pirituality 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
life of the words, "the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's
head." The gospel therefore was preached unto Abraham. Moses felt the
potent influence of "the reproach of Christ." David describeth the
blessedness of "the man unto whom God imputeth not iniquity." "Of this
salvation the prophets enquired and searched diligently." Christ was the
one name of the world's constant memory, "to Him gave all the prophets
witness," and from the obscurest to the clearest revelation all testified
in tones which it was difficult to misunderstand. "Neither is there
salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given
among men whereby we must be saved." The patriarchal dispensation had no
elaborate furniture nor gorgeous ritualism. The father was the priest of
the household, and as often as the firstling bled upon the altar it
typified the faith of them all in a better sacrifice to come. Then came
the Jewish dispensation with its array of services and external
splendour, with its expressive symbolism and its magnificent temple; and
then, rising into a higher altitude, the fulness of time came, and
Christianity--the religion not of the sensuous but of the spiritual, not
of the imagination awed by scenes of grandeur nor bewildered by
ceremonies of terror, but of the intellect