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example, because it may be taken as the most exalted form in which the revelation of God transcends the presumptions and analogies of nature. Before it was revealed, how unimaginable was the incarnation of the Son of God, the descent and perpetual indwelling of the Holy Ghost! how exuberant of supernatural mysteries, how fruitful in Divine ministries of grace! Since the fall, there had been one heavy downward tide bearing mankind away from God: perpetuity, steadfastness, growth of sanctity, except in scattered saints, was nowhere

seen.

Even the elder Church was but a shadow of good things to come, though, through all its visible declensions, it preserved its elect, and the promise of Messiah. "As a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves; so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof." And this prophecy, though the teil tree and the oak are types and illustrations, was fulfilled by a divine person and a divine production above the analogies of nature; by the mystical unity of Christ and the Church.

Let us, then, while we trace the unity and harmony of all God's works, both in nature and in grace, beware how we limit the manifold fulness of the Divine procedure. All the creation of God reveals itself upon an ascending scale, a mystical ladder, the foot of which rests on this lower earth; but as we climb upward, new and more perfect ministries, laws of a heavenlier tenor, begin to move and reign; as subjects of the city of God, we pass under conditions of probation, guidance, light, grace, and sustenance, of which nature gives the prelude and the hope, but the realities are transcendent and eternal.

1 Isaiah vi. 13.

SERMON Χ.

THE NEW CREATION.

REV. iii. 14.

"These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God."

B

Y these divine titles our Lord made Himself known to the Church of Laodicea. They have each one of them a deep and ineffable meaning, far beyond the reach of our intelligence. He is the eternal, self-affirming, self-attesting Truth; the changeless revelation of the unchangeable wisdom; the fulness of the promises; "the beginning," and first producing cause, "of the creation of God."

It is of this last title we have now to speak. Let us consider, therefore, why He is so called. And first, the Son of God is so called because He was Himself the creator of all worlds.

In the book of Proverbs we read of the Word or Wisdom of the Father: "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: while as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When He prepared the heavens, I was there: when He set a compass upon the face of the depth: when He established the clouds above: when He strengthened the fountains of the deep: when He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters should not pass His commandment: when He appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him : and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him." Again, in the book of Psalms: "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth."2 The beloved disciple writes: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...... All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made."3 And St. Paul writes: "Who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of

1 Prov. viii. 22-30.

8 St. John i. 1, 3.

VOL. IV.

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2 Ps. xxxii. 6.

every creature: for by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist." And again: "His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds."2 And so the Church confesses in the Nicene creed, "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God," "by whom all things were made."

From these words we learn that the creator of the world is the everlasting Son of God. The Word of God is He by whom "He spake, and it was done: He commanded, and it stood fast." He said, "Let there be light: and there was light." That same almighty and eternal Word is not a mere effluence, or emanation, or radiance of the Father, but a divine Person, consubstantial, distinct, but undivided, the Power of creation, as voice is the power of speech, - true, living, almighty. Thus He was the beginning, the first moving cause, making that to be which was not, shaping and moulding it after the forms of His own eternal wisdom; ordering, harmonising, uniting all things; filling, quickening, upholding all things. All creation was a visible revealing of

1 Col. i. 15-1

2 Heb. i. 2.

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