When this design began to fail of being accomplished by the increased wickedness of the post-diluvians, then God called Abram, and through Abraham and his seed designed that this purpose should flow on and be fulfilled. Through this Abrahamic channel flow all the purposes of a Divine Providence in this world. Through his seed all the nations of the earth are to be blessed. The children of Abraham are the appointed and Divinely authorised agents of God. Through them, as primary, he has, and is, and will evangelise the world. Abraham stands to the generations of earth as the Gulf-stream to Europe and the isles of the sea. This Gulf-stream is our largest river; being the longest, broadest, and deepest. Its bottom and banks are cold water. Compressed by the straits of Florida, it rushes forth to warm and replenish the earth and isles of the sea. So the forces of a Divine Providence compressed in Abraham go forth to bless mankind. The Gulf-stream is water in water, and Abraham’s seed are men among men. Providence is at once clear and intelligible, and history is at once plain, reasonable, and harmonious, when interpreted in harmony with the Abrahamic covenant. The scattering and returning of Israel and Judah to Palestine, and the intervening history, from the time of dispersion to the Return, is clear as noon-day. Their location, oppression, prosperity, and victories, have long been foretold by prophets inspired of God.
Through all the changes in nature God has a design. He prepared the world for Adam and his seed, and He did so by some wonderful upheaving and overturning; this scientists will admit. This world, in its present shape and condition, indicates fierce and protracted struggles. The outlines of strange and sublime revolutions are imprinted on her rock-ribbed bosom. Look at her cloud-capped mountains, her snow-crowned peaks, her wild and rocky wastes, her barren plains and sandy deserts, her fruitful hills and luxuriant valleys, her mighty oceans and swelling seas, her inland lakes and rolling rivers; these tell us of a time long ago—of the time when the Mighty One went forth to work a work, to build a house and make a home for His creature, man. And as it was necessary in the preparatory stage to tune nature to the coming man, so all along through the history of the centuries we find nature holding a subordinate relation to man. The world is not run on one principle and man on another, but both are permeated by a Divine force and led on to a Divine end. All things are ours, and we are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s; this is the established order of subordination. Most certainly it cannot be unscientific in the Author of nature to make the same His messenger for good or evil. It is not unscientific to throw a line from the shore to a ship in distress, even though thrown from the mouth of a cannon, nor is it counted unscientific to use that same cannon in war to destroy men.