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BLOOD OF HIS SON CLEANSETH US FROM ALL SIN. It melts the most obdurate into tenderness and contrition. It cheers the broken hearted, and brings the tear of gladness into eyes swollen with grief. It maintains serenity under calamities that drive the worldling mad. It reconciles the sufferer to his cross, and raises songs of praise from lips quivering with agony. It teaches the fading eye to brighten at the sweet promises of Jesus, and brings a foretaste of heaven down to the "chamber where the good man meets his fate."

"Jesus can make a dying bed

Feel soft as downy pillows are."

BLESSED IS THE PEOPLE THAT KNOW THE JOYFUL SOUND: THEY SHALL WALK, O LORD, IN THE LIGHT OF

THY COUNTENANCE.

BLESSED IS THE NATION WHOSE GOD IS THE LORD. BLESSED BE THE LORD FOR EVERMORE. AMEN AND ΑΜΕΝ.

PERPETUITY OF THE CHURCH.

BY

J. C. LORD, D. D.

PASTOR OF THE CENTRAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, BUFFALO, N. Y.

Wherefore we receiving a kingdom that cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear.-HEB. xii. 28.

WHAT kingdom is this which cannot be moved? What kingdom is that which has not been moved, and shall not be for ever? Where is the law of absolute permanency manifested? Where are the everlasting foundations that never shall be shaken? Shall we turn to the kingdom of nature for an example, expecting to find unchangeableness there? Upon a careful examination, a state of facts will be discerned at war with the commonly received opinions of the permanency and fixedness of the course of nature. If we go back a few centuries in our investigations, we find that extraordinary interruptions and changes have marked the history of this kingdom, since God created the heavens and the earth, the proofs of which are graven in the rocks by the finger of the great Architect; the memorials of which (225)

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are as numerous as the heights of the earth, and the depths of the sea. Our globe has been shaken by convulsions, which have overwhelmed existing orders of life; which have thrust the mountains skyward, and hollowed out the profound depths where are gathered the waters of the ocean. The chaotic state which preceded the present order of things, when the earth was without form and void, has left every where visible and indubitable marks of its existence. The ancient forms of life have passed away, and new ones have been created to supply their places. The economy of existence, in this world, has been changed more than once; and the present order of things reposes on the wrecks of preexistent and extinguished forms of life. The ruins of primitive forests, of a diverse order or species from those which now exist, constitute the beds of coal from which we draw inexhaustible supplies of fuel. The metals we use were melted in furnaces in the interior of the earth, and injected in veins through the masses of igneous rocks, broken by a power which shattered the crust of the globe, and upheaved the mountains, whose scattered debris constitute the soils which now produce the precious fruits of the earth. The attrition and decomposition of substances forced out of the bosom of the planet, and distributed by the alternate action of cold and heat, by the agency of fire, air, and water, constitutes the basis of all vegetable production, and the support of the present kingdom of life. The roots of the present economy draw their sustenance from the graves of its predecessors. We build not only upon, but with the tombs of extinct orders of

life; more than this, the regularity and uniformity of the present order of things is the result of a previous designed irregularity and disorder, which prepared the globe for the support of its present inhabitants. Mountains and valleys are the ridges of ancient volcanoes, which drove the plowshare of apparent ruin through the crust of the earth, only to prepare the way for man, and the orders of life with which it pleased God to surround him. The ancient vegetable kingdom was buried as a deposit for his use; before this, in the era of fire which preceded all forms of life, the metals were fabricated, and then deposited, or rather driven, near the surface by volcanic action, for the same wise and benevolent purpose. All the primitive systems have passed away, having performed their office by furnishing the means of support to that which was to succeed them.

The scriptural chronology commences with the creation of man, after a brief intimation of a preexisting amorphous condition of the earth; and it is conceded that geological phenomena do not indicate a longer time than six thousand years for the present order or kingdom of life. The Bible no where limits the length of that period during which the planet was in an imperfect and forming condition; nor are we told how long the Spirit of God was moving upon the face of the waters, preparatory to the last six day's work of creation. But without dwelling further on this interesting theme, may we not presume that enough has been said to show that the kingdom of nature has none of the permanency spoken of in the text? It has been revolutionized;

it has been shifted from foundation to foundation; it has been moved from its earlier conditions; it has been without all life under the dominion of fire; it was inhabited for a time only by the inferior forms of existence, which sport in the waters, or by gigantic lizards, which haunted the marshes among ferns sixty feet high; it has experienced numerous interruptions destructive of the earlier organisms, which have been succeeded by new acts and new forms of creation.

The present economy under which we live is continued now by no necessity of nature, and abides in an orderly way, only because God "upholdeth all things" by the same word of power by which he called order and form, and life and light, out of darkness and death, out of emptiness and nothingness. It is the sure word of promise that perpetuates the kingdom of nature during the appointed time, for God said to Noah, when he came out of the ark, "While the earth remaineth summer and winter, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, and day and night shall not cease,

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But as this kingdom of nature has been moved by the concurrent testimony of science and religion, so there is the same evidence that it is destined to new revolutions and changes. The promise to Noah implies the end of the present economy; "while the earth remaineth," that is, during the appointed period of its present state, "seed time and harvest shall not fail."

The apostle Peter, in his second epistle, declares that "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, the elements melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein shall be

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