"For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited; I am the Lord; and there is none else."* That same Jehovah is He, who is "of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look upon iniquity."† When God made man to inhabit the earth, he made him 66 very good," and when the great adversary prevailed to add the knowledge of evil to the knowledge of good in that man, by tempting him to sin, he may be said to have placed the Almighty One in this dilemma. The man whom he had made had fallen from righteousness, and by sin incurred the penalty of death which cut him off from communion with his Maker. The very source from whence the family of man was to flow had become poisoned before the rising of one pure stream through which the original purpose might be fulfilled. Either, then, Jehovah must have destroyed the creature whom he had appointed to inhabit the earth, and the earth created for him, and so have been constrained to reverse his decree; or He must have tolerated the perpetual rebellion of the fallen family, whom he had placed upon the earth to replenish it. In either case there would * Isaiah xlv. 18. † Hab. i. 13.

have been a constraining power from without, acting upon the purposes of Jehovah, and it is in full contemplation of the alternatives of this dilemma that Jehovah writes, "I am the Lord, and there is none else," as the Divine sign manual to the decree, that he formed the earth, and made it, and established it, and created it, not in vain, but formed it to be inhabited.

The great adversary who made this assault upon the omnipotence of God knew nothing of the Almightiness of His wisdom. Wisdom was with him in eternity. "The Lord possessed him in the beginning of his way before his works of old. He was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was."* And that Wisdom made possible the impossible path between the alternatives of the dilemma. In him, mercy and truth met together, righteousness and peace kissed each other. Being the eternal Son of God, he determined to become man, and in the flesh to make that great atonement by which he brought back man from the curse in order to inhabit the earth, and the earth from the curse in order to be inhabited by man. By taking the manhood into God, he not only disappointed the designs of Satan, but gathered new glory out of the results of the satanic attempt.

* Proverbs viii. 22, 23.

This boundless scheme of love involved the taking of the flesh by the Son of God for ever; and it pleased the Almighty mind to connect with this glorious humiliation special circumstances that might constitute what we may venture to call memorials of the vast event,living tokens of these unspeakable wonders, that should convey in all eternity its remembrance to all created beings. These memorials must be constituted from that corrupt nature, the uncorrupting and renewing of which they testify and for this purpose some delay was necessary in the nature of things, in order that the beings to be employed for this great purpose should be born, and rise in due and natural order out of the man to whom the dominion of the earth had been originally given. Were it not for this, we can tell no reason why the expectation of Eve should not have been accomplished, that her earliest seed should be the very one to bruise the serpent's head. A little time was needed, but a little. A week of days in a century of years would be a vast proportion compared to a week of thousand years to all the ages of eternity. This little while, indeed, the power of Satan must still be left uncrushed, in order to the purpose of establishing those splendid memorials; and still that uncrushed

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power must be permitted to gather fruits of the fall, to increase, alas! the company that are to fill the place prepared for the devil and his angels.

But, when once the grand result shall have been obtained, Satan shall have no more victims, but be for ever cast out powerless for ill to all eternity; while from his cunning deceit will have arisen augmented glory to the Son of God, and the raising out of the original man a new class of beings above the angels, and in the likeness of the glorified Jesus himself, surrounding his throne for ever, shining as living rays round the Sun of Righteousness. While these will form the bright memorial in the heavens-tokens to all created beings of the glorious humiliation of the Son of God-the earth itself shall also have a suitable memorial of past mercy in its restored condition, when, at the restitution of all things, the uncursed earth shall bear again the race that rules it, marked as "very good." These, during at least the Sabbatical Millennium, (for we dare not speak beyond what is written,) the special kindred of that honoured flesh,-chosen and set apart in its earliest stock,-separated and not counted amongst the nations, shall hold a glorious pre-eminence above their fellow-men. With bodies unchanged, indeed, to spiritual bodies

("there is a natural body and there is a spiritual body,") yet, full of the Spirit of God, every one holy. This royal race-this chosen priesthood, shall form a grade above the children of men, (called the nations of the saved ones,) dwelling on the earth, and below the glorified saints of heaven.

The glorified saints shall have their home where Christ is, while they fulfil his commands and exercise his delegated kingship wherever that one King of kings shall employ them; for He hath "made us unto our God kings and priests, and we shall reign on the earth." For there will be a dispensation of sight; and even as man was made to hold open communion with his Maker, and sin alone has been the cause of that separation and banishment, by which the unseen things have become as though they were not; yet sin being then subdued, the early intercourse will be restored, and instead of those rare angel visits which of old gave an occasional glance into the heavenly economy, the open manifestation of the glorified saints will be the ordinary characteristic of the dispensation.

The Abrahamic saints below, upon whom shall have been poured "the Spirit of grace and of supplications," perfected as Christians by the fulness of the Spirit of Christ in them,—walking upon