and successive nature; "providence" implies the oversight and government of all that is comprehended in the creation.

ANECDOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

The difference between God's execution of the work of creation and that of providence is this: He executed the work of creation entirely without means; whereas he executes the work of providence generally in the use of them. But whatever use God may make of second causes in executing his purposes, they are all but instruments in his hand to bring about his glorious designs. "Deep in unfathomable mines

Of never-failing skill,

He treasures up his bright designs,

And works his sovereign will."-Cowper.

QUEST. 9. What is the work of creation?

ANS. The work of creation is, God's making all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days, and all very good.

GEN. i. 1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

HEB. xi. 3. Through 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 do appear.

Ex. xx. 11. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.

GEN. i. 31. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

I. Creation was from nothing.-It arose from the will of God. God is the first great cause; he alone is uncreated. Creation is vast; there is reason to believe that 75,000,000 of stars may be visible by the telescope; and Baron Zach supposes that there are 100,000,000 of stars. Their distances are great. Light travels at the rate of 12,000,000 of miles in a minute; yet some stars are so distant that it would take 1,640 years for a ray to reach the Earth. Lord Rosse's telescope has revealed nebula whose light would take 2,000,000 of years to reach our Earth. There is a plurality of worlds. Geology reveals countless ages of this world, and a great many plants and animals now extinct. There are 1,200,000,000 of mankind. The animal creation comprises 300,000 species. There are 56,000 different kinds of herbs known to botanists-many more exist; 30,000 animalcules have been found in a drop of water.

II. Creation was by the word of God. "He spake, and it was done," Ps. xxxiii. 9. The eternal Son is called the Word of God, John i. 1; by him the worlds were made, Col. i. 16.

III. The period of creation.-Six days. This period has been much contro

verted. It is sometimes referred to various ages of the past. It is sometimes referred to the present order of things only: the order is-first, light; second, the firmament; third, dry land and herbs; fourth, the arrangement of luminaries; fifth, fishes and fowls; sixth, beasts and man. We can afford to wait for more light on this subject.

IV. The character of creation.-All was very good." This goodness consisted in their perfection of nature and adaptation; abundant evidence of this primeval goodness exists still.

LESSONS.

1. The greatness of God. This is fitted to draw forth reverence and worship. 2. Human goodness of character best fulfils the design of our Creator. This is found through Christ: 2 Cor. v. 17.

ANECDOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

A person, whose name was John Thorp, was greatly harassed for the space of two years with temptations to deny the existence of God. While passing through a wood, a falling leaf stuck between his fingers. He felt a powerful impression to examine its texture, and holding it between his eye and the sun, and reflecting on its exquisitely curious and wonderful formation, he was led into an extensive contemplation on the works of creation; and tracing these back to their First Cause, he had in a moment such a conviction of the existence and ineffable perfections of God that his distress was removed, and he prosecuted his journey rejoicing in God and admiring him in every object that presented itself to his view.

Among the ancient philosophers of every school it was universally accepted as an indubitable axiom that the origination of any new existence out of nothing is impossible,—that is, Ex nihilo nihil fit. All therefore, theists and atheists alike, repudiated the idea of creation. In modern times the deniers of the doctrine of absolute creation (ex nihilo) have been either pantheists or atheists. Pantheism, as the term indicates, signifies that system which maintains that all phenomena, whether spiritual or material, are to be referred to but one substance, and that the universal substance of God. Thus matter and mind are declared to be only different modifications of one substance. The atheist says that there is no God; the pantheist, that everything is God. The atheist says that the present system of the universe has developed in unbroken succession from eternity.

The universal opinion of all geologists, Christians and infidels, theists and atheists, is, that the material composing our globe has been in existence for incalculable ages; that it has passed through many successive stages in its transition, probably from a gaseous, certainly from a molten condition, to its present constitution; and that it has been inhabited successively by many different orders of organized beings.

66

"In Mars," says Sir D. Brewster, we see continents, and oceans, and green savannas. The surfaces of Venus and Mercury show mountain chains of great elevation. These planets are surrounded with atmospheres like our own, and the clouds are seen floating in that of Mars. Jupiter has its atmosphere, the moon has its atmosphere, and so has the sun; and these

phenomena all go to prove the fitness of the planets and the sun, and if so, all other suns and their systems, for the support of life in forms unknown to us, but adapted to each celestial locality."

Christians are taught in the Scriptures how the creation was originated. Though the proper office of the Bible is to teach religion and morality, yet it gives information on many things besides. Physical facts are important even in the revelation of God's will. Creation is a physical fact, and the Bible teaches us to confess that God made all things, and to say, "We believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth."

Creation took its origin in the will of God. Whatever changes may have been developed in time, they were the result of the original will in creating. Scripture attributes all to God, who is above and distinct from the whole universe.

"Robert Dick, the baker, and geologist and botanist of Thurso, after much searching in nature, was of opinion that dogmatism in interpretation was equally out of place in geology as in divinity. He thought that man's proper work at present was to search and acquire new facts and materials for the formation of further knowledge. Theories might wait. Certainly the time had not yet arisen for harmonizing the 'Testimony of the Rocks' with the first chapter of the book of Genesis."-Dr. S. Smiles: Life of Robert Dick.

"About half a century ago, a Chinese boy, in one of the suburbs of Canton, threw away the idols of his family, became an atheist, and ran away to America. In the city of New York he supported himself as a porter, and spent his Sundays on the streets or on the shores of Hoboken. Curiosity led him one day to look into a church, and he was astonished to find no idols there. He asked the next day an explanation of his employer, who replied by simply putting a Bible into his hands. The first chapter of Genesis converted him; he became a Christian, and was educated, and returned a Christian teacher to China. He was in the same class with us in 1839, and we bear joyous testimony to his good sense, ability, and character, and to the genuineness, so far as men could judge, of the conversion wrought in him by the first chapter in Genesis."-Rev. Thomas Hill, D.D., LL.D.

"There is no creature on earth that does not fulfil its mission except man; none but what promotes God's glory except the one that boasts his image. All God's works praise him: the song of birds, the lowing of cattle, the chime of the sea-waves, the sighing of the wind, all creatures, all sights, all sounds are full of worship. Man, once the high priest of creation-the mysterious yet glorious link between the material and the spiritual-has put off his Eden robes, and no longer ministers a holy Levite before the Lord."H. Gill.

"The degenerate plant has no consciousness of its own degradation, nor could it, when reduced to the character of a weed or a wild flower, recognize in the fair and delicate garden-plant the type of its former self. The tamed and domesticated animal, stunted in size and subjugated in spirit, could not feel any sense of humiliation when confronted with its wild brother of the desert, fierce, strong, and free, as if discerning in that spectacle the noble type from which itself had fallen. But it is different with a conscious, moral

being. Reduce such an one ever so low, yet you cannot obliterate in his inner nature the consciousness of falling beneath himself; you cannot blot out from his mind the latent reminiscence of a nobler and better self which he might have been, and which to have lost is guilt and wretchedness." -Dr. J. Caird.

An antiquary in Italy, reading in a book that there was a portrait of Dante painted by Giotto, was led to suspect where it had been placed. There was an outhouse used for storing hay and wood. He got permission to examine the walls. After experimenting upon the white-washed surface, he detected signs of the picture, and by loving care he brought out to view the image of the Tuscan poet. Sin has covered over the image of God in man, but by the cleansing operation of the Spirit the likeness can be reproduced in his soul.

Dean Swift, who probably got the idea from the Roman orator Cicero, said that he would no more believe that the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms than that the accidental jumbling of the letters of the alphabet would fall by chance into an ingenious and learned treatise of philosophy.

Plato acknowledged his conviction of the existence of a great Creator upon observing that all the world could not make so insignificant a creature as a fly.

"A gentleman, who had discharged the thought of God from his mind, while travelling in Australia was led in a remarkable way to a belief in his existence. His own account of it is as follows: 'Journeying on a day as close and sultry as can well be imagined, I became, after some hours' travel, so weary that at length I cast myself down beneath the most shady tree I could find, unable to hold out any longer, and determined to await the cool of the evening. As I lay thus, after some time I saw the seed-stem of a little plant close before me move in the slightest degree several times, each time accompanying the motion with a single low, sharp sound, like the tick of a watch. Interested to discover the connection between the motion and the sound, I leaned over and examined it. It was a small plant, with a short and more than proportionably thick flower-stem, having a single seed-pod at the extremity. The seed-pod was an oblate spheroid, not much larger than a garden pea; but it was composed of a number of sections, which, shrinking as it ripened, separated themselves from one another, and finally each section detached itself at the bottom of the stalk, which ran right through to the upper side, and sprang out, nearly straining itself; so that eventually, when all the sections had extended themselves, it would be something like an open unbrella. But to the extremity of each of these sections, before it sprang out, on the inside was attached a single small round seed, which was cast, by the spring of the section to which it belonged, to a considerable distance. I struck the stem lightly, and thus artificially expedited the process of disjunction, and found that the seeds were thrown out upwards of two feet. On paying close attention to the plant itself, I observed that its stem was so stiff that the wind could have no power to sway it to and fro, and thus scatter the seed; so low, likewise, that amidst the surrounding grass the wind could scarcely ever reach it in force sufficient to

carry the seed away; and lastly, that it was placed in the midst of leaves, all outspreading upwards and outwards in a funnel form from the root, so that if the seed were not cast beyond them they would catch and carry it back again to the bosom of the plant itself. The disadvantage, then, was threefold, and so complete in the whole as to bar this little fraction of nature from the performance of one of its grand generic offices,-that of properly depositing its seeds. Nothing could relieve it but some mechanical contrivance; and not only was it a contrivance in itself, but there were design and adaptation in fixing the very juncture of its operations. The seed should not be thrown off till it was ripe; and till it was so ripe that its very reservoir began to separate into fragments, this mechanical contrivance could not act. The completion of the ripening process was the condition on which the contrivance for scattering the seed depended for coming into action. It was an instance of design and contrivance so indisputable that there was no leaving it to be accounted for in any way but by the agency of a God.'"-Dr. Leifchild.

"The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,

And spangled heavens, a shining frame,

Their great Original proclaim.

The unwearied sun, from day to day,
Does his Creator's power display;

And publishes to every land

The work of an Almighty hand.

"Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And, nightly, to the listening earth

Repeats the story of her birth;

While all the stars that round her burn,

And all the planets in their turn,

Confirm the tidings as they roll,

And spread the truth from pole to pole."-Addison.

QUEST. 10. How did God create man?

ANS. God created man male and female, after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures.

GEN. i. 27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

COL. iii. 10. And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.

ECCLES. vii. 29. God hath made man upright.

EPH. iv. 24. And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

GEN. i. 28. And God blessed them, and