that hardier and more intelligent races might develop in a cooler and more bracing air; and the superabundant carbonic acid in that atmosphere, needful to the luxuriant flora of that period, but fatal to the higher orders of animals. which were to come, was gradually drawn out by the superabundant vegetation, changed by the mysterious chemistry of vegetable life into the solid carbon of wood, then softened and finally dried and packed away in a form which renders it entirely harmless to the lungs of succeeding Better still; this element, fatal to the higher breathing animals, was not only taken out of the air and converted into a useful solid, but this change also set free a large amount of the vital oxygen, thus adapting an atmosphere still better to the wants and organs of the nobler races which were next to come upon the stage.

races.

Thus that element, the carbonic acid, which once would have swept the earth clean of the human race, had they then been upon it, is now become the solid carbon of the coal fields, without which some of the most enlightened and Christian parts of the earth would soon be swept clean of the greater part of their present industry and usefulness.

Now is ruin, however disastrous it may seem in itself and at the time, to be deplored as sheer ruin when it leads to the existence of a something higher and better than what was ruined? Should it be deplored when it is made to enter as a component element, into that higher and better state?

"That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body." Infinite Wisdom has revealed no other method of producing a spiritual body than through the death of the natural.

Real goodness is indestructible. The substantial good of each successive Geological era is preserved, and "crops out" in the next. Ruin is not sheer ruin as long as God controls it; and in His sublime providence death is only a sowing for harvests of higher life, and the wanton breach of God's law in the fall is chosen as an antecedent of the highest possible glory to the law and the Lawgiver.

The current doctrine of the fall and recovery of man, finds an illustration and counterpart in the primeval destruction and present restitution of the luxuriant vegetation of the carboniferous era.

Perhaps the objection assumes this form: "The restoration, if admitted, is not complete." In other words, "the plan of redemption does not work perfectly." We can answer this best by separating it into parts.

(a)" The recovery is not immediate upon the ruin." But who can number the ages during which the coal fields remained uncovered? How long did God leave this untold wealth of light and heat and force, to be unused and unknown?

It appears to be a principle with God to reserve valuable blessings until man is sorely pressed with a sense of need. Necessity is the divinely appointed mother of discoveries, as well as of inventions. God keeps silent as to His gracious provisions for lost man, until the heart is breaking, and out of the depths cries for help. So did He wait long for the best time to manifest His eternal love in the appearance of His Redeemer-Son; and so is He now waiting for the best time to make known His coming to the nations for whom He appeared.

"The recovery is not immediate; how could Jehovah endure the long, dark, and sad interval before the restoration?"

In itself considered and disconnected from its consequents, how dull and drear must this Geological period have seemed to the All-Wise Creator! Not one gleam of rationality shooting athwart the horizon of night; not a creature that could survey and contemplate the scene; not one aspiration. towards Himself to relieve the universal earthiness; not one hope of immortality springing up from all the universal sowing of death; on all the face of the round earth, not one emanation of delight in God; not one thought of God, nor even one capability of loving or knowing God! What could be more blank and dreary than this, in itself considered?

But the Divine foreknowledge shot rays of light all through

that dark profound. The ripened future, our present, was then present to God. In what that irrational age was to introduce; in its rich store-houses of materials for the happiness of future races; in the fact that He foresaw that these treasures would be opened and used by the highest order of creation, a race made in His own image, and would subserve their highest necessities in a thousand different ways, and would even become indispensable, in many places, to the existence of His church and the spread of the gospel of His Son,-in all this then future He found a then present delight.

So in looking down the centuries upon the deluge and the cities of the plain, upon the reeking wickedness of Greece and Rome, and the stale monotony of a mere animal existence in the populous nations of Asia and Africa, did the Infinite mind find relief in fore-seeing that to which this state of things would ultimately lead. So, too, in the rough, wicked and provoking experiences of His chosen people, together with His severe chastisements of them for the same, His eye rested with delight upon the materials which these temporary destructions were furnishing for the instruction and comfort of His infinitely more numerous people in all later Christian ages. To the Omniscient eye, the remote, glorious consequences were all visible in their earliest ante

cedents.

The Lamb was "slain from the foundation of the world." The Divine Architect, therefore, while slowly laying these solid material foundations of the earth,- an inferior and irksome work in itself, could yet find a lively satisfaction in dwelling upon the glorious fact, then present to His mind, of His Son appearing upon this earth and dying to redeem men, and actually redeeming a great multitude which no man can number.

What to-day were it worth to a tribe of Caffres to be told that their Kraals were standing upon the richest coal basin in the whole world? But the time may come when that information, if it were true, would be invaluable to them; and it would help us to endure their present dulness, could we

So the Father of mercies

foresee for them such a future. saw that an earlier appearance of His Son upon the earth would not so well have answered the benevolent end of His appearing. It would not so well have met the wants of those He came to bless. It would have been like discovering the coal treasures to Celts and Mound-Builders, or like uncapping those rich deposits ere their substance had solidified, and when it would have wasted away in useless or noxious exhalations. So God bears to-day with many nations, whose blindness and sottishness prevent His sending immediately to them the knowledge of His Son.

(b) "The restoration is not commensurate with the ruin;" meaning, I suppose, that a greater number are lost than are saved.

Numbers are fallacious data for reasoning, unless the things compared by number are identical or exactly equivalent, which is rarely the case. Figures often do lie, by inference. With the Supreme Wisdom the guiding principle is multum rather than multa.

What, to God, was the whole vegetable and animal world of the carboniferous era, compared with England or America now? What that whole Geological period, long and fertile and teeming with animal life as it may have been, compared with that part of England and America which to-day subsists entirely through what survives from the destructions of that period? Are gigantic ferns and reeds and clubmosses, the food of gigantic lizards, comparable with the wheat and the tree upon which philosopher and poet and Christian feed? Can mathematics make out an equation between millions of monster Saurians and one living man, an image of the Incomprehensible?

We dare not affirm with quite a perfect confidence, but with the Bible open before us, we dare affirm with great confidence, that man can make no equation between a soul safe without sin, as the unfallen angel is safe, and a soul saved from out of sin by Jesus Christ. The Bible places man redeemed above the angels unfallen; one soul recovered by Christ above the many remaining lost. Fallen hu

manity thus recovered, is worth more in the Divine estimation than humanity in its original form; even as carbon is worth more to the world in the solid and practical coal, than when floating as an invisible mordant poison in the atmosphere of the carboniferous era.1

Again: the time has not yet come for man to attempt a numerical comparison between the ruin and the recovery, and certainly not for saying that the recovery can never equal the ruin.

We can understand in some measure the extent of the spoliation that attended the exodus of this Geological era ; but the present extent and prospective value of those buried spoils to civilization and christianity, are not yet known. or imagined. Coal was worthless stuff for untold ages; only yesterday, as it were, was it put to its higher uses, and its highest uses may not appear till the morrow.

Let redemption have proper time to unfold and mature, and thus vindicate itself. It were just to allow it at least as long a time for repairing as the ruin has been in coming on. The reign of sin on the earth, however long or disastrous, may bear no greater ratio to the future successes of redemption, than the temporary destructions of the carboniferous era, bear to all the ages in which coal shall enter into the well-being of mankind.

The time for the objector to make his confident assertion,

1 Should we do a wrong to one of the sublimest strains in an inspired argument, if we introduce it here as an indirect illustration and confirmation of our position? "But not as the offence, so also is the free gift: for if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification. For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus ChristTherefore, as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord."