In both alike do we find an upward progress from dead matter to the humbler forms of vitality, and from thence to the higher. And after great cattle and beasts of the earth had, in due order, succeeded inanimate plants, sea-monsters, and moving creatures that had life, the moral agent, man, enters upon the scene. Previous to his appearance on earth, each succeeding elevation in the long upward march had been a result of creation. The creative fiat went forth, and dead matter came into existence. The creative fiat went forth, and plants, with the lower animal forms, came into existence. The creative fiat went forth, and the oviparous animals,-birds and reptiles,-came into existence. The creative fiat went forth, and the mammiferous animals,-cattle and beasts of the earth,-came into existence. And, finally, last in the series, the creative fiat went forth, and responsible, immortal man, came into existence. But has the course of progress come, in consequence, to a close? No. God's work of elevating, raising, heightening,—of making the high in due progression succeed the low, still goes on. But man's responsibility, his immortality, his God-implanted instincts respecting an eternal future, forbid that that work of elevation and progress should be, as in all the other instances, a work of creation. To create would be to supersede. God's work of elevation now is the work of fitting and preparing peccable, imperfect man for a perfect, impeccable future state. God's seventh day's work is the work of Redemption. And, read in this light, his reason vouchsafed to man for the institution of the Sabbath is found to yield a meaning of peculiar breadth and emphasis. God, it seems to say, rests on his Sabbath from his creative labours, in order

that by his Sabbath-day's work He may save and elevate you. Rest ye also on your Sabbaths, that through your co-operation with Him in this great work ye may be elevated and saved. Made originally in the image of God, let God be your pattern and example. Engaged in your material and temporal employments, labour in the proportions in which he laboured; but, in order that you may enjoy an eternal future with Him, rest also in the proportions in which He rests.

One other remark ere I conclude. In the history of the earth which we inhabit, molluscs, fishes, reptiles, mammals, had each in succession their periods of vast duration; and then the human period began,-the period of a fellow-worker with God, created in God's own image. What is to be the next advance? Is there to be merely a repetition of the past?-an introduction a second time of man made in the image of God? No. The geologist, in those tables of stone which form his records, finds no example of dynasties once passed away again returning. There has been no repetition of the dynasty of the fish, of the reptile, of the mammal. The dynasty of the future is to have glorified man for its inhabitant; but it is to be the dynasty" the kingdom"-not of glorified man made in the image of God, but of God himself in the form of man. In the doctrine of the two conjoined natures, human and Divine, and in the farther doctrine that the terminal dynasty is to be peculiarly the dynasty of HIM in whom the natures are united, we find that required progression beyond which progress cannot go. We find the point of elevation never to be exceeded meetly coincident with the final period never to be terminated, -the infinite in height harmoniously associated with

the eternal in duration. Creation and the Creator meet at one point, and in one person. The long ascending line from dead matter to man has been a progress Godwards, not an asymptotical progress, but destined from the beginning to furnish a point of union; and, occupying that point as true God and true man,—as Creator and created,-we recognise the adorable Monarch of all the future!

LECTURE FOURTH.

THE MOSAIC VISION OF CREATION.

THE history of creation is introduced into the "Paradise Lost" as a piece of narrative, and forms one of the two great episodes of the poem. Milton represents the common father of the race as "led on" by a desire to know

"What within Eden or without was done
Before his memory;"

and straightway Raphael, "the affable archangel," in compliance with the wish, enters into a description of the six days' work of the Divine Creator,-a description in which, as Addison well remarks, "the whole energy of our tongue is employed, and the several great scenes of creation rise up to view, one after another, in such a manner, that the reader seems present at this wonderful work, and to assist among the choirs of angels who are spectators of it." In the other great episode of the poem, that in which the more prominent changes which were to happen in after time upon the earth are made to pass before Adam, he is represented as carried by

Michael to the top of a great mountain, lofty as that on which in a long posterior age the Tempter placed our Saviour, and where the coming events are described as rising up in vision before him. In the earlier episode, as in those of the Odyssey and Æneid, in which heroes relate in the courts of princes the story of their adventures, there is but narrative and description; in the later, a series of magnificent pictures, that form and then dissolve before the spectator, and comprise, in their vivid tints and pregnant outlines, the future history of a world. And one of these two episodes,-that which relates to the creation of all things,-must have as certainly had a place in human history as in the master epic of England. Man would have for ever remained ignorant of many of those events related in the opening chapters of Scripture which took place ere there was a human eye to witness or a human memory to record, had he not been permitted, like Adam of old, to hold intercourse with the intelligences that had preceded him in creation, or with the great Creator himself, the Author of them all; and the question has been asked of late, both in our own country and on the Continent, What was the form and nature of the revelation by which the pre-Adamic history of the earth and heavens was originally conveyed to man? Was it conveyed, like the sublime story of Raphael, as a piece of narrative, dictated, mayhap, to the inspired penman, or miraculously borne in upon his mind? Or was it conveyed by a succession of sublime visions like that which Michael is represented as calling up before Adam, when, purging his "visual nerves with euphrasy and rue," he enabled him to see, in a series of scenes, the history of his offspring from the crime of Cain down to the destruction of the Old World by a flood? The pas