others, is a question which need not embarrass us. It is not necessary that his master-purpose should have priority in the order of time, and only in the order of nature. Nothing is more obvious from his word, or from an extended view of his providence, than that his first purpose in importance-his most comprehensive and all-concentrating purpose-is his purpose of mercy to apostate men. It is the purpose which is most endeared to his benevolent mind, the one for which he has made the greatest sacrifices, and to which he has made all things subservient. Treasures of divine thought were to be developed by it, which otherwise never could have enriched the universe, and changes effected by it which would arrest the attention of angels and men. The divine mind was here to employ itself on a large scale; it was to occupy ages; wondrous were the manifestations it was to make of the unsearchable Godhead. There were "utterances of the Deity" in the few words of that single promise, which will be echoed in the everlasting song of the redeemed; there were excellencies of the Deity of which that promise is the mirror, which will be the more effulgent and the more transforming, as the effects of it are seen and felt with increasing interest by every rational being, when these material heavens and earth shall be no more.

The reasons for the formation of this great

purpose, have been revealed. God himself is his own supreme object. He must be so, from the eternity of his existence, and the perfection of his character. All nations are as a drop of a bucket compared with him. In the eternity past, there was no other in existence except himself; and in the eternity to come, though worlds be created upon worlds, they may not be compared with him. If God himself be not the chief end of all things, creatures must be that end. Yet the heavens are not clean in his sight, and his angels he chargeth with folly. And what is man who is a worm, and the son of man who is a worm? If we ask why, with unwasting resources of joy and blessedness within himself, did he give existence to the race of man; the most natural and obvious answer must be given in the words, "Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they do exist and were created." If we ask, why was it his pleasure; a field of thought here opens which it is impossible for creatures to travel over, impossible for them to survey, or even to glance at, without adoring views of God, and without veiling their faces before him.

That is an amazing declaration which affirms that God is love. How much these few words contain, neither the tongue of men, nor angels can express. It is God's nature, to love. He would not exist alone; he must have something to love.

He created angels that he might love them, and make them holy and happy. But he would stoop lower than angels; his heart was set upon man; he would make them lovely, and give them the happiness of being loved. When his love puts on its most attractive forms, and he would deck himself with it as with a garment, he smiles upon the cheerless and desponding; he hears the groaning of the prisoner and looses them that are appointed unto death. He stoops to this agitated, convulsed, and almost distracted world-this house of mourning, this home of the miserable, these suburbs of hell. His highest delight and joy are that from this once fair, and now fallen creation, those most demonstrative expressions of "the exceeding riches of his grace" should go forth which must otherwise have been suppressed, but which are now destined to receive eternally-accumulating responses of grateful and admiring praise.

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Here we may perceive something of the import of this first promise. The all-sufficient God was, if I may so speak, urged to it by his irrepressible love. The fountain was full, and must thus transpire though it were by a streamlet in the desert. It is a wonderful promise; and one which illumines the pages of God's entire revelation; lights up many a dark and inexplicable dispensation of his government, and sends its cheering radiance from the dawn of creation to its declining sun.

was,

When oppressed with sin, and writhing under the sting of guilt, it was no easy matter for our first parents to comprehend that there was hope for such sinners as they. Dismal and sullen was the silence of that scene when they were first summoned before their offended judge; and when that deep silence was broken on their part, pitiable must have been those notes of woe. And, delightful thought, guilty as our fallen humanity its-wretchedness had a voice that entered into his ear; man's helplessness was his most affecting appeal for deliverance from death. The fountain of eternal love was opened, that the thirsty and perishing might drink and live. "Deliver him from going down to the pit; for I have found a ransom." The iron grasp of inexorable justice was broken; that hopeless grief assuaged, and the tears of Paradise exchanged for the "glad tidings, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between her seed and thy seed."

There is in this promise, in the next place, a

PREDICTION OF HIS ASSUMPTION OF HUMAN NATURE

BY THE SECOND PERSON OF THE ADORABLE GODHEAD. “Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness; God manifest in the flesh." It is one thing to reveal a mystery; it is quite another to explain it; to say that mysteries are revealed is no absurdity, to say that they are explained is to make them no longer mysterious. The Bible has

higher aims than to make men acute reasoners and profound metaphysicians. The incomprehensible mystery of the Incarnation appeals to something else in man beside his reason; it appeals to his conscience and addresses his wants and his woes.

The Saviour we need must be God, and not a creature. Men have sinned, and deserve the curse pronounced by that law which can no more change than God can change. They need pardon and peace; and though they search through creation, and go up to the heavens, and down into the deep; though they inquire of the past, the present, and the future; though they address the most exalted and the most perfect of all the creatures that ever came from the hand of God; they can find none so good, so powerful, so perfect as to effect their reconciliation with their offended Maker. It would be temerity and crime for the loftiest of creatures, who has no righteousness beyond his own necessities, to entertain the proud and sacrilegious thought that by anything he could do, or suffer, he could satisfy or relax the bonds of immutable justice, and justify the Holy One in justifying the ungodly. Condemned and dying men could not trust a created Saviour; redeemed sinners may not be under this debt of gratitude to a created Saviour.

But while the deliverer they need must be truly and properly divine; he must be also the "woman's