The Christian System - Chapter 11

THE ATTRIBUTES OF A REAL SIN-OFFERING.

I. A single action or event often involves, in weal or woe, a family, a nation, an empire. Who can count the effects or bearings of the elevation or fall of a Cesar, a Hannibal, a Napoleon? A single victory, like that of Zama, or of Waterloo; a single revolution, like that of England, or America, sometimes involves the fortunes of a world. Neither actions nor events can be appreciated but through their bearings and tendencies upon every person and thing with [46] which they come in contact. The relations, connexions, and critical dependencies in which persons and actions stand are often so numerous and so various, that it is seldom, or perhaps, at all, in the power of man to calculate the consequences, or the value of one of a thousand of the more prominent actions of his life.

II. Who could have estimated, or who can estimate, the moral or the political bearings of the sale of Joseph to a band of Ishmaelites--of the exposure of Moses in a cradle of rushes on the Nile--of the anointing of David king of Israel--of the schism of the twelve tribes under Rehoboam--of the treachery of Judas, the martyrdom of Stephen, the conversion of Paul, the accession of Constantine the Great, the apostacy of Julian, the crusades against the Turks, the reformation of Luther, the revival of letters, or any of the great movements of the present day? How difficult, then, is it to estimate the rebellion of Satan, the fall of Adam, the death of Christ, in all their bearings upon the destinies of the universe!

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