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noticed, that the creation of man in God's image lays the basis for the incarnation, in which the Word becaine flesh and the eternal Son wrought out in human life the perfect sonship. Sin has marred the divine image in us, but when we wish to know God as He is, we can turn from ourselves to the perfect Man Christ Jesus, and see in him the perfect image of the perfect God. And more and more as Christ comes to dwell in us and to change us into his own image, we can discover in our own souls the lineaments of God. The pure in heart see God.

Finally, Creation had for its object redemption, or the establishment of God's kingdom. It thus was the first step to the carrying out of the eternal plan of God, which also aimed at redemption. The world was to be the arena of that highest display of God's love, the salvation of the fallen race. Man was to be the subject of redemption, the son of the kingdom. Christ the Redeemer was here to be incarnate. If God was omniscient and had from eternity formed His plan of redemption, we cannot doubt that when He called the universe into being, He had clearly in His thought all the wonderful history that was to transpire in it. Sinai and Calvary were made with reference to the Law and the Gospel. Of course, if this view be true, creation was effected with reference to the future existence of sin in the world. All that issued from the divine hand was pure and good. But God knew that man by the abuse of freedom would mar the perfect works of God; He had permissively ordained that it should be so. And so He made a world which provided restraints and punishments for sin, as well as facilities for a work of redemptive grace.

Thus God's work was done. The morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. The six days' creative toil was finished, and God rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. Now begins human history and with it human sin, while God enters upon His work of redemption.

XV.

THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD

WE have discussed the subject of creation, and now we ask, What is the relation in which God stands to the world which He has created? It is easy to see that this is a question not only of theoretical, but also of vast practical, importance. For here we are in the world, and we need to know whether God is here also, and whether He is concerning himself with its ongoings. Is He a God afar off, dwelling in some remote Heaven, not troubling Himself with the affairs of this world, its material processes, the life of plant and animal, the joys and sorrows of men? Is He like those gods of whom Tennyson tells us in "The Lotos-Eaters," who

"Lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world; Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,

Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands?"

Is He such a God as that? Or is He the God who is everywhere present and active in His world, who is directly interested in all its affairs, from the fall of a sparrow to the fate of an empire, from the beauty of the lily to the provision for the wants of His people?

Thank God, the Christian revelation answers these questions with no uncertain sound. No doctrine in the

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whole range of religious truth is taught by the Bible more unequivocally or with greater fulness. In the presence of those false views of God and His relation to the world with which our age abounds, we need, therefore, to proclaim with the strongest emphasis the simple but profound trut!of God's providence which comes to us through the Script ures, and is verified by Christian experience.

I. The Christian doctrine of providence is distinctively theistic. It declares that the Absolute Being is the liv ing, personal God, and asserts His free disposal over nature and man. He is not the unknown God of agnosticism, who is hidden behind the impenetrable veil of the finite, and of whom we are certain only that He is the cause and ground of all things. He is not the impersonal and unconscious God of pantheism, who is lost in the world and can in no sense be said to control it. He is not the "absentee God" of deism, who has left his world to its own ways since He has brought it into being, and has done so for the wise reason that He has had no power to interpose in its affairs. The God of providence made the world for Himself, He sustains it in being, He is a factor in all its activities, He is its free Ruler. The relation in which He stands to the world through His providence is as close and vital as that in which He stood in its creation.

The providence of God may be considered under three aspects, as preservation, immanence, and government. We will look at each of these.

1. By preservation is meant God's providence as exercised in maintaining His creatures in being. According to the deistical view of the universe, the world when once created is self-existent. God has, it is true, the power to annihilate it, if He will-at least this is admitted with respect to the material world-but unless He sees fit to do so, it will continue to exist. But the scriptural teaching points to a closer relation of God to the creation than this. Finite beings continue in existence only by a constant ex

ercise of the divine power. If this were for an instant withdrawn, they would cease to be, as the shadow ceases when the substance which casts it is removed, or as the light ceases when the lamp is extinguished.

The continuance of material things is due to the upholding and preserving power of God. The scientific law of conservation, according to which the quantity of matter and energy in the world remains always the same, and can be neither increased nor diminished by any processes now at work or under the control of man, is simply the expres sion of the uniformity of the divine preservation in the material sphere. Matter and energy are the constants of the universe, but it is only because God is behind them. It is for this reason, and this only, that we can speak of the uniformity of causation. Moreover, God maintains the properties and laws of matter and energy. The great cosmical arrangements by which the perpetuity of life on our planet is maintained are due to the same preserving power. God Himself has given us the promise that, "While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease" (Gen. viii. 22).

In like manner God's preserving providence is the cause of the maintenance of life. What is life? Is it an independent entity, a principle which has the power to co-ordinate the activities of matter, or is it only a function of matter, something which could be explained entirely by matter and energy, if we only had the key to its mystery? In either case it is upheld in being by God's constant energizing. The life of plant and animal alike is due to the divine preservation. Death is the result of the withdrawal of His supporting power. "Thou takest away their breath," said the Psalmist, speaking of the animal creation, "they die and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the ground" (Ps. civ. 29, 30).

So also God preserves the human spirit. As its first existence was the result of a divine inbreathing (Gen. ii. 7), so its continuance is the result of God's power constantly exercised (Ps. xxxvi. 6, lxvi. 9; Job xxxiv. 14, 15). It is commonly asserted that the human soul is possessed of what is called "natural immortality," that is, that it is indestructible, and theologians often go so far as to say that God could not annihilate a soul if He desired. But there is not a hint of such a doctrine in the Bible, and those who think that by asserting it they can refute the unscriptural doctrine of the annihilation of the ungodly, purchase relief at quite too high a price. If God should withdraw His power from the soul, it would sink into nothingness, and if it be true, as the Bible seems to teach, that no soul is ever thus "cast as rubbish to the void," it is not because God cannot annihilate it, but because He will not. Moreover, God maintains the powers of the soul in existence. The intellect, the sensibility, the will, the free agency of man, the activity of conscience, are possible only upon this condition. "In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts xvii. 28). Even more strikingly is the spiritual life dependent upon God. For what is the spiritual life? It is the right relation of the soul to God, the state of things in which God's favor is granted to man and man lives in communion with God. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent " (John xvii. 3). When the soul is by faith united with God, He pours into it His own divine life. When men sin against Him he withdraws His gracious influences, and the result is spiritual death.

2. Another element in God's providence is His immaPreservation has to do with the maintenance of the creation in existence. Immanence has to do with its activities. God does not only uphold things and let them work according to their properties and laws; He

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