SECTION III.

1.

A SERMON,

PREACHED BEFORE THE

BEDFORD LODGE OF FREEMASONS,

In Tavistock Church,

JULY 6, 1814

1st Chapter of the Book of Genesis, Verse 1st.

The creation is of all others the most sensible and obvious argument of a Deity. Other considerations may work upon the Almighty Author of all things as it were to our senses. So often

our reason, but this brings down so often

as

With feelings of respect to his Masonic Brethren in Tavistock, the Conductor AT THEIR REQUEST, now presents to them and the public a discourse, which on any other occasion he would have been rather willing to conceal. For it was written with little previous notice and with no view to publication. The plan of it is wholly borrowed from Blair, and if it has any merits, they belong rather to others than to the Preacher, whose only, object was to build up with a MASONIC HAND the materials furnished by others.

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as we look up to heaven, so often as we regard the earth or the fruits thereof, so often as we reflect upon ourselves, our figure and our faculties; which way soever we turn our eyes, we are encountered with plain evidences of a superior Being. So the Psalmist tells us, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth the works of his hands." And so likewise St. Paul writes to the Romans, that "the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even his eternal power and godhead."

Thus Moses begins his inspired and most ancient book with a declaration that God created all that man sees. Before the sun and the moon, those glorious lights, were set on high, before the sound of the human voice was heard, or the name of man was known, in those dark and mysterous times, fitly termed by Moses "the beginning". God created the heaven and the earth.

To a beginning of the world we are led back by every thing that now exists, by the records of all nations. In tracing the transactions of past ages, we arrive at a period, which clearly indicates the infancy of the human race. We behold the world peopled by degrees. We ascend to the origin of all those useful and necessary arts without the knowledge of which, mankind could not subsist. We discern society and civilization arising from rude beginnings in every corner of the earth, and gradually advancing to the state in which we now find them. All which things afford plain evidence that time was, when man and the variety of arts that hang upon his hands were not, and that the commencement of human life and civilized society is a point on which there is no doubt.

+ Vide. Dr. Blair's Sermons, Vol. 3.

doubt. To some of the ancient philosophers, creation from nothing appeared an unintelligible idea; and they accordingly held that this beautiful frame of the world was produced by a fortuitous concourse of preexistent atoms. But in this they acknowledge a preexistence, and a preexistence of matter. Now to acknowledge any thing preexistent is to acknowledge a beginning; and in acknowledging a beginning, we cannot but confess some powerful Source, whence alone such beginning, or such preexistence of atoms could be derived.

For it is manifestly unreasonable to impute an effect to chance, which carries on its face characters of a wise design and contrivance. Was ever any considerable work, in which was required a great variety of parts, and a regular and orderly disposition of those parts, done by chance? Will chance always fit means to ends, and never fail? How often might a man after he had shaken a set of letters in a bag fling them out upon the ground before they would form intelligible and connected discourse? How long might a man be in sprinkling colours upon canvass, ere they would happen to form a perfect picture? A person might with as just reason maintain that this edifice (nay, with better reason, considering the vast difference between this little structure and the huge fabric of the world) that this was never contrived and built by men, but that the stones did here by chance gather themselves together, and by chance grew into those figures and devices into which they seem to have been cut and graven; and that the materials of this building as the morter, timber iron, lead and glass happily met together and very fortunately arranged themselves into the order in which we now behold them. Should a man advance such an opinion as this, what should we think of him? If we did him right, we should regard him as insane, and yet with less reason than that man who holds the world was

by

by chance, and that men and the various tribes of animals grew up at first out of the earth, as the plants do now.* In these wild opinions surely there is nothing which gives - them any title to be opposed to the authority of revelation.

"He

Adhering then to the testimony of Scripture, we believe that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Thus from non-existence sprang at once into being this mighty fabric on which so many millions of creatures now dwell. No preparatory measures were required-no long circuit of means was employed. spake and it was done." The earth was at first, "without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The Almighty Architect surveyed this rude rnass, separated its incongruous matter, and fixed bounds to the several divisions of nature. He said "be there light, and there was light." Then appeared the sea, and the dry land. The mountains arose, and the rivers flowed. The sun was set in the Heavens, and the moon began her course. Herbs and plants sprung forth at the bidding of omnipotence and clothed the ground. The air, the earth and the waters were stored with their respective inhabitants. At last man was made in God's image. He appeared walking erect, and received the Creator's benediction, as the Lord of this new world. Finally, the Almighty beheld his work when it was finished, and pronounced it good.

But on this great work of creation we are not merely

to

* Vide. Archbishop Tillotson.

+ Vide. Dr. Blair's Sermons, Vol. 2.

to gaze with astonishment, but should consider in what light it presents the Divine Architect, who thus built up and beautified the mighty fabric, of which his will has made us inhabitants. It presents him supreme in wisdom and supreme in goodness. We will first consider him as supreme in wisdom.

The wisdom of God is indeed a subject scarcely befitting our finite faculties; we are confounded by supernatural powers, and knowledge beyond human ken, and may hardly find language meet to express our notions of that consummate skill which could plan and perfect all the frame of nature. We must needs grant that Gods wisdom is infinite, that the designs of it are unsearchable, that we shall never be able to exhaust all the various wisdom and contrivance that appears in his work. At the same time, we may discover something of it; the oftener and the nearer we meditate upon it, the more we shall see to admire in it- the more we study this book of the creation, the more we shall be astonished at its magnitude and might, and though neither pen can imprint nor art engrave it, yet our attention may in some measure master and comprehend it. For as the effects of infinite power fall under our senses, so the designs of infinite wisdom may fall under our reason and when things appear to our best reason to have been ordered and appointed so excellently for the advantages of the world and of mankind, that if they had been otherwise, they would not have been so well, we then ought to conclude that the existence of things as they are and not otherwise is the result of infinite wisdom. And every thing in creation is most aptly ordained for the general utility. The skill of man could not possibly devise any alteration for the better.

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