limits, and the truth they would establish is not, moreover, the end to which our present disquisitions are directed. The theme of this Lecture is the course observed by eternal wisdom, or the divine order in the realm of truth. My object is to call your attention to the care with which Providence observes a gradual progression in its mental development of the human race, lovingly suiting and adapting itself to the weakness and finiteness of humanity, and to the imperfection of earthly creatures, according to that principle of divine condescension, so often mentioned already, which, throughout the divine operations in the world, and His influence on man, is distinctly visible. Thus, then, in the knowledge immediately imparted to man by a higher providence we may discern a preliminary period--a previous illumination, in order to reopen the eye of man, which heathenism had blinded to the truth, that it might be able to see and discern God. This first step of revelation was little more than a preparation for the future; but the second was, or has been, an illumination of the soul--a vital renewal of it--a total conversion of it from the state of darkness to the Everlasting Light and the Sun of Righteousness. But in this living development of the highest life, which is even the divine light of the Spirit, the third and last step (which indeed commences in and is involved in the second, even as it also had its germ in the first) is the full enlightenment of the spirit or mind. And accordingly this full revelation is in Scripture itself, as being the close and completion of the whole, expressly described, and named the last time.