essential that we should, at the very outset of such inquiry, make ourselves acquainted with what the Scriptures teach concerning the Divine Being of whom these visitations are predicted. Without a plain and satisfactory idea upon this subject we shall be liable to get into some confusion while studying those remarkable dispensations of His providence. Permit me then, with much earnestness and affection, to direct your attention to this point.
The Scripture statement that "The Lord our God is one Lord," is very emphatic; and the acceptance of it as a grand truth is one of the marks and evidences of genuine religion. Still, this is only the numerical idea, and, viewed in itself, does not advance us very far into an intellectual acquaintance with Him. He is not a Being for human discovery: man by searching cannot find out God. The fact that He is one is made known to us through the medium of revelation, and all other true information respecting Him comes from the same source. The Bible informs us that God made several communications to Adam;[1] thereby He must have made a revelation of Himself; and from that period some idea respecting Him has always prevailed among mankind. Nothing seems more certain than that the idea of God first came into the world by His own revelation of it: it is also evident that as the purity of that idea has, from time to time, been corrupted or forgotten by the perversities of men. He has been mercifully pleased to renew such revelations, for the purpose of restoring and maintaining the truth of it in His Church.
Doubtless the Scriptures are intended to furnish us with as full and complete an idea of the Deity as it is possible for finite minds to have respecting the Infinite. But as the Scriptures were not given to the world all at once, so the
- ↑ Gen. i. and ii.
