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blessedness awaiting man at the end of his earthly dispensation; but though, like these, serving grandly for consolation and impressiveness as to man's importance in the purposes of God, it is a light that only the more shows the exceptional position of the human race in these purposes, and the consequent necessity that they should be guided in their thoughts of God and of themselves as connected with Him, not by their own observation and reasoning on things around and within them, but by thinking on the particular history of that connection, and interpreting all other things by the help of that history. In accordance with this is the Bible's representation of the simplicity of the thoughts which are to belong to man's religion. They are to be such as a wayfaring man, though unwise in other learning, cannot err in.

NOTE.-The conclusion drawn from revelation, that man's place in the purposes of God is exceptional, is in harmony with the conclusion, apparently unavoidable from physical truths, that his place in material life is exceptional, and that the being inhabiting this earth is unique, and exists nowhere else. It would be the loosest speculation to take into account the possibility of there being other worlds in the universe inhabited by beings of our nature, if it is demonstrable that no such beings can be in any of the celestial bodies likest to our own globe. And since it is certain that upon no one of the solar planets except the earth could a being of our bodily constitution exist, it is simply a corollary that no being of our spiritual experience—that is, no “living soul” whose conditions and consequent capacities are the same as ours-can be anywhere else in the planetary system. We altogether beg the question if we say that it seems to detract from the glory of God to think that He extended our moral life and the love declared in His Word over so limited a space as our earth alone, and that He will people heaven with the race of Adam only. We cannot assume to be judges of what is most for God's glory; and to some minds a selected sphere for human life will present thoughts best agreeing with the attributes which God seeks us chiefly to associate with Him as His glory. These are not physical, but moral. "God is love" (1 John iv. 8). "His tender mercies are over" (above, overruling) "all his works" (Ps. cxlv. 9). To one thinking on this declared character of God, what would seem an appropriate greatness or grand thing in the history of life? That God should have created a race upon whom He was especially to pour forth the inexhaustible love which is His being-whose life was to be an eternal going on to know the breadth and length and depth and height of His love-in whose nature He was to reproduce His own moral attributes-in whose history He was to make gloriously manifest to all the universe of intelligence His grief and hatred against sin, and His unquenchable love and compassion for His creatures deceived into it, giving

Himself in sacrifice for their deliverance,-may well be more astounding, more gloriously impressive, than would be the creation and peopling of a thousand times the number of worlds that we can conceive now existing. Indeed, any craving after belief in a population of beings like ourselves dwelling in the countless orbs of our sky and of the universe around, seems to partake of that hankering after material rather than moral grandeur, which appears in most of man's aspirations after great thoughts. Moral grandeur, such as God's is revealed to be, is not dependent on physical limits; and to think of Him creating a race for Himself to show forth His praise and glory in His love, should be no more difficult for us than to think that one day is to Him as great a thing as a thousand years. And if God made man to be in a family relationship with Him, inferring family affections and exceptional family importance, which is exactly the position of man towards God declared in God's Word, man's place may well be exceptional in extent as in all other respects. The family circle should be a circumscribed one-one taken out of the world of life. As to an appropriate original preparation of the earth for the habitation of man in his present religious condition of a being to be recovered from sin, see Bushnel's geological speculation in his 'Nature and the Supernatural,' chap. vii.

God's exceptional love

in man's salvation.

CHAPTER II.

THE SUBJECT OF FAITH.

JOHN iii. 16.-God so loved the world.

1. THE subject with which religious faith is to occupy itself as its peculiar business is a restricted one. It is God's exceptional affection towards mankind. What we may call the key-words of revelation, which all its histories, promises, and forms of assurance expound, are, "God so loved the world." Our religious thoughts are directed not to God's nature, but to the facts and assurances of His love to man; and what thoughts are given to us of His natural attributes are presented to us in connection with that, the essential contemplation of our religion-His love to man-enhancing to our feelings its sureness, or its extent, or its tenderness.

2. We do not know to what extent God revealed to our first parents, at their creation, His peculiar love for them of all the creatures to whom He had given life. Our condition is in one great respect different, and the peculiar subject of our faith in God is the affection He has since declared to fallen man. It is an important fact, in agreement with what the Bible says of the great change which came over man's powers by the entrance of sin, that God had to, or did, educate the world anew to faith in Him, as it were from the beginning, by “line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little." Through a period of at least forty centuries He slowly unveiled to mankind, as they were able to think of it, His holy nature and the nearness of His connection with them, and His corresponding love for them. His love, as it is fully

revealed, is the subject of Christian faith; part only of the thoughts of which was possessed by the early patriarchs, and even by the father of the faithful-and part only, though a larger part, by the chosen people.

love :

3. The character of our fully-revealed faith is one distinctly A family defined and intelligibly marked. It is to be faith in a family nearness to God into which He has taken us, and in a corresponding love assured to us-the exceptional relationship and affection which the manner of our creation indicated to be His purpose from the first as to our race.

There are two bodies of facts given us in the Word of God by which to exercise our thoughts to the habit of looking to Him as in a uniting relationship, inferring a peculiar manner of love.

first by

ships;

4. First, He has all along the progress of revelation bidden revealed man think of Him by the light of certain familiar relationships, assumed gradually unveiling fullest family union. These are relation-relationships inferring affectionate protection-as a paternal monarch, a shepherd, a teacher; relationships inferring power and wisdom put forth in watchful and most considerate help—as a physician, a forgiver, a captain of salvation, a comforter; relationships implying community of nature and union of life-as a father, a brother, a husband. In the last stage of revelation other figures were added conveying an idea of closer union than human relationships experience—that of a branch to the vine, the members of the body to the head. By these lines of thought He bids us draw near to Him and understand the manner of His love to us, and learn to appreciate it. The help is one necessary to our understanding and our comfort alike. We cannot by searching find out God. His eternal power and Godhead are clearly seen from His great creation; and those who can look upon the heavens and the earth, and not glorify Him as God, are inexcusable. But the thought of His greatness is by itself an oppressive one, and beyond it reason can hardly penetrate, and from it hardly extract comfort. We can make little of thinking about such subjects as eternity, infinity, and omnipotence. When Christian philosophers think that they reason closely from these bare ideas,

the form

of preChristian faith;

they are unconsciously finding as conclusions thoughts which are really lying in their minds already, the unnoticed teaching of revelation. The heathen world by its unaided wisdom knew not God. A help mighty to save from much erroneous reasoning is this form in which He comes near to us, and draws us near to Him. "The full thunder of His power who can comprehend?" but who is there, the feeblest and most cast down, who cannot understand and value and take to his heart the love and care a father has for his little ones, the "comforting" a mother gives, the "closeness" of a brother's affection, the life of faith a wife has in her husband, and the close clinging happiness which binds the union of these relationships, the "life hid in them," the belief of the heart, which is their occupation? When we are bidden think by these names of the love of God and our dependence upon Him, which He desires, we are already exercised to discern the good in which we are invited to believe.

5. By this way of illustrative and assuring relationships God instructed mankind in the earlier ages of faith to believe in His holy love to them, and by these to interpret His government of them in His providence, and His messages to them by His prophets. All were not revealed from the first; nor was any of them revealed with equal fulness of significance to all the generations to whom they prepared the way for the coming of God manifest in the flesh. Some of them were not among the enjoyed thoughts of the earliest believers. Abraham had not them all. The Psalms show that some early saints could ponder most of them in their hearts; and their responsive language, in which Jehovah is spoken of as their "portion," their "refuge," their " dwelling-place," shows much appreciation of the love assured in His chosen metaphors of nearness. It is by the light of another revelation that the fulness of times has come to apprehend all the comfort sent with these names to mankind. It is since the manifestation of God was added to their representations of Him that the love of the Father has been with full appreciation proclaimed evermore to the race, and the light of His countenance has shined upon them evermore.

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