OW wonderful are the divine arrangements in nature and in grace! How overwhelming the grandeur of conception, the loftiness of purpose, and the infinitude of power, wisdom, and goodness manifested in God's dealings with man, as his Creator and Redeemer! How mysterious the might by which he brings extremes together, and compels them to succeed each other by a charming series of gradations, or to unite in harmonious action, or even to produce each other! Day subsides into night, life leads to death: again, night gives place to day, and death to life. It is God who bends into the graceful ellipse of the planetary orbits the right lines of the two great opposing forces of [109] the universe. It is God who, in the beginning of his creation, brought light out of darkness, and it is he who will bring good out of evil in the closing triumphs of the great plan of redemption.

      Among the singular incidents of human history which tend to illustrate this divine prerogative, we note that Satan, the apostle of death, is made to be the first preacher of life and glory. It was he who first announced to man that sublime revelation: "Ye shall not surely die; but ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil"--a revelation which, though indeed false in its primary intention, is rendered most true in fact by the divine power in the Gospel of Jesus, who correspondingly says of those who shall obtain that future world: "Neither can they die any more, for they are equal unto the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection." And surely the redeemed shall be, in one sense, as gods, being the children of the Most High, the brethren and co-parceners of Christ, knowing good and evil--not, indeed, as at first, the knowledge of good lost and evil [110] got, but now that of evil lost and good obtained!

      Again: it is in harmony with the divine procedure, that, as man died by eating, so it is by EATING that he shall live forever. "I am the living food," said Jesus, "which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this food he shall live forever, and the food that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." "As the living Father hath sent me and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me." The literal truth of Eden has its counter-sense in the spiritual truth of Christianity; and, as the mortal taste of the forbidden fruit brought death to the world, so a participation in the heavenly food presented by the Gospel, communicates the enduring vigor of eternal life.

      It is to partake of this tree of life of God's true paradise, that we are here invited. How rich are its twelve-times varied fruits! How potent the virtue of its healing leaves, by which the deadly wounds which sin has inflicted upon the nations may be forever healed! How [111] glorious a privilege, that we are thus permitted to become partakers of Christ, and to live by Him who died that we might live, and rose that we might reign!

      Yet it is not alone in the sanctuary of God that we are admitted to this privilege; nor is it alone in the divine institution of the Lord's supper, that we eat the flesh and drink the blood of our Redeemer. It is here, indeed, that, by these sacred emblems, we can most easily realize the figure in which Christ thus represents himself as the source of spiritual life; but it is in the meditations of the heart in the night-watches; in humble submission to the divine commands; in trustful reliance upon divine promises; in every exercise of faith; in every emotion of Christian love; in every act by which we enjoy communion with Christ, that we receive him as "the heavenly food that gives life to the world," and, renewing our fainting energies, are enabled to toil onward and upward to the better land.

      It is especially amidst the abodes of sorrow, and in the dark hours of affliction, that we are likely to be found nearest to the "man of sorrows and [112] acquainted with grief." It is not in the mansions of the great and the opulent, not in the festal halls of dissipation, nor in the proud palaces of kings, that we are likely to find the humble Nazarene. But it is amid the disappointments of life; in the days of mourning and of desolation; in the hours of self-abasement and penitential love, that we meet with Jesus. It is in the home of poverty and in the lowly mansion of the wretched that we may have fellowship with Christ. It is in the garden, not of delights, but of anguish--in Gethsemane, whose soil is watered with his tears and with his blood, or upon the bare and rocky mount, extended upon the agonizing cross, that we may find our Savior. It is here that we are called upon to contemplate that divine love that was stronger than death. It is here that the dying sinner is permitted to look upon him thus lifted up, that, believing, he may have life through his name! It is here that all may approach him in humble adoration, and yield the soul captive to the conqueror of death and the grave, who has triumphed for us over all our enemies, and is become our light and life, our hope and our salvation. [113]

[CITS 109-113]