FIRST THINGS
by Gardiner Spring
Volume I — Chapter 13

THE FIRST PROMISE.

Wondrous truth, there was no great interval between the first sin and the first promise. Those portentous clouds which hung over the garden, had scarcely begun to cast their shadows, when the halo of an unexpected and bright prediction encircled these first transgressors, and sent its radiance to distant times. Strange prediction! marvellous promise! “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”

This is the first promise recorded in the Scriptures. And that hope might gently and gradually find its way to the despairing bosoms of the transgressors, it is contained in the sentence pronounced on their betrayer. He was the first and great transgressor, and on him incensed justice first fell. What was death to him, was life to them. They could not comprehend its import; bright as it was, it was but a ray of light that illumined their dungeon. Nor did it at first disclose the full, rich truth, that his degradation was man’s honor, his defeat man’s victory, his overthrow man’s redemption. Our first parents probably understood it to imply no more than that it contained a prediction of life to the woman, because it spoke of the “woman’s seed;” a prediction of conflict between her seed and the serpent, in which the tempter should be vanquished by One in a nature inferior to his own, and in which the woman’s seed should be ultimately triumphant. It was the woman’s seed, and not the offspring of the man; and could therefore be applicable only to him who was the Virgin’s Son. It is a singular promise, but so emphatic and compendious as to require subsequent revelations to develop its import. It includes the sum and substance of the gospel; it is the germ of that Tree of Life whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. A brief analysis of it is the design of the present chapter.

It contains the FIRST REVELATION OF GOD’S PURPOSES OF MERCY TO OUR WORLD. There is nothing contingent, or accidental in the arrangements of the divine mind. “Order is heaven’s first law.” Nothing can happen which is not foreseen by an all-knowing God. There never was a period when everything that he does, did not come within the arrangements of an antecedent and eternal purpose. He is wise and immutable, and therefore thought of everything beforehand; everything exists “according to the counsel of his own will.” The purposes of creatures discover weakness and imperfection; and therefore are liable to change.

On God’s part, everything is fixed and permanent. The mind of creatures is too narrow to comprehend many things at once; their heart is too inconstant to remain undivided in their pursuits; their passions are too unstable to flow long in any one direction. God is “of one mind, and none can turn him, and what his soul desireth that he doeth.” It is a revealed fact, and not a problem to be solved, that the infinite God, whose thoughts are as far above man’s thoughts as the heavens are higher than the earth, has interposed in the concern of man’s salvation by a settled purpose and a stated method. If his perfections require definiteness of arrangement in all the minor affairs of the world in which we dwell, so that a sparrow falls not to the ground without his providence; much more is it required in the method of the great redemption. The purpose is not fortuitous and unexpected; it belongs to “the everlasting gospel,” and this revelation of it is the first explication of that “mystery hid from the foundation of the world.”


Whether a Being who never began to exist, formed some of his purposes before he formed 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.

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.

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 was, 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 GOD-HEAD. “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 seed,” and clothe himself with flesh. Man is the transgressor; man is the one that needs reconciliation; the great and satisfactory expiation must be made by man, and have a special reference to man. Man is the one who must suffer; and therefore, it is in the nature of man, and for man that the expiation must be made.

The great Mediator must therefore be both God and man, thus supplying the deficiencies of the created by the infinite efficacy and worthiness of the uncreated; and thus applying the infinite merits of the uncreated to the created nature. It is this Incarnate Deliverer which the sinner needs; one that is not hidden from his view by the light that is inaccessible and full of glory; one that he may venture to approach, because, with all his majestic brightness, he is related to humanity; and one to whom he can repair without distrust, without timidity, and with joy.

While, therefore, there is inexplicable mystery in the truth disclosed in this first promise, it is an arrangement full of heavenly love and wisdom. In no way does God so stoop to men, as by becoming one of them; and in no way does he so encourage men to draw near to him, without fear and without reserve. The promised Saviour was the “seed of the woman,” the Virgin’s son. He whom “all the angels of God worship,” who “was in the form of God, and thought it not robbery to be equal with God,” took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.” Nothing could have induced this disrobing himself of the splendor of the Godhead, and this enrobing himself with the properties of a well-known and degraded humanity, had he not a special fellowship and sympathy with the great brotherhood of man. He linked himself with the race by this fraternal tie. “Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he likewise took part of the same.” He would be a child with them, and participate in the children’s destiny. “Verily he took not on him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham; because in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren.”
The” Seed of the Woman” is a designation that he glories in; he claims to be the “Son of David,” and the “Son of Abraham,” not less than the “Son of God.” He speaks of himself more than sixty times, as the “Son of Man,” everywhere and always identifying himself with humanity.

We look back to those gloomy scenes in Paradise, where man fell, and was doomed to labor and toil; where woman was condemned to be the daughter of sorrow; where the ground was cursed for man’s sake; and where our first parents trembled in apprehension of the coming wrath; and in this sentence upon the serpent, we see them, dark and gloomy as they were, illumined with brighter rays even than those of hope. The predicted Incarnation of the Eternal Word gives an interest and importance to them which belongs to no other part of the universe. This earth we tread upon is immortalized by the fact that it was once his cradle and his grave; and man is immortalized from this wondrous alliance to the Deity. We feel humbled as the descendants of an apostate progenitor; but it is no mean genealogy that we belong to a race of which Mary’s Son was the “first born among many brethren.” The pride of family has no such lineage to boast of as this common heritage of the race; descent from earthly princes has no such armorial ensigns as the babe of Bethlehem “wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

The “Seed of the Woman,” how comprehensive a truth is this!—announced by prophets, shadowed forth by the prefigurations of the ancient law, demonstrated by miracles, confirmed by the cross, reassured by him who rose from the dead, and raiseth them up, because “he quickeneth whom he will!” How momentous this historical fact, that the Son of God left the glories of heaven and descended to the abyss of human woes! What a new face did it put, not only upon the original Paradise, but upon all earthly things, and what transformations has it effected and is yet destined to produce in the history of the world in which we dwell! What an announcement to sinners like ourselves! What amazing interest is thrown around this affecting reality,—interest as intense and as fresh as though it had been just revealed from heaven, although it was announced six thousand years ago! What should interest and electrify us, if not the tidings that the “Seed of the Woman” came to seek and save that which was lost; to satisfy divine justice, and reconcile us to God; to restore the fallen to fellowship with their Maker; to welcome the exile to his Father’s house; to make the conquest of the sinner’s heart, and carry it with him to those unseen heavens whence he came; to bid the despairing hope, to give the confiding comfort, strength to the weak, and to the struggling victory!

This first promise, also, in the next place, REVEALS THE ONLY WAY OF LIFE. We know not how distinctly the way of salvation was revealed to our first parents; but it was in sufficient fulness to keep them from despair, and encourage them to offer acceptable sacrifices to God. Of this one truth they were persuaded, that salvation by the works of the law was to them no longer a practicable thing. What they had done, or what they could perform, might no longer be the ground of hope. They had no reason for self-exultation in their obedience. No repentance and reform could come in the place of the threatened penalty. No morality, no religious duties, no promises of good behavior, much as all these became them, could justify them in the sight of God. As well might a murderer promise repentance and amendment as a satisfaction to violated law, as the sinner look to any works of righteousness of his own as the ground of his pardon and acceptance. “Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law;“ it is a legal obedience, a character and conduct which the law requires and justifies. “The man that doeth these things shall live by them.” Punitive justice has no claims upon such a man, because he has no sin to be punished, or forgiven. Remunerative justice pronounces him just, and entitled to the life which it awards to unsinning subjects. But the mournful fact is, there is no such man; “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” “There is none righteous, no, not one.” So that the man who now stands upon his own righteousness, is condemned and lost. He may not be so bad as other men; but in the article of his justification on the ground of what he himself has done, he stands upon the same level with the vilest of the race. “Every mouth is stopped, and the whole world is guilty before God.” For man the sinner, there is no hope from the law. “Yea, though I wash myself in snow water, and make myself never so clean, yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me.” It is no longer in himself that he can find a justifying righteousness; it is too late; be it ever so agonizing, the effort is desperate, it is a forlorn hope. “If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquity, O Lord, who could stand?” The thing is impossible. Sooner may men scale the heavens, or dive to the bottom of the ocean. It is more than God can do thus to justify the ungodly.

Yet shall the seed of the woman bruise the serpent’s head. There is salvation by Jesus Christ, and that salvation is altogether a practicable attainment. What cannot be affirmed of a legal justification by the deeds of law, can be affirmed of a gratuitous justification by the seed of the woman. There is such a reality as “the righteousness of faith.” This was the way of life revealed to our first parents, and which is so clearly and abundantly revealed to their apostate descendants. What men cannot do, Jesus Christ has performed. The work is finished by him; nothing can be added to it, and nothing can be taken from it; and God hath done it, that men may fear before him.

There is perfect simplicity in this way of life, and perfect reasonableness in its revealed conditions. There is nothing in it which an intelligent child cannot understand; it has no duplicity, no subtlety, no abstruseness. It has not one set of doctrines for the initiated, and another for the vulgar; its teachings are open to the world and accessible to all. It is not locked up in mysterious hieroglyphics, and confined to the cloisters of learned and privileged orders of men. “The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart.” It is simply that the righteousness, on the ground of which the sinner is justified, is not in himself, but in another; not wrought by himself, but by God manifest in the flesh. And it is perfectly reasonable in its revealed condition. It is the “word of faith which we preach, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” It is no longer “This do and thou shalt live,” but “he that believeth shall be saved.” It is an honest and true faith.

It is not enough, that the ground of acceptance is laid in the perfected work of Christ; that finished redemption must be received by a trusting confidence. The testimony which God has given concerning it must be practically honored. Men must be so persuaded of the truth and importance of it, as to rest upon it the whole weight of their immortality. If they demand, Is there nothing for me to do to be saved; I answer, this is the work of God, “that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” They have nothing to do as a work of righteousness, or as adding to, or giving strength to the foundation which God has laid in Zion. They have this to do, to believe the promise in which there is so much reason to conclude, our first parents believed—to believe on the Son of God as the only and all-sufficient Saviour. “Him hath God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood.” This is a very different thing from “going about to establish a righteousness of our own by the deeds of the law.” The one is the “righteousness of the law,” the other is the “righteousness of faith;“ the one is of works, the other is of grace—a received and imputed righteousness. The former is impossible, there is no impossibility in the latter. Millions have thus believed; and millions upon millions more will rejoice in this way of life, thus early disclosed, and to the “glory of his grace who hath made them accepted in the Beloved.” Men may not work for it, but they must believe for it. They have nothing to give for it; but they may have it without money and without price. They are not worthy of it; and it is because they are so unworthy that the gift and grace are so rich and free. They have nothing to cover their poverty and shame but rags of filthiness; yet may they take these heaven-provided robes and be clothed in fine linen, clean and white. The word on which God caused our first parents to hope was not a stipulation, but a promise; and it is worthy of remark, that so far from their worthiness having anything to do with it, it was not uttered to them, but embodied in the sentence upon their greatest foe.

Another fact comprised in this promise is, that IT IS THE GREAT SOURCE AND MEANS OF HOLINESS. This is a fair inference from what was said in the chapter on the subject of spiritual death constituting a part of the penalty threatened to our first parents for their disobedience. Personal holiness flows through Christ as well as pardon. The redemption he bestows is as truly redemption from sin as redemption from hell. Personal holiness is too great a blessing to be bestowed except for the sake of Christ; nor could it, in the nature of the case, be bestowed where the penalty of the law is executed. And if it could be, who does not see and feel the unfitness of sanctifying a sinner without making him the object of pardoning mercy? Those who hold to the doctrine, that forgiveness is the only blessing which is bestowed for Christ’s sake, must be driven to the conclusion, that, so far as this theory is concerned, God may, in the mere sovereignty of his grace, sanctify a sinner, and yet send him to hell. Would not this be an anomaly in the divine government? How much more in keeping with the beauty and symmetry of all the arrangements of heavenly wisdom, that pardon and holiness should never be separated in their objects, should flow in the same channel; and from the same source? It is a beautiful view of this first promise, that it not only binds together the divine attributes of truth, justice, and mercy, but is the golden string that binds the unwithering flowers of holiness, in all their beauty and freshness, to the parent stock on which they grew. There is nothing in the gospel that transforms man’s physical and intellectual nature; it is impossible for him to be holy while in despair. The great design of Christianity is to make him holy, by encouraging him to hope. “Perfect love casteth out fear.” The love of God is essential to the existence and progress of holiness in the heart. Wickedness could not indeed be justified in a state of absolute despair, any more than our first parents could have been justified in persevering alienation from God before the utterance of this first promise. Yet, no more than they would have returned to him without this promise, would their descendants, without hope, ever become holy.

It is the method of God’s grace to rouse men from their thoughtlessness by the terrors of wrath, and to persuade them to repentance by the attractions of love. The promise which so early taught the first transgressors the only true method of justification, contained those great truths by which alone they and their descendants could become holy. The apostle Peter instructs us, that “exceeding great and precious promises,” are given to God’s people, “that by these, they might become partakers of the divine nature.” They have comforted the hearts and revived the hopes of millions, and thereby promoted their holiness. The influence of this first promise has extended to untold millions; nor has it been uncertain, or feeble, nor its tendency questioned to promote every grace and virtue. This was its great object, and these the most important things it promised. It supplies the means and inducements to holiness, and that power of the Spirit of God by which alone men ever become holy. Just as it supported and propped up the drooping heart of our first parents, who, in that dark hour, needed something to lean upon, does the system of grace and truth it reveals support the drooping hearts of that great multitude which no man can number who are washed, and sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. There never was, and there never will be a holy creature among all Adam’s posterity, whose personal character is not influenced by this promise. Take this promise and the great truths and realities which it involves from the word of God, and you leave the world under the influence of error, dreams, and fable; you leave it without any such knowledge of right and wrong as would exert a practical effect on their character; you leave it under the dominion of wickedness, and with no hope that its wickedness will ever end, or that a brighter day will ever dawn on this lost and undone world. There is heavenly light from this promise on the wayward character of man. There is no provision made for this, but in the religion of which this promise is the germ. Here the heart is relieved from its sense of guilt, and cleansed from sin. It is no longer shut out from all communication with God. There is a renewal of the lost fellowship. There is a closer and still more close communion; until, at last, it becomes unbroken; and beholding, as in a mirror, the “glory of the Lord, the believer in it is changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

There is one more remark we may not suppress, in our amplification of this promise: IT CONTAINS A PREDICTION OF THE SAVIOUR’S TRIUMPH. After his fatally practised wiles upon our first parents, the Great Adversary enjoyed a malignant and momentary victory. Man was ensnared, and this great foe vainly imagined the race was lost. The thought not improbably entered his mind, that what he sought by his own revolt was now secured; that the object of the benevolent Creator in calling into existence this lower world was defeated, and that the gloom and sadness of his own prison must now be transferred to those bright heavens from which he had been so lately exiled. But how short the triumph, and what a death-blow to his malignant hopes were those words, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel!” How degrading the sentence, and what a poor, degraded being must he have felt himself to he, to learn that, after all his subtlety and malice, and all that teeming hostility which then brooded within his fiendish bosom; the most that he could ever hope to accomplish was to crawl upon his belly through a redeemed world, be trodden upon and crushed by the woman’s seed, and that the only retaliation he could now inflict was to “bruise its heel!” And how degraded must they be who condescend to enlist themselves in the service of such a poor, degraded devil as this!

Glad visions cheer the Son of God as he now looks down on the world where we dwell. Ten thousand blessings drop from his hands, and fountains of joy spring up in his path all over this redeemed creation. In the progress of time, not a nation, not a tribe, and not an island of the sea but will lay their honors at his feet. His triumphs will be complete, and everywhere confessed. His conquests are conquests of truth over error, holiness over sin, joy over sorrow, heaven over hell. He is as emphatically the King of truth as the Great Adversary is the prince of darkness. He himself is the way, the truth, and the life; truth in its thousand forms constitutes the weapons of his warfare. When his arrows are sharp and reach the hearts of his enemies, he “rides victoriously, because of truth, meekness and righteousness.” When he girds his sword upon his thigh, and his right hand teaches him terrible things, “grace is poured into his lips,” and his “sceptre is a righteous sceptre.” He gains his victories by making the people willing in the day of his power, and by those moral transformations which are multiplied like the dew of the morning, and resplendent with the beauties of holiness.

When this “rod of his strength goes forth out of Zion,” the love of self is supplanted by the love of God; the love of heaven predominates over the love of earth: the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus over the law of sin and death; and the new creation, the temple of God is erected upon the ruins of the fall. This is all his work, the consequence of his incarnation and sacrifice, and the result of “the exceeding greatness of his power.”

Not more certainly did this beautiful world come forth from the depths of chaos at his command, and shine forth in all its brilliancy, than his command calls into being a new and regenerated intellectual and moral creation, and bids it shine in progressive and everlasting splendor.

This was the object he had in view when he stooped to the cradle, and expired on the cross; and this is his joyous reward. The balances of earth cannot weigh the burden of his degradation and sorrows; nor can the arithmetic of earth measure the exaltation and extent of his victories. The “ heathen are given to him as his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession.” He shall “have dominion from sea to sea;“ they that “dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him,” and his throne shall be as the days of heaven.” “His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace;” and “he must reign until all enemies are put under his feet.” The victory shall be complete, and the shouts of it be heard in every land. The devil, that old serpent, in a little while shall be bound a thousand years, and go forth to deceive the nations no more. And when the predestined time shall come that his chain shall be loosed for a little season, it shall be only that he may be more inexorably bound at last “He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel;” this is the comment upon all his struggles. He shall have no ultimate triumph. Whatever may be the relative number of the saved and the lost, of this one thing we are assured, the proportion will be such, that heaven and hell shall see that the seed of the woman is victorious. He has made a show of the powers of darkness openly, triumphing over them in his cross. In commemorating his death, we commemorate his triumphs. The destroyer shall still destroy; but the Saviour shall be mighty to save. It shall yet be as it ever has been, that while the devil’s path shall be traced only by the serpent’s slime, the path of the conqueror shall be marked by the footsteps of light, and impress of love, by the honors awarded to him by redeemed men, and by wreaths which earth and heaven have prepared for the head that is to wear “many crowns.”

Such is this first promise. And it is like the rainbow which the exiled apostle saw round about the throne. It encircles the earth where we dwell. This is the promise under which we were born. We are the descendants of a fallen ancestry; nor are there wanting humbling reflections which force themselves upon us, and thoughts that cover us with shame in contemplating such an origin. But these form the deep and lowering background, from which stand out the strongest lights in the moral firmament.

The brightest gems that adorn our Immanuel’s head are gathered from this low earth; the sweetest song is the song of those who “are redeemed from among men.” And let not the remark be forgotten, that notwithstanding all their sins, men cannot come short of this character and blessedness, except through their persevering unbelief and impenitent rebellion. Yonder infant in its cradle, if it employs its opportunities of religious instruction as it may and ought to employ them, will know more of its redeeming God, and enjoy him more; will be brought into nearer relations to him; will adore him more humbly, and more gratefully praise him, than the favored angel who now leads the chorus of the skies. To have been thus an embryo fiend, and to have thus become an embryo seraph, is the privilege of every believer in Jesus. Wondrous truth! and one which we may well press to our bosoms,—to pass through this wondrous transformation—to learn thus to “esteem all things but loss, that he may win Christ”—to find his highest good in him, and good in everything because it flows from his love—to be the workmanship of this Great Restorer, and occupy his assigned place in the “Temple not made with hands”—is the privilege of the meanest believer in Jesus. This is a privilege which belongs not to angels; they have no such interest in Christ; they bear no relation to him as their Redeemer. In heaven they cannot sing his praise as their Redeemer; and should they come down to earth and worship with us in these earthly sanctuaries, they could never have access to the communion-table of his saints, and there show forth his love.
I thank my Maker that I was not created an angel; for if I had been, right sure am I, that, left to myself, I should have been among the fallen. I give him praise that I am a native of this favored earth; that I occupy a place on the soil consecrated by the mission of patriarchs and prophets, and the greater mission of his Son; and that I belong to this habitable earth, where “his delights are with the sons of men;” that I live in a world where that Incarnate One first drew his infant breath, and where one of Adam’s daughters called him Son! Here lies man’s dignity, that his nature has been thus associated with Deity. He belongs to the earth the Saviour trode upon, and which was vocal with his prayers, and wet with his tears and blood. And, if a believer in Jesus, he is one with that redeemed humanity, in which, from the eternity past to the coming eternity, this Redeemer takes such a joyous interest, and of which he is the accredited, honored, adored Representative in the court of Heaven.

This promise is appreciated only by appreciating its corresponding obligations. And how vast and extended are they! Who makes a just estimate of them? What a world is this we live in; what a world to labor for, and what mighty objects are here to be secured by a faithful devotement to the will and glory of its great Redeemer! The smallest church, the meanest family, the most unworthy minister, the most unnoticed individual, is here exerting an influence for good or for evil. It is an influence that acts always and everywhere. It is felt far off and near; and not only while men live, but after they are dead; it laps over, and fastens itself upon succeeding generations.

And how amazing is the responsibility which rests upon every man for his own soul! He inhabits a world which belongs to him who “came to seek and to save that which was lost.” With the exception of the short period between the first apostasy and the first promise, this earth has never been without a revealed Saviour. Not a generation has passed over it for whom there was no gospel; never was so miserable, so touching a sight presented to the eyes of angels or men. Amid all the changes in human affairs, God’s revelation of grace has never been withdrawn from the abodes of time. Almost from its very birth, this earth has been wrapt in the mantle of heavenly mercy. Here “God commands all men everywhere to repent,” and makes them the offer of the great salvation. They have a reprieve from the condemning sentence; and this is their day of grace. But it is a short day. Nothing shuts out death from the abodes of men. It is found in the purest and most salubrious sky; it reigns in every zone; its elements are combined with every clod, every stream, and every breeze. This world is the only place of education for eternity. Within this little span are comprehended decisions which determine an unalterable retribution. O does not this stamp a value on earth and time, which time and earth cannot calculate! This single fact throws around this habitable globe, and the least considerable of its inhabitants, an interest and a responsibility, that are overwhelming.

“Just as a tree cut down, that fell
To north or southward, there it lies;
So man departs to heaven or hell,
Fix’d in the state wherein he dies.”

Think of this, Christian, when you inspect the work you have to do, and the place which it is given you to occupy. Be thankful for the high vocation to which the grace of God has called you, and be solicitous and, in earnest to honor the law of your being and your destiny. Let this earth have the same place in your hearts which it has in the heart of your eternal Saviour, and for the same reasons; take heed that you put a due estimate upon it, by putting a due estimate upon his claims, and the advancement of his kingdom where he lived and died.
Think of these things, ye also who forget God. There is no world like that in which you dwell, so fitted to draw out your character, and fit you for your eternal state. Hear ye this, both high and low, rich and poor together. “O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord!” There is given to you this short space for repentance. Around you are men forgetful of God like yourselves. A little farther back in the career of human life, you see the young who have fallen, and made shipwreck of their immortality in the days of their youth. Onward, and at a little distance, is many a veteran neglecter of God’s salvation, cast up as a withered hulk on the shores of time, a beacon to warn you of the danger of delay. Just beyond the ground on which you are treading is the grave. It is a dark valley; a darker night than ever yet encircled the earth, will soon enwrap its folds about you. And now, from “the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths,” the voice of wisdom cries, “Flee to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope.”

We solicit for this promise a glad and thankful and confident reception. There is no imposition in this first promise. It is but for this Saviour to fill the circle of our moral vision, and we may say with Paul, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day!” There are realities in his divine character and perfected work, so sure as to remove doubt. There is nothing obscure, or fluctuating in them. They will never alter. God’s covenant with the day and the night shall come to an end; but the covenant of which his blood is the seal, is “ordered in all things and sure.” I am “persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” It is no marvel that when our back is turned upon this Sun of Righteousness, our way should be dark; nor need we wonder that the winter of our comforts comes on when his beams fall scantily and obliquely on our path. If you seek not shadows and gloom, study to know more of this first promise. Be familiar with the pages that develop its import, with the mercy-seat on which it is inscribed, with the sanctuaries which it illumines, with the ordinances and emblems of which it is the substance. And learn to dread not too deeply those dark passages in the wilderness where the light of it shines with unwonted loveliness; nor those hard and tempestuous waves where the wind is contrary, and in the appointed watch of the night, Jesus himself comes walking on the sea. “Stagger not at the promise through unbelief;” and if he bids you come to him on the waters, take heed lest you extort from his lips the deserved, though kind rebuke, “O thou of little faith! wherefore didst thou doubt?”

Human life is not worth its toil, its perplexity, its weariness, its disappointments, its trials, its solitude, its ten thousand ills, if there be no hereafter. Man would be the sport of delusion, his hopes mocked, and his best affections cheated, were not life and immortality brought to light by the gospel. O ye, who make light of this gospel! approach and see what a wreck of human hopes this fallen world would be, if this ark of God did not float upon its waters, or if its doors were shut. Cast your eyes over this broad earth; mark the woes that rest upon it, and then turn to this one hope of man.