An intelligent adherent of the Scriptural, Protestant, and Evangelical faith of the living Christianity of this realm of England, associates all we have endeavoured to illustrate in the whole of our discussion with the simple inscription on the Royal Exchange. It is a text from the Bible. It recognises the Divine authority of the book; and the recognition of that authority in one of its sayings, carries with it the admission of the whole of its utterances. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof.” The association of this, in a devout mind, is easy and natural with the exaltation and glory of the Redeemer of the world, whose last words when he left it were, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth,” and who, upon this, based the command which he gave to the Apostles, “Go ye, therefore, into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.” The government of the earth is in the hands of Christ; it is mediatorial; it is not only that of goodness and beneficence, but it is that also of revealed mercy. God “will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth,” for his son “gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.” There is another “fulness,” besides that of the teeming earth, and the annual redundance and prodigality of nature. There is “The fulness of Christ,—the fulness of him who filleth all in all;” the complete development of “his body the Church;” and the full-orbed display of his perfections and glory, when “to him every knee shall bow of things in heaven and things in earth; and every tongue shall confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” All this, the thoughtful observer associates with the sentence that daily meets the eyes of the citizens of this great metropolis. All this is being ceaselessly uttered in the hearing of the assembled congress of nations;—it is held up in the sight of the many and multitudinous representatives of the various tribes and peoples of the earth! What would be the future of Europe and the world,—moral, political, social, and religious,—if England and its visitors alike learnt, and fully carried out, all that is involved in what the one is proclaiming in the ears of the others?
In the succeeding pages of this book, we shall endeavour to reply to this question.
PART III.
PROPHETIC.