answer. observance suddenly falling into disuse, and presently supplanted by another Day, which to this year of Grace has held its own amid the throes of eighteen centuries. How then will you account for this stupendous revolution? It is, I repeat, a fair question for the philosophical historian to ask. And the philosophical historian knows the All Jesus the Nazarene had been crucified. through the Seventh Day or Hebrew Sabbath He had lain in Joseph's tomb. In that tomb, amid solitude and darkness and grave-clothes, He had grappled in mortal duel with the King of Death, and had thrown him, and shivered his Sceptre. At the close of that awful Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the First Day of the Week (Matt. xxviii. 1), He had risen triumphant from the dead. And by and in the very fact of that triumphant Rising, He had henceforth and for evermore. emblazoned the First Day of the Week as His own royal, supernal Day, even Time's first, true Sabbath. Ah, the Primitive Church needed no command. Conscious of their need of a Sabbath, and aware that the Hebrew Seventh Day, like the other institutions of the Sinaitic Economy, had shared Christ's Sepulchre, but not Christ's Resurrection, it was enough for them, and it is enough for us, that He Who Himself was the Lord of the Sabbath, and greater than Sinai and Eden, had risen on Sunday. By as much then as Spirit is nobler than matter: by as much as Grace is grander than law: by as much as the Eden to come is sublimer than the Eden that has been: by as much as a finished Redemption is auguster than a finished Creation by so much does the day which commemorates the achievement of a Redeemer transcend the day which commemorates the achievement of a Creator. Not that the earlier achievement was not glorious: but it has ceased to be glorious by reason of the Glory which excelleth (2 Cor. iii. 10). Ay, Saturday was but the Sabbath of Creation, Sunday is the Sabbath of Redemption: Saturday the Sabbath of the first Adam, Sunday the Sabbath of the Second Adam: Saturday the Sabbath of Nature, Sunday the Sabbath of Grace: Saturday the Sabbath of the letter, Sunday the Sabbath of the Spirit: Saturday the Sabbath of perdition by Sinai, Sunday the Sabbath of Salvation by Calvary: Saturday the Sabbath of a rejected, executed, entombed Jesus, Sunday the Sabbath of a Risen, Exalted, Triumphant Christ : Saturday Creator's day, Sunday Redeemer's Day. "Hail, Thou Lord of earth and heaven! Praise to Thee by both be given! Thee we greet triumphant now! Hail the Resurrection, Thou!"-(WESLEY.) Finally: Jesus Christ Himself is our IV. Jesus Christ Sabbath, alike its origin, its meaning, Himself Our Sabbath. and its end. In fact, the final cause of the Sabbath is to Sabbatize each day and make all life sacramental. And Jesus Christ being our true Sabbath, Jesus Christ is also our true Rest-even the spirit's everlasting Eden. May it be for us all evermore to be in the Lord's own Spirit on the Lord's own Day (Rev. i. 10)! So shall we keep His Sabbath as a Resurrection festival. Why seek ye the Living One among the dead? He is not here: He is Risen, as He said (Luke xxiv. 5, 6). the Church of the Sepulchre: ours is the Church of the Resurrection. May it be for us all evermore to feel the power of His Resurrection (Phil. iii. 10), and so to enter the Sabbath's Rest which remaineth for His people (Heb. iv. 10)! Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Ours is not LECTURE XIV. PALINGENESIS. "The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in all holy conversation and godliness; looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."-2 PETER iii. 10-13. I.-The Retro spect. We have now completed our study of E the Story of the Creative Week. Standing at the goal, it is natural for us to look backward, and review the field we have traversed. Even the Creator Himself, at the close of the Sixth Day, reviewed His own work, and took delight in it: "God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good' (Gen. i. 31). May the Spirit of God help us as we also venture to join in the sacred Review! Accordingly, ascending once more the Mount of Panoramic Vision, let us gaze with the inspired Seer on the unfolding sections of the Creative Week. 1. The Infinite Blank. Go we back, then, to an indefinite period in the Past: it may be six thousand years it may be six hundred thousand it may be six million million: it matters not enough that it is sublimely called "The Beginning." The curtain uplifts. It is the First Scene. Alas, it is no scene at all! Nothing but universal, absolute, infinite Space. "Illimitable, . . without bound, Without dimension, where length, breadth, and height, Again the curtain rises. It is the 2.-The Emerging Second Scene. "In the beginning God Universe. created the heavens and the earth." It is the vision of the emerging elements of the Universe. In the Beginning, when Nothing was, God caused to come into existence the heavens and the earth. A miracle, of course, it was. And, being a miracle, of course, my intellect cannot understand it. But But my faith can. faith can. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which appeared (Heb. xi. 3). Ay, this word-" Faith "-is the motto inscribed on the very threshold of the Temple of Truth. The very first question in philosophy is this: "What is the Origin of Things?" The very first sentence of the Bible is an answer to that question: an answer as simple as majestic-God. Thus the very first summons to the student of Nature is a summons to an act of faith. Chaos. Again the curtain rises. It is the 3.—The Emerging Third Scene. "And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep." I know not at what stage in the course of Time this chaotic state existed: it may have been the instant after creation: it may not have been till indefinite ages had glided away. What I know is this: There has been a time when the earth was waste and formless, and darkness was over the face of the abyss. Again the curtain rises. It is the 4.—The Emerging Fourth Scene. "And the Breath of Order. God moved over the face of the fluids." I know not how much this means. What I know is this: The wind sometimes does an assuaging ministry-e. g., when earth was endeluged, God caused a wind to pass over it, and the waters subsided (Gen. viii. 1). In some sense and way inscrutable to us, the Spirit of God-the Divine Windhovered over ancient chaos, marshaling, coördinating, organizing its heterogeneous elements, breathing over the shapeless, desolate, Cimmerian immensity His own energy of movement, and array, and unity, and peace, and beauty. Again the curtain rises. It is the 5.—The Emerging Fifth Scene. "And God said: 'Let Light. Light be!' and Light was." I know not whence this Light came, or how, or what its nature. It could not have been the light of the sun: for that did not make its appearance till the Fourth Day. This light of the First Day was, quite probably, the light of atomic movement—the universal ether, as it were, quivering beneath the flutter of the Spirit's wings and surging in billows of light before the zephyr of His own breathing. All I know is this: "God said: "Let Light be!' and Light was. And there was evening, and there was morning, Day One." Again the curtain rises. It is the 6.-The Emerging Sixth Scene. "And God said: 'Let Sky. there be an expanse in the midst of the fluids, and let it divide fluids from fluids."" I know not how much this term "expanse" means. It may mean the atmospheric heavens, absorbing the vapors rising from earth's surface, and so separating the waters into masses— the one mass above, the other mass below. Or it may mean |