But, while all creation echoes the voice, and implicitly demonstrates the existence of God, so as to “leave without excuse those, who worshipped and served the creature more than (μαλλον ’η _rather than_, or _and not_) the Creator;” Rom. i. 25; yet it is to Revelation we are indebted for that information respecting the nature, works, and dispensations of Jehovah, which the most refined systems of human wisdom have never been able to give us. In the sacred volume, we receive more instruction from a single page, and often from one short sentence, than from whole volumes of antiquity; and more truth too, than all the elaborate systems of philosophers and speculatists have been able to investigate for thousands of years. What they groped after by the dim light of reason, is here revealed to the full satisfaction of the most illiterate inquirer. And what their schemes attempted to elucidate, and, in elucidating, only made more obscure and absurd, is here unfolded in a manner, that exhibits indubitable marks of divine authenticity, and affords an opportunity to “the wayfaring man, though a fool,” to surpass in genuine knowledge the most renowned philosopher, who either had not, or would not have, the “oracles of God,” for his counsellor and guide. Here we are informed not only that God is, but also, “that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him;” Heb. xi. 6;—that “the worlds were framed by the word of God;” verse 3;—that they did not exist from eternity, as some of the philosophers whimsically maintained, but that “_in the beginning_, God created the heavens and the earth;” Gen. i. 1;—that the frame of the universe was not formed from pre-existing materials, for that “the things which are seen, were not made of things which do appear;” Heb. xi. 3;—that, contrary, to the atheistical and stupid hypothesis of the Epicureans, who ascribed the creation of all things to chance, or a fortuitous concourse of atoms; the world and all its inhabitants were the production of an eternal, infinitely intelligent, spiritual, wise, and powerful Being, whom the scriptures call God;—that he, whose almighty _fiat_ from darkness educed light, and from the confusion of chaos brought harmony and order, was the very person, who afterwards disrobed himself of his divine splendor, and “was manifest in the flesh, took upon him the form of a servant, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Phil. ii. 7, 8. For, by him, “in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins, and who is the” express “image of the invisible God, were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created _by_ him,” as the Agent, “and _for_ him,” as the _End_. Col. ii. 14, 15;—that all the calamities which prevail in the natural and moral world originate in that act of disobedience recorded in Gen. iii.