SERMON I. SUNDAY. SEPTUAGESIMA, 1860. GENESIS, ii. 2, 3. On the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made. THE lessons for to-day recall our thoughts to a time when this world did not exist. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." He created them. He called them forth out of nothing, by a power peculiar to Himself. How that power acts, or what it is, we cannot explain by few words or many. The idea of creation is as far beyond us as the power of creating. We can only learn and wonder, that before this great universe, with its infinite variety and multitude of inhabitants, came into being, God was God as now. The eternal Trinity-Father, Son, and Holy Ghost-were then, as they are now, One God, perfectly wise, perfectly good. By the act of creation there came to be a heaven and an earth. Shapeless, void, and dark, the earth was spread out, at the first, a gloomy expanse of water. But the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water. And the Word of God, the same Word who in after ages stooped beneath the burden of the malefactor's cross, said "Let there be light, and there was light." "And God saw the light that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness," instituting the names of Day and Night. "And the evening and the morning were the first day." Five more days are recorded as the epochs at which God ordained severally the firmament of heaven, the dry land and plants, the sun, moon, and stars, the birds and fishes, the beasts and man. All these God saw when he had created them, and found them very good: and the sixth day closed upon a completed work. The day which followed was made to differ from the others. God rested on the seventh day. How God should rest, or how God should work, are problems which only bewilder the human mind. Infinite power suffers no weariness, infinite wisdom knows no slumber. Yet God rested, and for His servants to all time. He hallowed the day of rest. The seventh day was sanctified because God had rested on the seventh day. A time will come when all of us who follow Christ in |