EARTH'S CURSE AND RESTITUTION.*

BY THE EDITOR.

WHAT does the Almighty Maker of the world we inhabit intend to do with it, is a question which many circumstances force upon the attention of thinking men. This question may be asked in sceptical, impatient, or sinful mood, a state of mind which precludes a satisfactory answer, because destitute of the reverence which the subject demands. But it may also be asked by men who are anxious to know the truth, who are prepared to give it their full mental sympathy, though it may come into collision with foregone conclusions, and who are profoundly convinced that the honour of the divine character will shine with increased lustre at every step in the right direction towards a solution of the problem. He who believes strongly in the absolute wisdom and goodness of God, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, in the terrible history of the human race, is just the man to say, "Righteous art thou, O Lord, when I plead with thee; yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments." Such a man has the qualification which introduces into the secret place. Loyal in heart to the government of the great King, he is persuaded that the principles upon which that government is conducted require only to be known to secure the admiration of all intelligent beings, except the wilfully disaffected. There are difficulties which the unaided human intellect labours in vain to remove; there are dark problems starting up at every step in the process of inquiry which it has no power to solve; there are thick clouds which it is totally unable to disperse; and both scepticism and faith may ask a thousand questions which the most gifted of the sons of men cannot answer. All this is admitted without hesitation; and yet the great central fact that there is a living God possessed of every possible perfection-a Being who is light, and in whom there is no darkness at all-remains in its integrity. True to Himself, true to the universe which He has called into existence, and true to the intelligent creatures with whom He has peopled it, that all-glorious Being must approve the principles upon which He has constituted His government. We assume this. We can do no otherwise. Let it be a postulate, an axiom, seen in its own brightness, vouching for itself, bearing its own testimony, and from it we reason in the light-or it may be sometimes only in the broken rays-of revelation; and if we mistake not, we may reach a conclusion which, in due time, will remove every difficulty, solve every problem, disperse every cloud, answer every question, bring out in radiant splendour the principles of the divine administration, flood the universe with peerless glory, and prove that the thoughts of the Lord are very deep, that He is wonderful in counsel, excellent in working, and infinitely rich in grace.

How, then, stands the question before us? The words, "Earth's Curse and Restitution," are easily uttered, but they are burdened with an amazing weight of meaning. "Earth's Curse "the reference is to

* This paper was read at the Alexandra-hall, Black heath, on the 11th, and at the Shire-hall, Hertford, on the 18th April.

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a fact in the history of the human race; "Earth's Restitution "-the reference is to a promise on the part of God. The words are opposites, the contrast between them is perfect, and the world we inhabit, which is the actual scene of the curse, is also the predicted scene of the restitution. Shall we dwell for a few minutes on the dark side of this picture, dismal and repellent as it is, for the purpose of deepening our gratitude to Him who has gilded its upper edge with glory, the herald and the guarantee of the magnificent deliverance in reserve for the groaning creation? The depths and extent of the calamity prove the resources of the transcendent mercy which rolls it back and leaves blessing and joy in its place. The appalling darkness of the long and tempestuous night makes us wish for the day, and hail its dawn with a sense of unutterable relief and thankfulness. And the fact that all efforts of moralists, philosophers, philanthropists, governments, and churches have entirely failed even to touch the chronic disease that preys upon the very heart of the world should make us turn with eagerness to God's prescription for the agonized sufferer.

Very early in the pages of our Bibles, just after we have repeatedly heard God pronouncing the works of His hands very good, and just after we have seen the first pair of human kind placed in a garden of delights, we are startled by these awful words from the Holy One: "And unto Adam He said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns, also, and thistles shall it bring forth unto thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." There is the sentence by the righteous Judge from whose award there is no appeal; and that it has taken effect the melancholy experience of nearly six thousand years fully proves. From the shock then given to creation it has trembled ever since. The shudder at its centre has been communicated to its widest circumference. No continent or island has escaped. It is a fallen world, whose foundations are out of course, all whose inhabitants of every type, from the greatest to the least, are exposed to pain and smitten with mortality, and whose history is a melancholy record of lamentations, mourning, and woe. Man disobeyed God. Man disobeyed God. Herein lay the cause of the tremendous disaster. Sin plucked the keystone from the glorious arch which connected Paradise with Heaven, and man's house lay in ruins about him. The legacy of woe has been transmitted to all generations. "The earth, also, is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate." Moral guilt and mental and physical suffering have characterized all generations. War, famine, pestilence-words of dread significance-are things which enter largely into the history of nations. And the lower animals are not only subjected to suffering in consequence of their connection with man, but they prey upon each other, thus distributing the confusion and the terror through the earth, the ocean, and the air. The jungle and the forest have their deadly reptiles and ferocious

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beasts; and man, the dethroned monarch of a splendid kingdom, has constantly to defend himself as best he may against thousands of enemies-insect, reptile and quadruped-as if the instinct of animated nature had discovered the cause of its sufferings, and led it to exact vengeance of man. Nor is this all. The material earth utters its groan and its protest. Here we have the arid desert that scorches the traveller, and refuses him a drop of water to cool his burning tongue; and if he escape death from the intolerable agonies of thirst, the awful sand-storm or the fatal sun-stroke may be at hand. There we have the pestilential swamp dealing out disease and death by its poisonous malaria to those who venture near its fatal locality. Here we have the fearful earthquake opening its granite jaws and devouring doomed. cities, with their shrieking inhabitants, without respect to character, age, or position. Saint and sinner, the hoary-headed man and the sweet little child, the large-hearted patriot and the miserable pest of society, are indiscriminately buried alive in that horrible sepulchre. There we have the irresistible hurricane, splitting into fragments, as if in mere sport, the strongest specimens of naval architecture, and strewing the ocean and the shore with the bodies of the dead. And here we have the swelling flood, fed by the rushing rain, which covers the standing crop and sweeps it to destruction; and there the long continued drought, until the heaven is as iron and the earth as brass, and there is no food for man or beast.

Now all this, which is but the merest hint pointing to the universal chaos, cries with a voice which cannot be mistaken, that the curse has diffused its virulent poison through the entire framework of this part of creation; and in addition to all this there is the dreadful fact that the whole world lieth in the wicked one. A malignant spirit of untiring energy in evil, Satan, the adversary, the accuser of the brethren, that old serpent, the devil, the father of lies, the deceiver, is not yet cast down from the heights and shut up in the prison, but is actively engaged in malicious effort to frustrate the work of the Redeemer, and to seduce man to destruction. Society is full of his deeds; the world is full of his temples; the majority of the race are led captive by him at his will. A world with such a history as this surely stands alone in the universe. It seems to have gathered around it, as to a vast focus, all the elements of good and evil, and to form the wonder and the terror of Jehovah's dominions. What, then, is its destiny? for it is impossible to conceive of this state of things continuing always, An end of some sort must close the fierce battle of sixty centuries. The conflict between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, the blessing and the curse, must come to an end; and on this subject, through the mercy of God, we are not left to grope our way through the thick darkness of mere speculation, but have the clear light of revelation to illumine our path and gladden our hearts. Gazing at the entire matter, we ask with an illustrious prophet, "O, my Lord, what shall be the end of these things?" for it is impossible that any disciple of Christ, having the honour of his Master and the welfare of his fellow-creatures at heart, can rest satisfied without some positive divine assurance that order shall supersede this hideous chaos, and harmony take the place of this horrible discord.

We turn, then, to a truth of far-reaching significance and sublime

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meaning, from which we are warranted to infer the most stupendous results. That truth stands by itself as the greatest wonder of all time, whilst it gives vitality and force to innumerable other truths that spring from it and cluster around. It is this: "THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH, AND DWELT AMONG US." This wonderful declaration is the keynote to all the divine music that has ever cheered the heart of the sad, and borne up the drooping spirit with the hope of better things to come. Assure me that the Son of God became incarnate, took man's nature into union with His own, and made man's world the place of His human birth, and whatever other purpose, or series of purposes, the incarnation may serve, I claim it as a pledge that the earth shall neither be abandoned to an everlasting curse, nor swept from the of the heavens by a decree of utter annihilation. The birth among us of the Holy One of God is the birth of the Heir, and though His rights were disputed, His claims rejected, and Himself murdered, the inheritance cannot pass to another. "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein," sang a poetprophet when in vision he saw the King of glory, strong and mighty in battle, coming to subdue His foes and take possession of His throne. That prophecy, with multitudes of similar import, must be fulfilled. The work of the adorable Saviour consists of three great parts-the redemption of the soul from sin, of the body from the grave, of the earth from the curse. The first is effected by pure grace; the second will be by Almighty power; the third by tremendous judgments. The first is already accomplished; for all who believe in Him who was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification pass from death unto life, are constituted sons of God and joint-heirs with Christ, and form the members of that separated community, the Church. They are chosen out of the world during the present dispensation of long-suffering, while their Lord is absent in the heavens, waiting for the kingdom promised to Him. This dispensation closes with the return of Jesus, and the reign of grace is superseded by that of judgment or righteousness, when the seventy-second Psalm, which is a splendid millennial ode, sweeping its grand music across a thousand years of time, shall have its fulfilment. The subjugation of the nations to Jesus, the salvation of the world, and the removal of the curse, are therefore things which the Church cannot do, and, for that reason, which it is neither expected nor asked to do. The times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began, will begin when He shall send Jesus Christ, as Peter told the amazed multitude as they looked upon the restored cripple walking, and leaping, and praising God. The demoniac world is not to be dispossessed by the disciples, but it will be by the Master when the typical scene of the transfiguration shall expand into the glorious reality of the world-wide kingdom of the Son of man; of which dispossession we have a specimen in the case of the poor youth we read of on that memorable occasion when Jesus came down from the mount. It is strange that a work requiring the exercise of judicial authority-and involving, as it most clearly does from the testimony of the prophets of both Testaments, a series of desolating judgments, compared with which those of the Mosaic exodus are gentle-should have been supposed possible of performance

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by the Christian Church. The nature of that community, the peculiarity of its constitution, and its true place in the infinitely wise arrangements of God, were all lost sight of before the thought took shape that ecclesiastical agency could rescue apostate humanity, evangelize the race, and put all enemies under the feet of Christ. Before the era of modern Christian missions the Church did little to bear testimony to the character and work of her Lord-her true work, without respect to its results-which was dishonouring to the High Priest of her profession; but since then she has gone to the other extreme, and says she can and will save the world whilst He is absent in the heavens, which is equally dishonouring to Him as the` appointed King of universal empire. In the first case, the cross and its lessons were not exhibited by a witnessing church before the eyes of the rations; in the second, the sceptre and its meaning are hidden behind the vaunting words of a religious intellectualism. Besides, it is manifest that no diffusion of Christianity-using that word in its generally received sense-could extract the curse from the earth and restore the paradise forfeited by man's transgression. The holiest among the sons of men, those who are most nearly conformed to the image of Christ, have no iminunity from sorrow and suffering, in consequence of that most blessed fact. No extent of holiness over the earth, no intensity of consecration to the adorable Saviour, on the part of its inhabitants, could deliver from bodily pain, decay, and death. No state of spirituality, however high, could turn the desert into a fruitful field, purify the pestilential atmosphere, extract the malaria from the soil, tame the lion and the panther, make the poisonous adder a harmless plaything for the little child, and cast down Satan from heaven. It is not in the nature of personal piety to heal the waters of the Dead Sea, to plant grass with reeds and rushes in the habitation of dragons, and to cause the fir-tree and the myrtle-tree to come up instead of the thorn and brier. Agency must correspond with the nature of tle work to be done; but there is no correspondence between the belief of the Gospel and the performance of the physical marvels to which these prophecies point. But we are told that these predictions are to be spiritually understood; they are highly poetic metaphors of what the transforming power of the Gospel, in the hand of the Holy Ghost, will effect; the lion, and the bear, and the asp, and the cockatrice, mean, wild, and wicked men converted and brought to Christ; and the healing of the Dead Sea is by the waters of the Gospel; and the fruitfulness of the desert is abundance of grace, and so on of all the rest. Very well, then; let us accept this canon of interpretation, and what is the result? Why, death remains exercising his old supremacy, the curse continues in all its original virulence, the burning desert, the barren soil, the unhealthy region, the earthquake, the tempest, all play their engines of destruction on hapless man for another weary thousand years. The roar of the lion, the hiss of the serpent, and the rattle of the snake still curdle the blood of the unhappy traveller. The living saints suffer pain and sorrow, as at present, and the dead in Christ lie in their graves during the whole of this protracted period. The curse is unrepealed, Satan is still the prince of the power of the air, the lower animals still suffer, and all creation still groans to be delivered. Such are the consequences of the so-called canon of