2. The Spirit still

the Organizing Force.

Is there any hope here? Thank God, there is. And so we pass to our second lesson. That same Breath of God which moved over the face of those ancient fluids, is moving to-day over the soul of humanity. Ah, this is the blessed Energy by which the chaos of our moral nature is being organized into order and beauty. Observe: as, in shaping the material Earth out of the old Chaos, the Spirit of God added no new elements, but simply fashioned into order the old; so, in organizing the spiritual chaos, He adds no new faculties, but simply quickens and organizes the old. What man needs is not creation, but re-creation; not generation, but re-generation. And this it is which the Holy Ghost is achieving. Brooding, incubating as God's Holy Dove over the Chaos of Humanity, He is quickening its latent forces, arranging its elements, assorting its capacities, organizing its functions, apportioning its gifts, perfecting its potentialities: in short, completing, fulfilling, consummating Man in the sphere of Jesus Christ. In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and in Him ye are complete, completed, filled full, fulfilled, consummated (Col. ii. 9-10). Most meet then was it that when the Son of God was baptized, this same most Holy Spirit, even God's own blessed Bird, which had hovered over ancient Chaos, should descend in bodily shape like a dove, and alight upon the Representative of Human Nature, even that Son of Man in whom the Chaos of Humanity is being organized into the Cosmos of the Church. And no power but the Holy Ghost can achieve this. Disorder cannot unravel itself into order; Chaos cannot evolve itself into Cosmos; Beelzebub cannot cast out Beelzebub. Only the Spirit of God can organize Chaos. And this, praised be His Grace, He is doing. No

man knows what is in him; no man really puts forth his better, his characterizing, his divine powers till his soul feels the life-giving warmth of the Spirit's touch. And then he awakes, oh, how gloriously! to the sense of sublime energies, to the mastery of celestial ranges. And this it is which the Spirit has been doing, even from the beginning. True, the process has been a slow one, even as it seems to have been in the case of the physical chaos. See, e. g., how slow has been the growth of Christendom taken as a matter of geography. Eighteen centuries have volled away since the Heavenly Sower declared that His field is the world; and yet by far the greater portion of that field is still heathen, never as yet sown with the Heavenly Seed. Again: see how slow has been the growth of moral ideas. Eighteen centuries have rolled away since the Lord of the Kingdom pronounced His Beatitudes. And yet there are still in His Church the proud in spirit, and the ambitious, and the avaricious, and the self-loving, and the quarrelsome, and the revengeful. Nevertheless, for let us be just, there has been growth-a real, positive, solid advance. We have seen idolatry shaken, and polygamy curbed, and slavery abolished, and intemperance checked, and woman emancipated, and brotherhood asserted, and war preparing to go into perpetual exile. And the growth has been an orderly one; first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear (Mark iv. 26–29). It is true in respect to doctrine. First Peter, the Apostle of Form; then Paul, the Apostle of Creed; then John, the Apostle of Life. First Athanasius, exponent of the Doctrine of Christ; then Augustine, exponent of the Doctrine of Man; then Anselm, exponent of the Doctrine of Grace. Nor has the growth or advancing order of due succession ceased. The problem of this present age is the Doctrine

of the Church, or what constitutes the true Body of Christ. And even now we see glimmers of the final Doctrine-the Parousia, or Doctrine of Last Things. And this law of orderly unfolding is equally true in respect to personal character. We may not expect to see the full-bearded grain of saintliness preceding the blades of youthful piety, or the ripe, rich fruits of heavenhood clustered around the subterranean root of faith. First children, then young men, then fathers (1 John ii. 12-14). Yes, Humanity as a whole is ever taking on symmetry, and peace, and beauty. Even the bad man, however much he may hate Christianity, would not exchange Christendom for Heathendom. Nay, more; the world's future will ever be greater and diviner than its past, because, evermore beneath the Spirit's brooding wing, it is evermore taking on growth and method, evermore becoming more and more divinely purpose ful, evermore becoming more and more conscious of a vocation to divine Sonship and everlasting praise. And so at last shall dawn the day of perfectation, even those Edenic Times of the Restitution of all things, of which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began (Acts iii. 21). Then, out of the Chaos of Humanity, even the spiritual heavens and earth, which now are, shall be seen rising in measureless amplitude, and dazzling stateliness, and eternal stability, the Cosmos of the Church, even the new Heavens and new Earth wherein dwelleth Righteousness (2 Peter iii. 13).

Finally, would you be inserted as a A Personal Exhor- living stone in that coming Temple? Then open the chambers of your soul

tation.

to the Holy Breeze of God. the zephyrs of His Breath.

Be wafted heavenward on Even now, awake, O North

Wind, and come, Thou South, and breathe on these dead,

that they may live (Cant. iv. 16). Yea, Thou risen Son of God, breathe on us all, that we too may receive the Holy Ghost (John xx. 22)!

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.

LECTURE IV.

GENESIS OF LIGHT.

"And God said, Let there be light, and there was light; and God saw the light, that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness; and God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night; and the evening and the morning were the first day."-GENESIS i. 3-5.

AND, first, let us ponder our passage

I. Explanation in its literal meaning. Probably we cannot do better here than to take up

of the Passage.

the successive clauses in their order.

ism.

"And God said.” How are we to 1.-" God said:" understand this phrase? Are we to An Anthropomorph- take it literally? Are we to suppose that in that primeval solitude when the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, the Creator literally vented His will in articulate speech-His audible voice pealing and reverberating through that chaotic, desolate, night-clad abyss? I can hardly think it. Evidently it is what the theologians call an Anthropomorphism; that is to say, an application to God of terms which properly belong to human beings. It is like those many Scriptural phrases which speak of God's eye, God's ear, God's hand, God's face, God's mouth, God's voice. Moreover: recall what was said in the Introductory Lecture touching the mode of the Divine