fiat was given. God said, "Let there be light, and there was light!" What created wisdom would have anticipated the form and outline of the finished creation from that rude waste of waters, where all was mixed in confusion and darkness? But the Spirit of God moved on the face of the deep. At every step of the whole change, the Divine Architect had in view the finished creation, as it revealed itself on the eve of the first Sabbath, when he beheld all that He had made; "and lo, it was very good." This Divine idea was present, in the work of each earlier day, and moulded every part of the whole system of the universe. The bed of the sea, the ridges of the land, were ordained with a reference to the future dwelling of the tribes of mankind. The clouds of the upper firmament were disposed, from the first, so as to secure the dews that might water Paradise, and nourish its lovely flowers into perfect beauty. The trees and plants of the third day were distributed by the Great Husbandman with a continual foresight of the final issue, whether in the beautiful variety of herb, tree, fruit, and flower, that adorned the hills and valleys of Eden, or in the thorns and thistles, prepared against the hour of sin and punishment. There was prospective wisdom in every change, and a full adaptation to hidden purposes, which the work gradually revealed, as it advanced towards perfection. And when once man was created, and planted in the garden of Paradise, every part of the whole work seemed at once to receive its interpretation, and the unity and perfection of design shone out brightly to view. Nothing was seen to be in vain, from the first beaming of the light and parting of the waters, to the last form of animal life that was fashioned before the birth of man.

Now this double analogy will apply, only on a wider

and nobler scale, to that new creation, which is revealed to us in the word of God, the glorious hope held out continually to a fallen universe. The creatures of God are now made subject to vanity, and hence it is only a very small part of the wisdom they really indicate, that can be seen in our present state, or until the curse is removed. All is merely the embryo of a more perfect birth, the dim shadow of a vision of Divine beauty that must shortly be revealed.

Ten thousand years of sorrow have well nigh
Fulfilled their tardy and disastrous course
Over a sinful world, and what remains
Of this tempestuous state of human things
Is merely as the working of a sea

Before a calm, that rocks itself to rest.

For He whose air the winds are, and the clouds
The dust that waits upon His sultry march
Shall visit earth in mercy, shall descend
Propitious in His chariot paved with love,
And what His storms have blasted and defaced
For man's revolt, shall with a smile repair.

The figures used in the word of God, to describe that future state of earthly blessedness, are of surpassing beauty. "The earth shall then bring forth her increase, and God, even our own God, shall give us His blessing. The Lord shall comfort Zion: He will comfort all her waste places. He will make her wilderness as Eden, and her desert as the garden of the Lord: joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody. Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, the young men and the old together, . . . . and their soul shall be as a watered garden, and they shall not sorrow any more at all." Every image of beauty is combined in the descriptions of this promised restitution, in which the creatures shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

An assured hope of this future restitution will raise our minds to the fullest view of our Lord's hidden wisdom, in all the course of natural providence, and the ordinances of the material world. As every stroke of the sculptor's chisel prepares the extrication of the perfect statue, and as even the ripple of every wave in the depths of the primitive chaos was a step towards the finished creation, as it appeared in beauty on the first Sabbath; so all the changes which science has explained, or observed without the power to explain them, through six thousand years, will be found to have prepared the way for the fulfilment of the promised glory. When once it arrives, the curse will be fully removed; and every part of the lower world, released from that heavy burden, will rise up, as in the buoyancy of recovered youth, to obey the voice of the Redeemer, and proclaim the triumph of His wisdom and love.

The truths of mathematics claimed the first place in our inquiry. However great the progress in this branch of science, in that day its meaning will be far more plainly revealed. Our present discoveries may then appear like the feeble sports of infancy, compared with the depth and variety of those properties of number and space and force, which may then be laid open to the maturer reason of mankind. But they will then have learned also, from these truths, a still deeper lesson. Instead of groping in unbelief, and questioning all that lies beyond the range of their senses, they will see, in mathematical science, a mirror to reflect the higher certainties of the moral and spiritual world— truths which unite the Creator and the creature, virtue and happiness, the probation of this life, and the solemn destinies of the life to come. Nay more, these laws of natural science, which have girdled the visible universe

for ages, will serve to manifest the wisdom of that Supreme Geometer, who has made every region of space and every hour of time, every development of physical force, and all those higher laws of moral truth, of which these are only dim counterparts, co-operate in the glorious issue, on which a ransomed universe shall gaze with wonder and perpetual delight.

The lessons of astronomy, and the wisdom of Him who ordained its laws and changes, will then be manifested, more fully, in that kingdom of our Lord. The course of day and night, the rising and setting of the stars, the revolutions of the planets, the influences of the Pleiades, and all the mysterious powers of universal attraction, moulding the course of every atom in the sunbeam, as well as of worlds in space, will all be seen to have worked out the grand result which the eye of the Saviour contemplated from the beginning. "Then shall the light of the moon be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound."

The stars in their courses will be seen to have fought with secret and silent efficacy, against all the enemies of the Lord. The heavens will be seen to have declared His glory, and to have seconded the message of the Gospel, with a perpetual testimony to the power, the glory, and the goodness of the Almighty. Our little world, shut in for long ages by myriads of brighter worlds that stud its firmament, and seem to gaze upon it with quiet wonder, will then be seen to have been ripening, under their ceaseless influence, for the promised consummation, the Sabbath of its rest. Whether as the registrars of time and seasons, the remembrancers

of the Divine greatness, the ministers of Divine bounty, or the awakeners of the conscience and heart of men to solemn reflection and devout humility, they will be seen to have fulfilled, in every age, one unbroken and unfailing counsel of mercy, which will then at length have triumphed over the obduracy and blindness of a fallen world.

We might trace the same thought, in connexion with every further branch of human science. It reveals brightly the wisdom of our Lord, when we view it simply in itself in the perfect knowledge of its actual laws, and their immediate adaptation to the present wants of the sensitive and rational creation, and the practical barmony of the lower universe. But it displays the same wisdom, or a still more wonderful light, when we consider its further connexion with the final issue, and behold it, with the eye of faith, as a step, arranged with unfailing and unsearchable skill, towards the accomplishment of the full redemption of the earth. When that day of glory shall dawn at length upon the Church of God, what countless mysteries of His own wisdom, our Lord will have to reveal to the astonished eye of His people! He who said to his disciples," Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost; will be seen to have perfectly satisfied the spirit of His own commandment. No fragment of His providence, in former ages, will be found to have been lost. All will have concurred in the vast scheme of Divine mercy. Not in vain will the Lord have numbered the very hairs on the head of each of his children. Not in vain will one grain have been left in the depths of the ocean, or one flower have blushed in vain, and wasted its sweet odour on the air of the desert. That voice, once uttered to the disciples in all the simplicity of love, will be