It is much to be observed, in such general statements, that the Apostles of our Lord never failed to add to their reasonings with Jew or Gentile, scribe or sophist, such comprehensive testimonies of the grounds of faith and the fruits of holiness in those who continue true to their engagement, as will leave no room for uncertain tests or bold opinions, for endless fluctuations in the mind and conduct, with doubts and difficulties of our own creating. It is true, that in the revelations of God’s will there are things which no human faculties, or even those of the purest of created beings in the realms of light, could penetrate, until the Most High so graciously revealed them,—things which relate to his own Essence, with his purposes and counsels for the redemption of mankind; but is it so hard to understand that when all was forfeited, God should send a Saviour from the throne of glory to become the new Head of mankind, by taking flesh, and in that nature, which He by his Divine prerogative had power to assume, to fulfil all that wherein our common sire had failed? Was not this a nobler exercise of Divine wisdom, than the creating a new race, and leaving that triumph to the common foe to God and man, that one such race was lost? Is it so hard to be understood, that to vindicate the credit of God’s Holy Law, there should be one sufficient satisfactory atonement, one sacrifice never more to be repeated or renewed? or that, by the prevailing intercession of the same Divine Redeemer, the gates of Heaven should be set wide to a rescued race, whose own exertions should from thenceforth be well employed, in spite of all the force and all the artifices of the common adversary? The glory of Divine grace is thus exalted, when the first gifts of God are again directed to their proper ends. To raise children unto Abraham of the stones of the desert, had been, no doubt, an easy task to the Almighty; but would it have served so highly to his glory, as the preservation and recovery of the first formed race? Is it so hard to perceive how signally the conspiring attributes of God, his justice, truth, and mercy, were thus illustrated and made to meet together in that work of redemption, which was accomplished in Christ Jesus? Does it require much scope of argument or pains of study to enable us to see, that to redeem mankind was an object no less worthy of Divine interposition, than to create them from the first? Again, could we safely remain strangers (as some would gladly seem to do) to the several branches of all moral obligations, when they have been confirmed anew, and drawn out into manifest example, and set before us so expressly for our imitation, in our Lord’s own life?