The accomplishment of such an object, it will be admitted, is one of unspeakable importance. For no government, however perfect and beautiful in other respects, can be of much value unless it be so constructed as to secure its own permanency. This grand object, revelation informs us, has been attained by the redemption of the world through Christ. But for his work, those blessed spirits now bound together in everlasting society with God, by the sacred ties of confidence and love, might have fallen from him into the outer darkness, as angels and archangels had fallen before them. The ministers of light, though having drunk deeply of the goodness of God, and rejoiced in his smile, were not satisfied with their condition, and, striving to better it, plucked down ruin on their heads. So, man in paradise, not content with his happy lot, but vainly striving to raise himself to a god, forsook his allegiance to his Maker, and yielded himself a willing servant to the powers of darkness. But an apostle, though born in sin, having tasted the bitter fruits of evil, and the sweet mercies of redeeming love, felt such confidence in God, that in whatsoever state he was, he could therewith be content. Not only in heaven—not only in paradise—but in a dungeon, loaded with irons, and beaten with stripes, he could rejoice and give glory to God. This firm and unshaken allegiance in a weak and erring mortal to the throne of the Most High God, presents a spectacle of moral grandeur and sublimity to which the annals of eternity, but for the existence of sin, had presented no parallel. It is by the scheme of Christianity alone that the confidence of the creature in his God has been rendered too strong for the gates of hell to prevail against him. But for this scheme, the moral government of God might have presented scenes of mutability and change, infinitely more appalling than the partial evil which we behold in our present state. Or if God had chosen to prevent this, to render it absolutely impossible, by the creation of no beings who he foreknew would rebel against him, this might have contracted his moral empire into the most insignificant limits. Thus, by the creation of the world, God has prepared the way to extend the boundaries of his empire, and to secure its foundations. Christ is the corner-stone of the spiritual universe, by which all things in heaven and earth are kept from falling away from God, its great centre of light and life. No wonder, then, that when this crowning event in the moral government of the universe was about to be accomplished, the heavenly host should have shouted, “Glory to God in the highest!”