laid the blight upon it, but he seemed most unwilling to destroy it. It
2. To shew what value God affixes to the material creation. He had laid the blight upon it, but he seemed most unwilling to destroy it. It was his own handiwork. He had so lately looked upon it with delight, and pronounced it good; how shall he " give it up," and sweep it away? This is the expression of God's estimate for the material creation. It is no carnal thing, nor is contact with it debasing or polluting. The truth is, that if we will but look at things in the light in which God places them before us, we shall find that it is not man who has been defiled by his contact with matter, but that it is matter which has been defiled by its contact with man. It was not Eden that ruined Adam; it was Adam that ruined Eden. "The creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who subjected it" (Rom. viii. 20—22). Nay, more; God tells us of the earnest expectation of creation, of its groans and travailings, of its longing to be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. The value which God sets upon creation must be far higher than that which many amongst us are accustomed to place upon it. He still rejoices over his handiworks ; he still keeps them before his eye, purposing, ere long, to cleanse and restore them all, clothing them with far more than primeval beauty in the day of "the restitution of all things, spoken of by all the holy prophets since the world began" (Acts iii. 21).
3. To shew that God had not forsaken the earth. It was his own earth, his own dwelling.
Here he had pitched his tent, and reared his palace. Sin has made him stand aloof from these, for a season; but he still preserves them in being,— though sorely marred,—to intimate that he has not abandoned them; nay, that he means to return and dwell there, as of old. Look at Eden, or at Paradise its fair garden within; it is but the ruins of his former dwelling, the relics of his temple. Yet why are