This was his opportunity. Now he could fully bring out to view all
to constantly increasing numbers. The air is one vast library, on whose pages are for ever written all that man has said or woman whispered.
4. He wished to shew the creature's helplessness. He can sin, but he cannot undo the effects of sin. He can unfasten the link that binds earth to heaven, but he cannot reknit it.
He can cast himself out of heaven, but he cannot raise himself up to that lost heaven again. It is not needful that God should consume him or bind him in chains of darkness, that he may be prevented from re-entering God's presence. It is enough that he be left to Himself. His utter helplessness becomes sufficiently manifest of itself. Deliverance must be of God, if he is to be delivered at all. His creation was of God, and it is to be seen that his new-creation is also of Him, and of Him alone. God made him at first, and that was much ; and He is to re-make him out of sin, and that is more.
5. He wished to open up his whole character, as the Infinite Jehovah. This was his opportunity. Now he could fully bring out to view all that was in his mind and heart.
But if the air we breathe is the never-failing historian of the sentiments we have uttered, earth, air, and ocean are the eternal witnesses of the acts we have done. . . . No motion impressed by natural causes or by human agency is ever obliterated. The momentary waves raised by the passing breeze, apparently born but to die on the spot which saw their birth, leave behind them an endless progeny, which reviving with diminished energy in other seas, visiting a thousand shores, reflected from each other, and perhaps again partially concentrated, will pursue their ceaseless course till ocean itself be annihilated."