be incompatible with holiness; it would be to bring unholiness and holiness into contact, and make holiness cease to be holiness; and therefore it is that our GOD is a mighty God and terrible'; HIS MAJESTY consists in His Holiness; and "with GOD," says Job, "is terrible MAJESTY". "The LORD MOST HIGH is terrible". When the LORD spake unto the children of Israel, the Mount Sinai was altogether in a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire, and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly; and to gaze on the LORD, who approached in the fire, was to perish1. You You see, from the very nature of things, annihilation would ensue from approaching HIM who is the HOLY ONE. Even to Moses, who was permitted to draw nigher to the mountain than the others, "so terrible was the sight, that he said, I exceedingly fear and quake”. And when emboldened by past mercies, he said, "I beseech THEE show me THY Glory"-the answer was, "Thou canst not see My face, for there shall no man see ME and live"; it is impossible for impure man, as such, to see ME in the fulness of My Glory without instantly perishing. These are types of the reality; the spiritual mind rises through the external things to the heavenly things, and learns that as Israel in the flesh could not approach the Mount for the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the trumpet, so neither can the unholy spirit have communion with the HOLY SPIRIT. I have said that, intrinsically, holiness is not terrific, but lovely: it is terrific to unholy creatures, because they have a sense to know that the approach of the HOLY ONE is destruction to all that is unholy. How magnificent, how glorious, how beautiful is the great luminary which acts as the centre of attraction, and the source of light to our solar system! Yet if wax be placed within the reach of its rays it will be melted into nothingness; if clay, it will be hardened to destruction; or were the sun to draw nearer to the earth, yea, but a little, the inhabitants of the earth would be consumed in the twinkling of an eye, and why? Because the nearer approach to that orb, in itself so glorious, would be incompatible with a nature such as our's. And, I repeat it, similar destruction would await our unholy souls, were they brought nearer to the SUN of Righteousness, if a method had not been devised by Omnipotent mercy to render possible what to man is impos sible'. Why, indeed, is this world we dwell in so spiritually cold and wretched, that no one would consent to dwell in it eternally? It is because God is, as it were, removed from us: He shines not upon us with the warmth of HIS Glory; His Glory is dimly, coldly reflected upon us through second causes. And it is so; because it is only by His withdrawing from us His Glory that such creatures as we are can live. See how the case stands. It pleased GOD in his wisdom to create man, and to endow him with freedom of will2: a high endowment which might have been employed to the very highest purposes. But freedom of will implies a power to disobey. Man did disobey. But disobedience is unholiness. Man became unholy, and, being himself unholy, begat an unholy race. But unholiness is alienation from GOD', and alienation from GoD is misery3. Reconciliation, without atonement, is in the nature of things, divinely constituted, impossible. The annihilation of our race would, therefore, have been mercy. Annihilation would have been better than everlasting misery. And as the misery occasioned by the unholiness of our race was not Gen. i. 16, 17. Gen. iii. 6. 1 Matt. xix. 26. Luke i. 37. Heb. xii. 14. • Heb. ix. 22. the result to each man of his personal act, but of original sin, we may, without presumption, suppose that the least of the two evils would have been ordained. But blessed be the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY, HE has in His mercy devised the means by which an exception may be made to that which He has constituted as the rule to all creation, by which an unholy race may be brought back into communion with the Holy GOD, without impeachment of His Holiness; and so now in Christian countries, where the Cross of CHRIST is planted, the misery of those who shall be miserable will be the result merely of their individual acts. You see, then, the design of GOD in the Redemption of man; it is to remove the barrier which rendered our approach to the GODHEAD a thing impossible; it is to reconcile what, without the interference of OMNIPOTENCE, would, from the very nature of things, be irreconcileable; to bring about what, to created intelligences, must have appeared to be an impossibility; to prove that God can continue Holy, and yet bring back to communion with HIM, the HOLY ONE, a race of beings by nature unholy; and thus the fallen state of human nature has been the means of calling forth a brighter display of the Divine attributes. Perhaps it has been the occasion of discovering to other beings besides man the plurality of persons in the one Divine nature. Certain it is, that the ALMIGHTY GOD has been pleased to make known to us that, though the essence, the substance of the GODHEAD is One, though there is consequently a unity of will, yet in this One Essence there are Three Persons1. There is in the DEITY, with respect to man, one will; that will being that man, though unholy, shall be rendered capable of communion with the HOLY ONE. For the accomplishment of that one Divine will, each of the Persons in the One Essence has a peculiar office. As in the creation of man you will find a consultation, if I may so say, held by the Three Persons in the GODHEAD: "Let us make man in our Image"; as, in like manner, a consultation, so to say, is held after the fall of man: "Behold, man is become as one of Us"; so we find that THEY acted, as it were, by Covenant on the subject of man's Redemption in this Covenant we find the EVERLASTING FATHER set before us as the Person in the GODHEAD to whom satisfaction shall be paid, the PERSON in the GODHEAD exacting Justice, 1 Creed of St. Athanasius. * Sixth Answer in Church Catechism. * Gen. iii. 22. Gen. i. 26. |