the 
 unbeliever; in the days of St. Peter, and in 
 our days. The stability of Nature and her 
 laws, the difficulty of conceiving the Lord’s 
 coming in upon and interrupting the present 
 order of things, is to him a reason for dis- 
 believing altogether that He will come — for 
 setting at nought the hopes of the Christian 
 Church, and expecting that this world is to 
 last for ever as it is. 
 
 On the Christian believer the effect is very 
 different. He, if he be wise, does not pretend 
 in this matter to be differently situated from 
 other men. Their difficulties are his diffi- 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 11 
 
 culties. He can no more realize the dread 
 and sudden event than they can. Where it 
 is to be, how it is to be, these are mysteries 
 to him as to others. But what is his con- 
 clusion from these difficulties and mysteries ? 
 Is it this, that he should relax his hold on 
 belief in the great fact itself; that he should 
 let go his faith in Him who hath promised, 
 and cease to look and wait for the coming of 
 the Lord? Hay, if I know anything of the 
 ordinary course of the working of the Chris- 
 tian’s thoughts, it is the direct reverse of this. 
 The certainty of the event itself is beyond 
 doubt. All Scripture is pledged to it; our 
 Lord’s own most sacred word is pledged to 
 it again and again. If the assurance, “He 
 that shall come will come,” had never been 
 written, it would yet have been virtually written 
 over and over again that He will come, and 
 will not tarry. Here there can be no giving 
 way. This at least is an article of his faith : 
 and without believing this, he could not be 
 
12 
 
 IN ADVENT . 
 
 the Christian which he is. What then is his 
 inference from this difficulty on which we 
 have been treating? — from the fact, that is, 
 that this solemn coming of his Lord is a 
 matter not belonging to the state of time, 
 not easily occurring to, nor grasped by, our 
 present senses and faculties ? What can it 
 be but this, — that it needs so much the more 
 to be thought upon, to be made matter of 
 earnest meditation, to be surveyed in all its 
 great bearings on his thoughts and desires, 
 on his affections and determinations ? “ Seeing 
 
 these things are so, what manner of men,” 
 as St. Peter asks, “ ought we to be ? ” Seeing 
 it is certain that this present state of things 
 will come to a sudden end by the Advent of 
 our Lord, how ought we to think of men and 
 things around us; how to make our plans; 
 how truly to enjoy life; how to deny our- 
 selves; how to feel God’s presence about and 
 over us ; how to war against sin and evil ; 
 how to perform the various duties of our sta- 
 
IN ADVENT . 
 
 13 
 
 tions for which, we shall on that day be called 
 to account ? For this is another result of that 
 of which we have been speaking: that our 
 preparation for that day must rather consist 
 in the things that are, than in those which 
 are to be. Its events are great, and beyond 
 our comprehension: strange, and removed out 
 of our experience. If we were always to be 
 dwelling on them, ever speculating on them, 
 we should be forsaking our line of practical 
 good, and unfitting ourselves for God’s work, 
 which lies in every man’s path of life. Nay, 
 the attempt would be vain; vain, as we saw, 
 for any worthy comprehension which it would 
 give us of that day; vain for any imagined 
 success in throwing off the realities of this 
 state in which we are. For the present , which 
 lies about a man, wraps him like a garment, 
 and gives the form and semblance to all his 
 thoughts and deeds; the age in which a man 
 lives is the very flesh and blood of his per- 
 sonal being, and he can no more divest him- 
 
14 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 self of it and be separate from it, than he 
 can divest himself of those and be separate 
 from them. 
 
 In our daily work then it is, that we must 
 prepare for Christ’s coming : in the occupations 
 of this day, for the account of that day : by liv- 
 ing more purely, more truthfully, more chari- 
 tably : living more in prayer, more in conscious- 
 ness of God’s presence, more in the cleansing 
 power of the Lord’s blessed Atonement, and by 
 the guidance of His indwelling Spirit. 
 
 One thought may perhaps have been in some 
 minds, as they have been reading these lines : 
 and it is this, Will not the Lord’s coming, to 
 most of us, in all probability be the day of our 
 own death ? And would it not be more profit- 
 able to be preparing us for that, than to write 
 to us of an event which may be far distant, and 
 probably will not come on the earth in our time 
 at all ? To this question there are two answers, 
 — answers which ought to be ever impressed on 
 a Christian’s mind. First, the view of things 
 
IN ADVENT . 
 
 15 
 
 proposed by the inquirer is not that taken in 
 Holy Scripture, which is the rule and pattern of 
 our teaching. There we do not hear anything 
 of preparation for death. I doubt whether one 
 text can be found in which we are exhorted 
 to make such preparation, as such. But the 
 constant note, the continually recurring exhort- 
 ation is, to be prepared for the Lord’s coming. 
 So that if we would teach as God’s word teaches, 
 as our blessed Lord and his Apostles taught, we 
 cannot do as the inquirer would have us. Our 
 second answer goes to the reason of the thing, 
 and in fact gives the account and lays open the 
 foundation of the former. He who is prepared 
 for the Lord’s coming, is necessarily also pre- 
 pared for his own death. The greater includes 
 the less. He who so lives, so thinks, so speaks, 
 so works, in his daily life, as to be ready for the 
 sign of the Son of man in heaven, and the voice 
 of the archangel, and the trump of God, will not 
 be found unready when the summons is heard 
 in a softer tone, and comes with more previous 
 
16 
 
 IN ADVENT : 
 
 warning. If he can meet the Lord amidst the 
 flaming heavens and the gathering dead, he will 
 not be loath to obey His call, when its dread 
 reality is tempered with all gentle and kindly 
 alleviation — with the gradual approaches of 
 sickness and infirmity, and the tender solaces of 
 loving friends and watchful attendants. But, 
 on the other hand, he who has forgotten his 
 Lord’s coming, and has simply been careful 
 about readiness for his own dismissal, will ever 
 be too liable in the lesser thing to have neg- 
 lected care for the greater; and he will also 
 be well-nigh certain to have lowered his stand- 
 ard of attainment, and narrowed his sympathies, 
 unworthily; in taking thought for himself, to 
 have forgotten the great Body of which he is a 
 member; in minding his own safety, to have 
 forgotten the glory of his Lord — nay, his very 
 Lord Himself. 
 
 Bor — and with this thought we will draw to 
 a close — there is nothing that so much takes a 
 man out of himself; nothing that so much 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 17 
 
 raises and widens his thoughts and sympathies ; 
 nothing that so much purifies and elevates his 
 hopes, as this preparation for the coming of the 
 Lord. 
 
 One thought more. And it is on words occur- 
 ring in a text already more than once referred 
 to, “ Yet a little while” I said it was not good 
 to speculate, not good to give scope to the 
 roving fancy, as to the great event, its manner 
 or its time. Still these words, “Yet a little 
 while,” should he impressed on every mind. 
 Could we look at the future as we do on the 
 past, — could we estimate the interval of time 
 between the Lord’s first and second coming, 
 as we shall do when we look back on it from 
 the eternal state, — how short it would seem ! 
 And how short it really is to Him who inhabit- 
 eth eternity ! “Yet a little while : ” — long per- 
 haps to us, distracted with our petty interests, 
 harassed with our unresting cares, biassed by 
 our cherished prejudices ; but in itself, and in 
 our real lifetime, short indeed. And if but a 
 
 C 
 
18 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 little while, how much the more important ! 
 How full should it be of life’s work, life’s 
 seedtime, life’s decision ! 
 
 Oh let us live it for God and for good ; let us 
 live it for the day which shall end it; let us 
 live it as we shall wish we had done when we 
 see the Son of man on his Throne, come to 
 judge the world ! 
 
 II. 
 
 THE GREAT ACCOUNT. 
 
 Another train of thought which suggests 
 itself to us in the season of Advent is this : — It 
 is the plain and general testimony of Holy 
 Scripture, that at the last awful day every one 
 of us shall be judged for, and called upon to 
 give an account of, the deeds, words, and 
 thoughts of this present state of time: “We 
 must all be made manifest before the judgment- 
 seat of Christ : that every one may receive the 
 things done in his body, whether (it be) good or 
 bad” (2 Cor. v. 10). And even so spoke the 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 19 
 
 Treacher in the Old Testament : “ God shall 
 bring every work into judgment, with every 
 secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be 
 evil ” (Eccles. xii. 14). And, like the persuasion 
 of that day itself being certain to come, so like- 
 wise is this belief accepted by every Christian. 
 
 Let us examine this in dependence on God’s 
 help. Let us see what difficulties lie about the 
 true understanding of this, as we did with 
 the other, and endeavour to deduce here also 
 the true estimate and idea which we ought to 
 form of that great final account, and the right 
 and best way of preparing for it. 
 
 Now, if we minutely inquire what it is that 
 we really believe, when we say that we shall 
 give account before God of all the deeds, words, 
 and thoughts of this state, we shall find that it 
 is one of the most astonishing things imagin- 
 able. One may be very familiar with the 
 words ; and that which they express to us may 
 have become a well-known and accustomed 
 thing ; but depend on it, there never was any- 
 
20 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 tiling more difficult to imagine, or to give any 
 conceivable account of. All the deeds, words, 
 and thoughts of our life on earth, — why, where 
 are they ? Where are those of any assignable 
 portion of that life ? If the Judge is to carry 
 conviction to the hearts of those who shall then 
 be judged, they must surely be in possession, at 
 the time, of the full consciousness of each act as 
 having been performed by them, of each word 
 as having been spoken, of each thought as 
 having passed through their minds. Take but 
 one ‘example. Suppose the great Judge to 
 arraign me in the matter of one day of my 
 childhood, and I were charged thus : That at 
 such a time in it I disobeyed my parents ; at 
 such another time I showed envy, or malice, or 
 selfishness towards my fellows ; at such another 
 time I had high thoughts., of myself, or rebel- 
 lious thoughts against God; and suppose all 
 this were to be to me only as a tale that is told, 
 only as something said about another person, 
 and not about myself : I might not, indeed I 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 21 
 
 could not, doubt the assurance, nor deny the 
 arraignment of an infallible Judge ; but where, 
 I ask, would be the conviction in my own 
 breast that the Judge of all the earth had done 
 right ? Unless I could see and feel at that 
 dread moment all the sinfulness of my then 
 acts ; in other words, unless I could put myself 
 into the very circumstances which then sur- 
 rounded me, how could I give account of, how 
 could I render in myself a true verdict con- 
 cerning those long past offences ? I say, the 
 very circumstances which then surrounded me. 
 For the guilt of my disobedience on that alleged 
 occasion would not appear in its true light, 
 unless I saw and knew how that dear parent 
 was striving to win me by kindness, how prayers 
 were rising for me, and tears were shed over me, 
 by one whose tender heart I was of set purpose 
 wounding ; my envy, and malice, and selfishness 
 would not be to me what it really was, unless I 
 could see those companions of my childhood 
 again, and recall their fresh young faces, and 
 
22 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 the tone of voices long, long forgotten ; and the 
 exceeding sinfulness of my rebel risings against 
 my God would not come up before me, unless 
 I could again have in me that rich and full tide 
 of exuberant blessedness with which the God of 
 love endows our happy childhood, and which 
 none of us has known since he was a child. 
 And I have taken but one instance — one day 
 or hour long passed away. Think then how 
 infinitely this difficulty must be multiplied, 
 when we have to deal with not a day nor an 
 hour, nor one frame of mind, nor one set of sins, 
 but every hour of all days of this whole life. 
 
 And then, again, take the difficulty in this 
 other light. What do we really know about 
 those deeds, words, thoughts, that we can 
 remember and recall ? What, I mean, do we 
 know of them in all their bearings, with all 
 their extenuations, all their aggravations, all 
 their consequences for good or for ill ? At 
 such a time we spoke an unkind word, we 
 depreciated a good act, we were wanting in 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 23 
 
 reverence for holy things. And our word or 
 our act was like a stone thrown on the pool, 
 and a circle of unhappy influences spread out 
 from it, and then another, and then another, 
 even till those were the worse for it who 
 perhaps never heard of it or of us, until time 
 and oblivion smoothed the ripples and effaced 
 the remembrance. But all this who can 
 recall ? Who, indeed, even knows ? And yet 
 of all this, of every item of it, shall we have 
 to give an account. As I sit and meditate 
 on this, I find it one of the most difficult 
 things possible to shape in any way before 
 my imagination. Yet shape it somehow I 
 must, if I would meditate on it profitably. 
 
 I see, then, by what we have already taken 
 into account, that two necessities seem to 
 have presented themselves, in order for that 
 day’s account to be a just and a complete 
 account. To these we shall have, I believe, 
 by-and-by to add a third. But first let us 
 look these fairly in the face, and thus approach 
 
24 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 that third; and when we have done this, let 
 us inquire whether there is, as far as we can 
 see, any reasonable prospect of these neces- 
 sary things being done for us, in order to 
 that day’s account. 
 
 Well, then, our first necessity, in order 
 that we may recognize at all the deeds, 
 words, and thoughts then laid to our charge, 
 is this, that we be at that day cognizant of 
 them as our own. And let there be no 
 mistake as to what this amounts to. It 
 amounts to nothing less than the complete 
 restoration to us of the remembrance of the 
 whole of our lives day by day, and hour by 
 hour. Nothing short of this will answer 
 the purpose. What I just now said of one 
 day’s sins, and one day’s events, must be 
 done with regard to every day’s sins and 
 every day’s events. All our past life must 
 be spread out before us, delineated with far 
 more accuracy than the most perfect map 
 delineates to the traveller the country he 
 
IN ADVENT . 
 
 25 
 
 has passed through. The delineation must 
 be (for we need not shrink from applying 
 the wonders of science and art to illustrate 
 such a matter) less like a map drawn by 
 common hands, than like a photograph of 
 the way passed over — in which inspection 
 may detect even the minutest plant by the 
 wayside, and the microscope may even find 
 the nest lodged in the cleft of the rock. It 
 must be as complete as this ; for if the 
 minutest portion of that which compounded 
 an action, that which prompted a word, 
 that which constituted a thought, be beyond 
 our reach on that day, so far the Great 
 Judge will not be in our minds and consciences 
 justified when He shall speak, and clear when 
 He shall judge. And we may well say, What a 
 marvellous condition of our future judgment 
 this is ! How improbable ! most would think ; 
 nay, some might even pronounce it impossible. 
 That we should ever stand and look back over 
 life, as a man would look on the wonderful sun- 
 
26 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 picture just now described; that we should be 
 able to make each day and hour give up its acts 
 and thoughts, which now seem to us as much 
 perished and scattered as the elements of a 
 decayed body which have passed into other 
 bodies, — is not this a wonder passing wonder ? 
 Yet I seem to see that, if I have to give up 
 a satisfactory final account of all my thoughts, 
 words, and acts, I must be furnished with this 
 and nothing short of this. But I must have 
 more, very much more, as our former thoughts 
 led us to see. I must have not only the restored 
 memory of all I ever have known, but I must 
 have the knowledge imparted to me of very 
 much that I never have known at all. I shall 
 want not only the forgotten dream restored, but 
 also the interpretation of the dream furnished. 
 Remember what was said about the unknown 
 and untraced consequences of that which we 
 think and do and say. Of all these undoubtedly 
 is our responsibility made up, and by them 
 will our account be swelled. And unless all 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 27 
 
 this is present to me, as well as to my Great 
 Judge, in that day, how is the full justice of my 
 sentence to be comprehended by me ? or, to put 
 the blessed alternative suggested by the bright 
 hopes of every Christian, how is the full 
 measure of that wondrous grace of the Son of 
 God to be seen by me, how that mighty mercy 
 glorified which has buried my sins in its depths, 
 and magnified itself in my utter unworthiness ? 
 So that this is our second necessity, in order 
 for that final account to be what we believe 
 it will be; not only must all memory be re- 
 stored, but knowledge must be given far sur- 
 passing that which the keenest-sighted of men 
 in this state ever attained to; knowledge of 
 facts to which we never had access, of men’s 
 thoughts and words and deeds, and the compli- 
 cations of their private resolves, and their social 
 intercourse, and actings upon themselves and 
 upon one another. And if we ask, To what 
 does this point ? what is the least requirement 
 that will satisfy this condition ? I answer, and 
 
28 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 any thinking man might answer, Nothing less 
 than the complete restoration of all that has 
 been done in the state of time ; the restoration 
 not merely of each individual man’s memory 
 as to all that happened to himself, but of the 
 universal memory of mankind as to all that ever 
 happened to this world. Here, the history of 
 the world is written by men in books ; but what 
 is written, even when we have set aside human 
 fallibility, and the amount of the writer’s own 
 individual bias and misrepresentation, is but 
 a very small portion of that which has really 
 been done — only the barest outline, so to speak, 
 with a figure here and there, of a picture which 
 should have been absolutely filled in with life, 
 and crowded with action. There, God will have 
 written the history of His own world ; written it 
 without a defect or omission, without a flaw or 
 misrepresentation ; and written it for all to 
 read. If this be not so, how can those grander 
 responsibilities ever be understood, which we 
 all solemnly believe to exist ? How shall the 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 29 
 
 great moral account of nations and of churches 
 ever be given in the sight and hearing of the 
 universe, unless the bearings of human policy, 
 and the consequences of human delinquencies, 
 on a larger scale than any individual account 
 could take in, be open for all to see ? 
 
 There seem then to be two requisites for 
 the reality and the justice of our great final 
 account; the full restoration of memory, and 
 the opening of the book of knowledge, so that 
 there has been nothing hid that shall not be 
 known. 
 
 But now comes up before us the third con- 
 dition, which I just now anticipated. Suppose 
 both those others to be fulfilled; all memory 
 restored, all knowledge of fact laid open; yet 
 more even than these would be wanted. If I 
 had them both, and yet were no fairer judge in 
 my own case than I am now, I could not 
 recognize in myself the justice of the Judge, 
 nor could I glorify Him, as I humbly believe I 
 shall do, for His mercy. We have, in this present 
 
30 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 state, no clear views of justice at all. The 
 rights and wrongs of men are measured by 
 a standard altogether inadequate to their ap- 
 portionment. And if this is so in the case 
 of other men abstractedly, much more is it so 
 in the case of ourselves, much more is it so in 
 the case of other men, when they come into con- 
 tact with ourselves. Probably no man yet ever 
 passed a right judgment on an act of his own. 
 Give way to ordinary vanity, and we are dis- 
 posed to defend all our acts, and make them 
 seem better; check ordinary vanity, and in 
 the very pride of conscious self-abasement, 
 we lash ourselves too severely, and vilify the 
 past that we may congratulate ourselves on 
 the present. 
 
 All this will need setting right, in order 
 for that final account to be a true and a 
 just one. We must see things as God sees 
 them, before God’s judgment of them will 
 cause us to lay our hand on our mouth and 
 own Him to be right. We must look upon 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 31 
 
 ourselves divested of selfishness, upon others 
 without all that antagonism which we feel 
 to them as obstacles to our self-esteem, in 
 order to know and feel fully, that both we 
 and they have our true meed at the hands 
 of the Great Dispenser of all men’s doom. 
 If, as we know, in that day the first shall be 
 last, and the last first, it is only thus that 
 the first can subside into the last without 
 bitter disappointment: only thus that they 
 can see the last pass by them without envy 
 and murmuring: only thus that the last can 
 go up higher without losing their humility. 
 
 It seems then, that the restoration to all 
 men of a perfectly righteous standard of judg- 
 ing both themselves and others is another 
 necessary condition, in order that that final 
 account may be a reality for us, and produce 
 its solemn effects; for bliss, and, we might 
 have said, for woe also. 
 
 And now let us see whether we possess, 
 in the present state of things, any however 
 
32 
 
 IN ADVENT . 
 
 faint indications that these conditions are 
 possible or probable for ns. 
 
 First, as to the entire restoration of the 
 individual memory. What is it to forget? 
 "What, but to have lost our mental grasp 
 on something which once we held within it ? 
 If this grasp have been but recently lost, the 
 fact escaped may generally be found with 
 but little trouble. If some time have elapsed, 
 more trouble is required ; and not unfre- 
 quently no mental effort will serve to recall 
 that which has gone from us. But is it 
 therefore altogether gone ? Can we confi- 
 dently say this of anything that ever has 
 been within the mind ? What can seem 
 more entirely passed away than a trivial 
 conversation of years back, to which no par- 
 ticular interest attached then, which we never 
 had any reason for remembering, and of 
 which we might fairly say, that it never 
 would again be recalled ? Yet shall some 
 unexpected turn in a road, some unusual 
 
IN ADVENT . 
 
 33 
 
 conjunction of natural objects, some affection 
 of some one of our senses, when we never 
 expected it, bring back to us every word 
 which passed in that trifling conversation. 
 Where was that all these years ? Clearly it 
 was ours ; not gone from us, though eluding 
 the grasp of conscious recollection. Who has 
 not heard of the first language of those who 
 have left a foreign land of their birth in 
 infancy, long and entirely forgotten, return- 
 ing again in all its fluency during the deli- 
 rium of fever ? Where was that, while it 
 was forgotten ? Feebleness of the frame and 
 of the brain brings tendency to forget; old 
 age renders the mental grasp less active, less 
 retentive ; but who can tell whether, when 
 the soul escapes from the worn-out machine, 
 it may not possess, at once and without effort, 
 that plenitude of memory of which we are 
 treating, as a requisite for an account being 
 given of the things done in the body ? 
 
 Of the probability of our second condition 
 D 
 
34 
 
 IN ADVENT . 
 
 there might be even perhaps more reasonable 
 doubt. That the whole record of time should 
 be restored to the race of man, seems beyond 
 all example or analogy. Yet even this may 
 not be so. The divine inspiration by which 
 the early historical books of Holy Scripture 
 were written must at all events have been 
 something of this kind. Matters unknown 
 to the historian are related by his pen. Facts 
 and precepts of which God alone was cogni- 
 zant, are described by him. If we ask, how ? 
 The only Christian answer is, that God put 
 them into his mind : opened the eyes of his 
 perception, so that these facts came to him 
 not through the outward senses, but by direct 
 revelation. Thus it was that St. Paul too, 
 as he expressly tells us, received from the 
 Lord the Gospel history, which he himself 
 had never witnessed; and we are led to ex- 
 pect something of this kind by that Apostle, 
 when he speaks of the blessed state as one 
 where we shall know even as we are known; 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 35 
 
 or as it should rather be, as we have long 
 been known by God. There is no antecedent 
 improbability in this intuitive consciousness 
 of all matter of fact being that in which our 
 perfect knowledge there will differ from our 
 imperfect and partial knowledge here. 
 
 In conceiving and expecting our third condi- 
 tion, the possession of a perfect and unerring 
 standard of right and justice, there is far less 
 difficulty. I say nothing of the progress of 
 Christian life, and maturity of gifts of the 
 Holy Spirit, because I am speaking of that 
 which must be common to all men ; which 
 must exist in order to the full condemnation 
 of the lost, as well as to the entire fruition 
 of God on the part of the blessed. But I 
 will recall to you things of which we have 
 all heard, and which some at least have wit- 
 nessed; how sometimes in an instant, in the 
 presence of solemn realities, the veil which 
 hid truth and justice drops off, and a man 
 sees things as they are. When death is 
 
36 
 
 IN ADVENT ; 
 
 known to be approaching, the meanest man’s 
 words put on oracular truth ; the unforgiven 
 one is called to the bedside, and the justice 
 of the long-rejected plea is allowed. When 
 death has called away a parent or a friend, 
 then first our own disobedience, then first 
 our own ingratitude and unkindness, puts on 
 its true appearance ; and generally when it 
 is too late to do good, we see the good we 
 might have done. All this seems to show 
 us that in a man, down in the depths of a 
 man, there does exist somewhere this true 
 estimate which we want; and that it needs 
 but the removal of all the obstacles which 
 now stand in its way — the corruption of our 
 flesh, and the seduction of the world — for it 
 to be universally seen and recognized. 
 
 It does not then appear impossible, it does 
 not even seem improbable, that these three 
 conditions of the reality and justice of the 
 final account may be one day fulfilled in 
 every one of us. There has not appeared 
 
IN ADVENT . 
 
 37 
 
 any reason why that solemn account may not 
 in every case as completely condemn the 
 sinner, and justify the servants of God, — 
 why it may not in the sight of men and 
 angels as entirely vindicate God’s justice, and 
 manifest forth his mercy, as any passage of 
 Scripture assures us it will. 
 
 in. 
 
 PRACTICAL EFFECT ON LIFE. 
 
 In our last meditation we treated of man’s 
 final account — of the difficulties which seemed 
 to lie about the conception of such final account 
 as a reality, involving as it does the complete 
 restoration of the memory of every minutest 
 act, word, and thought; and, notwithstanding, 
 the probability which exists from certain things 
 which we find taking place in us even now, 
 that such restoration wil]. be furnished to us. 
 
 It was best to leave the practical part of 
 my subject for another occasion. Let us take 
 
38 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 it up now. Let us consider what ought to be 
 the effect on us of the expectation that our 
 whole lives, in their minutest detail, will be 
 again brought up before us, and made the sub- 
 ject of God’s righteous judgment before men 
 and angels. 
 
 And here we must begin with saying, un- 
 doubtedly the thought that it will be so is a 
 strange and unaccustomed one. We are always 
 in the habit of accounting that which is gone 
 by to be really gone by, no more to return ; or 
 if we do expect to be called into judgment for 
 our acts, it is thus that we shape the idea : that 
 perhaps some of the greater things of our lives 
 will be remembered for and against us, but that 
 certainly all the lesser ones will not. We simply 
 do not take them into account, but let them 
 drift by, and forget them altogether. Now it 
 may well be asked in the outset, does this want 
 altering ? Supposing it were possible, would it 
 be desirable, that we should bear in mind 
 every thought, word, and deed, or even that we 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 39 
 
 should keep in mind very much more than we 
 ordinarily do ? Decidedly the answer must be, 
 that it would not be desirable. No man could 
 bear the burden of the irrevocable past resting 
 on him in much greater weight than it already 
 does. If memory were perfect, man would be 
 utterly miserable. There would be no bounds 
 to remorse, to self-accusation, to despair. All 
 the sweet fallacies of hope would be powerless 
 to rouse man to action. If all I have felt and 
 said, all I have done and omitted to do, for one 
 week, were to be enshrined imperishably in my 
 memory, constituted as I now am, it would drive 
 me to madness. No, depend on it God has done 
 well to endow us frail and imperfect mortals 
 with the faculty of forgetfulness. It may be 
 doubted whether, of all our faculties and powers, 
 any one has ministered so much to human 
 happiness as this. For man is not meant to live 
 in the past, but in the present, and in the future : 
 in the present, in order to the future: in the 
 future, that he may live well in the present. 
 
40 
 
 IN ADVENT . 
 
 According as a man has power of throwing him- 
 self intensely into the present, of forgetting what 
 he has been, and remembering only what he is, 
 and what he is to be, — in that proportion is he 
 energetic, is he useful, does he impress the 
 things that he does, or the age in which he 
 lives, with reality, and work God’s work, and 
 do good in the world. 
 
 Enough of the past remains with all wise men, 
 to take warning by ; enough is ever present with 
 all reasonable men, to take courage by ; enough 
 rests on the thoughts of all Christian men, to 
 teach them to trust in God and distrust them- 
 selves. But no wise man, no reasonable man, 
 no Christian man, will ever wish for more of the 
 past to be constantly with him and pressing on 
 his thoughts. 
 
 So that I do not think we need believe it to be 
 a wrong thing, that we let the trivial thoughts, 
 words, and deeds of the day thus slip away 
 from us beyond recall. Still it is clear that, if 
 they are all to be recalled some day, they ought 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 41 
 
 by some means to be so cared for, that they may 
 not at that day cause us shame and confusion. 
 
 “So live,” says one, “as you will wish you 
 had lived when you come to die ; so live, that 
 nothing in your life may be a terror to you 
 when that life comes to be laid out before men 
 and angels at the last day.” Admirable advice : 
 as good as it is obvious : but who can follow it ? 
 I suppose none but the most ignorant of himself, 
 none but the most arrogant and conceited, will 
 ever say that he has spent a day, or an hour, in 
 accordance with this conventional good counsel. 
 It is clearly in some other way than this, that 
 we must set about our preparation for that day 
 of account : not by being remiss in living purely, 
 speaking charitably, thinking as responsible for 
 our thoughts : God forbid : but by frankly ac- 
 knowledging, that we cannot so live, as fearlessly 
 to meet the Judge of all: by measuring, and 
 confessing, the depth of our own unworthiness 
 and shortcoming; and by at the same time 
 diligently availing ourselves of whatever help 
 
42 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 God has mercifully provided for us. For He has 
 provided help for us, in this matter of our final 
 account. He has not left us to accumulate 
 guilt in His sight, hopeless of its ever being 
 removed. It is most true, that this must be the 
 case with man as he is by nature, and unassisted : 
 it is true, that it will, alas ! be the case with the 
 holiest and best of us, even with all the means 
 and appliances of God’s grace within his reach : 
 we shall all be found guilty in that day, and 
 none can stand before Him. And yet, on the 
 other hand, it is most true also, that there is 
 such a thing as not fearing that final account : 
 such a thing as being prepared for it, and look- 
 ing to it even with calmness and assurance of 
 hope. Let us see how this can be. 
 
 And in order to this, we must lay down one 
 distinction very widely, which is far too often 
 forgotten : a distinction, the due remembering 
 of which lies at the very foundation of every 
 Christian mans view of himself and his pros- 
 pects. I mean the distinction between man as 
 
IN ADVENT . 
 
 43 
 
 lie is by nature, and man as lie is under the 
 grace of Christ. As we are by nature, we 
 have abundantly seen that the mere thought of 
 the great final account might well overpower 
 us. It must be to us nothing short of absolute 
 ruin and eternal death. And the mere natural 
 man confesses this by his conduct. He endea- 
 vours to put the thought of that account far 
 from him. He acts, he speaks, he thinks, as if it 
 were never to come. He perhaps even affects, 
 in spite of the continued testimony of conscience 
 within him, to disbelieve it. However much he 
 may repudiate the saying when alleged against 
 him, the motto of his real practical life is “ Let 
 us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die, and are 
 no more.” And if this be not so, abject fear and 
 contemptible superstition take the place of 
 restlessness and unbelief. All kinds of vain 
 expectations and unavailing satisfactions are 
 invented, by which the terrors of the final 
 account may be averted. Hot that the craving 
 for such refuge from its terrors is vain: it is 
 
44 
 
 IN ADVENT . 
 
 one of the truest instincts of our nature, des- 
 tined by Him who implanted it to lead us to 
 happiness and peace : the mischief is, when men 
 will not accept God’s way to these blessed re- 
 sults, and will be setting up ways of their 
 own invention : building, like those in Shinar of 
 old, towers on this earth to reach to heaven. 
 
 But now let us look at the other side, and 
 behold man in a state of grace. Such a con- 
 trast is fitting to the season of which we are 
 writing ; fitting to a time when we are close on 
 the anniversary of His birth by whom grace and 
 truth came in. Let us follow it out, simply and in 
 detail, asking the meaning of the words which 
 we use, as we use them. Man in a state of grace. 
 And what is grace ? Grace means simply the 
 Divine favour — God’s good pleasure restored to 
 the rebellious race of men, and with that, all the 
 means of serving God, and further, pleasing God, 
 and being at peace with God, and rejoicing in 
 God, and becoming like God, and finally attain- 
 ing unto God in everlasting bliss. All this is 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 45 
 
 comprehended in that word grace; all this 
 belongs to man as in the state of grace. And 
 now we come to the plain belief of Christ’s 
 universal Church : to that glorious subject 
 which the present season is about to intro- 
 duce in all its renewed joy before us. This 
 grace was brought in, came about, by means of 
 One Man: and that man is God incarnate in 
 our flesh — Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, 
 and the suffering, triumphant, and glorified Son 
 of man. And the Church, the body of men 
 which receives Him as the author and bringer in 
 of this grace and favour of God, believes this 
 about Him and about its members : that those 
 who are admitted, by the ordinance which He 
 appointed, into visible membership with Him, 
 from having been born in sin and being children 
 of wrath, do become children of grace: from 
 being merely members of this human race, 
 children of earthly parents, and inheritors of 
 God’s wrath, which rests on our guilty state, 
 become members of Christ, children of God, and 
 
46 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. This is 
 our belief, taught us when children, adopted 
 consciously by us at our confirmation, acted on 
 by us as often as we meet together in church, 
 or approach God in any way. We are His 
 people, reconciled to Him in Christ, bound to 
 His service, upheld by His Spirit, looking for 
 His mercy unto eternal life. 
 
 Now it is time to ask, how does it stand in 
 our case with regard to this great final account? 
 Shall we escape it ? Certainly not. When St. 
 Paul used the words “We must all appear (or 
 more properly “must all be made manifest ”) 
 before the judgment-seat of Christ,” he was 
 speaking of himself and those to whom he was 
 writing, all of whom were in this state of grace. 
 We shall not escape the final account. But 
 what says our Lord himself respecting it, and 
 his believing people ? “ He that heareth my 
 
 word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath 
 everlasting life, and shall not come into con- 
 demnation (rather, shall not come into judgment, 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 47 
 
 shall not incur the peril, the risk of being 
 unfavourably j udged) ; but is passed from death 
 unto life.” What a wonderful thing is this ! His 
 believing ones are in no danger of condemnation 
 in that great final account : they shall be borne 
 blameless throughout it, notwithstanding their 
 own utter unworthiness and inability to endure 
 its searching questions. And how is this ? By 
 what marvellous arrangement ? How, consistently 
 with God’s justice ? How, consistently with the 
 Judge of all the earth doing right ? The tale is 
 an old one to us, but let it ever be a fresh and 
 living one in its bearing and influence on us. 
 The Son of God, who became Son of man, died : 
 died, bearing on Him the sins of the race of 
 man ; put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself : 
 and they who are united to Him by a true and 
 living faith, have entered into and put on this 
 sinlessness of His, this triumph of His, this 
 glory of His. They live, not to themselves, but 
 to Him. Hot their own life, but His ; not for 
 their own profit, but for the glory of His infinite 
 
48 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 love and grace in giving Himself for them and 
 saving them. And now do we inquire, for what 
 shall those be judged and called in question 
 who are members of Christ’s Church ? Do we 
 ask, when judgment shall begin at the house of 
 God, what shall be its subject and aim ? What 
 in that day shall distinguish one baptized person 
 from another, so that one shall be an accepted 
 guest at the marriage supper of the Lamb, and 
 the other thrust out into utter darkness ? 
 What but this ; the question as to the reality 
 and living power in each of us of that faith in 
 Christ into which we were all admitted at our 
 baptism ? One man believed in his Saviour as 
 a living and loving Master, ever by him, ever 
 upholding him, ever requiring his love and 
 simple obedience : a thousand imperfections 
 marred his service, a hundred falls into sin might 
 be laid to his charge, but they have not been his 
 will, they have been wrought against his consent, 
 in spite of his watchful care. There is One who 
 shall answer for him, One on whom all his 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 49 
 
 sins and imperfections are laid, and lie is safe ; 
 safe in the shadow of the Rock ; safe in the rest 
 given to the weary and heavy-laden ; safe, 
 though he has erred and strayed like a sheep 
 that is lost, in the arms of the Chief Shepherd, 
 who died to ransom the flock. And then 
 another, baptized like him, a member of the 
 same Church, and partaker of the same privileges, 
 never made these things a reality to himself; 
 went on through life hearing of Christ, talking of 
 Christ, doubting, it may be, about Christ, or not 
 caring about Him at all : and he shall be shut 
 out and condemned, because he hath not believed 
 on the only begotten Son of God : hath not served 
 Him, never cared for Him, or for waking up in 
 his likeness. Here is the difference between man 
 and man in the state of grace : here is the pre- 
 paration for the awful account of that day. If 
 all my sins rise behind me dark as the tempest 
 in that day, and if I have held by Christ, lived 
 on Christ, striven by Christ’s grace to obey Him, 
 and to be like Him, then all is well. He will 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 IN ADVENT . 
 
 be my refuge and strength, and my exceeding 
 great reward. But if, while professing to belong 
 to Him, I have not cared for Him or his word, 
 have let my belief in Him be a mere sound and 
 a fable, never penetrating my heart — then will 
 the account of that day overwhelm me with 
 everlasting confusion. May we look on the two 
 — may we make our choice, and prepare accord- 
 ingly for what must ere long come upon us all. 
 
 IV. 
 
 NO CHANGE IN NATUEE. 
 
 One form of unbelief, very prevalent in our 
 days, found its distrust of religion on the 
 permanence of the laws of nature. It can 
 perhaps be hardly more accurately described 
 than in the words of St. Peter (2 Pet. iii. 4), as 
 saying, “ Where is the promise of His coming ? 
 Por since the fathers fell asleep, all things are 
 as they were from the beginning of the crea- 
 tion.” The laws of nature, it is alleged, are 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 51 
 
 fixed and permanent ; and we know of no in- 
 stances in which they have been interfered 
 with. Therefore, these persons somewhat in- 
 consequently add, they never have been, and 
 never shall be, interfered with. 
 
 Now I am not going at present to complain 
 of the inconsequence of this inference, that, 
 because a thing has not happened within our 
 experience, therefore it never can have hap- 
 pened, and never shall happen ; but I wish to 
 meet those who thus reason on another ground ; 
 to examine into the truth of their chief axiom, 
 this supposed permanence of the present state 
 of things, and see whether we can* entirely rely 
 upon it in a matter so important as this, where 
 our eternal hopes and interests are concerned. 
 
 But before I do so, let me set before you 
 a distinct idea as to what this form of un- 
 belief amounts to ; how far it goes, and what, 
 if consistent, it proposes to itself. 
 
 To deny all interference with nature, is to 
 deny that there is such a thing as what we 
 
52 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 call the supernatural. This denial the advo- 
 cates of the view which I am describing 
 distinctly avow. There is absolutely no 
 supernatural, they say. In other words — 
 and they have no right to shrink from it — 
 there is no God. Tor if there be a God, who 
 made Nature and ordained her laws, it is 
 clearly within his power to set aside those 
 laws and act without them when He pleases : 
 and who shall say when He may be so 
 pleased? So that the consideration that all 
 things* are as they were from the beginning 
 of the creation, not only suggests to them a 
 doubt of Christ’s second coming, but causes 
 them to deny that He ever came at all, in 
 the sense in which we believe Him to have 
 come, as God incarnate in the nature of man : 
 it leads them to deny all His miracles and 
 all His prophecies; and while they profess to 
 admire Him as a teacher of morals and as 
 an example of truth and love, they must, if 
 they are consistent with themselves, also hold 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 53 
 
 Him to have been an impostor and deceiver : 
 because He plainly did set up claim to mira- 
 culous powers, and to the gift of prophecy. 
 So that the real tendency of the kind of un- 
 belief of which I speak, is not, as its most 
 popular expounder would have us believe, to 
 clear up the character of Jesus, and set Him 
 before us as a great teacher and example ; but 
 it is, to put Him altogether out of the number 
 of the world’s benefactors, and His teaching out 
 of our regard as any pattern for our moral obe- 
 dience. One who condescended .to impose on 
 others by pretended miracles, cannot be worth 
 anything as a teacher of truth. Even if this 
 were not so (though this is what is actually 
 held by them), one who lived, spoke, wrought, and 
 died, in an intense belief of the supernatural, 
 cannot be good for much as a guide for men 
 who know that the supernatural is impossible. 
 
 This kind of unbelief then tends' directly 
 to rob us of one whom we have been ac- 
 customed to regard as our Redeemer, our 
 
54 
 
 IN ADVENT ; 
 
 Teacher, and our Example: one whom every 
 Christian believes to be at this moment at 
 God’s right hand in heaven, waiting, in our 
 glorified nature, till all things are put under 
 His feet ; and then about to come in person 
 to judge the quick and dead. The great ex- 
 ploit which the atheist forerunner of revolu- 
 tionary France demanded, the wiping out of 
 Him whom Christians worship, has thus, it 
 would seem, been accomplished a century 
 after, by a brilliant and accomplished writer 
 of the same nation, who professes to set his 
 character in its true light, and claims to 
 admire and love Him even more than we do- 
 And it is to be feared that this writer does 
 not by any means stand alone. A habit is 
 becoming sadly prevalent in educated circles, 
 and especially where the greatest amount of 
 our national intelligence dwells, in the middle 
 class of our countrymen, of speaking of this 
 world and its facts — things present, things 
 palpable — as certainties ; and of all beyond 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 55 
 
 it, religion, with its facts and promises, as 
 uncertain, and the realm of legend and fable. 
 And if one questions the ground of such an 
 estimate, it is generally found to be the very 
 one of which I have been speaking, — that 
 the course of nature is one and unalterable : 
 and that, as far as we can see, the supernatural 
 is impossible. 
 
 It is high time, then, that we should ex- 
 amine into this foundation axiom of our 
 modern school of unbelief. “All things are 
 as they were from the beginning of the crea- 
 tion. Nature never . changes : never returns 
 on her footsteps : any interference with her 
 course is simply inconceivable.” Now is this 
 so ? Let us go abroad into Creation and see. 
 If permanence means anything, it may be ap- 
 plied to the face of the earth as we behold it. 
 Scripture gives us a true representation of 
 what men feel about this, when it speaks 
 of the “everlasting hills.”- Hill and dale 
 are, as it were, terms of the covenant by 
 
56 
 
 IN ADVENT . 
 
 which man holds the. earth. . Now what is 
 the testimony of the hills as to the perma- 
 nence of all things as they were from the 
 beginning ? Let us dig into the first hill 
 we come to, and what shall we find? In 
 some cases, the records of a former world, 
 with animals and plants of its own : in 
 others, masses of primitive rock whigh has 
 broken up from beneath in a state of fusion : 
 in others again, vast accretions of debris , 
 brought thither by some unknown force, all 
 record of which has long since passed away. 
 Look at the bare face of any limestone cliff 
 or stone quarry, and surely all faith in the 
 permanence of the present state of things, 
 with the quiet working of its ordinary laws, 
 must be at an end. I speak not now of all 
 that animal and vegetable matter imbedded 
 in those strata whose lines we can trace in 
 the rock : but what power upheaved those 
 strata themselves, some, as their very nature 
 testifies, once lying horizontal for hundreds of 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 57 
 
 feet in thickness and hundreds of miles in 
 extent? What ordinary force now in opera- 
 tion, and to be looked for from day to day, 
 uplifted the vast chains of the Alps, the 
 Andes, the Himalayas ? Grant that it was 
 but an exaggeration of forces now in opera- 
 tion : and what has the opponent gained ? 
 Nothing but this : this at the worst, and this 
 at the least: that at some time in the earth’s 
 history, an exertion of those forces took place 
 sufficient to overthrow the whole existing 
 order of things ; sufficient to clear large por- 
 tions of the earth’s surface of their animal 
 and vegetable inhabitants ; sufficient to divide 
 the sea from the land, and to re-distribute 
 oceans and continents ; sufficient to alter 
 conditions of climates ; to bring cold, where 
 tropical heat once prevailed, and again, mode- 
 rate temperature, where once were vast seas 
 of ice. No record exists of any such change 
 in our time, or in the time of our race. Had 
 our race dwelt then on earth, it must have 
 
58 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 been extinguished in those general convul- 
 sions : and that it did not then exist is 
 plain ; for among the more ancient wrecks of 
 the conditions which preceded this present 
 one, neither man himself, nor the animals 
 which now dwell with man on the earth, 
 can be found at all. 
 
 Now I would ask our opponents, Of 
 what kind were such convulsions as these ? 
 Granted, as I said before, that they may have 
 been brought about by the exaggerated agency 
 of laws still operating ; what has now become 
 of such exaggerated agencies ? Why are they 
 not continually breaking forth from time to 
 time ? Why have they slumbered, I will not 
 say for 6,000 years, because that would be 
 to assume a period which the unbeliever 
 might not be -disposed to concede, — but for 
 2,500, the shortest limit which, I suppose, 
 the most sceptical will put to the historic 
 period ? What is the worst earthquake that 
 history has ever recorded, compared with the 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 59 
 
 convulsion to which the most ordinary range 
 of hills owes its existence ? And couple this 
 with the fact, that after each such convulsion 
 we find a new order of things, as testified by 
 the existing remains : new animals, new 
 
 plants, new conditions of climate; and at a 
 certain time in the series, when the globe 
 has become as it were prepared for his habita- 
 tion, our race appears, peopling the earth and 
 replenishing it: what man with the exercise 
 of common sense can look upon such a set 
 of phenomena, and not infer that the exist- 
 ing order of nature has been from time to 
 time broken in upon by a will above nature ? 
 Whether that will acted in each case accord- 
 ing to, or by the suspending of the ordinary 
 laws of nature, is, I conceive, of little conse- 
 quence : give us a personal will above nature, 
 and I am content. 
 
 And if such be the testimony of the earth 
 itself, surely it is corroborated by that of the 
 earth’s history. Where in its progress do we 
 
60 
 
 IN ADVENT . 
 
 find any guarantee for the permanence of the 
 existing order of things ? Set every hedge you 
 will about any given dynasty or form of govern- 
 ment ; advance as far as you will in social and 
 moral progress; make security and continued 
 peace next to certain ; remove every element of 
 discontent and discord: and then warrant the 
 permanence of a dynasty, of a government, 
 of a nation’s tranquillity. The morning may 
 witness the boast, and the evening may set 
 in revolution and blood : the occupant of the 
 throne may be an exile, the stable govern- 
 ment overthrown, neighbour set against neigh- 
 bour and brother against brother, with a 
 ferocity unknown in previous history. Sudden 
 change thus befalls human affairs, in spite of 
 all man’s precaution. Fixed laws are not 
 to be calculated on here, any more than in 
 nature. They operate, it is true ; but not 
 without certain’ rude interruptions which, 
 happening often without assignable cause, 
 shatter the fair hopes of those who had calcu- 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 61 
 
 lated on permanence. Here, as in the other 
 case, the inference drawn by mankind ever 
 has been, that there is a Power above and 
 outside the fabric of human society, fashion- 
 ing its similitudes according to His will. 
 
 And even more strikingly is this seen 
 to be so, if we regard, not only sudden inter- 
 ruptions of the working of the mental and 
 social laws by which our race is regulated, 
 but also the gradual progress which the world 
 has made under the operation of those laws 
 themselves. Let any one cast but the most 
 cursory glance over man’s history, and he can 
 hardly fail to perceive that the general cha- 
 racter of its course has been, good coming to 
 man in spite of man : great schemes of ambi- 
 tion overruled for good: evil warded off from 
 nations, not by, but contrary to, their most 
 earnest wishes : the greatest calamities turned 
 into the greatest blessings : and looking at 
 the world as a whole, a gradual upward pro- 
 gress, quite unaccountable, if man were left 
 
62 
 
 IN ADVENT . 
 
 to himself, but then only capable of explana- 
 tion, if we suppose One who cares for man 
 to be wielding the destinies of man. 
 
 Let us change the scene once more. Let 
 us look each on his own history in life. 
 Are all things here as they were from the 
 beginning? Has our outer or our inner life 
 gone on by a fixed rule, so that we could 
 calculate it from year to year; so that we 
 could say, I know what it shall be, and none 
 shall interfere with it ? Who can say this ? 
 Has it not rather been always so led, that 
 we have felt it has not been in ourselves 
 to direct our ways ; so that we have trembled 
 as we looked forward, not knowing what 
 might be His will, in whose hands we knew 
 our destinies to be? Do we not all feel 
 that any day might bring loss of health, loss 
 of friends, loss of worldly means, loss of 
 reason, loss of life ? And is not this feeling 
 a very instinct of our humanity ? Is not the 
 denial of its truth a denial of the very condi- 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 63 
 
 tions of our own being ? In our nature is 
 implanted a consciousness of tlie supernatural : 
 and he who pronounces the supernatural to be 
 impossible, is, while he does so, denying his 
 own convictions. 
 
 And notice again what I said before — that 
 this argument of unbelief, to be good for 
 anything, must be good for everything. Unless 
 it can prevail to the exclusion of the super- 
 natural from everything, it is absolutely worth- 
 less. If there be any power watching over 
 man, then much more over that lower nature 
 and inferior world of which man is constituted 
 head and chief. If matter was created at all, 
 then He who created it framed the laws which 
 now regulate it, and can suspend them, or undo 
 His creation, if it be His will. If any link in 
 the chain is loose, the whole will give way. 
 And I believe that we have shown, that there 
 are links loose in many places : that whether 
 we look at the course of nature, or at the world’s 
 history, or at that of the individual, we do not 
 
64 
 
 IN ADVENT . 
 
 find any reason to doubt, but every reason to 
 infer with certainty, that there is One who 
 ruleth all of them, who is above nature, and 
 whose doings, if ever He is pleased to interfere 
 with nature, must be called strictly super- 
 natural. 
 
 So that, these things being so, I cannot feel, 
 and I cannot imagine how any man with 
 ordinary common sense can feel, the slightest 
 difficulty in the mere receiving as a fact, of the 
 exertion of power suspending or setting aside 
 the laws of nature, even though nothing of the 
 kind may have been witnessed by ourselves, or 
 within our own times or those of our fathers. 
 Many reasons may be conceived why at certain 
 periods of the world’s history such mani- 
 festations should be suspended. The Creation 
 has been such a manifestation, — renewed, it 
 would appear, at periods widely distant, when 
 different races of beings, now extinct, were pro- 
 duced, — and for the last time, on the calling into 
 life of the race which now inhabit our world. 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 65 
 
 But, creation being once accomplished, and the 
 laws of organic being fixed, the world was left 
 during the rest of each period respectively to 
 obey those laws for the most part without 
 interference. And why should this not also be 
 the case in the world of man’s spirit, and of that 
 knowledge of God upon which it is to be 
 nurtured for immortality? At the first open- 
 ing of the dispensation of grace and truth by 
 Jesus Christ, supernatural interference was 
 absolutely necessary. God cannot make a 
 special revelation of Himself without departing 
 from the ordinary course of nature — the very 
 terms imply it. But that revelation once made, 
 and established by His own interference as His 
 truth, the Church is left to obey the new laws, 
 so to speak, of the organised being thus 
 impressed upon her. 
 
 Besides, another mistake, or rather another 
 set of mistakes, is made by those whose views 
 we have been controverting; the habit of con- 
 founding together two things entirely distinct ; 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 that which is contrary to nature, and that which 
 is merely obedience to a higher law of nature 
 instead of a lower. Let me make my meaning 
 plain by an example. That a dead corpse, laid 
 in the tomb, should in the ordinary course 
 reorganise itself and become quickened, and 
 after a certain time come out of the tomb a living 
 body, is absolutely contrary to nature. No pro- 
 visions are made in the ordinary course of 
 things for such a process; nay, all is against 
 it; and we may with certainty say that it 
 never has happened, and never will happen. 
 But for the God of nature, or any one having 
 authority from the God of nature, to stand by 
 that tomb and summon the dead corpse, and 
 then for that corpse to come forth a living body, 
 reorganised and quickened, this is not contrary 
 to nature; this is in obedience to nature’s first 
 and highest law — the supreme will of the 
 Creator. And for us to say it is not likely that 
 the God of nature would ever do this, or autho- 
 rize any one to do it, is simply folly and pre- 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 67 
 
 sumption, seeing that we cannot prescribe to 
 Him His conduct, nor say what He may deem 
 it fit to do. 
 
 Now, transferring these considerations to the 
 great subject of this season, and using them as 
 a reply to the question, “ Where is the promise 
 of His coming ? ” two or three thoughts occur to 
 us which may be profitably dwelt upon. 
 
 First of all, we see from the testimony of the 
 earth itself, that former periods have had their 
 beginning and their end, each accompanied by 
 interruptions, more or less violent, to the pre- 
 ceding or the existing order of things. It is, 
 then, according to analogy, that this our period 
 shall have its end also. 
 
 Next, the entire evidence, derived from the 
 same phenomena, is in favour of the view, that 
 the whole course of these periods has been one 
 of upward progress. This last period, and, as 
 far as we can ascertain, none before it, has 
 been distinguished by the existence upon our 
 globe of a sentient race of beings, who have 
 
68 
 
 IN ADVENT. 
 
 subdued it to their purposes, and have been 
 endowed with faculties of the highest order. 
 Is it anything unreasonable to suppose, that 
 inasmuch as this race have had opened to them 
 the ^knowledge of their Creator, and implanted 
 in their minds the desire after Him, and the 
 hope of enjoying Him in immortality, He 
 should be especially present with them, at their 
 origin, at each of His manifestations of Himself 
 to them, and, above all, at the destined end of 
 their career, when His purposes shall have been 
 accomplished respecting them ? Again, if it be 
 His purpose, as we believe it is, Himself to 
 stand at the latter day upon the earth, and to 
 be seen by us all, and to call the dead out of 
 their graves, I cannot see that this will be any 
 violation, or even any interruption, of the laws 
 of nature, if only we understand that term 
 aright. No violation. To him indeed who 
 only looks on this earth and what he sees 
 here, it may appear to violate the established 
 laws of things. But this is only because he sees 
 
IN ADVENT. 
 
 69 
 
 but a few of them, and his views are confined 
 to those few. And again, in the true sense of 
 the word, it will be no interruption either ; be- 
 cause, not only for the ordinary process, but also 
 for this the final consummation, was provision 
 made in the purposes of the All- wise and 
 All-provident : this was itself part of the 
 destined course, and interwoven into the series 
 of causes and effects foreseen from the 
 beginning. 
 
 So that, as it seems to me, there is nothing in 
 any such considerations of the regularity and 
 permanence of nature, which need affect us 
 Christian believers in respect of any of the 
 articles of our faith. Whenever, and by whom- 
 soever such thoughts are pressed upon us, — 
 whether by avowed opponents, or by disguised 
 pretenders to admiration of the character and 
 course of our Master, our duty is one and the 
 same. Prove all things. Be not agitated, be 
 not provoked to wrath. Eevile not: give no 
 opportunity by weakness to the eager and .wary 
 
70 
 
 IN ADVENT . 
 
 foe. Take his arguments, sift them carefully, 
 make every allowance, deal liberally and large- 
 heartedly ; by this you will lose nothing. And 
 when this has been done, it will ever be found that 
 error has been dissipated and truth made clearer. 
 
 Where is the promise of His coming ? Here, 
 written on the face of the earth, read on the arch 
 of the heavens ; here, written in the record of 
 His manifestation of Himself to man; here, 
 laid up in our hearts, bright at the end of all 
 our thoughts, and warming and quickening 
 all our course of action. Where is it, seeing 
 that all things remain as they were ? Yes, we 
 reply, all things remain; and more than the 
 questioner thinks of. For among them remain 
 His unfailing word, His abiding presence, His 
 unwearied ordinances. He said He would be 
 with us all the days, even to the end of the 
 world. The days are not yet past, nor has He 
 ceased to be among us ; we still believe in the 
 end, when not His Spirit only, but His glorified 
 Countenance, shall shine on us for ever. 
 
ON CREATION. 
 
 i. 
 
 The subject of Creation , as it presents itself 
 to the religious mind in connection with our 
 actual circumstances and habits of thought, 
 is one which, it seems to me, we may 
 profitably meditate on. It is especially im- 
 portant in our days to take an account of 
 the great truths which we profess to believe: 
 to put them side by side with what we know 
 and daily feel: and thus to keep ourselves 
 ever in a condition, so to speak, of familiar 
 intercourse with them ; that we may not have 
 first to make their real acquaintance when we 
 
72 
 
 ON CREATION. 
 
 ought to be defending them against the faith’s 
 enemies, or making use of them in our own 
 hour of need. 
 
 God created the Heavens and the Earth. 
 — This is our central fact. First, let us look 
 on it as a fact. It is in every one’s mouth; 
 but what do we mean by it, and how does it 
 look when we realize it? Eegard it which 
 way we will, it is a thing entirely removed 
 from our experience, and passing our com- 
 prehension. For what do we know of Crea- 
 tion, as an act ? All that is ever made here 
 on earth, is nothing but a new arrangement 
 of previously existing material; and this is 
 true, not only of that which we make, but 
 of all outward objects of the senses that God 
 makes now, hi this existing state of things. 
 This globe, in all probability, does not now 
 contain one particle of matter more than it 
 did when it was first created. Animals and 
 plants have sprung up and decayed, and their 
 material has passed into the substance of the 
 
ON CREATION 
 
 73 
 
 earth, and thence into new animals and 
 plants, and so on through the series of ages. 
 But there has been only one work of mate- 
 rial Creation , properly and strictly so called; 
 and that is the act related in these words, 
 “ In the beginning God created the heavens 
 and the earth.” This act is entirely distinct 
 from most of those that follow it in that 
 wonderful story in the first chapter of Gene- 
 sis. For most of those that follow are not so 
 much acts of creation as of arrangement, and 
 endowment with power of production out of 
 given material. All of these are Gods acts — 
 acts of almighty power and infinite wisdom, 
 by which life may originate and may be sup- 
 ported; but, except in a sense which I am 
 not yet considering, they are not like this 
 first one. And what is this act ? One of 
 which, as I said, we have no conception: 
 which as far surpasses us as any other of 
 the ways and acts of God: it is the calling 
 matter into being out of nothing. Let us try 
 
74 
 
 ON CREATION. 
 
 to make this real to ourselves. Our imagi- 
 nation must, in order to this, traverse back 
 far above the earliest period known even to 
 the vast inferences of geological science ; even 
 to the time when God was alone in the void 
 universe, and nothing besides : an infinite 
 Spirit inhabiting Eternity. Perhaps we can 
 form some conception approaching to the truth 
 of this, strange as the conception may be. 
 But it is the next step which appears so 
 utterly to baffle us. Suddenly or gradually — 
 for this makes no difference to our difficulty 
 or to the resulting fact — at the command of 
 God, matter comes into existence. Vast masses 
 of solid material are, where absolutely nothing 
 was before : are, without having been trans- 
 ported from elsewhere : come into existence 
 out of nothing. Am I not right in saying 
 that such a thing utterly and entirely passes 
 our power of comprehension, and all obvious 
 examples and analogies of which we know ? 
 We believe it : but we are obliged to stop 
 
ON CREATION. 
 
 75 
 
 when we get close up to the fact, so to 
 speak, and to pass from inquiry to accept- 
 ance; from reason and imagination, and all 
 that we ever saw or knew or heard of, to 
 faith, and faith only. “ Through faith we 
 understand that the worlds were framed by 
 the word of God, so that things which 
 are seen were not made of things which do 
 appear” 
 
 Here, then, we stand at the same point 
 where we stood in our former meditations in 
 the same strain respecting the Lord’s coming, 
 and our own final account. The great thing 
 which we believe is one only to be believed, 
 not to be assured to us by any power of our 
 own to comprehend it. All the arguments 
 about God’s benevolent designs in creation, 
 His wonderful arrangements for the well-being 
 and good of His creatures, do not apply to 
 this point at all: for this point is, not the 
 arrangement, but the bringing into existence, 
 of the materials of this and of all the worlds. 
 
76 
 
 ON CREATION 
 
 The ancient heathen could reason as touch- 
 ingly and as convincingly about the benevo- 
 lent designs of the Creator, as have our own 
 Christian writers ; but the heathen never knew, 
 as a doctrine of their religion, this wonderful 
 fact of the creation of matter out of nothing. 
 With them, matter was eternal; and - the 
 Creator only used the material which was 
 ready to His hand. 
 
 But now let us take the same course which 
 we did on those other occasions, and let us 
 see whether our faith in the fact, that God 
 in the beginning created the heavens and the 
 earth, may not find present confirmation from 
 what we behold going on around us day by 
 day. We said that we see no such thing 
 now as creation of new matter. In the na- 
 tural world such a phenomenon is unknown. 
 But is it in the spiritual? When the exist- 
 ence of each of us began, what happened ? 
 As far as the body is concerned, no more 
 than what we have already spoken of. The 
 
ON CREATION. 
 
 77 
 
 body is composed of, the body is nourished 
 by, materials previously existing in the world. 
 But is this so with the mental part of us ? 
 is it so with the spiritual part? It is true 
 that, to a certain extent, even this is effected 
 by descent from minds and spirits previously 
 existing. But it is also true that there is 
 no way of accounting for the personality and 
 responsibility of the human soul, without be- 
 lieving every individual spirit to have come 
 immediately from God’s creative hand. The 
 creation of each human being was as com- 
 pletely a calling into existence out of nothing, 
 as the creation of the material of a world. 
 Let us go back in our thoughts here, as we 
 did in that case before, to a time when there 
 was no created rational being: to the first 
 creative act by which sentient being began. 
 Where, a moment since, all was blank, there 
 sprang into life a soul, with all its powers, 
 all its responsibilities, all its sympathies: but 
 above all these, and including all these, with 
 
78 
 
 ON CREATION. 
 
 its personal being, existing side by side with 
 Him who called it into life. If we compare 
 these two together, the creation of a mass of 
 matter and the creation of a living soul, far 
 above our comprehension as both of them are, 
 shall we not necessarily confess that to create 
 a spirit seems to us, when we ponder on the 
 matter, the greater and more marvellous work ? 
 And yet this is going on before our eyes every 
 day. Tell me not that God’s creative acts in 
 the spiritual world are ever carried on in sub- 
 ordination to certain natural laws. This makes 
 no difference to my argument: my argument 
 is, that we daily witness the creation of 
 spirits : we constantly see before us a living, 
 thinking, responsible soul, where but just now 
 there was none. The fact is there, and we 
 cannot deny it ; we can understand it as little 
 as we can understand the other; but here it 
 is, continually going on. Why then should 
 we feel it against us to believe in God’s 
 having called the material of the worlds out 
 
ON CREATION. 
 
 79 
 
 of nothing, seeing that He daily calls immortal 
 souls out of nothing ? 
 
 It is plain that I might have sought my 
 example further down in animal creation. 
 The life that moves in the brute animal is 
 not any necessary result of the combination 
 of the particles of matter of which the animal 
 consists. Man might put together those par- 
 ticles with all the skill in his power, but 
 there would be no life. Every life of animal, 
 every life of any organised matter, is a crea- 
 tion of God. God is ever creating, — as well 
 as ever using, in His marvellous wisdom, 
 materials which He has already created. 
 
 Now I have as yet been meditating on 
 the Creator, and on creation, as those 
 might meditate who simply believed in one 
 Supreme Euler of the universe. But be it 
 never forgotten that we, as Christians, have 
 other and more satisfactory grounds to go 
 on than the mere Deist, as to the process 
 and the intent of creation. We know that 
 
80 
 
 ON CREATION 
 
 the making of the worlds was not an act of 
 power only, nor was it only an act of divine 
 benevolence toward those who might inhabit 
 them. It had a further and a far higher pur- 
 pose than these. Indeed, if it had not, the 
 charge might not unfairly be brought, that 
 neither of the aims of the Creator has been 
 accomplished ; that there is not universal 
 happiness and well-being in the world which 
 we know; nor is it a perfect display of His 
 supreme power; but that His benevolent de- 
 signs have been marred by sin, and misery, 
 and death, and His power thwarted by an 
 adversary. How I do not mean to say that 
 Christianity has enabled us to solve the whole 
 mystery of sin, and misery, and death; nor 
 of the irruption of that adversary into God’s 
 world. There will be still, even when we 
 have all its revelations in their fulness, much 
 in these things that will be painfully incom- 
 prehensible, and that will require faith to 
 arrive at, and yield to faith only; but I do 
 
ON CREATION. 
 
 81 
 
 mean to say, that Christianity has given us 
 the master-key to all such difficulties, and 
 that we may well believe, from the number 
 of closed doors which it already opens, that 
 those to which we have not access, and those 
 whose locks refuse at present to yield to our 
 weak hands, will eventually give way to it. 
 And how has that master-key been furnished ? 
 What do we Christians know about Creation, 
 more than the mere unaided reasoner, more 
 than the mere Deist knows? 
 
 In answering this question, I shall assume 
 the great doctrines of our faith: I shall not 
 stay to confirm them, but simply take them 
 for granted: wishing to inquire, not now into 
 them, but into that which by means of them 
 we know of the world about us, more than 
 they do who receive them not. We believe 
 then that the great Creator of the universe, 
 the One God over all, has from eternity 
 existed in three divine Persons — Father, Son, 
 and Holy Spirit — co-eternal together and co- 
 
 G 
 
32 
 
 ON CREATION 
 
 equal. And Holy Scripture has not left us 
 ignorant, as regards the process of creation, 
 of the parts borne in it by those several 
 Persons of the Holy Trinity. The Father, 
 doing all things after the counsel of His own 
 will, created the world by the Son, who is 
 His "Word, the expression of His power and 
 love ; and the Holy Spirit, the Lord and the 
 Giver of life, wrought in this Creation, to 
 the production of light, and life, and order, 
 and being, and perfection. And all this we 
 know was done for a gracious and glorious 
 purpose. The material world was created to 
 subserve the spiritual. Man was created the 
 lord of the material world, that by means of 
 his use of it, and of his own spiritual facul- 
 ties, as served by his senses, he might rise 
 into participation of the nature and blessed- 
 ness of God himself. And we further know 
 that, in order to this glorification of God in 
 and by His human creatures, trial, and con- 
 flict, and sorrow, and suffering, and death, are 
 
ON CREATION 
 
 83 
 
 steps necessary and inevitable. We know that 
 these were originally introduced by man s own 
 choice and fault, that choice and fault being 
 brought about by the action of temptation on 
 his will, which was necessarily created free to 
 stand and free to fall. Again, I do not mean 
 to say that our understanding can master 
 every step of this; but I am bringing it all 
 forward, as that which we read and believe, 
 and in order to see what light it throws upon 
 the process and the aim of Creation. 
 
 Now when we take these things into account, 
 it seems very plain to me that we must take 
 into account a good deal more, before we shall 
 properly appreciate this aim of Creation. Think 
 of the words, “ the Lamb slain from before the 
 foundation of the world.” When I read such a 
 Scripture sentence as this, am I wrong in saying 
 or writing, as I have often done, that Creation is 
 only a part of Redemption ? It was God’s 
 design from eternity to bring the sons of men 
 to a sharing of His glory by the elevation of 
 
84 
 
 ON CREATION. 
 
 their spiritual nature. Not, observe, by any act 
 of His power ; not to create at once beings who 
 might sit upon thrones near to Himself ; but to 
 create spiritual, responsible beings, who might, 
 by action on their own spirits, aided by His 
 grace, become renovated, become elevated, 
 become glorified, even till they should ascend 
 up where He is, and sit down with Him on His 
 throne. Now for this purpose He made the 
 worlds ; made the worlds by that blessed Son 
 of His, who was from eternity destined to be 
 the Head by Lordship over all created things ; 
 the Head, by actual participation, of the great 
 human family ; the Captain in the mighty con- 
 flict ; the Lamb slain as a sacrifice for sin ; the 
 first-born from the dead, and the Conqueror 
 of Death ; the Prince and Saviour of His people. 
 Por Him and for His, God created all this which 
 we see around us. For Christ, and Christ's 
 Church it is, that nature exists ; that the laws 
 of nature have been established. For us, and 
 for our bliss, and for our glorification, soul and 
 
ON CREATION. 
 
 85 
 
 body, it is, that the sun rules the day, and the 
 moon the night ; that the earth buds and blooms, 
 and brings forth her fruit ; that a thousand in- 
 ferior races live and move around us ; that 
 seasons pass onward, and times recur, and all 
 the vast fabric of creation works onward to a 
 final consummation. For “ all things are ours : 
 whether life or death, or things present or 
 things 4 to come, all are ours ; and we are 
 Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” 
 
 So then Creation to the Christian — and, allow 
 me to say, to the Christian alone — has its voice 
 and its meaning, though not everywhere actually 
 and at present understood, yet speaking so as to 
 show the way to the understanding of it all 
 another day. Of this great and blessed view of 
 Creation, the unbeliever knows nothing. It is 
 to him simply a painful riddle. He weighs 
 misery which he does not see against happiness 
 which he does not see, and he is confounded by 
 the comparison. It all seems blank, and aimless, 
 and inexplicable. He sees not why God the 
 
86 
 
 ON CREATION 
 
 Beneficent should have made man to suffer, 
 should have made the animals to suffer, should 
 have allowed the clear skies to be dashed with 
 storm, and the bright flowers to wither with 
 blight, and strength to pass into weakness, and 
 power to be baffled, and beauty to decay, and 
 promise to issue in disappointment. Neither do 
 we see all this : but there hath sprung up to us 
 light in the darkness : there is in the cloud the 
 bow of the Covenant, and we are assured that, 
 though we cannot see all, all is well : that in the 
 end God will be justified, and everything that 
 He hath made will be shown to be very good. 
 
 From this let us carry away the lesson, that 
 we ought as Christians to be very careful to 
 keep Creation, in our thoughts, in its right 
 place. Second let it ever be, not first: sub- 
 ordinate to our holy faith, not overruling it. 
 From neglecting this much unbelief arises. A 
 man regards the world about him as his reality, 
 and his religion as mere matter of shifting 
 opinion, turned about hither and thither by 
 
ON CREATION 
 
 87 
 
 tilings around him, by converse, and by books. 
 Now this ought to be just the other way. Our 
 religion is our reality ; it alone is certain. It 
 may be that God's creation, and God's provi- 
 dence, may cast light upon it from time to time ; 
 but, in the main, by it must they be interpreted, 
 not it by them. We know that God made the 
 heavens and the earth, and all that therein is : 
 we know that He made them by His Eternal 
 Son, and the agency of His blessed Spirit : we 
 know that He made them to manifest the 
 wonders of His Love by victory in the conflict 
 with Evil : we know that He who by His Death 
 and Eesurrection won for us this victory, upholds 
 all creation by His power. These are our facts, 
 and on these everything else depends ; all our 
 outward knowledge, all science, all wholesome 
 research, all that we can say or be persuaded 
 about outward things : from these great truths 
 of our faith is their truth derived, and by their 
 subordinate truth shall those great truths shine 
 clearer and be better known. 
 
88 
 
 ON CREATION. 
 
 Thus let us think of Creation, and it will be 
 to us, not a painful and dispiriting senigma, but 
 a portion of the ways of Him whom to know 
 truly is life eternal. 
 
 II. 
 
 Creation then, material made out of nothing 
 by God, is all around us ; and we are part of it 
 ourselves : we see it, we hear it, we touch it : 
 and bur own bodies are in these respects acted 
 on by it, as it is acted on by them. And all 
 this is a portion of our Christian life, in the 
 wondrous scheme of Redemption. For the 
 carrying out of that scheme, as we saw before. 
 Creation was called into existence. 
 
 Now belonging to this part of our subject, 
 our present connection with Creation, there are 
 some considerations full of wonder and mystery. 
 We, our personal and immortal part, are at pre- 
 sent inseparably bound up with created matter. 
 
ON CREATION. 
 
 89 
 
 By means of it we live, and move, and have 
 our being. If it receives injury, we suffer: if 
 its waste is not daily repaired, our spirits sink, 
 and our vital energies decay. And this is 
 wonderful to think of, even in itself — to think 
 that such a thing ever should be so at all. But 
 it is still more wonderful to think of, when 
 viewed in this light. At any moment any one 
 of us may be called on to quit this connection, 
 at present so necessary, with created matter. I 
 who- write, using organs now consisting of 
 created matter, may, before an hour has passed, 
 become entirely unconnected with any created 
 matter whatever : may go forth into space, or — 
 for even such an expression is too material — 
 simply exist, as a disembodied spirit. Two 
 things are wonderful here. First, that such a 
 thing should be : next, that it should be able to 
 take place in an instant, and without prepara- 
 tion. 
 
 That it should be. As we are now, every- 
 thing depends on the state of the body, every- 
 
90 
 
 ON CREATION \ 
 
 thing depends on the outward conditions around 
 the body. In racking pain, in deadly faintness, 
 in unconquerable fatigue, of what avail is the 
 vigour of the spirit ? How dependent for ex- 
 ertion are we on the firmness of the step, on the 
 steadiness of the hand, on the correctness of 
 the eye, on the powers of the brain to collect 
 and concentrate thought ! And even if all these 
 were in vigour, yet if external conditions are 
 unfavourable, all will be in vain. If the earth 
 were shaken, and the ground beneath us were 
 unsteady : if the light of day were withdrawn : 
 if the materials of our work were wanting to us, 
 or the proper shelter in which that work should 
 be carried on: all our own powers would be 
 unable to effect that for which they are calcu- 
 lated. We are, in this present state, the slaves 
 of matter. That we should exist in entire dis- 
 connection from it, is at first sight almost in- 
 conceivable. And when we come to join to this, 
 that an instant only is the boundary of two states 
 so apparently inconsistent with one another; 
 
ON CREATION . 
 
 91 
 
 tliat at one moment the soul is bound in the 
 fetters of sense, nay, entirely held down by them 
 in powerless and utter prostration, — and at the 
 next moment is absolutely free from them and 
 existing independently, the wonder and diffi- 
 culty of the fact do indeed seem to be greater 
 than we are able to surmount in our imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 Still, let us view it by the light of other 
 considerations, as undoubted, and forming 
 part of our every-day experience. We can 
 hardly speak or act, without bearing testi- 
 mony that things really are as it has just 
 now appeared so wonderful that they should 
 be. How do we regard things about us ? 
 How do we regard our own bodies, with 
 which we are thus bound up ? Do we ever 
 look on them as part of ourselves ? As far 
 as I know, never on any occasion. As to 
 things about us, palpably and clearly, not. 
 We migrate from home to home: we loosen 
 and we bind attachments : and, however some 
 
92 
 
 ON CREATION 
 
 persons may be disposed to cling to the same 
 circumstances and places, we are quite unable 
 to conceive that any one should ever come 
 to imagine external things necessary to his 
 own existence. And even so is it with our 
 own very bodies: they are our possessions, 
 but they are not ourselves. However near 
 portions of them may be to the apparent seat 
 of life, and essential to its maintenance, we 
 never for a moment treat or speak of them 
 as if they were ourselves. Injury or loss of 
 them will be sure to dissolve that life: yet 
 we ever call them ours , not us. Nay, some- 
 times, in their utter disorganisation and de- 
 struction, the spirit asserts its mastery: and 
 it is seen, amidst the crash of the fatal acci- 
 dent, or from the all but finished decay of 
 the wasted frame, that matter is not man: 
 that man is not bound to matter. 
 
 As we proceed, we have other analogies 
 suggested to us which illustrate our subject. 
 Thought — what is it? Clearly, nothing that 
 
ON CREATION. 
 
 93 
 
 is, or that is in itself dependent upon, matter. 
 Yet are we entirely beholden to matter for 
 our power of communicating thought. It is 
 spoken — we receive it through the agitation 
 of the air by sound: it is written — we receive 
 it by the stains made by some colouring 
 matter on paper. Yet that which is received 
 in each case is as entirely distinct from any 
 sounds or any written characters, as the spirit 
 is from the body. It is a spiritual thing; 
 and, when once received into the mind, sub- 
 sists there independently of any material 
 medium. It may be conveyed to the deaf 
 by signals — to the blind by touch : one mind 
 may make use of matter in various ways to 
 
 communicate with another mind, but the com- 
 
 * 
 
 munication is of that which is of itself not 
 material. Nay, in all the purer and higher 
 processes of thought, when we work in- 
 wardly by the laws of our reasoning facul- 
 ties, — be it on our own spiritual life, or on 
 the nature of God, or on the laws of abstract 
 
94 
 
 ON CREATION. 
 
 science, or on any other purely mental sub- 
 ject that we meditate, then for the time, 
 however liable such thought may be to be 
 disturbed by things around us, we are, as 
 nearly as the case admits of, actually putting 
 ourselves into the state of freedom from the 
 body, and anticipating our condition when 
 this shall really have come to pass. 
 
 So that, though it may be to us, in our 
 present state, a most wonderful thing that 
 we should exist as spirits and be conscious 
 without the body, yet from much that 
 now passes we see that it is not inconceiv- 
 able, but that in our purest and highest 
 moods we are continually approaching that 
 condition. 
 
 I said just now, that the suddenness of the 
 transition to the disembodied state was a 
 strange and a wonderful thing. We cannot 
 indeed tell by what gradual steps the spirit, 
 set free from the body, may be permitted or 
 empowered to realize its new condition: but 
 
ON CREATION 
 
 95 
 
 of this we are sure, that however this may 
 he, all those steps must be taken in the dis- 
 embodied, not in the corporeal state. If we 
 do not hold a sleep of the soul (and I sup- 
 pose no thinking Christian possibly can hold 
 this), there must be an instantaneous passage, 
 in most men’s case, from consciousness in the 
 embodied state to consciousness in the dis- 
 embodied state. And this has ever to my 
 mind been the strangest thing about death; 
 the consideration of that moment of transi- 
 tion — that new awakening to consciousness 
 in the world of spirits. 
 
 But again, I do not see anything in it 
 which may not be: anything of which we 
 have not example at least approaching in 
 kind to the reality, though very short of it 
 in degree. For what is our awakening each 
 morning of our lives ? or to come even nearer, 
 what is awakening from a dream to real life ? 
 Are not these, is not especially this latter, 
 an instantaneous exchange of one state for 
 
96 
 
 ON CREATION. 
 
 another ? And this is done every day with- 
 out any violent shock, as tranquilly and 
 naturally as we pass from one subject of 
 thought to another. 
 
 Now in coming to the main portion of that 
 which concerns us, the use of Creation about 
 us in our present state, what we have been 
 but now considering will be of great use to 
 us ; and we must carry it somewhat further, 
 to get at its full use. 
 
 The disembodied state is not our final 
 state. We are again to be joined to the 
 body: we are again to be joined to the same 
 body with which we were before united. It 
 will not be of the same particles of sub- 
 stance; but that is not necessary to its iden- 
 tity ; for its substance has been changed over 
 and over again, while it remained the same 
 body here. It will probably not be the exact 
 actual body, even in appearance, which we 
 bore at any time during our earthly pilgrim- 
 age : but it will be the same body. It will 
 
ON CREATION 
 
 97 
 
 have lost its mortality, its liability to decay, 
 to pain, to weakness, — possibly all its traces 
 of all these; but not its identity. Created 
 matter it will still be, and it will be in a 
 world of created matter. Thus much I am 
 obliged to say in anticipation of the next 
 portion of my subject: and I shall anticipate 
 it no more. Thus much was necessary, to 
 show the use of this world of matter which 
 lies about us. 
 
 And I must also look back for a moment 
 on what we showed before. We tried to 
 make it clear, that the world was made for 
 Christ, and for Christ’s Church. It was a 
 part of the great and glorious scheme of Re- 
 demption, to lead the sons of God, through 
 trial, and through increase of knowledge, and 
 through a course of holy obedience, all in a 
 material body, and surrounded with material 
 circumstances. 
 
 Well then, if we ask the question, what 
 purpose does Creation at present serve to us 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 ON CREATION 
 
 who are parts of it and surrounded by it? — 
 the first and* most obvious answer will be, 
 that it is our appointed sphere of trial, and 
 condition of preparation for our glorious final 
 state. Now this may sound a commonplace 
 thing to say: but I very much doubt whether 
 it enters one half as much into men’s 
 thoughts of themselves, and of the world 
 about them, as it ought to do. When we 
 say, Creation is our sphere of trial, what do 
 we mean? Consider how wide the words 
 ought to extend, if they have really any 
 meaning at all. God has given us senses : 
 God has given us created matter for those 
 senses to act on, and to be acted on by. 
 The objects with which we are thus brought 
 into contact are innumerable. Have we a 
 right to say that any, even the meanest of 
 those objects, bears no part in the trial and 
 preparation of us for our final state? Of all 
 that the eye can behold, and the ear can 
 hear, and the hand can touch, and the tongue 
 
ON CREATION. 
 
 99 
 
 can taste, is there anything so mean, as to be 
 altogether without part in acting for good or 
 for harm on the immortal spirit ? The ques- 
 tion is easily answered by taking an example 
 in one direction. When a man suffers himself 
 to be brought under by any one of these ob- 
 jects of his senses, and becomes a slave to it, 
 we all know the effect on him : he is de- 
 graded, and becomes incapable of rising into 
 spiritual freedom, and exertion, and dignity. 
 It is manifest that they do produce an effect 
 on the soul in this direction — that of evil. 
 But is there none in the direction of good? 
 The meanest thing that God hath created is 
 fearfully and wonderfully made; adapted to 
 its use with infinite and inconceivable skill. 
 Is it likely, knowing the object which we 
 know He had in Creation, that He should 
 have lavished such skill on the inferior 
 works of His hand, with no regard what- 
 ever to those for whom all this was made ? 
 Can a man therefore be safe in going through 
 
100 
 
 ON CREATION 
 
 this world, making no use of the Creation of 
 God, further than is required by his bodily 
 wants and occupations ? I have ever regarded 
 it as one of the great arguments for impart- 
 ing useful knowledge to all classes amongst 
 us, that God evidently intended us to know 
 and to admire and to behold Him in His 
 works around us; and that therefore as long 
 as we are not doing this, we are losing some- 
 thing which we might be gaining, and are 
 defective for the higher purposes of our im- 
 mortality. The beasts that perish stray over 
 the plains and the mountain side, and look 
 but on the grass whereon they browse: but 
 man has special powers given to him to ap- 
 prehend God’s works, and to turn them into 
 good for his undying spirit. It was for this 
 that the Creator made the dreary abysses of 
 space put on the lovely blue which arches 
 over us, and caused the great light of the 
 day to carry gladness to our sight, and decked 
 the nightly heavens with glittering stars: for 
 
ON CREATION 
 
 101 
 
 this that He so wonderfully turned aside the 
 axis of our globe, and gave us the ever- varying 
 round of seasons, so full of interest, and hope, 
 and cheering prospect, and recurring toil : for 
 this that He subjected to us the tribes of the 
 earth, and air, and waters, for use, and for 
 beauty, and for research : for this that He 
 clad £he earth in refreshing green, and ena- 
 melled her surface with a thousand blossoming 
 gems, and gave us her manifold offspring, 
 fruits, and herbs, and trees of the field. And 
 the seas, and the mountains, and the plains, 
 and the valleys, these He has made to be to 
 us not mere accidents of the earth’s surface, 
 but never-failing wonders of refreshing beauty 
 and grateful change : all for the teaching and 
 nurturing and cheering of our spirits, whether 
 by their own thoughts, or by their share in 
 the invigoration of our bodies and renewal 
 of our energies. 
 
 Let us approach somewhat closer this por- 
 tion of our subject, and so draw our medita- 
 
102 
 
 ON CREATION 
 
 tion towards its end. Let us boldly ask — 
 what is the intent of these things which we 
 see thus wonderfully and wisely made about 
 us ? What are we to think of Light, in 
 which Creation lives and rejoices ? What 
 are we to believe respecting Life, that holy 
 mystery which pervades this world of matter ? 
 What are we to say respecting the equally 
 great mystery of food — the power granted 
 to certain material substances to become por- 
 tions of organized bodies, and supply their 
 waste, and contribute to their growth? Are 
 all these things mere happy contrivances of 
 the Creator, to be admired for their wonder- 
 ful skill and wisdom, but carrying no further 
 lesson with them ? Are they parts of one 
 system, and is the Gospel of our Blessed 
 Redeemer part of another ? Do the processes 
 of this world furnish no instruction to the 
 Christian believer, and does the faith in 
 Christ find no confirmation from the con- 
 sideration of them ? 
 
ON CREATION 
 
 103 
 
 Not so has our Redeemer Himself taught 
 us ; not so that beloved Apostle, who received 
 the Holy Spirit of inspiration in the soaring 
 rapture of the eagle’s flight, and the undaz- 
 zled steadiness of the eagle’s gaze. Read the 
 Gospel of St. John, and see there the natural 
 philosophy of the faith : see there, not a 
 number of ingenious similitudes to Nature 
 and her processes, but the true and ultimate 
 science of Nature herself: learn thence, not 
 that Christ is like light, is like life, is like 
 food: but that light, life, and food all have 
 their blessed qualities and their genial powers, 
 because they are like Him. He is the true 
 Light, He is the true Life, He is the Bread 
 of Life, and the only real sustenance. Nature 
 is but a stray spark, struck out from under 
 the chariot-wheels of His path of Glory. 
 Nature is but a shell cast up by the Ocean 
 of His infinite love, in which the child-like 
 listener may hear faintly and afar off the 
 everlasting melodies of its unfathomable 
 
104 
 
 ON CREATION. 
 
 waters. The sun shines, because there is an 
 
 Eternal Sun of Righteousness : the morning 
 
 star burns on the kindling forehead of the 
 
 East, because there is a blessed Day-star on 
 
 high. The wind bloweth where it listeth, 
 
 because there is a Divine Spirit moving over 
 
 confusion and death and calling forth life : 
 
 the tree puts forth her leaves and buds and 
 < 
 
 blossoms and fruit, because there is a true Vine, 
 with a multitude of fruit-bearing branches 
 which no man can number : the wheat is laid 
 in the ground as seed, and puts forth first the 
 blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the 
 ear, and is reaped, and gathered into barns, 
 and threshed, and winnowed, and made into 
 bread for man, not because of the necessities 
 of nature, nor of man’s fleshly body, but be- 
 cause there is a holy seed, even the word of 
 God, capable of begetting man to a new life ; 
 because there is a growth in grace for the 
 plants of our heavenly Father’s planting, in 
 which they ripen for His harvest, and shall 
 
ON CREATION 
 
 105 
 
 be winnowed by His judgment, and laid up 
 in His garner : because there is a blessed 
 Bread of Life, which whoso eateth of shall 
 live for ever. And so of a thousand processes 
 of nature about us : they are because of, and 
 they owe their creation to, eternal spiritual 
 verities, of which the believer in Christ knows 
 ever more and more, but of which he that 
 believeth not, and the man of this world, 
 knoweth nothing. 
 
 And what if the listener at the mouth of 
 the shell sometimes hear the echo of other 
 sounds than the gentle ripple sporting on the 
 beach, — what if there be the striving of the 
 winds of heaven on the sea, and the wailing 
 of the rising gale, and the fierce conflict of 
 the tempest at its height ? Why are these 
 heard in Nature? Why is there darkness, 
 and blight, and dreariness, and disappoint- 
 ment, and decay, and death, but because all 
 this has come first upon the spiritual world ? 
 There the sun has first been clouded, there 
 
106 
 
 ON CREATION 
 
 the calm first disturbed ; there the lurid form 
 of evil appeared, before it blotted with its 
 leaden mass the clear horizon of nature. 
 When the Son of God passed into the shadow 
 of His agony and the crisis of His dread con- 
 flict, the sun hid his face, and the earth was 
 shaken : when the First-born of Creation 
 
 was in anguish, the whole vast family was 
 troubled, and the beauty of the heavens was 
 saddened, and the foundations of the earth 
 gave way. 
 
 Yes — this is the use of Nature, this is the 
 end and aim of the Creation ; to set forth 
 God, to glorify Christ: to shadow forth the 
 truth, as it is in the spirit of man, and as 
 it is in God. Nature is not a ladder whereby 
 to mount to Him : not a building of matter, 
 on which we may climb up to heaven. There 
 are no inferences from Creation which will 
 lead men on to God. But nature is a ladder 
 let down from God : a ladder at the top of 
 which He stands as He has revealed Himself 
 
ON CREATION. 
 
 107 
 
 in Christ, and by the power of His Blessed 
 Spirit. Bevelation is the only key to Crea- 
 tion: the only solution of the enigma of its 
 use, as well as of its purpose and destiny. 
 The Christian believer only can be the true 
 naturalist; for he alone enters on the study 
 of nature aright. He alone feels the ineffable 
 majesty of that august temple of the Creator, 
 and treads its aisles with the humility which 
 leads to wisdom, and kneels at its altars 
 with becoming devotion. 
 
 Its original purpose — its present purpose — 
 these, as a Christian believer, I have thus 
 endeavoured to enter into, writing for Chris- 
 tian believers, as a brother member of the 
 Church, whose inheritance is this know- 
 ledge and this benefit. 
 
 One great inquiry yet remains : what will 
 Creation be to us in the future ? what shall 
 be Nature’s part, when Death shall have been 
 swallowed up in victory ? 
 
108 
 
 ON CREATION 
 
 hi. 
 
 We stand at this point in our meditations. 
 We have brought them to an end as regards this 
 present state, and it is yet left for us to inquire 
 concerning the use of Creation in the final 
 glorious condition ; whether it will have any 
 use, and if any, what use, for the blessed in that 
 other world. The former of these questions is 
 very soon and very simply answered. The 
 resurrection body will be created matter. How- 
 ever changed, however glorified, this will still 
 be true of it. Our Lord’s risen body was 
 tangible by the disciples. It took into it the 
 common food upon which we subsist. And as 
 He challenged them to handle Him, and did eat 
 and drink before them, with the set purpose of 
 proving to them His identity, we are compelled 
 to believe that both these — the property of 
 
ON CREATION. 
 
 109 
 
 being handled, and the capacity of assimilating 
 food — were no visionary or assumed attributes 
 of His glorified body, or else the proof would 
 have been a mere delusion. That it could put 
 off its liability to the observation of the senses, 
 we know ; that it needed not food for its sub- 
 sistence, we may surely believe : but neither of 
 these alters the above-mentioned facts. He was 
 handled : and He did eat and drink. And as 
 the firstfruits, so they that follow ; not perhaps 
 in all points, but certainly in all essential points. 
 Our bodies will be risen, glorified, spiritual 
 bodies : but they will still be bodies : created 
 matter: and, as we before said, and I see not 
 how we can escape inferring, living in a world 
 of created matter. 
 
 How, on the very threshold of this inquiry, 
 one astonishing thing meets us, and it is this : 
 that there should be those who call themselves 
 Christians, and yet cast a doubt on the future 
 resurrection of the body. I cannot see how a 
 man who doubts this doctrine can be in any 
 
110 
 
 ON CREATION. 
 
 complete sense a Christian at all. If the dead 
 rise not, then Christ is not risen ; and if Christ 
 is not risen, we are yet in our sins ; our faith is 
 vain, our preaching is also vain, and the gospel 
 is a delusion. This is St. Paul’s argument in 
 that wonderful funeral chapter ; and surely he 
 who goes not with St. Paul in it, call himself 
 what he will, is a mere unbeliever. And yet I 
 fear there are many such : men who argue 
 about that future state, that bodies will not be 
 wanted there, and so on : neither knowing what 
 they say, nor whereof they affirm. Por if Christ 
 has not saved man’s body, He has not perfected 
 that for which He came on earth ; He has failed 
 in that for which He died and rose again. It is 
 indeed this doctrine, and not that of a future 
 existence of the soul, which is the characteristic 
 feature of Christianity. 
 
 I say no more on this point, but simply take 
 it for granted, and proceed upon it as certain. 
 We shall live for ever in the glorified body. 
 Now what kind of circumstances will surround 
 
ON CREATION 
 
 111 
 
 us in that new corporeal state ? It is not easy, 
 except for those who go to the Bible with the 
 eye of their understanding shut, to mistake its 
 testimony on this point. There are to be “new. 
 heavens and a new earth.” “ The whole crea- 
 tion,” we are told, “ groaneth and travaileth 
 together in pain in this present state, waiting 
 for the manifestation of the sons of God,” i. e., 
 for the day when the sons of God shall be 
 revealed and glorified, “because,” the Apostle 
 proceeds, “ the Creation itself shall be delivered 
 from the bondage of corruption into the liberty 
 of the glory of the children of God.” 
 
 Now these seem to be our facts to go upon. 
 We need not seek further testimony : but may 
 at once proceed to ask, what does this imply ? 
 As far as we are now capable of treating such 
 a question, what are we to imagine respecting 
 this new heaven and new earth, — this Creation 
 freed from the bondage of corruption, and made 
 partaker of the glory and freedom of the per- 
 fected children of God ? 
 
112 
 
 ON CREATION 
 
 Now at this point we are met by the fact, 
 that the question of the use of Creation in our 
 future perfected state is, like some which we 
 have considered in these meditations before, 
 beset with considerable difficulties. Of these, 
 some arise from the language of certain passages 
 of Scripture, and others from the nature of the 
 subject itself. 
 
 First, then, there is no denying that Holy 
 Scripture seems in some places to speak as if 
 this world, and all that is therein, were to bear 
 no part at all in the employments and interests 
 of those who shall inherit life eternal. The 
 earth and the works therein are to be burned up. 
 All these things are to be dissolved ; and con- 
 siderations founded on that certainty are pressed 
 upon us, as to affect our present practice. Again, 
 we are told that the things seen are but for a 
 time, whereas the things not seen endure for 
 ever. And many passages of a similar tendency 
 might be quoted. Are we, then, to understand 
 these of a total annihilation and passing away of 
 
ON CREATION 
 
 113 
 
 the fabric of material creation? Unexplained, 
 it would seem as if we hardly could take them 
 otherwise. But they are not left unexplained. 
 Scripture also contains plain declarations, such 
 as we have already quoted, not in figurative 
 passages only, but in passages which cannot be 
 taken otherwise than literally, that there must 
 and will be a material creation, in the midst of 
 which our future life will be spent. Not to 
 mention at present the imagery which runs 
 through the Prophets and the book of Revelation, 
 which I venture to say can hardly have any 
 sense assigned to it without such an assump- 
 tion, the whole declarations of our Lord and 
 His Apostles respecting the resurrection of the 
 body absolutely require it, in order to fall into 
 any connected and consistent meaning. Nay, 
 we are not called upon to make any inferences 
 of our own upon the point ; for St. Paul himself 
 distinctly gives us the testimony already cited, 
 than which nothing can be plainer, that the 
 world which we see about us shall not always 
 
 I 
 
114 
 
 ON CREATION 
 
 be the prey of decay and disappointment, but 
 shall itself be made partaker of the freedom and 
 power of advance to perfection which shall 
 result from the glorification of the triumphant 
 Church. And it is clear, that one such plain 
 declaration as this, which it is impossible to 
 misunderstand, outweighs, by the very fact of 
 its being the key to their true signification, any 
 number of passages which seem to tend the 
 other way. Their true sense must be made 
 apparent by it, not its clear meaning explained 
 away in order to bend it to them. If Creation 
 is to be delivered from the fetters of decay, and 
 wrong, and death, then must that burning up 
 and dissolving, elsewhere spoken of, be the puri- 
 fying and liberating process, not the extermi- 
 nating and annihilating one. 
 
 So much may be laid down then as to the 
 testimony of Scripture, that it is clear and 
 precise concerning the future destiny of Crea- 
 tion. It is to partake of our blessedness ; we are 
 to have it about us, as we have the Creation 
 
ON CREATION 
 
 115 
 
 about us here. Whether this is to take place 
 on our globe, is for us perhaps an idle ques- 
 tion, though we are naturally prone to ask it. 
 There are in Scripture reasons for the suppo- 
 sition; and there are also reasons against it. 
 And so too in the nature of things. This earth 
 is full of the past : if it retained any of its dis- 
 tinctive features, would it not also, we may say, 
 retain the traces of sin and sorrow? If it is 
 not to retain those distinctive features, then it 
 would matter little to us if it were to be locally 
 and materially the same. At all events, what- 
 ever becomes of this lesser question, Scripture 
 informs us that the Creation of God is not 
 always to continue, as now, the prey of imper- 
 fection and blight and corruption; but that 
 there is reserved for it, as well as for us, and 
 for it as participating with us, a perfect and a 
 glorious state. 
 
 I would not shrink from confessing (and this 
 is that to which I alluded when I spoke of the 
 difficulties of our subject) that the positive 
 
116 
 
 ON CREATION. 
 
 nature of those passages, especially that in 
 2 Peter iii., which seems to announce the de- 
 struction of nature, is, after all, somewhat 
 perplexing. The idea that they describe a 
 purifying process, though our only resource, 
 does not seem an entirely satisfactory one. One 
 other way indeed of explanation is open to us : 
 that they may describe the destruction of this 
 globe, and those other places may be spoken of 
 some different ones. In this case, such words 
 as those of St. Paul just now cited, “the 
 Creation shall be delivered from the bondage of 
 corruption,” cannot mean what they almost 
 must mean, that the same Creation which now 
 suffers shall then be free from suffering. 
 
 And now let me pass on to the considerations 
 arising out of the subject itself. 
 
 First of all then, there is this tendency in 
 the affirmative direction. If we believe that 
 Creation is but a part of Redemption, and with 
 this belief we ask ourselves the question, Has 
 Creation in this point of view served its pur- 
 
ON CREATION 
 
 117 
 
 pose ? we surely must reply that it has not. 
 The points of contact between man and the 
 material world are very few. In those exercises 
 and employments which most concern his 
 eternal being, he secludes and insulates himself 
 from it. Besides, it cannot be assumed to have 
 served its purpose of bringing glory to God by 
 the recognition of His wonderful works. In this 
 present state, their mysteries are for the most 
 part hidden from us. We know almost nothing 
 about Creation. Its history indeed is told in 
 Scripture in very general terms: but those 
 terms themselves are mysterious ; and when we 
 compare them with the facts visible on the 
 earth itself, we find that we have yet to learn 
 how to understand many of them. And there 
 can be no doubt that this will continue to be so 
 to the end of time. 
 
 How little again do we know of the most 
 interesting questions about Creation ? We exa- 
 mine, and we classify, and we speculate : but who 
 can tell the processes, whereby the most ordinary 
 
118 
 
 ON CREATION. 
 
 phenomena in Nature take place? Who can 
 satisfy us, why the leaf is green, and the flower 
 constant to its own peculiar colour ? Doubtless 
 there might be an account given of the reason 
 of all such facts ; but at present they defy our 
 analysis and baffle our research. 
 
 But will this always be so ? Are we to 
 imagine that God has created that most won- 
 derful of His works, the mind of man, with 
 faculties able to comprehend these inner 
 mysteries of His creation, and then that such 
 understanding is never to take place ? Are we 
 to believe that Nature is to be set before us 
 
 ) 
 
 during our imperfect state here, as an enigma 
 which we cannot solve, and that it will then, 
 when we shall be endowed with superior facul- 
 ties, be withdrawn from our observation? If 
 this were so, then I must think that one of the 
 great elements of the glorifying of God by 
 His redeemed ones would be absent. So 
 that on this ground, the nature of the case 
 itself leads me to believe that a material 
 
ON CREATION 
 
 119 
 
 Creation will lie about us in that other 
 state. 
 
 And if we inquire into the nature of our con- 
 nection with and employment in that Creation, 
 we must be guided to an answer, not by the 
 very slight knowledge which we possess of the 
 nature of the resurrection body, but by what 
 seems to be the very first requisite of any idea 
 at all which we can ‘form of that future life, 
 viz., that there must be continuity of being and 
 interest in each one of us; that our life here 
 and our life there should not be two distinct 
 lives, but the continuation of one and the same 
 life, however much that life may be ennobled, 
 and exalted, and purified. Now what conclu- 
 sions shall we draw from the application of this 
 thought to our inquiry ? 
 
 “At Thy right hand there is pleasure for 
 evermore.” What pleasure? Proceeding on 
 the same course which we have just pointed 
 out, we may say that surely this pleasure, for 
 the majority of mankind, cannot be entirely 
 
120 
 
 ON CREATION. 
 
 disconnected from this present life here: will 
 not he an entirely new beginning of a delight 
 previously unknown, but the purification and 
 ennobling of a delight already begun below. 
 I know that this may seem strange to some : — 
 that we have been accustomed to view that 
 future state as a sort of great school of theo- 
 logy, in which we shall be always contem- 
 plating the great and •difficult doctrines of 
 the faith, and especially such of them as 
 surpass and baffle us here. Doubtless in 
 some cases this may be so; doubtless, in all 
 cases, the mental vision will be so cleared 
 and strengthened, that even those who were 
 dullest on earth will be able to see and know 
 more of the divine love and power, than 
 could the ablest and deepest here : but this, 
 I take it, is not the question: it is rather, 
 whether the impressions and effects produced 
 by what man has gone through here, will not 
 be in the main the foundation of the exceed- 
 
ON CREATION. 
 
 121 
 
 ing blissfulness which he shall inherit there. 
 And I venture to think that, if this is to be 
 so, a very large proportion of our im- 
 pressions which we derive through the senses 
 here will not be broken off and discontinued 
 there, but will be carried forward in a more 
 blessed and elevating form. 
 
 Let me without hesitation apply this to 
 the consideration of our subject. And I will 
 at once deal with a difficulty, which at first 
 sight quite seems to baffle our powers. We 
 cannot think of nature without decay. Decay 
 is the very life of Nature, as now constituted. 
 There is hardly one of her productions which 
 does not, by its decay and corruption, furnish 
 the essential material for supply and for sub- 
 sistence. Remove decay, deliver nature from 
 the bondage of corruption, and all things 
 would be always the same : no pleasant suc- 
 cession, no interchange of grateful seasons. 
 Bring all in nature to perfection, and stop 
 
122 
 
 ON CREATION. 
 
 all at that point, — and, however beautiful, the 
 face of the new earth would seem to be but 
 as a picture, and that an incongruous one. 
 
 This then it would appear cannot be 
 meant by deliverance from the bondage of 
 corruption. The words must somehow bear 
 another and a worthier sense. It cannot be 
 that the world, in her change into a fit habita- 
 tion for the blessed for ever, should lose all 
 that beauty and that glory which carried 
 gladness to our hearts before. Some things 
 indeed belonging to the present state we can 
 hardly admit in our thoughts into that other: 
 the desolating storm, the withering blight, 
 the nipping frost, the unfruitful season, — 
 these, and the like of these, cannot be where 
 all is free to expand, and where the meanest 
 child of nature will not fail to reach its best 
 and highest degree. And we may well con- 
 ceive also, that certain combinations of cir- 
 cumstances, to which we owe much of our 
 enjoyment of nature here, will hardly be 
 
ON CREATION. 
 
 123 
 
 found there. The first outbreak of spring 
 makes the heart leap within us, chiefly per- 
 haps because of the winter, which has so long 
 bound up vegetation with his icy fetters : 
 wdien the woods put on their fresh green, 
 and the earth on which we tread becomes 
 radiant with flowers, it is above all things 
 the contrast which gives zest and delight. 
 But we can hardly imagine that there will 
 be winter there ; or that bareness and dreari- 
 ness will ever characterize the hills and vales 
 of the new earth. And if we pursue the 
 train of thought thus suggested, we may per- 
 haps arrive at some account of how this may 
 well be. Here, in our weak and ever-changing 
 state of thought and feeling, contrast is always 
 necessary to add piquancy to our interest. 
 There, where satisfied calm shall have taken 
 the place of restless craving for change, con- 
 trast will no longer be wanted. To our ears 
 now, perpetual spring sounds as if it would 
 soon pall upon us : and even if there could 
 
124 
 
 ON CREATION 
 
 be a happy mixture of the three propitious 
 seasons, and the earth could at one and the 
 same time be budding into leaf, and opening 
 the flower, and ripening the fruit, it might 
 be a question whether our senses would not 
 soon weary of the continual strain on them, 
 and yearn for some entire rest, some fallow 
 time like winter, when they might repose 
 from excitement. 
 
 But there, it may well not be so. Weari- 
 ness will no longer exist: good enjoyed will 
 lead on to good desired: the eye will not 
 want respite from seeing, nor the ear from 
 hearing, nor the brain from searching and 
 gaining conclusions. So that it may well be, 
 that there shall be no decay there, and yet 
 no feeling of dulness ; no desire for change, 
 where the thoughts and interests themselves 
 will be always changing, because always ad- 
 vancing from one height of blessedness to 
 another. 
 
 And if a further consideration is wanted to 
 
ON CREATION. 
 
 125 
 
 convince us, that there may be the highest 
 bliss in the enjoyment and contemplation of 
 God’s works, without the elements of decay 
 and renewal, we may think of what will be 
 our own state in that other life, and derive 
 from that a strong argument as to the condi- 
 tion of the blessed world itself of which we 
 shall form a part. We are told by our Lord, 
 that we shall be like the holy angels; our- 
 selves without death and decay, and therefore 
 without the necessity of renewal. Doubtless 
 there will be beauty there, far surpassing the 
 fairest dream here; there will be majesty 
 there, compared to which all the splendour of 
 man here is but contemptible: but there will 
 be no fluctuation — no oscillating backwards 
 and forwards into degrees of greater or less : 
 either all will be always the same, or the 
 only progress will be advance. 
 
 And as man himself will be, so in all likeli- 
 hood will also be the world in which man 
 will be found. Here, decay and change are 
 
126 
 
 ON CREATION 
 
 the very conditions of beauty and majesty. 
 The loveliness of infancy, the gaiety of child- 
 hood, the strength and comeliness of youth, 
 the force of manhood, the veneration claimed 
 for age, the sympathies called forth by feeble- 
 ness, the solemn lessons bequeathed us by 
 death, — all these are but circumstances at- 
 tendant on so many onward steps in a course 
 which reaches its height and then declines. 
 But there, all these, or as many of them as 
 are consistent with a blissful state of perfec- 
 tion, will be fixed at their height and. their 
 best, and there will for ever continue to 
 flourish, filled with loveliness and purity, ac- 
 cording to the measure of each, by Him, the 
 great author and source of all that is lovely 
 and pure. Each, we may well conceive, will 
 have its place and its work, and in that place 
 and work will be an element in the multitu- 
 dinous blessedness of the whole. And even 
 so will it be with Creation itself. Of what- 
 ever members and details Creation may then 
 
ON CREATION. 
 
 127 
 
 consist, whether of the same that we see here, 
 or more or less, each will he advanced to its 
 highest point of perfection, each will have 
 attained all its possible beauty and majesty, 
 and at this point will remain for ever. As 
 the blessed contemplate the wonderful works 
 of God, new wonders, fresh points of interest, 
 will continually occur: more praise will be 
 rendered to Him, more true pleasure will ac- 
 crue to His redeemed ones, throughout the 
 countless ages of eternity. 
 
 And if it be asked, how is this to be, see- 
 ing that all Creation has inherited man’s sin, 
 seeing that the ground is cursed for his sake, 
 and nature suffers because the lord of nature 
 was disobedient ? — we may fearlessly reply, 
 it will take place, this deliverance from the 
 bondage of corruption and of sin, owing to 
 the Death and Eesurrection of the Lord. 
 Having made peace by the blood of His 
 cross, by Him it pleased the Lather to recon- 
 cile all things to Himself, all things in heaven 
 
128 
 
 ON CREATION. 
 
 and earth. And in that vision of St. Peter, 
 when he was instructed not to call that un- 
 clean which God had cleansed, this was dis- 
 tinctly set forth to him: this bringing of all 
 things created into a state of reconcilement 
 with God, and fitting use for man, by the 
 great sacrifice of the Death of the Son of 
 God. So that I believe we may surely expect, 
 and I do myself confidently look for, this 
 renewed and glorious condition of God’s mate- 
 rial Creation in the next happy state. I be- 
 lieve nature has not been, as the loose belief 
 of many would suppose it to have been, 
 a great mistake on the part of the Creator — 
 a gigantic failure — an imperfect mould, to be 
 cast aside one day as though it had never 
 been; but I hold firmly that for even mate- 
 rial nature there is a good time coming, when 
 the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the 
 rose: — that God’s wonderful works, here so 
 much abused, so little understood, will there, 
 in all their highest forms of beauty and pro- 
 
ON CREATION. 
 
 129 
 
 portion, be tlie everlasting study and admira- 
 tion of the blessed. Not, it is true, before, 
 still less to the exclusion of, His still more 
 wonderful work of Redemption, but as con- 
 tributing to it, and indeed themselves forming 
 part of it. 
 
 And this leads us to the same point where 
 we brought to a close our other meditations : 
 that it is for the sake of Christ, and of 
 Christ’s work of love, and of Christ’s redeemed 
 ones, that all things are and were created. 
 For this will be then most clearly shown and 
 most fully carried out, when not only the 
 Church, but material Nature also, has reached 
 its highest aim and end : when no decay 
 mars the one, as no sin the other: when the 
 wonders of the created universe are read, not 
 as now, with failing eyes and doubting hearts, 
 but with the purified and unerring vision of 
 the sons of God in glory; when there will 
 be no peril of science invading faith, because 
 faith and knowledge will be one: when none 
 
 K 
 
130 
 
 ON CREATION , 
 
 can go astray, because He who made and who 
 redeemed all things will be Himself our 
 teacher, and will lead us beside the fountains 
 of living waters; when great acquirements 
 will no longer mar perfect holiness, because 
 He who sanctifieth the elect people of God 
 will dwell in us, in full measure, for ever. 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 i. 
 
 DIFFICULTIES OF THE MAIN SUBJECT. 
 
 We speak and we write evermore of God’s 
 Providence. We regard Him as ruling over 
 the world, and shaping all things after the 
 counsel of His own will. This is our belief. 
 
 But at the same time, we speak and we write 
 evermore also of man as the moving cause of 
 events and results in this world. If we do, or 
 abstain from doing, this or that, we regard cer- 
 tain consequences as sure to follow. And in 
 common life, we ordinarily act as if there were 
 no power superior to ourselves, to interfere with 
 
132 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 the course and the products of human actions. 
 This is our practice. 
 
 Now this belief on the one hand, and this 
 practice on the other, are common to all orders 
 and kinds of men in our Christian land : to the 
 most devoutly religious, as well as to those 
 whose religion sits most loosely upon them. 
 We ordinarily speak and write, in our more 
 serious moods, as if God were down on earth, 
 walking among us, arranging and ordering 
 everything : we ordinarily speak, write, and 
 act, in the common affairs of life, I will not say 
 as if there were no God, but certainly as if He 
 were at a distance from us, and did not meddle 
 in human affairs. 
 
 The occurrence of such a diversity between 
 men at one time and the same men at another, 
 a diversity so universally found prevailing, and 
 taken so much as a matter of course, naturally 
 sets one thinking as to whether any reasonable 
 account can be given of it, or whether it is quite 
 unreasonable and blameable. And it is plain 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 133 
 
 that this train of thought, if followed out, will 
 take us over some considerable space, and cost 
 us no little trouble. We shall find ourselves 
 compelled to trace up some of those ideas, which 
 we usually accept without inquiry, even to 
 their very sources : and to give an account of 
 some ways of speech and habits of action, which 
 seem to us almost as instincts, born with us, 
 and always found in us. 
 
 Notwithstanding, it does appear to me im- 
 portant that such an inquiry should be under- 
 taken. We live in days when many and many 
 a talent is folded round and round with napkins, 
 and buried deep in the earth : when many holy 
 words, which ought to be full of stirring sig- 
 nificance, have been sounding so long in the 
 air, that they have become but as tinkling 
 noises : when, to take another figure, every por- 
 tion of our spiritual armour wants separately 
 looking up, and burnishing, and oiling afresh 
 if it is ever to be used to any purpose. 
 
 Let us then meditate awhile on God’s Provi- 
 
134 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 dence : on otir ideas of it, as connected with the 
 actions of men, and with our own course in life. 
 And may His Spirit guide us aright. 
 
 It seems first requisite that we should give 
 some account of our idea of God Himself, with 
 reference to our main subject. We are apt to 
 take for granted that all is clear about the infi- 
 nite power and capacity of God, without con- 
 sidering what a strange and wonderful thing it 
 is that we are believing. The common, and the 
 true idea of God is, that He knows and orders 
 all things. But let us follow this out in our 
 thoughts. All that we can conceive about a 
 mind, and its knowledge, is derived from what 
 we observe about our own minds, and the minds 
 of other men. Now what is your knowledge, 
 and what is mine ? The merest imperfect frag- 
 ment of what is to be known about even that 
 little which falls under our own observation. 
 When we take into account, on the one hand, 
 our ignorance, our forgetfulness, our misappre- 
 hensions, — and on the other, the number of 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 135 
 
 tilings which we might know, but which escape 
 us, and the number which, to make our know- 
 ledge worth anything, we ought to know, but 
 cannot attain to, and then reflect, that of the 
 sons of men, he who knows most is equally 
 liable to these imperfections with him who 
 knows least, — truly we must see that everything 
 we can conceive about an all-extensive and 
 a perfect knowledge -must be delusive indeed, 
 and short of any even the least adequate idea. 
 God, we believe, knows all things. Now, let us 
 try to realize such a kind of knowledge even 
 within small limits. Suppose, to begin with 
 very little, that any of us could retain in his 
 mind, perfectly, and without fail, everything 
 that had come under his observation for a 
 whole month, or week, or day. What an 
 amazing mass of knowledge it would be ! All 
 the shifting thoughts that flitted through the 
 mind ; all the insignificant objects that passed 
 before the eye ; all the looks, and words, and 
 doings of his fellow-men. And yet this is per- 
 
136 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 fection only in one department of knowledge, — 
 only in the power of retaining in the memory : 
 and even this would be enough to weigh down 
 and overhear the powers of any human mind. 
 In the presence of such a supposition, we con- 
 gratulate ourselves on our power of forgetting, 
 and look on it as one of the best safeguards of 
 our health and peace of mind. Yet in thinking 
 of God, we are imagining to ourselves a Being 
 in whose knowledge are absolutely abiding all 
 things that ever were in this world, and, for 
 aught we can tell, in myriads of worlds besides. 
 
 But again, let us vary our supposition, and 
 try to conceive what it would be, if any one of 
 us knew everything present around him. What 
 would it be, for instance, if I knew all that was 
 passing in that limited space which is before my 
 eyes at this moment ? Only try to realize such 
 a thought, and it utterly baffles our conception. 
 Take even one minutest portion of that space : 
 it is filled with air, whose composition it sur- 
 passes human science thoroughly to describe 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 137 
 
 and account for ; that portion of atmosphere is 
 peopled perhaps with life so minute as to escape 
 the subtlest instruments by which our eyes are 
 assisted ; or it is occupied by solid material, 
 wood or stone, whose very texture is a mystery, 
 in the one case of the special organized vegetable 
 growth, in the other of the deposition of strata 
 older than the system of nature under which 
 we live. Or, for our supposition must extend 
 even to this in order to be complete, the portion 
 of space on which we look may contain that 
 greatest of all mysteries for man to behold, the 
 countenance of man : and then we must be able 
 to read every one of its expressions, and to 
 declare all the thoughts of which they are the 
 signs. It seems to me, that for any one man 
 thoroughly and entirely to know the recesses of 
 the mind of another, would be a weight of know- 
 ledge and anxiety sufficient to drive reason from 
 its seat, and destroy the power of knowledge 
 altogether. And yet when we conceive of God, 
 we imagine a Being who knows absolutely all 
 
138 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 things that are : who penetrates every mystery, 
 and before whom no secrets are hid : who knows 
 the thoughts of all hearts : whose field of view 
 is not one small portion of space, but the whole 
 universe. If it would be more than man could 
 bear, to be admitted into the recesses of another 
 mind besides his own, what would it be, to 
 hold at once in knowledge the hidden thoughts 
 of a whole family — a whole city — a whole nation 
 — all mankind — the inhabitants, it may be, of 
 millions of worlds ? Yet this, and no less than 
 this, must be true of God. No less, but much 
 more than this : for to all this we must add the 
 absolute knowledge of all things to come ; the 
 entire guidance and ordering of all things, from 
 the greatest down to the most minute, in every 
 place and at every time. 
 
 Now I say these things about the knowledge 
 of God, that I may make it appear, not how vast 
 it is, far passing in comprehension anything of 
 which we can form an idea (for this is not my 
 present object), but that it is something, in its 
 
ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 139 
 
 very kind and nature, different from that which 
 we call knowledge. It is absolute and all- 
 including. Not only all existing things, but 
 also all sources and reasons of things, and all 
 the issues and ends of things, are taken in by it. 
 And again, it is not knowledge, as ours is, of 
 that which is outside, and independent of Him- 
 self. Whatever God knows, He also is Himself 
 concerned with, and has the absolute disposal of. 
 He is the centre of life, and of power ; in Him 
 all things live, and move, and have their being. 
 
 Now it must be evident, if we give thought 
 to the matter, that w T e cannot expect to compre- 
 hend the sort of interference which knowledge 
 like this exercises in human affairs. The whole 
 subject is too vast for our grasp. We have no 
 faculties with which to approach its considera- 
 tion. It is totally unlike any case in our own 
 matters, which one might at first sight be dis- 
 posed to compare with it. Let us take one, and 
 we shall see this. If a man claims what we call 
 previous knowledge of the way in which a 
 
140 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 course of events will turn out, it can only be 
 from long exercise of his observation on similar 
 occurrences ; and this is but a conjecture after 
 all more or less to be relied on, according to the 
 amount of his experience, and the accurate exer- 
 cise of his judgment. And after all, he is 
 obliged to allow for all sorts of unlooked-for 
 contingencies, which may throw out his calcula- 
 tion. In fact, such a claim, on such grounds, 
 does not properly belong to man at all; still 
 less does any control over those who act in any 
 course of events. We may be, in some sense, 
 controlled by other men : yet it is not because 
 we are compelled to be obedient to their will, 
 but, however far compulsion may seem to 
 extend, it is, really and ultimately, because we 
 choose to be ; because we see the necessity for 
 so being obedient. Even the man whose power 
 of action is most completely taken from him by 
 the will of another, — even the prisoner in the 
 dungeon, may die when his tyrant would have 
 him live : even the victim on the scaffold, over 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 141 
 
 whom outward circumstances seem all-power- 
 ful, so that he must die, may rise in will and 
 in word above them. It is plain that we cannot 
 compare for a moment such knowledge, or such 
 power, with that all-embracing sovereignty of 
 God, concerning which we are now treating. 
 And what is the inference from that which has 
 been said ? Clearly, it seems to me, this : that 
 we have no right to think of God’s foreknow- 
 ledge, and control of our ways and course of life, as 
 we would think of the same in a fellow-creature ; 
 because the two are totally different in the most 
 essential points. God’s foreknowledge and 
 control embraces all things at once. Every law 
 which affects His creatures, and every capa- 
 city of choice and action on the part of any 
 of His creatures, is included in that, His fore- 
 knowledge and control, just as completely as 
 the results of those laws and capacities. Our 
 free will is just as much His appointment, 
 as anything else which belongs to us : as our 
 power, for instance, of breathing or walking. 
 
142 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 He knows beforehand how we shall exert it: 
 but that foreknowledge of His does not fetter 
 its exertion. We know that we do exert it 
 hour by hour; we feel that courses of action 
 or inaction lie open to our choice. Nothing 
 can ever rob us of this conviction. If we 
 are constrained to do this, or not to do that, 
 it is not, we know it is not, a power above 
 us which forces us, but it is the guidance of 
 our own judgment, the verdict of our own 
 deliberation, the sense of our own interest, 
 the appreciation of circumstances known and 
 taken into account by ourselves: God being 
 the appointer of those circumstances, and the 
 appointer also of our being set to choose 
 among them. It has ever seemed to me one of 
 the most astonishing things, that any thinking 
 persons should be found, who deny the free will 
 of man. For of all facts open and undeniable, 
 this appears to me the most conspicuous, and 
 the least able to be controverted. And hence 
 it is that, as I said in the beginning, we ever 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 143 
 
 speak and act, in ordinary life, on the full 
 assumption of the exercise of this free will. 
 All human affairs proceed on it. Without it, 
 there would be no moral responsibility at all. 
 No man would be accountable in the slightest 
 degree for acts or words which were totally 
 independent of his own choice. W ithout freedom 
 of the human will, our teaching would be vain, 
 and our faith would be vain also. What are the 
 words of Scripture exhortation ? “ Behold, I set 
 before you this day life and death: therefore 
 choose life, that it may be well with thee/’ Did 
 not the Redeemer stand and invite all weary and 
 heavy-laden to come to Him ? Did He not, on 
 the other hand, charge the Jews, as a fault, that 
 they were not willing to come unto Him that 
 they might have life ? And when St. Paul used 
 the strongest term he could use, and said, “ The 
 love of Christ constraineth us/’ did He not make 
 this very constraint the result of our own 
 deliberate judgment, and say, “The love of 
 Christ constraineth us, because we thus 
 
144 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 judge, that if one died for all, then all died?” 
 And we might go further, and say, If man were 
 not free to be affected this or that way by con- 
 siderations presented to him, why has the Spirit 
 of God pleaded all these ages with sinful men ? 
 Why all this exhibition of God’s love in order 
 to move our love ? We love Him, not because 
 He compels us to love Him, not because we 
 cannot help it, which would take all the reality 
 out of love, but because He first loved us. He 
 draws us with the cords of a man, His heart to 
 our heart, for our good, and for His glory in our 
 good. And the same thing which is true in our 
 determinations about the most solemn things, 
 is true also in all the ordinary matters of life. 
 We act, and we are expected to act, as being free 
 to choose our course of action. Hence comes, 
 and hence properly and legitimately comes, that 
 which we mentioned in the beginning, the uni- 
 versal habit of men, religious as well as irreli- 
 gious, of going on in life, and speaking and acting 
 from day to day, as possessing this freedom, 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 145 
 
 and, within certain limits, guiding themselves 
 by it. If they did not, they would not be fit for 
 the world's business, or the world's duties : they 
 would in fact cease to be rational beings at all. 
 
 But we must not leave the matter here. We 
 have, I think, to the minds of reasonable men, 
 made clear one point : that, our own free will 
 being a plain fact, and as matter of fact not 
 hindered from moment to moment by special 
 interference from above, we are meant to act 
 as being free, and to be invested with a re- 
 sponsibility which depends on that freedom. 
 
 And we have further shown, I trust, that 
 the undeniable foreknowledge and sovereignty 
 of God, being a matter so far passing our 
 comprehension, and so far removed from any- 
 thing which we know of in practical life, cannot 
 be, and ought not to be, brought in as a dis- 
 turbing element in our ordinary reasonings and 
 conclusions on matters presented to us in life. 
 
 I said, we must not stop here. For if we 
 did, there might appear to be some danger of 
 L 
 
14G 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 our being understood to mean, that we ought 
 to go our way in life without thinking of God, 
 or acknowledging His guiding and superintend- 
 ing hand. And this would be the very 
 contrary of that which we really do intend: 
 having undertaken the consideration of this 
 matter, in order that, if it may be, we may 
 show how the recognition of God should be 
 our constant safeguard and guide in life, and our 
 greatest comfort in all that befalls us. “ Man’s 
 goings,” says the scripture, “are of the Lord: 
 how then can he understand his own way?” 
 (Prov. xx. 24). These words contain the whole 
 matter. God’s foreknowledge, God’s super- 
 intending Providence, enwraps us all round. 
 It is like the space through which our globe 
 revolves : like the air which we breathe as we 
 move about on it. It is a necessary condition 
 of our living, and moving, and having our being. 
 As we cannot think of material objects without 
 space being presupposed for them to be situated 
 in — as we camiot think of a succession of 
 
ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 147 
 
 events without presupposing time for them to 
 happen in, so neither can we conceive of a world 
 at all, or of ourselves as existing in that world, 
 without presupposing the foreknowledge and 
 sovereignty of God, who created and upholds it. 
 Man’s goings are of the Lord. If this be not so, 
 God is not the King of all: God is not God. 
 This is a fact incontrovertible, and not to be 
 shaken : necessary from our very idea of a God 
 at all. And now comes the inference : “ Man’s 
 goings are of the Lord : how then can he under- 
 stand his own way ? ” How can we expect to 
 be able to bring down the surpassing vastness 
 of God’s foreknowledge and power, and to fit 
 it on to the petty details of our individual 
 lives ? We cannot do it : we shall err grievously, 
 if we attempt to do it. What is the lesson then, 
 — the lesson which good sense and Scripture 
 alike teach us ? Why, this ; — not to attempt it : 
 to recognise to the full both the great facts,— 
 God’s sovereignty, and man’s free will, — and to 
 go no further. We can see these two clearly. 
 
148 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 Their lines are plainly marked, running on side 
 by side through our lives, and through the 
 lifetime of our world. But to trace them up 
 into one, the human eye fails. Bring them ever 
 so near, by reasoning or by illustration, yet the 
 point where they join is lost in the light 
 inaccessible, which no man hath seen nor can 
 see. Many have tried to gaze on it ; many are 
 trying now : — but the result is ever the same ; 
 the presumptuous eye is dazzled, the over- 
 bold inquirer strays into error, and the mystery 
 remains where it was. Let us rather keep our 
 thoughts intent on the work in life which God 
 our Father hath given us to do ; it will require 
 all our energy to carry it on, and all our 
 penetration to discern what His will is in it 
 respecting us. In it, apportioned by His good 
 Providence who has created both the shoulder 
 and the burden, will be found our most healthy 
 and our wisest employ; there shall we meet 
 with Him who can give us strength, and whose 
 presence alone can cheer the journey through 
 
ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 149 
 
 life. We cannot understand our own way, it 
 is true ; but for this very reason, that our goings 
 are of Him. He is about our path, and about 
 our bed, and spieth out all our ways. He has 
 taken care that our whole lives should be full of 
 Him, and of the thought of Him. His blessed 
 Son has lived our life, has felt our sorrow, has 
 died our death. Wherever we are in the world, 
 the tracks of His footsteps are visible before 
 us. God’s knowledge may be too vast for us to 
 imagine: His power and sovereignty may be 
 elements too weighty to enter into our daily 
 thought of the details of our lives; but Jesus 
 our Lord hath manifested Him to us, and in 
 our Eedeemer’s presence we can look on God 
 and live. The evident freedom of our will 
 then is no excuse for forgetting God. They 
 who acknowledge not Him in their goings, use 
 not that freedom aright. Eather let us adore 
 the mystery of His loving-kindness, who has so 
 wonderfully made us that, while we are in His 
 hands as clay in those of the potter, He has 
 
150 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 yet left each, of us in the free use of those 
 powers and faculties which He has given us, 
 who, in the great conflict between good and 
 evil, has overcome our evil with His good; 
 being the Father of lights, from whom is every 
 good and perfect gift, — ever waiting to be 
 gracious to us, — ever offering us the help of His 
 free Spirit. Eather let us strive, each in his 
 place, to seek after Him, and feel His hand 
 leading us ; and thus, though we may not 
 understand our own way in life, we shall be 
 guided on by Him who doeth all things well, 
 from faith, to the sight of Him : from a limited 
 and imperfect existence, to the liberty of the 
 glory of the sons of God. 
 
 ii. 
 
 god’s guidance of us for good. 
 
 In our last meditation on the Providence of 
 God, we endeavoured to show that His fore- 
 knowledge and power were matters so infinitely 
 surpassing our comprehension, that while we 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 151 
 
 are certain that all our ways are ordered by 
 Him, we cannot understand our own path, nor 
 the manner in which His will foreordains it ; 
 that consequently we cannot, and in fact no 
 man does, take into account, in the details of 
 our daily life, that foreknowledge and power 
 as a disturbing element. It envelops us, and 
 is all about us ; but, at the same time, our will 
 is free to choose and to refuse courses of 
 action proposed to us ; and if it were not, we 
 should no longer be accountable beings. 
 
 We will now look at the same great subject 
 from another side. We will inquire respecting 
 the tender and constant care with which God, 
 ever present and ever watchful, upholds and 
 provides for us. If it be true, that we have 
 no right to regard Him, in ordinary cases, as 
 interfering with the exercise of our own free will 
 in choosing between courses of action, are we 
 justified in assuming that His providence 
 watches over us for good, and guides our 
 feet into the way of peace ? In other words. 
 
152 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 is there, I will not say any inconsistency, but 
 any blameable inconsistency, any inconsistency 
 that we can help, in refusing to think of God 
 as an obstacle to our freedom of action, and 
 yet claiming to think of Him as the constant 
 witness of all that we do, and our never- wearied 
 Benefactor and Upholder ? 
 
 The answer to this question will somewhat 
 depend on some things which were said in our 
 last meditation. The reason why we cannot re- 
 gard God as interfering with the exercise of our 
 own freewili is, that his foreknowledge and power 
 are too vast for our comprehension, are matters 
 which we cannot by any possibility bring down 
 and apply to the details of our ordinary life 
 without the danger of continually going wrong. 
 Man’s goings are of the Lord : and therefore 
 he cannot understand his own way. On the 
 other hand, we know and are sure, that we have 
 the free choice between courses of action. And 
 it is not for us to misinterpret, and to mar the 
 healthy conditions of, a portion of our being, 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 153 
 
 whose wholesome exercise, in accordance with 
 the divine will, is our very secret of moral 
 happiness, by mixing it up with another high and 
 mysterious matter which we cannot comprehend. 
 This was our argument. How does it apply here ? 
 
 God is to us the author of all that is good. 
 Whenever comfort comes, whenever preser- 
 vation comes, whenever body or soul is bene- 
 fited, the gift is of Him, and not of man, nor 
 of ourselves, in the first degree. Thus much 
 is perfectly clear. In a given case, perhaps, 
 we chose the good and refused the evil. But 
 it was He who put it into our hearts to choose 
 the good; it was He who gave us strength, 
 when we had chosen it, to follow up our 
 inclination and resolve ; it was He who moved 
 obstacles out of our way ; it was He who turned 
 even our evil into His good, and shaped and 
 moulded men and events so that we might 
 attain unto that good. And all this was not 
 by forcing us into accord with Him and His 
 will, but by gentle persuasion, and by putting 
 
154 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 opportunities in our way, and by the pleadings 
 of His blessed indwelling Spirit. The bad man 
 may refuse to hear God, and go his way, and 
 act independently ; the good man may partially 
 listen to Him, and may sometimes prefer his 
 own inclination to the prompting of the Spirit for 
 His good ; but the great truth remains the same : 
 that it is God who is striving for the welfare, 
 and providing for the necessity, and upholding 
 the life, temporal and spiritual, of us all. If 
 there be an inconsistency here, it is at least one 
 bound up with our very first conditions of 
 thought and feeling. It is at least one which 
 we, in our present imperfect state, cannot 
 help, and are even bound to submit to. Where 
 we cannot see God’s way clear, nor under- 
 stand how He shapes our course, we proceed 
 on the known fact of our own free will, and 
 regard ourselves as responsible, and in some 
 measure as the pilots of our own way; but 
 where we can see Him, and all is clear, we 
 love to acknowledge His hand and to praise 
 
ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 155 
 
 His goodness, and to trace His beneficent inter- 
 ference in warding off evil, and in procuring 
 us good. There is, in fact, no more in- 
 consistency here than in the seaman, who, 
 while the sky is clear and the sun and stars 
 visible, takes his observations direct from them, 
 and steers accordingly ; but when they become 
 overcast, has recourse to his books and his in- 
 struments, and shapes his course as he best may. 
 The one guidance may be surer than the other ; 
 but both are in compliance with the laws of the 
 same world, and both are with a view to the 
 same end. And if it be most true, that God is 
 about us when we do not see Him, and girds us 
 when we know Him not, the very acknowledg- 
 ment of this fact ought to show us, that it 
 is in vain for us to attempt to recognise all the 
 ways by which He leads us, but that we must 
 be content to appear very often to be left to 
 ourselves; while at the same time we must 
 none the less for this be tracing Him where 
 we can, and attributing to Him at least all 
 
156 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 those portions of onr course which seem to 
 bear traces of His good and merciful guidance. 
 
 Let us now strengthen this position by the 
 direct testimony of Holy Scripture. I said 
 before, that it is the practice of the word of 
 God, in the case of great truths which may seem 
 to our minds to be inconsistent with each other, 
 not, as we do, to trim and compromise between 
 them, but to state both sides broadly and 
 plainly, and leave us to infer that the putting 
 both together surpasses our powers. In no case 
 is this more evident, than in the statements of 
 Scripture respecting God’s Providence and man’s 
 free will. The statement of the latter truth 
 engaged us in our former meditation. We 
 quoted words which offered to man the choice 
 of life and death, and we might have quoted 
 questions which imply that the death of the 
 sinner was his own act, and not that of God. 
 But the assertions respecting God’s watchful 
 Providence, and universal foreknowledge, and 
 unresisted sovereignty, are as plain and un- 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 157 
 
 doubted. Take that of our Lord, where He says 
 that two sparrows are sold for a farthing, and 
 yet that, without the knowledge of God, and 
 His permission, not one of these shall perish ; 
 — and goes on to say, that the very hairs of 
 our heads are all numbered : meaning, that 
 nothing befalls us, unknown to, unwatched by, 
 unpermitted by, our heavenly Father. Take 
 any portion of Holy Scripture, either history or 
 prophecy, or the confessions of any of the ser- 
 vants of God with regard to their personal life 
 and experience, — and it is ever the same. God 
 is seen everywhere. He girds them to war. 
 He blesses them with peace. He brought them 
 from the womb, and cared for them when they 
 hanged yet on their mothers’ breasts. From 
 youth up until now ; — even to hoar hairs and the 
 day of death, — He carries them. They are safe 
 under the shadow of His wings, and His minis- 
 tering messengers bear them up in their hands, 
 lest at any time they should dash their foot 
 against a stone. Such has ever been the ex- 
 
158 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 pressed belief, such have been the motives for 
 courage and confidence and resignation, of all 
 the servants of God : from the first days of the 
 dawning promise, until the full light of the Sun 
 of Eighteousness arose upon the Church. Such 
 was the feeling of Moses, and of Joshua, and of 
 David, and of Elijah, and of Hezekiah, and of 
 Hehemiah, and of the prophets : such was the 
 conviction of St. Paul, and of St. Peter, and of 
 all the holy men who wrought and suffered for 
 Christ. And such, above all, was ever the mind 
 and the confession of Him who is our pattern as 
 well as our propitiation. The Lord Jesus, in 
 His course on earth, — yea, more, in His course 
 through glory to perfection in heaven, — ever 
 regarded Himself as in the watchful care of the 
 Patlier, sent upon earth to do His will, not alone, 
 even in the hour of dark desertion and bitter 
 suffering, because the Father was with Him. 
 There can be no doubt, that the tendency of all 
 Scripture teaching and example, as well as of its 
 direct command, is to induce us to see God in 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 159 
 
 all our ways, and acknowledge Him in all our 
 paths, — that it is to lead us to do this, infinitely 
 more than we are disposed to do it. Our ten- 
 dency is to forget God, and to look too much to 
 ourselves and to men around us ; but the man 
 who reads his Bible will evermore find this ten- 
 dency counteracted by the assertion of God’s 
 presence, and God’s working, and God’s crossing 
 his path at every turn. 
 
 And let us come, as usual in these medita- 
 tions, from the more general consideration of 
 our state as believers in God, to that of our 
 more particular condition as believers in the 
 Son of God. If, in the former capacity, we are 
 bound by God’s word to see Him ever about us, 
 surely in the latter we are much more bound. 
 Bor consider what He has done to assert more 
 strongly His presence with us, and His care 
 over us. He has entered into our nature ; and 
 become, not merely what He was to the ancient 
 Church, a covenant God, but, according to His 
 promise, God manifest in our flesh: dwelling 
 
1G0 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 and abiding among us as one of ourselves. The 
 Son of God is no God at a distance, removed 
 from our yearnings and our sympathies. Are 
 we tempted ? He has been tempted in like 
 manner. Are we in pain? He has suffered 
 likewise. Are we deserted, in bereavement, and 
 in sorrow ? So was He : it was the very form 
 which He took on Him and the very character 
 by which He was pleased to be known. Of old, 
 it was obvious to the mind of God’s servants 
 to see Him about them in prosperity ; but difh - 
 cult to trace Him in adversity. All they 
 could attain to was a general confidence that He 
 would provide well, and a resolve to leave all 
 to Him. “ Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and 
 He shall sustain thee.” “I have been young 
 and now am old, and yet never saw I the 
 righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their 
 bread.” Even to us now, such pious sayings 
 are most touching, and full of comfort; but 
 it is mainly by the light shed on them since 
 the Man of Sorrows has gone up into His glory. 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 161 
 
 Now, it is not a vague confidence that all things 
 will he well which upholds us : it is no mere 
 result of a life-long experience that all will he 
 well with the righteous. Ours is a far higher 
 and a far more blessed faith and persuasion. 
 Suffering and sorrow, contradiction and deser- 
 tion, persecution and death, these were the ap- 
 pointed and the chosen paths of Him who loved 
 us, and washed us from our sins in His hlood. 
 Through these dark and dreary valleys sparkles 
 the track of those footsteps which are now lost 
 in the light unapproachable. Blessed are they 
 who follow Him anywhere : twice blessed they 
 who are made partakers of His sufferings : most 
 blessed of all, they who drink deepest of that 
 cup, round which is inscribed in letters of light, 
 “ Not my will, but thine be done.” We suffer, 
 we mourn, with no mere vague persuasion that 
 all will be well : with no more regard to the deal- 
 ings of a God at a distance, moving and working 
 in the history of those we have known : such 
 thoughts may tend to uphold our weakness, may 
 
 M 
 
162 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 be sometimes the highest we can reach : but 0 
 they are not our birthright, they are not the 
 extent of our high privilege. We have rights 
 in Christ extending far beyond these. We are 
 the sheep of Christ following their Shepherd: 
 none can pluck us out of His hand : if we be 
 found in the path in which He went before, not 
 mere resignation, but triumph and holy joy 
 should be our mind. 
 
 Such thoughts as these lead me to conclude 
 with one or two remarks, both respecting the 
 blessedness of the Christian who thus sees God 
 about his path, and respecting the wise and sober 
 limits within which such blessedness is found. 
 
 There is no surer way to real happiness, than 
 a constant sense of God’s upholding and provid- 
 ing care. For one who earnestly believes that 
 which is said of Him in Scripture and the offices 
 of the Church, life may indeed be, as it is to 
 other men, full of difficulty, and of dark places ; 
 but there hath arisen a light in his darkness. 
 There can be no gloom in his path, though there 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 163 
 
 may be shade. There can be no distressing 
 doubt, though there may be uncertainty. There 
 can be no despair, though there may be neces- 
 sity for entire resignation into his Father’s 
 hand. He need not be afraid of any evil 
 tidings, for his heart standeth fast, trusting in 
 the Lord. He may be left alone, but his 
 Father is with him. Hone may uphold him in 
 his path of chosen duty, but the witness of the 
 Spirit is more to him than the applause of the 
 multitude. Listen to the language of such an 
 one in old time : “ The Lord is my Shepherd ; I 
 shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in 
 green pastures : He leadeth me beside the still 
 waters. He restoreth my soul : He leadeth me 
 in the paths of righteousness for His name’s 
 sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley 
 of the shadow of death, I will not fear : for 
 thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff 
 they comfort me. Surely goodness and mercy 
 shall follow me all the days of my life : and I 
 will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” 
 
164 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 Words like these bring us to our last conside- 
 ration, and lead us to say, that the true enjoy- 
 ment of this abiding feeling of God’s gracious 
 and loving guidance is to be gained, not by an 
 unbridled fancy, nor by a superstitious magni- 
 fying of ordinary circumstances into extraordi- 
 nary, but by the combined exercise of earnest 
 piety with sound discretion. On the one hand, 
 let us never think that we ourselves alone are 
 the objects of God’s care; on the other hand, 
 let us never fail to acknowledge that care 
 keeping watch over us. The best rule for a 
 sober judgment in this matter will be derived 
 from the considerations which have been 
 already before us in these meditations. No 
 sober-minded Christian will ever see God act- 
 ing as fettering or hindering his way, but will 
 choose according to his heavenly Father’s 
 will, in a free and loyal spirit. Again, no wise 
 man will trouble himself with dispensations of 
 God’s Providence which we cannot possibly 
 understand. Such thoughts frequently perplex 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 165 
 
 and distress men beyond measure, but surely 
 not those men who give sober consideration to 
 the subject. What are called special provi- 
 dences may be difficult to recognise, and 
 dangerous to press on the mind as such: but 
 in fact they are all around us, and universal. 
 The ship goes its way with its freight and 
 its passengers, and is overwhelmed in the storm. 
 He who hastened to set sail in her, and was too 
 late, is on all hands acknowledged to have been 
 the subject of God’s providential and special 
 care. But are we to say that no such special 
 providence kept watch over those who perished 
 in her ? God forbid. Every one of them was 
 just as much in the mind of our heavenly 
 Father as he who was saved. His course was 
 continued, theirs was brought to an end: but 
 the same loving-kindness was over both, and 
 the same infinite wisdom shown in the lot 
 apportioned to each. The man in health and 
 vigour praises God for the lengthened time of 
 his service, and the continued power of active 
 
166 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 good : are we to suppose on this account that 
 the poor invalid, whose life is confined to the 
 w T alls of his chamber, is forgotten by God ? No 
 indeed ; he may praise Him just as much and 
 as heartily for his hour of calm slumber, for his 
 interval of rest from pain, and sweet meditation. 
 The aged servant of God looks back on a long 
 career, and glorifies Him for the mercies of 
 years : but his mercies to the youth or the 
 maiden cut down in the flower of life are just 
 so great in their kind, just as worthy of praise. 
 Let each trace God about his own path : there 
 he may see in abundance the power of the 
 Father, the love and sympathy of the Son, the 
 inner pleading and witness of the Spirit. The 
 course of others, and some parts of his own, 
 may be dark and perplexing to him ; concern- 
 ing these let him not be troubled. Enough is 
 revealed, enough is quite clear, for continual 
 thanks and praise: enough to prompt ever- 
 growing trust and ever-increased resignation. 
 
 Let us live closer and closer to Him; ever 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 167 
 
 feeling for His hand to guide, — ever looking 
 for His light on our path : and then we shall be 
 safe in life, safe in death, and blessed for ever. 
 
 III. 
 
 TESTIMONY FROM THE COURSE OF THE WORLD. 
 
 In the course of meditating on the Provi- 
 dence of God, our attention is naturally drawn 
 to the evidence furnished by the moral state of 
 things around us. On which side does this 
 tell? Does it appear, when we take it into 
 account, as if things drifted onward by blind 
 chance ? does it seem as if man unassisted 
 shaped his own course ? or does it seem as if an 
 unseen hand were guiding ? To employ our time 
 in answering this question, may seem like taking 
 superfluous trouble, seeing that it is abundantly 
 answered for us in Holy Scripture, and to enter- 
 tain any doubt on it would be so far to set aside 
 the great verities of our Christian faith. Yet 
 it is profitable sometimes (and this is especially 
 the case in days like our own, when the founda- 
 
168 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 tions of the faith are assailed) to derive confirma- 
 tion for our faith, by looking at matters around 
 us, just as any mere observer must look at them : 
 and to endeavour to lift up the unbelieving or the 
 doubting to us, by seeming for a while to come 
 down to their level, and to speak as they do. 
 
 Well then, let us begin with a general survey 
 of the state of things around us with regard to 
 good and evil. It is, I suppose, pretty plain to 
 all, that our natural tendency, if left entirely to 
 ourselves, is to evil. One need but look at the 
 state of the heathen nations : one need but 
 observe the course of any person growing up 
 without educational training, to be convinced of 
 this. And I do not know that any reasonable 
 person seriously questions it. We sometimes 
 hear rash expressions of a contrary opinion 
 thrown out, but it is generally by men of a 
 peculiar stamp, fond of maintaining singular 
 views: and I have generally observed, that 
 they who thus speak, do nevertheless in their 
 actions, and in the business of life, just as much 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 169 
 
 take for granted a general tendency to evil as 
 the rest of mankind. Well then, this being so, 
 — man being generally prone to evil, — when we 
 look about over the world and the face of 
 society, one question at once meets us : How is 
 it that the world is not worse than it is ? Take 
 the state of the very lowest and the most de- 
 praved among the heathen tribes, — and why is 
 not that the state of us all ? Why has not every 
 nation, through its successive generations, gra- 
 vitated constantly downward? To this ques- 
 tion there may be two answers. The downward 
 tendency must have been checked either by 
 some influence within man, arising from him- 
 self, or by some influence without him, arising 
 from some one not himself. Let us consider 
 each of these in turn. If the salutary influence 
 is to be attributable to upward and nobler 
 instincts in man, how is it that these have acted 
 in some cases, and have been altogether dormant 
 in others ? It may be said, that this has been 
 according as they have met with favourable 
 
170 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 or unfavourable circumstances of situation or 
 climate. But it is easily answered, that this is 
 remarkably otherwise. The fairest portions of 
 the earth have sometimes witnessed the most 
 appalling degradation of our race, as is now the 
 case in many places under the tropical climates : 
 while at the same time some of those fairest 
 portions have seen the most remarkable deve- 
 lopment of the moral conscience and of the 
 intellectual power of man ; as for instance the 
 Land of Promise of old, and the lovely shores 
 and valleys of ancient Greece. And on the 
 other hand, the hardest and most ungenial 
 climates have not prevented human progress to 
 good, as neither can they be said to have always 
 promoted it. We have examples of some of the 
 best of nations struggling with the disadvan- 
 tages of soil and sky, and some of the worst 
 succumbing under them. It would seem as if 
 we were especially cautioned by facts, not to 
 fall into the mistake of imagining that man is 
 made or unmade by outward circumstances. 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 m 
 
 For tlie very same situations and climates have 
 been tlie scenes, at different times, of the most 
 widely various phenomena in the history of 
 mankind. The land where all Israel once dwelt 
 peaceably under David and Solomon is now well- 
 nigh desolate, and the traveller goes in peril of 
 the plundering Arab. This country of ours, now 
 teeming with inhabitants peaceful and loyal, 
 was once the war-ground of savages ; and where 
 our churches now rise, human sacrifices were 
 offered. If we look again at mere situation, the 
 same advantages which at one time may seem 
 to have made a nation of busy and successful 
 traders, have at another reared a nest of pirates 
 and marauders. 
 
 Nor again can it be said that influences for 
 good have been implanted in some races of 
 men, while others have been without them. 
 Vast as the difference really is between the races 
 of men as we now find them, such a view seems 
 to me wholly to misrepresent it. It is one not so 
 much of good and evil, as of comparative power 
 
172 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 for both. The superior race is not superior in 
 good alone, but in evil also. Its advances in 
 true civilization and social purity are ever 
 counterbalanced by corresponding fearful ad- 
 vances in the other direction. New facilities 
 for gaining wealth and for self-enjoyment ever 
 stimulate not only the better, but also the worse 
 propensities of our nature. Knowledge is power 
 for evil, as well as for good. The leading race 
 of men may do something towards the civilizing 
 and teaching of the inferior races : but it 
 generally has been found in history to have 
 done more towards demoralizing and exter- 
 minating them. Its evil habits are greedily 
 adopted, and carried on without limit or shame : 
 its excesses become inveterate and suicidal ; and 
 its very diseases assume a more virulent and 
 deadly type. And if it be answered, that though 
 such may be the influence of a highly advanced 
 civilization over one less advanced, yet in itself 
 a leading race of men possesses power of con- 
 tinual advance in good, — the rejoinder in this 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 173 
 
 may, I believe, be furnished by the history of 
 such races as have from time to time taken the 
 lead in the world. For has it not been found 
 that, though for a time they have seemed the 
 sources of blessing to our species, yet when 
 tried by the only sure test, the test of time, they 
 have themselves degenerated, and their place 
 has been taken by others ? If an example in 
 our time were wanted, we could not point to 
 one more remarkable than that which we are 
 now witnessing on the other side of the Atlantic 
 with regard to our own, the vaunted Anglo- 
 Saxon race. What can be more signal than its 
 present degradation, as we see it shown in a 
 return to all the unreasoning ferocity of the 
 savage tribes, in the use of names and profes- 
 sion of motives sacred to the Christian and the 
 man of peace, in justification of deeds their 
 very opposites — in total disregard of truth 
 public and private ? Truly the lesson is there 
 being taught us, if ever it was taught, that it is 
 not by the influence of mere race that evil is 
 
174 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 kept in check among men : it is not because 
 the blood of some races is better and purer than 
 that of others, that more good has been pre- 
 dominant in one place and at one time, than 
 elsewhere and at another time. 
 
 Nay, let us look back over what we have 
 just been saying, and, if I am not mistaken, 
 quite a different thought rises in our minds. 
 With the height of civilization and of know- 
 ledge, as we have seen, evil tendencies are 
 also developed to their height, and the 
 dangers to social and moral well-being become 
 greater. The better man becomes, the worse 
 he becomes. And this is no paradox. The 
 more light is shed abroad, the worse becomes 
 the sin of those who prefer darkness to that 
 increased light. The more men’s hearts are 
 penetrated and softened by good, from where- 
 soever arising, the more utterly lost to right 
 feeling and humane affection must be that in- 
 fluence which would supersede that softening 
 by a new and more impenetrable hardening. 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 175 
 
 And as connected with this thought, it is 
 instructive to observe the precise way in 
 whioh, though the good and the evil thus run 
 on, so to speak, together, the whole result is 
 for good and not for evil. The precise way, 
 I say; for it is commonly not as we might 
 expect, but far otherwise. The particular good 
 which was in conflict with the evil is com- 
 monly overborne and destroyed by it. When, 
 in a nation, good and evil influences are at 
 issue with one another, the ordinary course is 
 that the mischief prevails, and national ruin 
 ensues. It has been so with all the great 
 nations of antiquity; even with the specially 
 favoured people of Israel. But the thing to be 
 remarked is this : that when the good has been 
 borne down and the evil has prevailed, then 
 there arises to mankind out of the result a new 
 and unlooked-for good, far greater than that 
 which has been lost. Through various great 
 revolutions and catastrophes, all of them 
 instances of the prevalence and victory of evil 
 
176 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 over good, our race has been brought forward, 
 in a way which no human skill could have de- 
 vised, from good to good. To call this accident, 
 would be merely to confess ourselves unable to 
 render a reason for it : would be simply to 
 refuse to allow the same inference in this 
 case which we should be compelled to allow in 
 any similar one. And that inference, which 
 the progress of our argument is now ripe for 
 stating, is, and must surely be, this: that 
 watching over the destinies of man, unseen 
 by us, working in ways mysterious to us, 
 checking and tempering the evil tendencies of 
 men, and bringing good out of them, is a 
 superior and all-wise Being, who is an enemy 
 to evil and a friend to good. 
 
 This is the very least, surely, that any fair 
 and reasonable mind can gather from the 
 phenomena which we have been considering. 
 And it is something, that this has been ever 
 the general feeling of mankind ; of the savage 
 as well as the civilized, of the ignorant as well 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 177 
 
 as the learned. All have concurred in feeling 
 at tlie bottom of their hearts, that the influence 
 which guides the helm of this world’s affairs 
 is not man himself, is not blind accident, but is 
 a Power above man, and exercised continually 
 over and in spite of man, with a wisdom and 
 goodness which man cannot penetrate nor 
 foresee. This I say is something. Compared 
 with what we believe and know, it may be no 
 very great thing : still it is enough to make 
 the unbeliever and sceptic distrust his own 
 view, when he finds all mankind against him. 
 
 But let us advance further. This Great Being 
 who does good and loves the good, and whose 
 face is against them that do evil, — do we 
 know any more about Him, or is His ex- 
 istence and working only the inference of 
 thinking minds from what they observe around 
 them ? Because, if so, it would seem after all, 
 as if man himself were the cause of God doing 
 any positive conscious good to the mind of man. 
 If God is altogether dependent for recognition 
 
178 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 among men on man’s finding Him out for him- 
 self, and if He has never personally interfered 
 in the manifestation of Himself, it leaves ns, 
 though not exactly where we were, yet hardly, 
 for any worthy purpose, at all advanced. Our 
 next question then is, Has this Great Being, 
 who thus mysteriously rules the destinies of 
 man for good, ever manifested Himself to man ? 
 Has He ever deigned to look forth from the 
 darkness which enwraps His counsels ? Obvi- 
 ously this is a question which must be answered 
 with extreme caution. Men are timid — are 
 superstitious. They may mistake the workings 
 of nature for His personal presence, or the 
 ravings of madness for His prophetic voice, or 
 the gathered wisdom of the shrewd or the aged 
 among themselves for revelations from Him. 
 We must look well to this, and must make our 
 answer safe from being misled by these mistakes 
 of men. Our answer then must be this, situated 
 as we are, and believing what we do : — It is our 
 belief, that this Being who rules over us for our 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 179 
 
 good, and hates and averts our evil, has mani- 
 fested Himself to us : has interfered personally 
 in the affairs of the world, and uttered His 
 voice to us. And this our belief rests not on 
 any such insecure foundations as those just 
 now disclaimed — not on mistakes which may 
 have been made by the timid and supersti- 
 tious, but on the fact and character of a 
 permanent record being in existence of God’s 
 manifestation of Himself to men, which to 
 our minds carries evidence of truth with it; 
 and when looked at in itself, and compared 
 with facts around us, proves to us that He 
 has so manifested Himself. 
 
 But it may be said, though the Bible may 
 not be the product of timidity or of mere 
 superstition, how do we know that it has 
 not been imposed upon us by designing per- 
 sons, who have made God speak that which 
 they would have Him say ? Or again, how 
 do we know that we have not in it merely 
 the old stories and legends of a particular 
 
180 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 nation, gathered together by some wise and 
 able hand, and imposed on the world as 
 being what we suppose it to be ? The great 
 and final answer to all such questions must 
 be found in that which I just now mentioned, 
 the comparison of the Bible with facts around 
 us. If, on doing this, it appear that it is 
 totally unlike any other book on earth, and 
 most of all unlike any books which have 
 either set up for divine, or have recorded 
 the primitive legends of the nations : if it 
 appear that it is the only book in the world 
 which tells us what the world is, and why 
 it is, then it is at least matter for our serious 
 consideration, whether it may not be that 
 which it professes to be, a voice from One 
 who is above the world, and guides the 
 world. If, again, it be found that it is the 
 only book in the world whose depths it is 
 impossible to exhaust : that whereas every 
 saying of human wisdom has an end and a 
 circumference, may be seen through and sur- 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 181 
 
 passed, but the simplest saying of this book 
 is inexhaustible by man, and enters on ground 
 higher than he can attain unto, it may be 
 worth our while to ask whether this be not 
 evidence, that a wiser mind than any among 
 the sons of men was at work in the writers 
 of the Bible. Again, — and this is immediately 
 to our present subject, — if we find, on examin- 
 ing this book, that He who professes to speak 
 in it agrees in character with this same mighty, 
 and good, and wise Being, who brings His good 
 out of man’s evil, it certainly would look to 
 reasonable men as if the two, the Author of 
 the Bible and the Euler and Guide of man- 
 kind for good, were one and the same. But 
 yet again: if we find that this is the only 
 book in the world which speaks direct to 
 the conscience and spirit of man : that all 
 good, and all good men, have ever been 
 found among those who value and believe 
 in this book : and that when a man begins 
 to doubt respecting it, when he surrenders 
 
182 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 his faith in it, when he allows human guid- 
 ance to supersede it, from that time his moral 
 being is affected for the worse, — we may well 
 conclude that the book belongs to, and comes 
 from, Him who is on the side of all good 
 against all evil ; in other words, that it is bound 
 up with God, and God’s rule among men, and 
 the revelation of God’s character to men. 
 
 To carry this argument no further, as not 
 being our main one at present, God does in 
 this book, which we have all reason to be- 
 lieve is His manifestation of Himself to us 
 men, plainly declare the truth which we 
 have been gathering from the aspect of the 
 moral world around us — that He is the up- 
 holder of the good man against the evil man. 
 “ The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, 
 and His ears are open to his prayers: but 
 the face of the Lord is against them that do 
 evil.” In all earthly matters we may take 
 this for granted, that good is stronger than 
 evil, and in the end shall prevail, because it 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 183 
 
 has God on its side. Things shall not be- 
 come worse and worse in the world taken as 
 a whole; but even the apparent prevalence 
 of evil in some portions, due to man’s own 
 depravity, shall be overruled by God for ulti- 
 mate good. This is an immense comfort to 
 every one who will look on it aright. It in- 
 spires courage in our efforts for good : it 
 shows us that the issue is not always as we 
 suppose it to be, but that very often there 
 is good doing where we least know and sus- 
 pect it. 
 
 And here again, passing from the mere 
 general consideration of a belief in an over- 
 ruling God to our belief in the God and 
 Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we shall find 
 our grounds of comfort immensely strength- 
 ened, and our vision exceedingly cleared. 
 During this present time, our ascended and 
 glorified Saviour is waiting till all things are 
 put under His feet. The whole moral world 
 is by degrees being subdued to Him. By 
 
184 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 various dispensations of God’s Providence, the 
 good is prevailing, the evil is being defeated 
 and put out. Now, if ever, is it true, that 
 the good man is God’s especial care, and that 
 all scope is given for all the best and highest 
 graces of humanity to expand and flourish. 
 The perfect pattern of the Eedeemer is before 
 us; the witnessing Spirit is within us; the 
 many mansions are being prepared for us, by 
 Him who will return to take us thither. He 
 that will love life and see good days, is not 
 dependent on promises of earthly prosperity. 
 His life is hid with Christ in God : his good 
 days are to come in that place whither his 
 Saviour Christ has gone before. 
 
 What a comfort it is for us to feel, in the 
 midst of dark and perplexing circumstances, 
 that the mighty and all-wise Being who is 
 overruling all things for His glory, and bring- 
 ing good out of man’s evil, is our own God; 
 that His covenanted mercies our ours ; that in 
 Christ Jesus all His promises are for ever 
 
ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 185 
 
 ratified to each one, even the least and most 
 helpless among us ! What a powerful motive 
 does it furnish to all good, what a discourage- 
 ment from all evil, to remember that we have 
 now no mere general assurance that God is 
 on the side of good, but a positive promise, 
 that all power in heaven and earth is given 
 to Him, who laid down His life for the truth : 
 and that one day, all who have followed Him 
 in the paths of truth and holiness shall be 
 like Him — partakers of His victory — changed 
 into His spotless purity — inheritors of the new 
 heaven and earth, wherein dwelleth righteous- 
 ness ; which He hath purchased for them, and 
 wherein they shall reign with Him, when truth 
 shall finally have been established, and all evil 
 shall for ever have been put down ! 
 
186 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 IV. 
 
 DIVINE AND HUMAN AGENCY. 
 
 When King David, after his sin in numbering 
 the people, was offered his choice among three 
 different modes of punishment, he replied 
 (2 Sam. xxiv. 14), “Let us fall now into the 
 hand of the Lord, for His mercies are great; 
 and let me not fall into the hand of man.” 
 These words point to a tendency in the 
 human mind, with reference to our belief in 
 God’s Providence, which it may be instructive 
 to discuss and illustrate. I believe that some 
 of our former meditations will throw light on 
 it : and it in turn may perhaps make them 
 better understood. 
 
 The habit is, that of less regarding God as 
 acting on us and around us, when human 
 agency is also employed, than when it is 
 absent. We are apt, it is true, to be some- 
 what inconsistent here, as in other portions 
 of our recognition of Providence ; but here 
 
ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 187 
 
 perhaps, as we before said in those cases, the 
 inconsistency may be unavoidable, and may 
 indeed be the only right path to pursue. A 
 man comes to his death by the culpable 
 negligence or want of foresight of a fellow- 
 man. We regard that negligence or want of 
 foresight as the assignable cause of his death. 
 We say, if that matter had been better cared 
 for, — if that dangerous path had been fenced, 
 or that rail better laid, or that violent disease 
 taken in time, — the man might have been alive 
 now. Yet in the very next breath we say, that 
 it pleased God to take him to Himself: and 
 we deal with the fact of his death in terms 
 which imply that no human power could 
 have saved him. This double way of speak- 
 ing remarkably illustrates the manner in which 
 we find ourselves compelled to hold and pro- 
 claim both truths, — man’s freedom of action 
 and God’s sovereign power of disposal. That 
 the two here, as everywhere, seem inconsistent 
 when brought into contact, is not a fault that 
 
188 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 we can help and correct, but a necessary con- 
 sequence of the infirmity of our nature, and 
 the narrowness of our comprehension. In 
 reality, God just as much acts where men 
 are concerned in bringing about the result; 
 and men have just as much freedom of action 
 ■where God overrules the result ; but we cannot 
 put the two together ; we can only apprehend 
 these truths separately. And separated, we do 
 apprehend them; we speak of the event on 
 one side as if man caused it, and on the other 
 as if God pre-ordained it. 
 
 Now something of this unavoidable inconsist- 
 ency is to be observed in the saying of David 
 which I quoted, and perhaps a little more. Three 
 things were offered to him, for his choice of one. 
 “ Shall seven years of famine come unto thee in 
 thy land ? or wilt thou flee three months before 
 thine enemies while they pursue thee ? or that 
 there be three days’ pestilence in thy land ? ” 
 
 First of all, the choice was given him by 
 God Himself, in whose power it plainly lay 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 189 
 
 to bring about any one of the three. The 
 dearth, from which was to arise the famine : 
 the war, which was to bring in the enemies : 
 the seeds and access of the pestilence ; all 
 these were, by the very terms of the offer, to 
 be of God’s ordaining and bringing about. 
 The hostile forces which were to pursue would 
 be as much under His control as the disease, 
 or the sun and the clouds. Whichsoever of the 
 three befell the penitent king, he would still fall 
 into the hands of God, and not of man. What 
 then, in his estimation, made the difference ? I 
 may say, what would make it in our own ? for 
 I doubt not that we all feel the same as he did. 
 Is it not this — that in the one case man appears 
 as the agent, whereas in the two others he does 
 not appear, but God only? We may say that 
 the answer, though a beautiful one, is one in- 
 dicative of weak faith; that if the king had 
 been strong in faith, he would equally have 
 seen himself safe in the great mercies of God, 
 whether man intervened between God and 
 
190 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 liimself or not. And doubtless this is so ; but 
 even though the faith may be weak, it is, I 
 believe, not only one which we are obliged to 
 be contented with, but of that sort which God 
 means us to have. All that happens to us 
 is naturally and necessarily divided off by us 
 into these two classes of events : those which are 
 man’s doing, and those which are God’s doing. 
 The merchant insures his ship, or undertakes 
 safely to convey the merchandise entrusted to 
 him : and in so doing, he speaks of “ the act of 
 God meaning, the storm which may imperil, 
 or the calm which may detain his vessel. 
 Inquiry is made into the cause of a death, and 
 if it has been sudden, or unassignable, it is said 
 to have taken place “ by the visitation of God.” 
 Let us follow out our habits of this kind a little 
 further. It appears also, that in great and solemn 
 matters we are more ready to acknowledge 
 the interposition of God, than in ordinary and 
 less significant ones ; even where the difference 
 of the presence or absence of human agency 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 191 
 
 does not occur. We do not scruple to say in 
 any society, that escape from accident, or 
 recovery from grievous sickness, has been 
 providential. All acquiesce in one sentiment, 
 and even the scorner’s brow is for once relaxed 
 into approval. But if the same merciful pre- 
 servation has extended to the prevention of 
 accident altogether, or to the long maintenance 
 of health uninterrupted, we do not equally 
 characterize these as the act of God, but almost 
 take them as matters of course ; and we should 
 pass with the world for enthusiasts or weak- 
 minded persons, if we spoke otherwise about 
 them. This practice, though seemingly different 
 from that other, is in reality the same. As 
 long as the world goes on without any inter- 
 ruption to its ordinary course, we seem to have 
 no reason to attribute that course to anything 
 beyond ordinary agencies, which appear to us 
 as if they always had been, and always would 
 continue to be; but when there comes an 
 interruption in the slightest degree unlooked 
 
192 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 for, then we begin to speak of Divine Provi- 
 dence, and to see God interfering. This last 
 fact is remarkably illustrated by remembering 
 that sometimes our recognition or non-recogni- 
 tion of God’s Hand takes place without any 
 reference to the relative importance of events, 
 but entirely with reference to their usual or 
 unusual character. The rising of the sun each 
 morning by the revolution of the earth on 
 her axis, — the bringing in of summer and 
 winter by the inclination of that axis, — the 
 drawing over us of the cloud from which 
 descends the fertilizing shower, — these are in 
 reality immeasurably greater events, and more 
 eloquent of divine power, than many things 
 in which we all see and acknowledge the 
 present hand of God. Yet in these we never 
 see it, or even speak of it. Sometimes, indeed, 
 when Nature’s operations assume a startling 
 or terrifying character, we seem compelled to 
 see God acting in them. The thunderings and 
 lightnings of the overcharged air, the storm 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 193 
 
 by whicli the balance of the atmosphere is 
 restored, these seem to ns evident proofs of 
 God’s interference: whereas that interference 
 is in reality as much proved by the opening 
 of the bud, or by the withering of the herbage 
 after continued drought. We cannot see this 
 matter as it really is, but only as it is rela- 
 tively to ourselves. For every event our 
 minds strive to supply some agent : if we see 
 man, if we see the ordinary laws of nature 
 at work by our side, we are apt to look no 
 further, and to seek for no higher cause : but if 
 all is blank, and the result only is seen, then 
 we seem to rise upward in thought through 
 the empty heavens, till we come to the Throne 
 and Him that sitteth thereon. This is one 
 form of the feeling induced by our infirmity. 
 And another is, as we have partly seen, that as 
 long as all is quiet, and our minds are not 
 unusually excited, we are content to look no 
 further than natural causes; but the moment 
 our fears are aroused, the moment we are 
 
 o 
 
194 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 anyhow deeply stirred in spirit, we see and 
 we acknowledge Him in whose hands are all 
 our ways. 
 
 Let us go on to speak of the use, and of the 
 abuse, of this practice. Doubtless it has its bene- 
 ficent use, or God would not have so universally 
 implanted it in our nature — in the best and 
 godliest of men, as well as in those who regard 
 Him not. And I think this use is not difficult 
 to ascertain. “ We walk by faith, not by sight/’ 
 But it is plain that while this is true, it can be 
 true only of the main turnings of our course, 
 not of every step at every time. The evidence 
 of our senses must be our guide in a world 
 which is apprehended by our senses, and faith 
 in things unseen must come in where the 
 world around us threatens to overbear our 
 higher principles and instincts. If a man 
 always, and day by day, guided every portion 
 of his course by consciousness of the things 
 unseen, and not according to the things seen, 
 he would become a dreamer, and would be 
 
ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 195 
 
 unfit to move and act in this working-day 
 world. And just so in the case which we are 
 considering. The constant thought and re- 
 cognition of God is good, is necessary for us 
 all, who would live for any worthy purpose. 
 
 “ Happy the man who sees a God employed 
 In all the good and ill that chequers life.” 
 
 But to refer every ordinary matter, every insig- 
 nificant result, to Him as its immediate agent, 
 would on the one hand bring in superstition and 
 morbid fancy, and on the other would tend to 
 diminish our reverence for God Himself. It 
 would bring in superstition and morbid fancy : 
 for it would lead us ever to be looking for the 
 Almighty ha^d in those minute details of its 
 working, which are concealed from us ; and we 
 should be attributing to God our own petty 
 ways of acting, and our own insufficient and 
 unworthy motives. "We should be ever regard- 
 ing ourselves as His chiefly favoured ones, and 
 the misfortunes of others as attributable to His 
 vengeance for that in them which is faulty in 
 
196 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 our eyes. The last dread famine in Ireland 
 was at one and, the same time regarded by 
 Protestants as a judgment on Popery, and by 
 Eomanists as a judgment on the land for the 
 success of Protestant missions. Such a circum- 
 stance should teach us caution, and show us 
 that it is sometimes good to withhold our 
 decision on the purposes and workings of 
 God’s Providence. It does not become sober- 
 minded Christians, who believe that He doeth 
 all things well, to betake themselves to finding 
 fault with His arrangements, if the showers fall 
 more or less frequently than usual, or if a 
 partial blighting of the fruits of the earth 
 diminish the prosperity of o*ie particular 
 portion of our globe. The exceptional weather 
 which spoils a harvest, may be His means of 
 averting a pestilence; and the calamity which 
 causes one branch of industry to stagnate, 
 may be a call from Him to waken thenceforth 
 better and higher energies of a people. We 
 must not judge Him, but trust Him. His hand 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 197 
 
 is too large for ns to see all it does at once; 
 its very opening to shed on us the blessings 
 with which it is loaded may crush some frail 
 image on which we think our well-being 
 depends. Extreme sensitiveness to God’s acts 
 is not true resignation to His will. 
 
 Again, I said, that such minute apportion- 
 ment of all things to His immediate agency 
 tends to diminish reverence for Him. This 
 indeed would follow from its producing super- 
 stition; for where there is superstition, there 
 cannot be reverence. But it is also very plain 
 on other grounds. “God is in heaven, and 
 thou on earth,” says the Holy Spirit in Scrip- 
 ture: “therefore let thy words be few.” That 
 is, not only let thy prayer be short, and sober, 
 and reverent, — avoiding the familiarity induced 
 by many words, — but the meaning doubtless 
 extends further, to this, — let thy surmises and 
 sayings about God and His acts be few, and 
 certain, and reverent also. It has not pleased 
 Him to move visibly among us, nor to hold 
 
198 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 converse with us face to face. We look before 
 us, and He is not there; and behind us, but 
 we cannot perceive His presence. He withholds 
 Himself from us, that we may adore Him, and 
 magnify Him in our thoughts. When it became 
 necessary, in His great purposes, that He should 
 be seen by man on earth, men did not reverence 
 Him, but they despised Him, and cruelly 
 entreated Him. His ways are not our ways : 
 when we make them our ways, we so far 
 degrade Him. The poor Papist, who has a 
 saint for every turn in life, falls to cursing his 
 saints, when those turns are not to his advan- 
 tage. He who is not content without seeing 
 God everywhere, would, from the very infirmity 
 of our constitution, reverence Him nowhere. 
 So that it is a good and wise provision of Him 
 who made us, that men in general are not given 
 to morbid and minute tracing of His working in 
 ordinary life. Their thoughts about Him are 
 thus kept within the bounds of sobriety and 
 due reverence, and are attuned to the feelings 
 
ON PROVIDENCE, 
 
 199 
 
 towards Him which He would have us entertain ; 
 so that when we are brought face to face with 
 Him, we meet Him with becoming awe, and 
 abase ourselves in dust and ashes. 
 
 But the tendency and the practice bring with 
 them their abuse likewise. And that abuse 
 consists in this, that we are too often given to 
 forget God altogether, where man is concerned. 
 It is not easy to acquit David himself of some- 
 thing like this fault. If enemies were to pursue 
 him while he fled before them, it seemed to 
 him as if he would be exposed to all the fury 
 and all the caprice of man’s vindictive agency. 
 And so it is very often with us. We look too 
 much to man, we put too much confidence in 
 human agents. We hope for prosperity, or we 
 fear thwarting, and the access of adversity, 
 simply and entirely from man, forgetting that 
 to every man on earth God says, “ Hitherto 
 shalt thou go, but no further.” And this evil 
 habit of forgetting God extends far wider than 
 the mere looking to man for good or evil. 
 
200 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 Thousands among ourselves, not unbelievers by 
 profession, pass through the realities of life 
 without a thought of God and His sovereign 
 disposal of them. Their course day by day, and 
 year by year, is led without any consciousness 
 that they are in his Almighty hand. I do not 
 mean that they never pray, or never go to 
 church ; but that in the inner chamber of their 
 hearts, where plans are made, and where joys 
 and sorrows have their source, God is not pre- 
 sent ; their springs of life are godless, and they 
 have lost all that can make life worth living. 
 
 Another abuse of the habit of which I am 
 treating is, a bold and presumptuous spirit, 
 which not only leaves out God, but openly de- 
 spises Him, as taking no part in human affairs. 
 This may not seem to be common; but it is 
 in fact far more common than we suppose. 
 Legendary history is full of stories illustrating 
 the punishment of such presumption. We will 
 take but one, and that for the sake of putting 
 clearly before us the spirit which I mean. It 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 201 
 
 is tliat, repeated in various forms at different 
 places on our island coast, of the merchant 
 adventurer now in sight of land after a pros- 
 perous voyage, and reminded that he owes 
 thanks to God for his safety, and that of his 
 charge. “Nay,” he replies, “thank the good 
 ship and the fair wind.” And then in the story, 
 the bank of clouds gathers in the "West, and 
 the vengeance of Him who was neglected 
 descends on the ship and her captain, and the 
 pious adviser alone escapes to tell the tale. 
 These stories may or may not be themselves mat- 
 ters of fact : but they point to a great fact in the 
 habits of ordinary men : a confidence in self and 
 in human skill, and a casting off of God as the 
 disposer of the issues of our actions. It is not 
 that we can afford to dispense with any human 
 effort of diligence or skill; these are God’s 
 appointed means of working among us and by 
 us ; but it is, that as He is pleased not to work 
 without these, so these must not be calculated 
 on without taking into account His works, 
 
202 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 apart from which they are of no avail. The 
 advice of the old Puritan general to his soldiers, 
 to trust in God and keep their powder dry, 
 was, homely as it may seem, sound and good. 
 He would be equally wrong who, professing to 
 trust in God, let his powder get wet, with him 
 who took the proper precaution, but left God out 
 of his calculation. Among men of the world, 
 among those engaged in business and working 
 for this world’s wealth, the latter fault is much 
 the more common of the two. We do not 
 remember God as we ought. Things here stand 
 in His place, and veil Him from our sight. We 
 take into account everything else first, and Him 
 last : or far too often, Him not at all. 
 
 But let us recur, in drawing our meditation 
 to a close, to the real comfort to be derived 
 from the habit which we have been considering, 
 in cases where nothing stands between us and 
 the Almighty hand. It may be a weakness to 
 recognise God more in these than in others ; but 
 it is a weakness wherein is strength and con- 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 203 
 
 solation. When the frame gives way under 
 sickness, and the foundations of life are sapped ; 
 when calamity over which we have no control 
 desecrates our homes and hearts; when our 
 flesh and heart fail, not because of man, but 
 because of One greater than man, who is plead- 
 ing with us face to face; is it not mercifully 
 ordained, that in all such cases the universal 
 tendency is to see God working, to acknowledge 
 ourselves to be in His hand, to feel that His 
 mercies are over all, and are great? 
 
 And is it not also a mercy, that we all 
 feel what David did, that it is God, and not 
 man, whom we wish to have for the disposer 
 of our fate ? that from the infirmity and 
 caprice of our fellow-creatures we are ever glad 
 to take refuge with Him whose mercies are 
 great, and who we know doeth all things well ? 
 
 We feel, that man may mistake us, man 
 may deal unjustly and unkindly with us, 
 man may serve his own purposes at our ex- 
 pense; man may be wanting in sympathy, in 
 
204 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 equity, in lenity : but none of these can be with 
 Him whose tender mercies are over all His 
 works : the Judge of all the earth must be just : 
 the Saviour of mankind must care for those 
 whom He bought with His blood : the blessed 
 Spirit of God will not easily forsake nor repro- 
 bate those with whom it is His sacred office to 
 dwell and to plead continually. 
 
 “ Let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for 
 His mercies are great : and let us not fall into 
 the hand of man.” 
 
 V. 
 
 EFFECT ON MEN OF GOD’S ORDINARY AND 
 EXTRAORDINARY DEALINGS. 
 
 Our Lord, in the remarkable parable of the rich 
 man and Lazarus, puts into the mouth of Abra- 
 ham, the Father of the faithful, this saying : that 
 if the rich man's brethren believed not Moses and 
 the Prophets, neither would they be persuaded 
 though one were to rise from the dead : in other 
 words, that if the ordinary means of grace are 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 205 
 
 powerless upon a man’s heart and life, the extra- 
 ordinary judgments of God will he powerless also. 
 
 Let us, in this meditation, apply this declara- 
 tion of our Lord (for it is manifestly delivered 
 under His sanction, and for us) to ourselves. 
 Let us do so in the manner in which we have 
 been, in our other meditations, attempting to 
 deal with sacred truths and their application: 
 by a matter-of-fact examination into the things 
 which actually happen in our own hearts and 
 lives. Let us in this manner try to make the 
 truth of our Lord’s saying apparent, and to force 
 it in upon our thoughts as a reality. The form 
 which our inquiry will take is this : What is 
 the effect on men’s minds of the ordinary means 
 of grace and course of God’s providence ? What 
 again is the effect on men’s minds of God’s 
 exceptional and extraordinary judgments ? And 
 then combining the two together, we shall try 
 to show that if the former effect do not succeed 
 in changing the life, it is not likely that the 
 latter will do so. 
 
206 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 First then, what is the effect on men’s minds 
 of the ordinary means of grace and course of 
 God’s providence ? What might we expect it 
 to be, from the very nature of those things 
 and of the minds of men ? Let us look at 
 any human character : our own individual 
 character, for instance. What have been the 
 greatest and most lasting effects ever produced 
 on it ? How is it, in other words, that we 
 come to be what we now find ourselves ? Let 
 us examine, in any case, into some habit 
 which has grown up in us, so that it is a 
 part of our very self. How came it about? 
 We can trace it to constant insensible influence 
 of some kind, and mostly to influence exerted 
 in early life. And when we come to add 
 together a multitude of these influences exerted 
 on us from without and from within, and take 
 into account circumstances which have lain all 
 round us throughout life, we arrive at some- 
 thing like a reason for the greater part of the 
 habits, and likings, and dislikes, and desires, 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 207 
 
 and tendencies of our individual character. 
 These grew up by degrees ; we could not trace 
 their growth day by day — hardly year by year : 
 but when we look at the scenes amidst which 
 we lived, and the persons with whom our lot was 
 cast, and, to use a Scripture expression, the 
 times that went over us, we see, taking a large 
 and general view, how each of these habits and 
 propensities must have grown up, even though 
 we could not trace it. Now just such, I believe, 
 is the usual effect of the ordinary means of 
 grace and calls of God’s providence, where they 
 affect men at all. The case where they do not 
 is not at present under consideration, but will 
 be by-and-by. Where a man is affected by 
 them, their working is of this gentle, gradual, 
 deep kind. His life becomes cast into their 
 mould : his daily thoughts run in the channels 
 of their great onward flows and tendencies ; his 
 actions take colour from this cast and com- 
 plexion of his thoughts. It is here as it is 
 with all matters of habit. The man whose days 
 
208 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 have been spent in the plains cannot be inured 
 to mountain climbing, nor are the forms and 
 phenomena of mountain scenery familiar to his 
 thoughts and imaginations : take him to the hill 
 country, and all would be strange to him. But 
 to the child of the mountains all these things 
 are matter of course, however wonderful they 
 may be in themselves. The masses of vast 
 and shadowy rock, the clouds resting half- 
 way down the mountain side, the torrent ever 
 sounding in its impetuous strength, the cataract 
 with its rainbow, — these, which are wonders 
 to others, are the very materials of daily life 
 to him. The plainsman wearies, and calls for 
 rest, with a few hours' breasting of the hill 
 track, up which his daily work has carried 
 the mountaineer, till his very frame has knit 
 into aptitude for the task. And not otherwise 
 is it with the effect on men's minds of the 
 ordinary means of grace and course of God's 
 providence. Those miracles of Divine good- 
 ness, which make up the history of redemp- 
 
ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 209 
 
 tion, become a portion of the very life itself. 
 Difficulties which surpass human comprehen- 
 sion, constitute the daily path and walk of 
 faith and holy practice. Where the unac- 
 customed step would falter, and the muscles 
 would immediately weary, the habituated 
 believer goes on his way fearless and con- 
 tented. The thews and sinews of his mind, 
 so to speak, have gathered the requisite 
 strength, — and he can climb the crag without 
 murmuring and without weariness: his eye 
 has been long used to the abyss underlying 
 his vision, and he can gaze down from the 
 cliff-path without giddiness. Effects of this 
 kind are not half enough taken into account 
 among us. They are, for us who have grown 
 up from childhood in the faith, our greatest 
 mercies, and our most precious possessions. 
 Take any of the great doctrines on which the 
 life of the Church is built : the Incarnation, the 
 Atonement, the indwelling of the Spirit, or any 
 other; present such a doctrine to the unac- 
 
 p 
 
210 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 customed mind, and what is the effect ? Look 
 up at yonder mountain side. Do you see that 
 track zigzagging along the face, as it appears, 
 of the perpendicular rock ? It glitters, as you 
 look, in the sun, moist and slippery with the 
 never-failing mists. What human foot could 
 venture thither in safety? Yet day by day 
 along that path passes the woodman, singing as 
 he goes to his work ; yet day by day along that 
 dizzy track gaily pass his little children with 
 their father’s mid-day meal, sportively plucking 
 the bright blossoms that peep from under the 
 patches of snow. Even so is it with the blessed 
 doctrines on which the soul lives and works in 
 God’s Church. To the unbeliever they are full 
 of difficulties — they seem impossible : he gazes 
 on them, and wonders that any can receive 
 them and work in their strength : but to him 
 who has grown in their presence and been 
 accustomed to their power, they are things 
 familiar, and their difficulties do not present 
 themselves : their majesty has passed into his 
 
ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 211 
 
 spirit, and their living efficiency has long 
 wrought within him. And we may well believe 
 that it is for this reason, among others, that it 
 has pleased the Lord that reception into His 
 Church by Holy Baptism should not wait for 
 the mature understanding, but should be the 
 very first thing in life: in order that the 
 blessed effects of His mighty Love for us 
 should be produced at the greatest possible 
 advantage : in order that “ Heaven ” may “ lie 
 about us in our infancy,” and holy and saving 
 truth may be carried into our young minds 
 long before we are aware of its presence. To 
 the Christian child, no playfellow of earliest 
 years is closer to memory and affection, than 
 the Child of Bethlehem : no tales of wonder 
 more familiar, than the miracles of the Saviour’s 
 mercy: to him, the Cross, and the Tomb, and 
 the Besurrection morning, and the ascending 
 up into heaven, and the sitting at the right 
 hand of God, are no strange things, to be 
 questioned by the doubting reason, and mas- 
 
212 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 tered by the understanding : but have formed, 
 from his earliest recollection, the very clothing 
 and inhabitation of his thoughts. 
 
 One word, before we pass to our next point, 
 on the outward effect produced now, and con- 
 tinually, on us who believe, by the ordinary 
 means of grace and course of Providence. 
 And here, it may be conceived, the result of 
 inquiry will be almost insensible. Between 
 two men, both brought up as Christians, both 
 holding the faith, both living correct and 
 blameless lives, but one a regular attendant 
 at public worship, a constant reader of his 
 Bible, and the other a neglecter of both, what 
 difference can we perceive? The question, 
 it seems to me, is just as if it were asked 
 respecting two buildings, both outwardly com- 
 plete, in one of which the work of fitting 
 and adorning was diligently carried on, while 
 in the other it was utterly neglected. In 
 outward appearance, both are the same. The 
 mere passer-by knows no difference between 
 
ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 213 
 
 tlie two. But enter within : see the two 
 houses as any one sees them who knows their 
 inmost recesses, and how vast is the real 
 difference! The one is gradually preparing 
 for the masters use ; the other is a mere shell, 
 worthless for human habitation. Or let us 
 take the same truth in the very illustration 
 given by our Lord Himself. Ten virgins went 
 out to meet the bridegroom. Five had pro- 
 vided for delay, and had taken care to be 
 ready whenever He should come : five had 
 made no provision. Here we have before us 
 just the difference in question. All these 
 are Christian souls, come out from the world 
 into the waiting Church of Christ : and our 
 Lord in the parable sets before us the differ- 
 ence between those who by the use of the 
 means of grace make continual preparation 
 for His coming, and those who make no such 
 preparation. The effect of these ordinary means 
 of grace is, to fit and adorn the soul for God’s 
 work, and for God’s summons to Himself; 
 
214 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 to supply the waste and wear of daily contact 
 with the world, that there may be oil in the 
 vessel, when the cry is made, that the Bride- 
 groom cometh. He who pays regard to God’s 
 ordinances, will find the blessing when he 
 needs it most ; he who neglects them, will 
 find himself, at that hour, all unprepared. 
 And it will be well if he be not shut out, in 
 the day when the Lord gathers His people. 
 
 Such then seems to be the effect on men 
 of the ordinary means of grace and the calls 
 and advices of God’s providence, when they 
 are listened to and received into the heart. 
 
 And now let us ask ourselves, what is the 
 effect on men’s minds of God’s exceptional 
 and extraordinary judgments ? Let us see 
 what we mean by these terms. The parable 
 to which we referred in the beginning gives 
 us a notable example : the rising of one from 
 the dead. But though this exactly suited 
 the case in the parable, it will not suit ours, 
 because we do not now see around us such 
 
ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 215 
 
 exercise of divine power as the raising of the 
 dead. And manifestly it will not do to say 
 that there are as great miracles going on 
 around us, if men would consider and per- 
 ceive them : for by the very nature of the case 
 we want for our present purpose something 
 which men cannot help perceiving, and being 
 affected by. Still, the instance in the parable 
 will guide us to the kind of incident of which 
 we are in search. Anything which is unusual, 
 and breaks in on the ordinary daily course of 
 events assumed as likely to happen, is of the 
 kind which we seek: especially if it bear a 
 character of solemnity, and carry a serious 
 thought down into a man whether he will or 
 no. Of such a kind, for example, is the oc- 
 currence of a death in the midst of us ; a sudden 
 interposition of One who is able to make things 
 about us to be as He wills, and not as we 
 will. And this is perhaps the commonest 
 instance of God’s extraordinary judgments, 
 happening as it does every day somewhere, 
 
216 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 and many times in the experience of ns all 
 among our own kinsfolk and acquaintance. 
 Now what is the usual effect of such an 
 event on men’s minds? We may give two 
 answers to the question : first as regards those 
 who are affected by the ordinary means of 
 grace, and course of God’s providence, — and 
 then as regards those who are not affected 
 by them. What is the effect on us who be- 
 lieve, of such an event as that which we have 
 mentioned ? I mean, the effect on our religious 
 lives and on our own characters ? Of course 
 there are various degrees of sorrow and regret, 
 as we approached nearer in intimacy or friend- 
 ship to any one who is. taken from us : and 
 these must not be altogether left out; for all 
 sorrow is a power over the soul, and brings a 
 lull within, during which the voice of God 
 may be heard. But I mean principally, what 
 is the abiding effect on our religious lives, 
 on our watchfulness for a like summons in 
 our own case, on our estimate of this world 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 217 
 
 and of eternity, on our thoughts of other men 
 and of ourselves ? Doubtless, if we be men 
 really in earnest, there is an effect: and 0 
 thank God for it. But of what kind ? If I 
 mistake not, in our case, just of the same 
 kind, allowing for necessary differences, as 
 that of the ordinary means of grace and oc- 
 currences of life. As with them it would 
 be impossible to say what part each service, 
 each Holy Communion, each day's more expe- 
 rience of God’s works and ways, bore in the 
 building up and fitting the Christian charac- 
 ter, — and yet we know that each did bear 
 some part : so is it ever likewise with these 
 extraordinary judgments of God. They pass 
 over us; for a short time thought is solem- 
 nized, and exuberant spirits are checked, and 
 we feel this life less secure, and another life 
 more real and nearer to us : and then time 
 goes by, and the past event, like all past 
 events, comparatively loses its power : present 
 and ordinary things flow in, and resume their 
 
218 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 influences over us; and, to outward seeming, 
 all is again as if the judgment had not been. 
 There is, nevertheless, as I said, a certain abid- 
 ing effect : but like that other, it is gradual, 
 and insensible, and accumulative ; by the re- 
 currence of these warnings we become mani- 
 festly and insensibly more prepared against 
 our own time : by the recurrence of sorrow 
 the heart is softened : by the recurrence of 
 kindly and sympathising feelings we have 
 gentler thoughts of others, and less selfish 
 ones about our own likings and interests. But 
 all this result is produced, let it be remem- 
 bered, on hearts already believing, already 
 predisposed by habit to be turned in the direc- 
 tion of God’s preventing and warning grace: 
 and again, all this is produced, not by the 
 sudden and overwhelming force of the event 
 itself, but in spite of that force being noto- 
 riously evanescent, and having seemingly been 
 exerted in vain. 
 
 And if we now pass on to the matter most 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 219 
 
 directly at issue, and ask, what effect will 
 God’s exceptional and extraordinary judgments 
 produce, on one who neglects or refuses to hear 
 the ordinary means of grace and calls of Provi- 
 dence ? our answer will surely not he doubtful 
 nor difficult. On the occurrence of one of 
 those judgments, his thoughts, like those of the 
 other, will be solemnized for a time. There is 
 not a heart so light, or a life so worldly, but 
 the sound of the death-bell carries on it some 
 grave reminding, however unwelcome, and how- 
 ever dissimulated. But what is the effect in 
 after time ? Por good, absolutely nothing. 
 The gentle gradual influence, which in the 
 other case remained after the first shock had 
 passed away, does not in this case exist at all : 
 the man is unaccustomed to the daily warnings 
 and remindings of grace and instruction: his 
 heart is essentially hard, and the repeated and 
 undecided shocks of judgments of this kind 
 only harden it still more. No sinner is so 
 hardened, as one who lives in the midst of 
 
220 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 warnings and terror. Incredible as it may 
 seem, we read that no robbers are so brutal, 
 no murderers so pitiless, as those who wander 
 among the wounded after a battle, where every 
 scene of suffering, one would think, would be 
 enough to melt the stoutest heart. Again, it 
 is well known that the habitual sight of anguish 
 and pain is apt, in ordinary persons, to steel 
 the heart against sympathy with both. And 
 if such be the outward effect, so transitory, so 
 powerless for good, so likely to produce even 
 permanent mischief by repetition, shall we find 
 any inward influence exerted on the heart of 
 the careless and impenitent by these ex- 
 ceptional interferences of God’s hand ? Even 
 in our own time, even with our Lord’s warning 
 words before us, we often hear these events 
 spoken of as if they had power to convert the 
 sinner. It would be presumption to say, that 
 God may not make use of any means for this 
 purpose : but it would, on the other side, be 
 idle to shut our eyes to the plain facts of His 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 221 
 
 dealings with men : and one of those plain 
 facts is, that He does not ordinarily make use 
 of events of this kind for that purpose. They 
 who do not listen to the ordinary means of 
 grace, do not, as a matter of fact, listen to these. 
 The sinner who turns a deaf ear to the church- 
 bell, turns a deaf ear to the death-bell also, 
 as far as any permanent good is concerned. 
 Let us strengthen the inference by an example ; 
 by the great example from history. The Jews 
 heard not Moses and the Prophets. The law 
 spoke of justice, mercy, and the love of God: 
 they were unjust, and unmerciful, and ungodly, 
 rejecting Him whom God had sent, and refus- 
 ing to see the testimony of His blameless life 
 and holy words. He raised up one from the 
 dead, in the presence of many of their chief 
 men. And what do we read of the effect on 
 them ? “ The Pharisees consulted that they 
 
 might put Lazarus also to death ; that because 
 of him many went away and believed in 
 Jesus.” And afterwards the Son of God 
 
222 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 Himself went unto them from the dead, His 
 resurrection being assured to them by the testi- 
 mony of those who had seen and heard and 
 handled Him, after He was risen. But in all 
 this, they did not believe : they refused the 
 evidence, they persecuted the followers of Jesus, 
 their city and temple miserably perished, and 
 they are scattered over the earth unto this day. 
 
 Such was the fulfilment of our Lord's saying 
 in them to whom it was spoken: and of that 
 same kind will it ever be in all men under simi- 
 lar circumstances. If we will not listen to the 
 ordinary means of grace ; if the course of God's 
 warning and loving Providence have no teach- 
 ing for us ; — then not unusual judgments, not 
 the occurrence of death among us, no, nor of 
 sickness and the approach of death to ourselves, 
 will produce the effect which the others could 
 not. These solemn judgments, these startling 
 calls, are full of instruction : but it is to those 
 who are under God’s teaching, not to those who 
 refuse it, and put it behind them. Conversion 
 
ON PROVIDE NCR 
 
 223 
 
 and sanctification, life and growth in grace, are 
 to be found in the ordinary services of the 
 Church, and reading of God’s word, and seeking 
 to Him day by day ; where these are not, none 
 of God’s extraordinary calls will waken the 
 sleeping sold. 
 
 VI. 
 
 god’s estimate of his own works. 
 
 In resuming our meditations on the Provi- 
 dence of God, one very interesting inquiry pre- 
 sents itself to us. How does the Creator and 
 Redeemer of nature look upon His own crea- 
 tion. ? What relative value in His eyes 
 have the various ranks and orders of His 
 creatures ? Is it possible, that we men may 
 be wrong in believing ourselves to be the flower 
 and crown of His works on earth ? As we 
 know that within the limits of our own race He 
 esteems the lowly more than the proud, may it 
 not be even so outside the limits of our own 
 race, — that proud man , who ever puts himself 
 
224 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 foremost in creation, may after all be in the sight 
 of God of less account than some tribe of God’s 
 creatures far beneath him in power and intelli- 
 gence ? 
 
 The answer to this question cannot be unim- 
 portant to us. If our own view of our place 
 in creation be confirmed to us by our Lord’s 
 own words and arguments, the fact of that con- 
 firmation, and the manner in which He is 
 pleased to make the announcement, and the 
 lessons which He draws and which we may 
 draw from it, must be alike edifying and pro- 
 fitable. 
 
 Our Lord devotes the second portion of His 
 great Sermon on the Mount to the enforcing 
 on us of a simple and undivided heart in 
 matters pertaining to God. Following in that 
 discourse the process of the Spirit’s work on 
 man as afterwards described by Himself, and 
 first dealing with the convictions and measures 
 of sin, — He next comes to His description of 
 the righteousness of those who would be His 
 
ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 225 
 
 disciples, and ends by giving them His rules 
 for their judgment of men and things about 
 them. It is in this middle portion, that the 
 passage occurs which deals with the question 
 before us. Having told us that our righteous- 
 ness is not to be done before men to be seen 
 of them, but is to be such as has real existence 
 before our Father who seeth in secret, He then 
 tells us that no man can serve two masters, 
 God and this present world. The soul of man, 
 whichever way drawn and tending, “ moveth 
 altogether, if it move at all.” The man who 
 pretends divided service, who thinks that he 
 can afford to have one eye towards God and 
 the next life, and the other towards self and 
 this life, will find in the end that he has been 
 mistaken, that he has not been doing himself 
 good by his attempt, which seemed so shrewd 
 and worldly-wise, but evil : that he has been 
 trying to live under impossible conditions, 
 and the result has been the break up and 
 ruin of his eternal prospects, in the demo- 
 
226 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 ralization of his conscience and his inner 
 being. 
 
 All this is important to our present conside- 
 ration, because our Lord passes to the portion in 
 which our question is treated with a “ Therefore 
 I say unto you/’ implying that what follows is 
 grounded on what went before. And so indeed 
 it is. If the heart and the service of the life 
 will not bear dividing, then the thoughts of the 
 heart about a man’s daily maintenance and wel- 
 fare must not, while he professes to believe in 
 and depend on God, be anxiously distracted, 
 partly trusting Him and partly distrusting Him. 
 “Therefore I say unto you, Take not anxious 
 thought for your life, what you shall eat; nor 
 for your raiment, what ye shall put on.” I may 
 remark, in passing, that the English reader is 
 apt to be misled in this passage by the render- 
 ing of our version, “ Take no thought,” which 
 does not represent what our Lord says, and 
 would, as we now understand the words, be 
 both impossible to carry out, and contradictory 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 227 
 
 to other express commands of Holy Scripture. 
 The original word thus rendered signifies, taking 
 anxious, distracted care. It is derived from a 
 verb which means to divide into two or more 
 parts : and is thus admirably suited to describe 
 the sort of care which will not suit him whose 
 heart is to be single and undivided in the ser- 
 vice of his Father in heaven. This division of 
 heart, this distracted and distrustful care, w T e 
 Christians are not to allow in ourselves with 
 regard to our subsistence, or to our necessary 
 shelter and due adornment of the body. And 
 why ? for here comes in the treatment of the 
 question which we proposed to ourselves in the 
 outset. And let me remark, that there is a 
 peculiar and delightful interest about this part 
 of our Lord’s discourse. Wherever, in the high 
 teaching of inspiration, Creation and Redemp- 
 tion are brought together, there is a charm in the 
 words which goes to every heart, and impresses 
 them on every mind. Who, for instance, does 
 not feel this in that wonderful eighth chapter 
 
228 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 to the Romans, where the Apostle assures us, 
 that all creation around is waiting and sighing 
 for the glorious day when our bodies shall be 
 clothed with immortality ? And if so, assuredly 
 here also will this be the case, where the Son of 
 God, the Lord of Creation, is pleased to afford 
 us a glimpse of His own estimate of portions of 
 His works which we see about us, and to de- 
 scribe to us those beauties and adornments of 
 His inferior creatures of which He alone knows 
 the secret and the value. “ Behold/’ He says, 
 “ the birds of the air ; they sow not, neither do 
 they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your 
 heavenly Father feedeth them.” The first ar- 
 gument here is of an absolute kind : the second 
 of a relative kind. First, our Lord says, Observe, 
 how large a portion of Creation is absolutely 
 dependent on the unsolicited and spontaneous 
 goodness of your heavenly Father. These crea- 
 tures live in wild liberty, giving no care to 
 provide stores for distant time: they are pro- 
 visionless and defenceless : but He whom you 
 
ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 229 
 
 serve, and wliose children you are, provides for 
 them. He has endowed them with instinct, 
 guided by which they go in search of their 
 daily food : and year by year and day by day 
 His bounty provides that food shall lie 
 scattered where they may find it. Will One so 
 careful, and so bountiful, suffer any portion of 
 His creatures to go neglected by Him? Can- 
 not you trust the bountiful and loving Father 
 who feeds the birds of the air ? So far for the 
 direct and absolute argument : to which it 
 might perhaps have been answered by one 
 willing to argue for argument’s sake, that we 
 are not so sure that we are equally with them 
 the objects of our heavenly Father’s care. But 
 our Lord precludes all such distrustful escapes 
 from His inference, by appealing at once to our 
 sense of our place in creation -as compared with 
 theirs, and He adds, “ Are ye not muck better 
 than they ? ” Our superiority to them is not a 
 matter requiring proof, but a conviction at once 
 to be assumed and appealed to. Now, as I said 
 
230 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 in the beginning, the fact of our Lord’s thus 
 confirming our view of our place in creation is 
 something. Let our persuasion of an obvious 
 truth be ever so strong, we cannot but feel that 
 our hold on it is firmer, when we hear it 
 asserted by the God of truth. 
 
 We are better than they. Now, as far as our 
 outward sight goes, we and they perish by a 
 common fate. Their bodies and ours moulder 
 together in the dust of the earth. But we are 
 better than they. Better, not as regards what 
 we see, this common fate, this common decay. 
 No: if that only be considered, we are much 
 worse than they. We have thoughts and hopes 
 reaching forward into immortality: they have 
 none. If we are to perish with them, bitter is 
 our lot : sad indeed the cutting off of high aspi- 
 rations, and bright hopes and eager yearnings. 
 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we 
 are of all Creation the most miserable. How 
 then are we so much better than they ? How 
 can we be so very sure that the great Father 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 231 
 
 who neglects not them, will not forget nor 
 neglect us ? How, but by this — that we have a 
 life which they have not ; that the fate which 
 overtakes us and them is common to us both, 
 as far as the outward eye reaches, but that 
 beyond, there is for us a life which is not for 
 them : that the decay in which our bodies and 
 theirs moulder together is* not for us what it is 
 for them : that our dust shall arise, while theirs 
 shall remain ? Here is our real superiority : 
 here is the truth by which the Lord’s argument 
 is driven home to our convictions : the life to 
 come ; the life that now is, a preparation for 
 the life to come. If God so takes care of these 
 fleeting and ephemeral creatures, who endure 
 but for an hour of the great day of the world, 
 how much more will He take care of those 
 whose life is not limited by the duration of the 
 creation itself — who shall survive the wreck of 
 matter and the crash of worlds ! 
 
 But there is more yet behind. Mere immor- 
 tality confers a superior rank over that which is 
 
232 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 mortal : still mere immortality may be a curse, 
 and not a blessing. But you know, that that 
 which it cost to make a blessing, God Him- 
 self has paid for us. And in another part of 
 the New Testament, we have this very fact 
 used as an argument tending in the same direc- 
 tion as this which we are considering. “He 
 who spared not His own Son, but delivered 
 Him up for us all, shall He not, with Him, also 
 freely give us all things ? ” 
 
 Such is the absolute, and such is the relative 
 argument here used. God, who feedeth the 
 birds of the air, will not neglect any portion of 
 His creatures : God, who feedeth with tender 
 care an inferior tribe of His creatures, will 
 not neglect nor forget one far better than it. 
 We may safely trust our daily sustenance and 
 welfare in His hands, as long as we do not cast 
 ourselves out of the course of His providential 
 care by an indolent, or a proud, or a reckless 
 repudiation of the work which He has given us 
 to do. “ Seek ye first the kingdom of God and 
 
ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 233 
 
 His righteousness : ” be found, that is, in the 
 place where He has put you, and fulfilling its 
 duties as accountable to Him, and seeking to 
 know Him and please Him, and all needful 
 things shall be added to you. 
 
 But there is a second portion of our cares and 
 anxieties, to which our Lord applies the same 
 argument. Food is the first necessity of life; 
 the second is clothing. And here enters an 
 element which, not properly belonging to the 
 actual supply of the want, has yet become mixed 
 up with it, and has come to form a considerable 
 part of our cares respecting it. Our clothing 
 is not only for shelter and decorum, but it is 
 also for adornment. A disposition to deck the 
 person is natural to all mankind. And let it 
 be noticed that our Lord, who knows what is in 
 man, takes up and recognises this as a part in 
 dealing with this portion of our wants. He does 
 not repudiate it nor chide it down. Had He 
 been here employed in giving us cautions as to 
 its moderation and its excess, there can be no 
 
234 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 doubt that He would have said, even as His 
 Apostle Peter has said, that it becomes not us 
 to place our chief adornment in outward things 
 applied to the body, but in the hidden man of 
 the heart. There within, ought to be the purest 
 tints, there the choicest jewels. But it is not 
 His practice in His divine teaching, to look 
 aside, or go out of the way, to inculcate cau- 
 tion. It is rather His habit, generously to re- 
 cognise, and with sympathy to speak of, those 
 tendencies which God has implanted in us for 
 good, and thereby to teach us to look on them 
 as good, and to keep them pure and good, and to 
 use them for good. And such a use, there can 
 be no doubt, we are able to make, and by far the 
 greater part of us do make, of this universal 
 tendency to personal adornment. Its excess is 
 foolish and sinful : its moderate use is not only 
 lawful but beneficial, inasmuch as it tends to 
 carry out the designs of God’s providence in the 
 social state in which we live. Large classes of 
 the teeming population of the civilized earth are 
 dependent for their living on the demand for 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 235 
 
 fabrics tending to minister to this propensity 
 for adornment. "We are not intended to thwart, 
 but to fall in with, that arrangement. The line 
 of duty in this matter is already marked for all 
 who will be not unwise, but understanding what 
 the will of the Lord is. The vain and frivolous 
 on the one hand, the ill-balanced mind and 
 morbid conscience on the other, will stray out 
 of it ; but for most of us there is little danger : 
 public opinion, guided and corrected by Chris- 
 tian intelligence, prescribes the mean; and, gene- 
 rally speaking, it is observed. 
 
 So then our Lord takes for granted this our 
 need and the further tendency which accom- 
 panies it, and He argues respecting both, much 
 in the same way as before. He forbids us to 
 entertain anxious or distracting thoughts on the 
 question, wherewithal we are to be clothed. 
 Doubtless, in the simple state of society found 
 in that land, and at that time, this anxious care 
 was more visible on the surface than it can be 
 in our artificial condition. There, the mother of 
 the household is described to us as spending her 
 
236 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 time at the distaff and the loom : and the choice 
 of pattern and colour, the preparation of the 
 material and the dye, and many other details 
 which we in our homes are now spared, must 
 have vastly enhanced the danger of making 
 this question the cause of distracting and mis- 
 chievous anxiety. 
 
 But here, as before, the Lord takes an example 
 from creation around us. “ Consider/' He says, 
 “ the lilies of the field, how they grow : they 
 toil not, neither do they spin : yet I say unto 
 you that even Solomon in all his glory was not 
 arrayed like one of these." Wonderful indeed 
 is such a sentence from Him who created all 
 things, and whose glory fills the Universe. 
 Wonderful, to hear Him giving us His own esti- 
 mate of the relative splendour of the richest 
 adornment that man can devise, and the sym- 
 metry and colours of the wayside flower. And 
 observe that this second argument, though in 
 the main of the same kind as the former, yet 
 differs somewhat from it in the manner of 
 application. Then it was, if God feeds the 
 
ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 237 
 
 inferior and less worthy tribe of His creatures, 
 shall He not much more feed you who are so 
 far better than they ? The difference, on which 
 that argument rested, w^as one between the two 
 classes brought into comparison: that which 
 God so freely and constantly ministers to the 
 less important class, we may safely assume He 
 will as freely and constantly furnish to ourselves. 
 But here, the difference on which the argument 
 rests is of another kind. It is not between the 
 two classes treated of, the flowers and ourselves, 
 — but between the degrees of perfection attained 
 in the result sought for. In the other case, we 
 had simply the fact of the feeding : here, we have 
 the degree of adornment. God clothes the lilies, 
 as never man in his pomp, as never woman in 
 her beauty, was yet bedecked. One of these way- 
 side flowers, if we could tell all the secrets and all 
 the blendings of its colours, if we could penetrate 
 all the laws which regulate the symmetry and 
 elegance of its form, if we could appreciate all 
 the care bestowed by the Creator on the delicacy 
 and complexion of its texture, would put all 
 
238 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 human adornment to shame. If we try one of 
 these with the power of the microscope, — the 
 more we magnify it, the more glories of form 
 and colour, the more intricate symmetries of 
 texture, astonish the dazzled eye : subject to the 
 same test the most delicately woven fabric of hu- 
 man skill, the most precise and uniform artificial 
 application of colour, and as it expands before 
 the scrutiny, it degenerates into a coarse and un- 
 seemly mass, daubed as if by an unskilful hand. 
 He who has lavished all this exquisite skill on 
 the rank growth of the field, which is flourish- 
 ing to-day, and cut down and dried up and 
 burnt to-morrow, shall He not much more clothe 
 you, 0 ye of little faith ? Will not He, in His 
 good Providence, bring about for all of us who 
 serve Him and seek to do His will, a sufficient 
 and seemly supply of what is needful and what 
 is becoming for the clothing of the body ? We 
 are to trust Him with the sustenance of our 
 lives, we are to trust Him with sheltering 
 and arraying us. We are better employed 
 than that we ought to distract our thoughts day 
 
ON PROVIDENCE . 
 
 239 
 
 by day about these matters : we have no time 
 to bestow on them as life’s business : they must 
 not eat out the spirit of a sound and earnest 
 mind, — they must not unteach us self-denial, 
 they must not be clamouring when we ought to 
 be listening to the whisper of sympathy and 
 God’s Spirit : they must not ever be rising as 
 drifts of clouds, troubling the clear morning of 
 the Christian’s day, and blotting the Sun of 
 Righteousness by whose light he walks and 
 works. 
 
 This it is, and no impossible, no exaggerated 
 casting away of earthly cares which the Lord 
 requires of us. It is the knowing what we are, 
 and who cares for us, and acting in that know- 
 ledge. It is told of the great Csesar, that being 
 at sea in a storm, and beholding the shipman 
 unmanned with fear, he cried, “ Fear not ; thou 
 hast Csesar on board.” This was perhaps carry- 
 ing greatness of soul even to infirmity : it might 
 be presumption for a man to put that trust in 
 his fortunes, and to have that confidence in his 
 own work in the world : but it is no undue confi- 
 
240 
 
 ON PROVIDENCE. 
 
 dence in us, and it savours of no presumption, 
 to say to our anxious souls, when they distract 
 us with fear for this life’s provision and welfare, 
 “ Fear not : thou earnest a precious spirit bound 
 for the blessed country afar : the Father of 
 spirits breathed it into thee, the Son of God 
 bled for it, the Holy Ghost guideth and sancti- 
 fieth .it : thou art freighted with covenant pro- 
 mises, and the fruits of a Christian life stored 
 up against the final harvest : be not thou 
 troubled with daily wants and anxieties : only 
 keep thine hand on the helm, and thine eye on 
 the compass, and let the wild waves rage as 
 they will. Seek first the one great purpose for 
 which thou art, and all things else shall be 
 added unto thee.” 
 
 PRINTED BY J. AND W. RIDER, LONDON.