SERMON I. As the Creature of God. ROMANS xi. 36. "For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: THIS is, indeed, one of the grandest utterances of this wonderful Epistle. We can almost see the acting of the Apostle's soul as its mighty waves raise themselves up under the breath of the awful Spirit which sweeps over them. He has been gazing on the footsteps of God's wonderful providence across the wastes of time. The long Gentile estrangedness, the Jewish adoption, and the Jewish fall; the faithfulness of God amidst the manifold workings of man's unfaithfulness; the love, the might, and the marvel of His counsels, all these pass in review before him, until the struggling thoughts burst forth into adoration, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor?" And then from the marvel of these hidden counsels the Apostle's thoughts turn to the mystery of His sovereignty. "Who hath first given unto Him?" Until all is summed up in these words of wonder: “For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever." B It is on the consequence which flows directly from the truth involved in this ascription that I am now to speak to you, the personal responsibility of each one of you to God as your Creator. Brethren, join, I beseech you, with me in one earnest cry to the Eternal Spirit, that He would awaken this night in many a heart the sense of this, which, as we muse upon it, we shall, I think, see to be the one all-controlling law of our being. Now to lead your thoughts to dwell upon this great subject with something like an orderly progression, I would ask you to enter with me into these considerations. I. What He is of whom we speak. II. What we are. III. Why we are what He has so made us to be. IV. The consequences which flow, first, as regards Him; and, secondly, as regards ourselves from this relation between Him and us. I. What, then, is He of whom we speak. He is the One eternal necessary Self-existing, Allwise, All-mighty, All-loving, Being, from whom all things are that are; who of His mere will made them to be; who upholds them in being by His mere will. He is ONE, not one as we are amongst many, but ONE absolutely. THE UNITY; One in Himself; the Principle of oneness, of whom, through whom, to whom, are all things. And this He ever has been, and ever must be. There was no beginning to this being, there is no prolongation of it, there is no ending to it. It is One, simply One. "From everlasting to everlasting Thou art God." Till we can grasp something of this idea we cannot really understand in its first conditions the relations of the creature and the Creator. For to do this, we must |