with the eternity
of the Word, does the Bible teach us to dismiss from our thoughts all
narrow views of the period of duration employed in manifesting the glory
of the self-existent Eternal One, and to raise our conceptions to the
highest possible pitch, and then to feel, that far beyond the grasp of
human calculation lies that _beginning_ which includes the years of the
right hand of the Most High, and is even used as one of the names of the
Eternal: "I AM THE BEGINNING _and the Ending, saith the Lord, who is,
and who was, and who is to come_--THE ALMIGHTY."[237]

In another Bible exhibition of the eternity of the Son of God, we are
conducted from that _beginning_, downward, stage by stage, from those
periods of remote antiquity prior to the formation of water, the
upheaval of the mountains, the alluvial deposits, the subsidence of the
existing sea basins, and the adornment of the habitable parts of the
earth, to that comparatively recent event, the existence of the sons of
men. Our ideas of the eternity of the love of Christ are thus enhanced,
by the vastness of the ages which stretch out between the human race and
that beginning when He was, as it were, "The Lamb slain from before the
foundations of the world."

"The Lord possessed me _in the beginning of his way_,
_Before his works of old_.
I was set up from everlasting,
_From the beginning, or ever the earth was_.
When there were no depths, I was brought forth;
When there were no fountains, abounding with water;
Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills, was I brought forth;
While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields,
Nor the highest part of the dust of the world
When he prepared the heavens, I was there;
When he described a circle upon the face of the deep;
When he established the clouds above;
When he strengthened the fountains of the deep;
When he gave to the sea his decree,
That the waters should not pass his commandment;
When he appointed the foundations of the earth:
Then was I by him, as one brought up with him;
And I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him:
Rejoicing in the habitable parts of his earth;
And my delights were with the sons of men."[238]

Let the geologist, then, penetrate as deeply as he can into the
profundities of the foundations of the earth, and bring forth the
monuments of their hoary antiquit