Conclusion

It has been the main object throughout the preceding chapters, not simply to address the understanding, but to present such a view of truth as should be adapted to influence the conscience, the heart, and the deportment. How far this object has been attained, and with what intentions it has been pursued, will become the subject of a solemn scrutiny when both the writer and the reader shall appear before the Son of Man. In all these lessons so early revealed, there are two grand subjects which occupy a prominent place: — God and Man. In their relations and dependencies, these constitute the most interesting topics within the circle of moral science. There is one thought in relation to them which it has been the desire of the writer to keep in view throughout the whole; and that is, That by all the exhibitions

OF DIVINE TRUTH, MAN IS HUMBLED AND God IS EX-ALTED.

In all the preceding discussions, we have found no truth that does not give man a low place. Much indeed has God done for man; but at «very step of our progress, the reflection must have forced itself upon us, “Lord, what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him?”

Man’s very existence is a borrowed and created existence, and could not be continued an hour without the sustaining hand of God. His dependence is so absolute and constant, that should God’s sustaining agency be withdrawn, he would instantly drop into annihilation. He acts not, lives not without the divine concurrence and visitation. What men shall be, and what they shall do; with what powers they shall be invested; what opportunities they shall enjoy, and what condition they shall occupy; what views they shall form, and what plans they shall carry into effect; what motives of action shall be set before them, and what influence they shall have upon their affections and conduct; in what pursuit they shall engage, and what character they shall possess: is so absolutely under a governing providence, that no man can predict his character, condition, or destiny, or foretell what awaits him the next moment, or what will be his next thought. They are not even their own property, but belonging absolutely and unalienably to another, and accountable to him universally and forever.

The race is also a depraved and corrupt race. Every principle of revealed religion considers the human family in a state of utter ruin. From the first moment of their existence as men, the youngest and the oldest, the lowest and the highest, every individual without exception, is represented in the Bible as having violated the law of God, and disregarded his rights as Creator and Governor, and his obligations as creatures and subjects. The Bible affects no concealment of the moral turpitude of men, but speaks of it in terms humbling and reproachful, condemns it as “abominable and filthy,” and represents it so odious and detestable as to deserve the wrath and curse of God both in this life and in that which is to come. So imbedded is the human heart in wickedness, that left to its own uninterrupted tendencies, its infallible and necessary consequence is all the plagues of the second death.

When from degradation like this we survey the method by which creatures so sinful and condemned, are rescued from guilt and condemnation, there are even here the strongest marks of human vileness. The Scriptures reveal the purpose of God to save, but it is by the humbling method of a pure forgiveness. This method of mercy does not even excuse or mitigate their rebellion; does not invest them with any personal claims on the divine favor, nor consider that any injustice would be done them, if God should curse them forever. Their personal ill-desert is never obliterated, either in this world, or the world to come. The very grace that redeems them sets before them the turpitude of their iniquity, condemns all their self-justifying excuses, sweeps away all their refuges of lies, prostrates them in the dust, and there presents them with a free and full forgiveness, for which they give no equivalent, and which is mere mercy from first to last. Such a salvation, — while it is a blessed, is a most reproachful salvation to sinners, because, though it saves to the uttermost, it fixes on the saved the stigma of a well-earned perdition. Men do not naturally fall in with such a salvation; and the reason why it is so often rejected, is that the despisers of mercy cannot consent to abase themselves so low, as such a method of salvation abases them.

The truths we have contemplated also make it necessary that all who are pardoned, should themselves possess an humble spirit. They not only view men as lost and condemned, but make it indispensable to their salvation, that they should see and ingenuously confess their pollution and guilt. Among the revealed conditions of pardoning mercy is the spirit which prostrates them as low in their own estimation as they are in the view of God and his holy law; nor are they ever in a state of mind to welcome this salvation without the spirit of ingennous self-loathing and self-abhorrence. No man can see his need of mercy, until he sees he is condemned by justice; no man can feel his need of mercy, until he feels he is condemned by justice; no man can accept of mercy, until he cordially approves of justice. This is the self-abasement to which the Bible sinks them, and to which they sink themselves.

To augment their humiliation, the whole scope of the Scriptures instructs us, that God extends his mercy toward them only for the sake of another. Such is the united testimony of Moses and the prophets, of Christ and the apostles. The sole ground of pardon and acceptance, is the atoning blood and justifying righteousness of Jesus Christ. If we inquire through whom, or for whose sake, or on whose account, the righteous Lawgiver justifies; to this inquiry, the divine Oracle gives but one answer. It is not from respect to anything done by men themselves, but entirely from respect to the character and work of Jesus Christ. Here, then, the truth of God again casts apostate man into the depths of humiliation. What can be more mortifying to his pride, than to be made the recipient of the divine favor as the gift of mere mercy; and that, too, in a way which not only recognizes his utter ill-desert, but so far from making any account of his virtues and goodness as the ground of his acceptance, has an exclusive

VOL. II. — lY regard to the interposition of another? “The lofty looks of man are thus humbled, and the haughtiness of man bowed down.” Thus low does the truth of God humble proud man. He is humbled in his loftiest exaltation, and exalted only in his deepest humility. O what contempt is poured upon all the glory of man by the truths of the Bible “that no flesh may glory in God’s presence!”

Yet is there a delightful counterpart to this truth. In humbling man, we exalt God. We have desired to give God his proper place, and not only to represent him as the greatest and best, and most exalted being in the universe, but to bring out to the view of men his existence, government, and glories. We have represented him as the great First Cause and Last End of all things; from everlasting inhabiting his own high and holy place, — the sole proprietor of that immeasurable continent, that shoreless ocean, — the exclusive inhabitant of a duration without beginning and without end, and the exalted being who possesses in his own existence a mysterious, mighty, inconceivable Eternity. We see him clothed with every attribute both of natural perfection and moral excellence; elevated above all the grossness of matter, and concentrating all the intellect, volition, and activity of a pure, perfect and infinite Spirit. We see his will invested with omnipotence, and his every volition clothed with an agency beyond the reach of resistance, obstruction, or control. We see this uncreated Spirit everywhere present in the essence of his nature, the extent of his knowledge, and the ubiquity of his influence. We see him glorious in holiness; and how the unchanging impulse of his infinite mind is to love that which is right, and accomplish that which is best. We see how holy, how awful, how amiable and how glorious is his justice, and how its severest illustrations secure and perpetuate the safety and welfare of his universal kingdom. We see how munificent, how tender, how unutterably condescending is his mercy, and what ineffable loveliness is discovered in this highest expression of his benevolent nature. And in all this, we see “no variableness, nor shadow of turning;” while everything else is subjected to mutation and decay, their very mutability do but illustrate and magnify his own divine immutability and faithfulness.

We have taken a glance at his wisdom, power and love in the creation and government of the universe; spreading out the heavens as a curtain, and the earth as a tent to dwell in; filling the earth, the air, and the waters with their appropriate inhabitants, and diffusing his wondrous glory over the immense fabric of created existence. We have read his law — his righteous and authoritative law — precepts that are pure, prohibitions that are reasonable, penalties and sanctions that his own character and the character of his subjects required him to prescribe; and how he has established a government in the consciences of his accountable creatures, which, while it enjoins on them subjection, gives a moral dignity to him in which every holy mind rejoices. We have also beheld him at the head of a most efficient administration, and maintaining a supremacy, a sovereignty, which leads him to “do according to his will in the armies of heaven and amid the inhabitants of the earth,” and which imparts the splendors of uncreated royalty to his throne. In this administration, we have seen him disclosing the operations both of an universal and particular providence, himself deciding the visible superiority and inferiority of all his creatures, both as it respects their condition, their intelligence, their moral character, and their final destination; and thus magnifying his own great and adorable supremacy in his “most holy, wise, and powerful governing all his creatures and all their actions.” We have seen how his almighty and invisible agency sustains all worlds; and how the life and breath which animate the living population of the universe, are the hourly infusion of his all-pervading presence; and how he lives in everything that lives. We have seen him observing with a minute inspection all that exists and is done, inflicting all that is suffered, and communicating all that is enjoyed, owning all that is scattered over his vast dominions, and as deeply interested in all as though his first and best designs, his first and highest desires were linked in with the work of his hands. It is a glorious feature in the system of revealed truth, that it excludes God from nothing; that it recognizes no partial atheism, obscures no impress of the divine hand, conceals no vestige of his footsteps, and discovers him first, him last, him midst, him always.

And when we come to the wonderful method of his grace, how is God All in all! Do you ask who devised it; it was God. That mysterious expedient whereby God can be just and the justifier of him that belie veth in Jesus; that mighty effort of mercy and righteousness, wisdom and power, by which all the apparently jarring attributes of the divine nature harmonize and illustrate each other in the redemption of sinners, — an expedient which put to naught all the wisdom of this world, and mocked all the powers of the angelic and human creation — was all his “own purpose and grace,” and one all the honors of which are ascribed alone to him. All the departments of this great redemption are filled up by God; he is not only the Author, but the Finisher of the whole. When man had fallen and justice was about to inflict her heaviest blow, it was he who made the earliest disclosures of this salvation to our apostate progenitors, and all along through the ancient economy, lighted up the darkness of the typical dispensation, by faith and hope in the great Mediator. And when the way was prepared by a general expectation throughout the world of the advent of some illustrious deliverer — by the fulfilment of the predictions in the Jewish Scriptures concerning the promised Messiah — by the cessation of that long line of prophets and inspired men who had been raised up to preserve the knowledge of the one Only Living and True God, and the prevalence of a ceremonial religion that had set at naught the obligation of the moral law — by the degradation of morals throughout the Pagan world, and the progress of human philosophy and intellectual refinement, which had then made their highest and best, but unavailing efforts for the redemption of mankind; — in this fulness of time, God sent forth his Son as the light and salvation of the world. We contemplate his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection and ascension, all completed in a series of astonishing and miraculous events, and all calculated to substantiate the divinity of his person, the fact of his messiahship, and the glory of his all-sufficient propitiation for the sins of men. And then see the God of heaven coming down from his holy habitation and dwelling among men, to give efficiency to his grace, and by his own Eternal Spirit, in order to prepare a people for his praise.

“Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to thy name give glory for thy mercy and truth’s sake.” To the accomplishment of this redemption everything in time is subjected and rendered subservient. We hold a place in that world which God has made the theatre of his most wonderful operations, and the history of which has been opening scenes that are constantly new and constantly exhibiting the mighty hand and astonishing wonders of redeeming mercy. We occupy an eminence from which we behold mighty revolutions in the moral universe, all reflecting the wonders of infinite wisdom, and all concentrating in the great redemption. And when from the eminence on which the truth of God has placed us, we look down the descent of future ages, we see that the revolutions that are now taking place, and that will take place hereafter, — the enterprises that are now matured and that will be matured hereafter, — the nations that now exist and that will be brought into existence hereafter, — the purification of the true church and the conversion or destruction of that which is impure and apostate, — the restoration of the Jews and the conversion of the Gentiles, — the downfall of the man of sin and the confusion of the false prophet, all proving the powerful auxiliaries, and themselves constitute some of the glorious results of Christ’s redemption. So obviously do they all lead to high and awful discoveries of the Godhead, that when they shall break upon the world, men shall “enter into the rock and hide them in the dust for fear of the Lord and for the glory of his majesty.” All the glories of the divine nature are brought out from their retirement and obtruded upon the admiration of men in this method of his grace. There was no other way in which God could unfold all the perfections of his infinite mind; no other in which he could so clearly and fully manifest any of his perfections; no other in which he could so fully prepare the minds of all moral beings to contemplate them with an arrested attention and keen sensibility. Here they shine in full-orbed splendor. Here, they overpower the intelligence of seraphs. They dazzle the senses of the highest orders of being, and they “cover their faces,” while in prostrate admiration, they say one to another, “Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory;” thus exalting him as God over all, and proclaiming his exaltation forever and ever.

To all that God has purposed and performed in the present world, there is an end. What that mighty result is, so worthy of God, has been disconclusion. 393

closed. It is in the final issues of the whole, that we behold him more than ever exalted. Men terminate their sublunary existence in the grave. Not until the morning of the resurrection will this whole creation and all the designs of God respecting it, reach their final issues. The voice of the archangel and the trump of God shall sound to announce the final advent of the Son of Man, to convoke the universe before the bar of judgment, to proclaim the long-predicted and fearful trial of moral character, to summon angels, men, and devils to God’s all-decisive sentence and their unalterable doom. And O, how “the loftylooks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down! How will the God of heaven be exalted in that day when the universe shall stand before him to acknowledge him as their Lord and king; when he shall assert his supremacy and vindicate the rectitude of everything he has done; when every mouth shall be stopped and the whole world shall become guilty before him; when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father; when the mediatorial kingdom shall be closed, and the Son deliver it up, and God shall be all in all; and when the wicked shall go away into everlasting punishment and the righteous into life eternal! There will indeed then be drawn a dividing line both in the character and condition of the universe through interminable ages; but they shall all unite in exalting God — the one cheerfully and of choice, the other reluctantly and by constraint — the one in heaven, the other in hell — the one by suffering, the other by praise — the one by disclosing the glories of his punitive righteousness, the other by disclosing and extolling the glories of his redeeming and wonderful mercy. Where now are they who once defamed and blasphemed the God of heaven? Where are rebel angels that so early threw off their allegiance and defied his authority? Where are “those his enemies” in every age of the world, who “would not that he should reign over them?” And where are the unfallen and redeemed creation? Where is the blood-bought church redeemed out of every kindred and nation and tongue under heaven? Low, low prostrated before his throne, in everlasting but sweet humility and self-abasement, and saying day and night, “Blessing, and honor, and dominion, and power be unto him that sitteth thereon, and to the Lamb forever!” Yes, there is exaltation for no other being in the universe then but God. God is exalted; God “alone” is exalted in that day.

It is a delightful thought that God is above all our praise. We can do little more than behold his glory; and as we behold it, veil our faces and lie in humble prostration at his feet. “Who bysearching can find out God?”

‘Stand, and adore; how glorious he!
That dwells in bright eternity.
We gaze, and we confound our sight,
Plunged in th’ abyss of dazzling light.

Great God, forgive our feeble praise,
Sound out thine own eternal praise;
A song so vast, a theme so high,
Calls for the voice that tuned the sky.’

There are those who are happy in the confidence, that God will be infinitely and forever exalted. Sweet assurance, that “the Lord God omnipotent reigneth;” that his eye and his heart who wrought the first things are fixed on the best end; that he never has lost sight of it, either in the works of creation, providence, or redemption; that all things are tending to his exaltation as their centre and final issue; that he has all means, instruments and causes in his hand, and that he will prosecute and consummate his purpose with all the ardor and zeal which infinite greatness and goodness can employ in the completion of the greatest and best design. We may indeed rejoice; yea, we may shout for joy. Heaven will be full of God. There the infinite One shall have his own proper place, and the honors of the universe shall be paid to him. There every creature shall have his proper place also, and lie at the footstool of his Sovereign and Redeemer; and because it is a world of everlasting humility, it will be supremely happy.