Take the first thought, spirituality. They are lively or living stones, built up into a spiritual house. Any one who thoughtfully observes the successive ages of the world's history, will not fail to discover that each generation of men has in some important particulars progressed upon its predecessor. There has been not only an accumulation of the treasures of thought and knowledge but an increase of the capacity to produce them. Hence in every age there has been a higher appreciation of freedom, a quickened enterprise of enquiry, the stream of legislation has refined and broadened in its flow, improvement has extended its acreage of enclosure, and principles proved and gained have become part of the property of the world. Our nature has had its mental childhood. The established laws of mind admit only of a gradual communication of knowledge. It was necessary, therefore, that men should be first stored with elementary principles, then advanced to axioms and syllables, and afterwards introduced into the fellowship of the mystery of Divine truth. Hence any reflective mind, pondering upon the dealings of God with men, will discover a progressive development of revelation, adjusted with careful adaptation to the preparedness of different ages of mankind. In the first ages God spake to men in sensible manifestations, in visions of the night, by audible voice, in significant symbol. As time advanced the sensible manifestations became rarer, and were reserved for great and distinguishing occasions. From the lips of a lawgiver, in the seer's vision, and in the prophet's burden of reproof or consolation, the Divine spake, and the people heard and trembled. At length, in the fulness of time, the appeal to the senses was altogether discarded; the age of spirituality began, and in the completed revelation men read, as they shall read for ever, the Divine will in the perfected and royal word. And this progress, which appears through all creation as an inseparable condition of the works of God, present in everything, from the formation of a crystal to the establishment of an economy, is seen also in the successive dispensations under which man has been brought into connection with heaven. You can trace through all dispensations the essential unity of revealed religion. There have never been but two covenants of God with man--the covenant of works and the covenant of grace; never but two religions--the religion of innocence, and the religion of mercy. Through all economies there run the same invariable elements of truth. The first promise contains within itself the germ of all subsequent revelation--the Abrahamic covenant, the separation of Israel, all the rites and all the prophecies, are but the unfoldings of its precious meaning. Sacrifice for the guilty, mediation for the far-off and wandering, regeneration for the impure, salvation through the merit of another; these are the inner