PREFACE. The apparently ambitious title of this really unpretending work may seem to require some explanation. In tardy compliance with an often repeated request from friends on whose judgment he relied, the author undertook to prepare a selection of his sermons for the press. Subsequent consideration, however, led to the belief that their subject-matter might be more advantageously treated in the form of a connected work than in that of pulpit discourses; and a growing sense of the interest and importance of some of the topics discussed in one of them bearing upon light and darkness, has induced him to expand it, with extracts from others, and much new matter, into the present publication, of which the name, although he wishes it were more modest, could hardly, he thinks, have been more appropriate. The work was intended at first for little more than a brief and popular compilation. The author's design was to make it a sort of net-work of quotations and references woven into the form of a narrative. But his peculiar position prevented him from carrying this intention into execution. The book has been written at intervals both of health and leisure, at a distance not only from the publisher, but from some of the best authorities, and from any literary friend from whom he could derive counsel or assistance. It is the author's first work, and his ignorance of the time allowed for the correction of a manuscript has caused him to leave a large portion of his own almost wholly unrevised. But, though deeply sensible of the many imperfections of his work, he still hopes that He whose strength is made perfect in weakness, will bless this effort, however humble, to promote His glory, and to vindicate the truth and importance of His own word. CONTENTS. Page I. THE CREATION OF Man His Story not yet fully told. a Tale of which the truest part is supposed by many to be be called, in one sense, Man's Biography. It speaks of the antiquity of the human race ; its origin, its unity, its cradle, its early happiness, its fatal fall, its earlier kingdoms, its religious history, and its final destiny. The first five of these the subjects of this Chapter. Date of it not positively ascertained. Controversy respecting the Antiquity of Man. Reasons for believing, independently of Scripture, that Man might have been made in the image of God. Meaning of the words, “God's image." 10 III. THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACE Agreeable to reason, that his first condition should be a happy one. The Origin of evil a hopeless mystery. But our concern is only here with its appearance upon earth ; and the Scriptural account of this more satisfactory than Students of nature, in search of simple truth, have our cordial good wishes. Value of the argument from the analogy of nature. Being an attempt to prove the reality, the nature, and the consequences of the Fall, and to answer modern scientific objections. THE DARKNESS OF SIN AND SORROW THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH PREACHERS OF THE DARKNESS 223 |