V.

In Preparing for Revelation.

On the assumption that human nature was in ruins, that we had lost the way to heaven, and that we could not discover it for ourselves,-why, it may be asked, did God suffer 4000 years to elapse before he made known the Gospel of the kingdom of his Son? Why was the ploughshare of ruin allowed so long to speed its way? Why was the sword so long unsheathed? Why was the darkness suffered to become so dense before the Sun of righteousness arose with healing under his wings? It is a diffcult question: it can only be neutralized as an objection—it cannot be solved as a difficulty. With God, what seems to us long, is very short. To an Eternal Being, to be preceded by millions upon millions of years, and to be succeeded by millions and millions more, is as a drop in the bucket in comparison with eternity. What seems to us a long process, only seems so relatively to the shortness of the span of our existence upon earth.

It may be neutralized as an objection in this way. If it be an objection against the God of Christianity that he was so long in making known the Gospel,that he allowed 4000 years to elapse after the Fall before the Great Recoverer came,-it must also equally tell against the existence and providential government

of a God at all, that he has allowed 6000 years to elapse before he gave, in his providence, some of the most beneficent and brilliant discoveries that have enriched the stores, and benefited the condition and the health of mankind. Why did he allow so long a time to elapse before vaccination was discovered-a remedy that has ended the ravages of a disease that was long the great plague and pestilence of mankind? Why did he allow so long a period to expire before he revealed. the ethereal breath, under the influence of which the anatomist's knife communicates no pang, and woman's sorrow is so mitigated, and the severest operations may take place without the patient knowing that he is the subject of them? Why did God allow so long a time to elapse before he gave us the mariner's compass, or before he revealed printing, that gives wings to words, and permanence to thought? Do we not see that if it be an argument against the God of the Bible that he allowed 4000 years to elapse before he gave a manifestation of the great truth, it must be an argument against the existence of a God at all that he allowed. the human race to remain so long toiling with distressing ailments, or dying the victims of disease, before he revealed to them those grand prescriptions that are among the choicest providential mercies that have been vouchsafed to the human family? We may thus neutralize the objection as an objection, though we cannot solve it as a difficulty. It is one of the "whys" that a fool may ask in a minute, but that it will take an eternity to unveil, and redeemed and wise men to explain, when we shall see no more through a glass darkly, but face to face. Let us be content with our ignorance, where we cannot dissipate it; let us b

humbled in our imperfections, where we cannot alter them; and wait for the better day, when what we do not know now, or very dimly know, we shall know hereafter.

But we shall see reasons neither light nor few by a very short and succinct resumé of the incidents that occurred before the advent of Christ. A great preparatory process was going on, and the human race was under a preliminary discipline, and Jesus came, to use the language of the Apostle, "in the fulness of the times "—that is, just at the moment when it was best for man, and man was fittest for it, and most for the glory of God. This was the finger of God. Admit that the manifestation of Christ was a Divine thing, and that admission is evidence enough that it was the wisest, the best, and the most blessed. But we shall see, by glancing at a few facts and features characteristic of the ages that preceded the Gospel, that our blessed Lord came just at that moment when we were best prepared and it was best for us, and most for his glory.

The description of man after the Fall is, that his heart became deceitful, that its very imagination was only evil continually, that he had become a sinner, and a sinner without any strength adequate to his own restoration. It seems to me that God's great design in allowing 4000 years to elapse before he revealed Christ the Saviour, was to lead all to learn, by personal, social, national, universal experience, that man is what he is described to be, and that he cannot restore himself; and that human nature—thus schooled by these experimental evidences, which fools even, it is said in the proverb, will learn-might appreciate the excellence

and the blessedness of that grand provision, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." We shall see this exhibited on every scale. Nation succeeded nation in the ancient economies. The conqueror took the throne of the conquered; the invader occupied the place of the nation invaded. We find a change of tenants, but not a change of character. It looks as if the conqueror caught the contagion of the nation he had conquered, and became himself just as corrupt as those who had preceded him. We do not find that the nations that swept away the empires of ancient days and of eastern times were one whit holier, or purer, or better, than the nations that they had dislodged. Let us see what attempts were made to improve mankind. Legislation made the experiment. All sorts of laws were made; the minds of legislators were taxed; the genius of accomplished men was exhausted. But it was found that human corruption shot up under every régime; and whether it was a despot on the throne, or the crowd in the agora-an aristocracy, a despotism, a limited monarchy, or a republic-it was discovered that policy could never make a people; for it was, and is still true, that a people only can make a lasting and a noble policy. It has been found that human nature was the same under all governments whatever.

Philosophy made the experiment in the hands of Socrates; and I know nothing as a human thing more beautiful, or more indicative of the first sprinkling of the rays of revealed truth, than the aphorisms, maxims, and prescriptions that this victim of his country's injustice, but benefactor of his age, gave so frequent utterance to. I know nothing human more beautiful

on earth than the magnificent clothing of the maxims of Socrates in the language of Plato: and we know that the philosophy of the Stagyrite lasted throughout the middle ages of Europe after Christianity itself was revealed, and gave shape and form to many of the conclusions of mankind. But amid all the lights of philosophy, amid all the lessons that it taught mankind, human nature remained still, in the meridian brightness of the purest teaching of Socrates, the slave of passion, the victim of corruption, creeping round an altar to the unknown Deity, and proclaiming, in the experience of a thousand years, that the world by wisdom knew not God.

We

If we leave philosophy, and turn to the consideration of the fine arts, we shall find the same result. read a great deal in the writings of the Germans of what is called æsthetic influence. Some Germans who are weary of everything in the past, and who are anxious to strike out something original and real, have many of them the idea that if men were all admirers of statues, and painting, and poetry, they would be pure and happy. In short, that, if you could sweep away all the churches of Christendom, and build Crystal Palaces and British Museums, accessible on Sundays, the human race would reach a pitch of moral excellence unprecedented in the past. But the experiment has been made. In Greece the marble was chiselled into such exquisite forms that the very fragments we are content to gather, and store in our museums, and admire. Painting attained such a pitch of excellence then, that, according to tradition, the birds of heaven descended to peck the fruits the painters of Greece were able to embody on the canvass. And it is well