dying fires, and goodness crowns its little universe of action with joy and gladness.
Thus does regeneration become a work of orderly progress and successive growth. Guided by the Lord, it is brought forward under his never ceasing energies. It is begun in chaos and ends in the glorious likeness of Divinity. This, and manifold more, the parable of the Creation sets forth, in its beautiful symbols, concerning the beginnings of the soul, its progress through the stages of its advancing career, the nature of each successive state, and the quality of its celestial outcomes. It is a lovely picture of the elevations of life to which we may dare aspire, a perfect delineation of the path we are divinely called to tread, a chart of life by which we may safely work our way, a glorious promise of our heavenly future if we are but true.
We may learn concerning science in the rock-ribbed earth, and trace the courses of the stars by the mathematics learned of man. But the Word of God is given that He may reveal Himself amid the weary ways of earth, build eternal hopes in the heart of fallen man, point the path to the higher life which reigns in heaven, and bathe the soul with the love and truth Divine. So only is the holy Scripture justified; so only our hearts made happy in its study; so only eternal life made sure through its leaves of wonderful light.
