II.

The lamb slain from the foundation of the world.-Revelations, xiii. 8.

THE fate of the world from the time of Adam to the time of Christ; and likewise of that infinite number of human beings, since that time, who have never heard of the gospel-has often excited the compassion of good christians. They have bewailed the everlasting perdition of so many millions of people. It is true, our Saviour gave a short answer to some, who made an inquiry about a matter of this kind: Lord, are there few that shall be saved? Trouble not yourselves, said he, with the case of others. Leave them in the hands of a merciful God. But let it be your care to attend to what concerns yourselves.

Such passages, however, as the text, of which there are several, seem to throw light enough upon this subject to give us all the satisfaction we We may be assured, that God will never punish men for what they cannot help; but will judge without law, those that have sinned without law.

want.

The

The mind of man however is always agitated. Having gotten rid of one difficulty, it raises a second often upon the solution of the first.-If then all the unchristianized parts of the world, which live up to the lights they have received, shall be saved through the merits of Christwhat occasion is there to advance the gospel further? That the great and gracious atonement should be made at some time, we can easily con ceive: but when it was made, was not all done that was necessary to be done? If men may be saved as well through the merits of Christ in a state of nature, as in a state of grace; why should the apostles be so earnest in propagating the christian religion themselves, and in their injunctions to all succeeding ministers to follow their example?

This, I own, is more of a difficulty than the other; because this earnestness has the appearance, as if the souls of men were really concerned. I shall endeavour to solve it.

Some have endeavoured to solve it by supposing christians to receive, at the end of their labours, a greater reward than other men. I think we have no authority for taking upon us to portion out God Almighty's favours. We are told indeed, that the dead in Christ should rise first.

But

But such expressions are greatly too obscure to be the foundation of doctrines, at least of this arduous nature.

Others may say, that the purification of our lives is a great end gained. True; but as the end of this purification is to qualify us for future. happiness-and as we have every reason to believe, that the future happiness of men in a state of nature, is already provided for through the great atonement-there does not yet appear to be an adequate end for the strict injunctions, which the apostles, and their successors, are laid under to preach, and propagate the gospel.

THE Revelations of St. John give us the only key, that I know, to solve this difficulty.

In that book we have some very sublime descriptions (full of obscurity indeed in the detail

but very intelligible in the general import) of the millennium-the heavenly Jerusalem-— and reign of the saints. The absolute nature of the glorious state figured out by these lofty expressions, we know not: but we know enough to conclude, that some triumphant state is held out; in which the church of Christ will, in some distant period, be established. Hitherto the church of Christ is in a very impure state. In

all

all nations, where the gospel is professed, it is so mixed with the prejudices and wickedness of the world, that its efficacy and effects are no where seen. Here, and there, a few faithful witnesses have always distinguished themselves amidst the corruption of the times. But the great mass of the world taken together, has always had in it much more of the reign of Satan, than of Christ.

Now supposing the benefit of the great atonement to have taken place immediately after the fall, it appears that God Almighty has still further views to open in the dispensation of the gospel; of which we are yet ignorant, except from the few hints delivered by the sacred writers, especially by St. John, the clue of whose divine book I am now following.

As it pleased God therefore that the world was several thousand years in preparing to receive the gospel at first, even mingled as it is with all the impurities infused into it by the wickedness of men, we may suppose a long time also may be required to prepare it for those great events, of which St. John speaks. So that although the future situation of such men as live up to the lights they have received, may be safe; yet the propagating and preserving the gospel alive in the world,

all

and in all the vigour of which this imperfect state of things is capable, may be necessary to bring about these farther designs of Providence. Thus as the Jewish religion was formerly the means of preparing the world for the reception of the gospel; so the gospel, as it is now professed, may be a mean of preparation for those grand schemes, which are bringing forward in God Almighty's plan.

Nothing in the whole revolution of this world's affairs-the rise, and fall of empires or the convulsions, and catastrophes, which the shocks of nature are continually introducing, bear, the least degree of comparison, in point of grandeur, with the progress, and completion of the great scheme of christianity, as it is opened in the beginning of Genesis, and concluded at the end of the Revelations. Published and introduced by prophecy, and the whole typical scenery, if I may so call it, of a people, wonderfully separated from the rest of the world, to make preparation for it-it appears at length attended with all this heavenly apparatus. Utterly rejecting, and as it were disdaining the parade of this world, it is great in its simplicity-merely upheld by the hand of heaven in all its miraculous dispensations.

VOL. I.

Y

It