Teachings of Nature in the Kingdom of Grace

Bserve the method of creation. I will not venture upon any dogmatic theory of geology,

but there seems to be every probability that this world has been fitted up and destroyed, re-fitted and then destroyed again, many times before the last arranging of it for the habitation of men. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth;” then came a long interval, and at length, at the appointed time, during seven days, the Lord prepared the earth for the human race. Consider, then, the state of matters when the Great Architect began His work. What was there in the beginning? Originally, nothing. When He commanded the ordering of the earth, how was it? “The earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” There was no trace of another’s plan to interfere with the Great Architect; “With whom took He counsel, and who instructed Him, and taught Him in the path of judgment, and taught Him knowledge, and showed to Him the way of understanding?” He received no contribution of column or pillar towards the temple which He intended to build. The earth was, as the Hebrew puts it, Tohu and Bohu, disorder and confusion — in a word, chaos. Soit is in the new creation. When the Lord new creates us, He borrows nothing from the old man, but makes all things new. He does not repair and add a new wing to the old house of our depraved nature, but He builds a new temple times have given for a tear4 I »wanted to repe could not4 longed ;to beliewe/by ney damien nd paralysed, (This is a humbling, revelation of God’s Holy Spirit/but a needful one, for the faith of the flesh is not the faith of God’s elect.

he faith which justifies the soul is the gift of God, and not of ourselves.

You see, then, the universality of this withering work within us, but I beg you also to notice the completeness of zt. The grass, what does it do? Droop, nay, wither. The flower of the field: what of that? Does it hang its head a little? No, according to Isaiah it fades; and according to Peter it falleth away. There is no reviving it with showers, it has come to its end. Even thus are the awakened led to see that in their flesh there dwelleth no good thing. What dying and withering work some of God’s servants have had in their souls! Look at John Bunyan, as, he describes himself in his “Grace Abounding!”/ For how many months and even years was the Spirit engaged in writing death upon all that was the old Bunyan, in order that he might become by grace a new man fitted to track the pilgrims along their heavenly way./ We have not all endured the ordeal so long, but in every chjld of God there must be a death to te the nw/and to self/which must be fully accomplished ere he is perfected in Christ and taken to heaven./ Corruption cannot inherit incorruption; it is through the Spirit that we mortify the deeds of the body, and therefore live. But cannot the fleshly mind be improved? By no means; for “the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Cannot you improve the old nature? No; “ye must be born again.” Can it not be taught heavenly things? No. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” There is nothing to be done with the old nature but to let it be laid in the grave; it must be dead, and buried, and when it is so, then the incorruptible seed that liveth and abideth for ever will develop gloriously, the fruit of the new birth will come to maturity, and grace shall be exalted in glory. The old nature never does improve, it is as earthly, and sensual, and devilish in the saint of eighty years of age as it was when first he came to Christ; it is unimproved and unimprovable; towards God it is enmity itself: every imagination of the thoughts of the heart is evil, and that continually. The old nature called “the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other,” neither can there be peace between them.

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