*

In process of time a peculiar people was to be selected, among whom the belief and worship of the true God were to be preserved through a special dispensation, and to whom "shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed," a law was to be given, under circumstances singularly awful and impressive a law containing God's holy oracles, intimations of his intended grace, types of his future blessings, and a plain prediction of the coming of a great prophet in Israel, to whom the people were to hearken. And a number of men, chosen of God and inspired by the Holy Ghost, was to arise among them at different periods who, uniting in one remarkable aim and object, should direct the attention of mankind to the coming of the Saviour, promised at the fall and to the fathers; and by a variety of prophecies describe him and his kingdom in a manner so distinct and peculiar, and under so many extraordinary and dissimilar representations, as to render it impossible for any candid or unprejudiced mind to mistake the one or the other, when the fulfilment should take place.

This, as events perfectly according with the word and promises of Scripture have proved,

Galatians, iii. 23.

was the grand counsel of the Trinity before the beginning of time. This was the remedy provided before the disease was contracted; the latter was foreknown, and, therefore, the former was devised.

If it be admitted that there can be nothing imperfect or limited in the nature and attributes of God, it must be conceded that he foreknew all the events that would take place in the world which he was about to create. But, because he foreknew them, does it necessarily follow that he predetermined they should take place? Certainly not those which were to be the conse→ quences of men's own will and actions. Those events were, indeed, to be subject to his control and government; but they were not to arise out of any absolute decree of his. What, then, did he foreordain? He foreordained that, as certain circumstances foreknown by him should arise, certain dispensations and evidences of grace should be vouchsafed, suited to the times and seasons, calculated to keep alive the knowledge of his name and the memory of his early promise, and manifesting, at every step, the progressive course of his counsels in the redemption of the world.

They who impartially and diligently examine the whole history of mankind down to the pre

sent moment, will, in seeing as they proceed the consistent and perpetual operations of the Divine counsels, readily acknowledge that too much is not asserted when it is said, that the redemption of mankind, and the mode of it, were appointed in the Divine councils before the foundation of the world. That this is not a mere fancy unsupported by any scriptural warrant, let the words of St. Peter testify: "Forasmuch," wrote he," as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver or gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot; who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.'

The doctrine of the foresight and foreknowledge of God is manifestly taught in these words of the Apostle; for he says that Christ was foreordained before the foundation of the world, for the purpose of redeeming it; and, consequently, teaches by a necessary inference that God foresaw and foreknew the events for which this preordination was to provide a remedy. Although grace came by Jesus Christ; that is, the

full revelation of it in his doctrines and precepts, and the actual accomplishment of it in his life and death, yet its provision was made antecedently to the creation, and the commencement of its operations is to be dated from the early promise of God, that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head.

OBJECTION TO CHRIST'S LATE APPEARANCE ANSWEred.

Some have taken offence because Christianity was not dispensed till so late a period of the world, and have declared their difficulty in reconciling this long delay with the infinite wisdom, justice, and goodness of God. They cannot, they say, conceive that he would permit four thousand years to roll away before he sent a Saviour, and thereby cause so many millions of human beings to pass out of life into death in total ignorance of the name and person of him who was to come upon so important a mission, affecting the interests of the whole human race.

But surely they would see that they have no good ground for their offence, if they would consider how old the counsel of redemption is, and reflect that it has been in a state of real operation from the fall of man; that the world, from the beginning of transgression, was taught by God himself to look forward in faith to a

Redeemer to come- that a declension into ignorance of this instruction was owing to men's voluntary departure from the ways of righteousness-that, although Christ did not appear till a late period, his merits and blood have a retrospective, as well as prospective efficacy— and that all good men who lived before his advent, and acted up to the lights and knowledge they possessed, will come in for a participation of those benefits which his life and death have

purchased for mankind. "The coming of Christ when he did," says Archbishop Secker, "was no hardship to those who lived before it; for although his personal appearance was late, yet that does not hinder but the earlier ages may have been greatly the happier for it. We learn, indeed, from Scripture, that there is no salvation in any other; but we learn also that the salvation procured by him extends from the beginning of time to the end of it; that as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive; that good persons in the first ages, as well as in the following, were redeemed by his blood who, being foreordained from eternity to be manifested in due time, is therefore in the efficacy of his death the lamb slain from the foundation of the world."

C