When, on the ebbing of the flood, men determined to raise a vast fabric on which they might be elevated above future floods thus disbelieving God's promise; and to make this idol tower the centre and hope of humankind, and thus localize and prevent the spread of the population of the earth, God poured confusion into their speech, and by this one act in history arrested the progress of the iniquitous structure, and necessitated distinction into nations, and thereby the dispersion of mankind to go forth over all the earth, that amid the snows of Lapland and under African suns- -in all lands and in all languages—worship might ascend as incense to the throne, and all kindreds thus see and adore God in history.

We read subsequently of God speaking aloud in the ear of history, and calling Abraham, and separating him and the rest of the patriarchs from the depraved inhabitants of the earth, "raising up the righteous man from the east, calling him to his foot, giving the nations before him, making him rule over kings; giving them as the dust to his sword, and as driven stubble to his bow."

In the great and protracted age of the patriarchs, we see a provision for perpetuating religious truths when there was no written document; and in their insulated position we see a colony amidst the vast multitude of Sodom, and Gomorrah, and Canaan, in connexion and communion with heaven, and thereby keeping alive the channel of the promised Seed, and testifying to the world God was still in its history.

We next read of still more vivid evidences of the great fact we seek to show. God came down, and dwelt in the bush in Horeb, scattering around on that desert the burning beams of the inapproachable glory. He next descended in a chariot of fire on Sinai, amid thousands of angels, the quaking hill and the agitated earth re-echoing his footsteps. We see Him next in the blazing pillar of fire that marched before the hosts of Israel; the deep sea attesting God in history, by opening its

bosom to make a promenade for Israel, and collapsing in fury to make a sepulchre for all the hosts and chivalry of Egypt. In the shortening of human life; in the giving of the law; in the institution of burdensome ceremonials, sacrifices, rites, oblations; in the captivity of Babylon, when the weepers hung their harps on the willows by the Euphrates, we see converging on ancient Israel, from above, around, below, an accumulating pressure intended to lead them to remember the first promise, and pray, and sigh, and cry for a deliverer out of Zion-a Saviour. Do we not see, in all these facts, design,

contrivance, consistent unity,-God in history?

By and by we see less of the driving and more of the drawing process in the ways of God. David emerging from the sheepcote, and establishing a kingdom, the type of the true Beloved; Solomon's reign of splendour and glory, to see which Sheba's and Seba's queen came from afar; the erection of the Temple, and the resting of the glory between the cherubim, and the Urim and Thummim, and the blossoming rod and the incorruptible manna, are proofs not only of God being, but of God acting, in history, and writing on its page the fulfilment of his ancient promise. In the long dark eve of that stupendous fact the Incarnation-we see every human element allowed to reach its perfection, in order to prove that no human element could restore men to God and happiness to men.

In Greece, poetry, and painting, and statuary, and philosophy had reached their perfection; nevertheless slavery, suicide, licentiousness luxuriated under their reign, and humanity thirsted yet more for God, of whom their greatest wise men had miserable conceptions. Greece shows us how far the wing of unaided humanity can soar, and how essential for man is a revelation from God.

As if to contrast with this, the Jews, who knew little of the fine arts- -an unscientific and unæsthetic race-cherished the sublimest conceptions of Deity. How do we explain this?

Yet the

The Greeks were taught by man; the Jews by God. one fact was as necessary as the other. God was in the Parthenon as truly as in Solomon's Temple-working out the experiment in the one, how little man could do; and showing the great truth in the other, how gloriously God can teach.

The Roman empire, at the eve of Christ's advent, had spread its sway over almost the known world; the laurels of the σrépavo, the crowns of its Cæsars, were gathered from every land; whatever skilful policy or martial prowess could do, Rome did. But numbers, sick at heart, waited still for the Consolation of Israel. The inscription is legible on the tomb of nations, "The world by wisdom knew not God."

At length the great Deliverer, for whom every nation had searched and toiled to find a substitute, and failed; for whose advent patriarchs and prophets, and priests and kings had prepared the way; whose path to a cross was paved with types and shadows and gorgeous ceremonies; whose footfall had been, for four thousand years, the sweetest note in the chimes of mercy and truth that met together, and righteousness and peace that kissed each other; who was set up from everlasting as the model after which all shall be fashioned, and the end to which all times and things shall contribute,this great Deliverer came, and found only a manger in the world he had made, and hostility in the hearts he sustained by his power, and came to redeem from destruction by his precious blood. God manifest in the flesh was the noblest apocalypse of God in history. The malignity of Herod, the hypocrisy of Pilate, the inveterate hatred of the Pharisees, the haughty scorn of the Sadducees, Roman laws and Jewish rites, the helplessness of women, the vacillation of men, the shout of them that reproached him-"Thou that savest others, save thyself,"-and the cry of human nature in the agony of its irrepressible conviction Truly this was the Son of God;" these and in

VOL. IV.

D

numerable other conflicting and antagonistic forces, coming together without preconcert, pursuing their exclusive ends without any unanimity of plan or identity of purpose, all conspire and co-operate to accomplish the purposes of God, and to prove to after ages God in history. Sin and Pain are thus ironed together like convicts, and are forced to do God's will. The leech likes only blood, but the physician uses it for the health of his patient; out of the corrosive poison God brings out a precious elixir.

What a monument of God in history is Calvary! Ignorance or wickedness alone can blind man's eyes to its glory.

Very beautiful it is, also, to see that every miracle that Jesus did was not a mere stroke of power, but an earnest and first-fruit of the rescue of man from his slavery, and of creation from its curse. When he healed the sick, it was a forelight of the sickless state. When he raised the dead, it was a foretoken of the first resurrection. Whatever man lost in Paradise, the Son of man regained in Gethsemane. The wilderness which the first Adam left as our inheritance, the second Adam entered, and out of it educed the outline of Paradise regained. His healing men's bodies, undoing the heavy burdens, raising the dead, unstopping the ears of the deaf, was God in history, beginning that process which the ministry of our physicians labours to perpetuate, and the voices of our clergy to circulate, and which shall end in the glory of that dawning age in which there shall be "long hours" of joy and "short hours of toil."

Starting at the empty tomb of their risen Lord, the first ambassadors of Christianity went forth to subdue the earth, with no patronage but an open world, and no help but in Him who had promised to be with them. Weakness prevailed against might, and few against many, and the lone fishers of Galilee against the soldiers of Cæsar. Humility overthrew pride, and love triumphed over hatred; and naked truth, the unarmed child, overcame the Macedonian phalanx, and the Roman legion,

and Satanic hosts, till the Vine of Israel shot up, and gracefully wove its tendrils around the sceptre, and mingled them with the laurels of the Cæsars, and at length the hated religion of a corner of the Roman empire became the faith of countless nations, and the hope and stay and joy of humanity.

Persecution fanned its flames; the sufferings of its martyrs convinced their murderers, and added new disciples to the faith. The winds of heaven wafted to distant lands the testimonies of the saints, and the silent subterranean catacombs into which they were crowded were inscribed with the records of the truths clung to in trial, and the joys realized by the worshippers within them. All forces helped Christianity, all winds bore her onward. Her records in all lands are the imperishable evidence of God in history. The carnal have tried to burst the restraints of the gospel, and the fierce and violent to tear up by the roots that tree of life whose shadow gives protection even to them; but like the banyan tree, the more its upper boughs have been cut and hacked, the wider and deeper its under roots have spread. God stands by it, though we see him not, and restrains with unseen but mighty hand, the fierce passions of mankind, and draws glory to himself from the remainder; and makes the first false prophet and the last false priest undesignedly aid the cause they have studied to betray. I know no more eloquent proof of God in history than this, that all the architects of creation have failed to build up a lie, and all the inquisitors of Spain have failed to burn one truth. God dies not when his children and confessors suffer, and truth is not consumed with her martyrs; and when the iron hoof of infidelity shall tread down all the churches, shrines, and altars, and holy places of Christianity, there shall be left in every Christian's bosom the chancel of a holy heart, which man can neither make nor mar— God's first temple in Paradise, and God's last temple on earth. Having glanced at this, the main current of evidence of God in history, let us look at some of the side streams. Wherever