ancient ruin, then again we may expect to recognise the history of that
redemption in the whole course of the miraculous intercourse between
the Redeemer and the redeemed until the end of time. The supernatural
elements in the Paradisiacal, the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the
Christian states, may be expected to be in many respects distinct, each
embodying with awful and glorious power the invisible relations which
the God of nature and of grace has thought fit to assume towards His
creatures.

And such, in fact, has been the case. Not only is the ceaseless
existence of a miraculous intercourse between God and man one of the
most completely proved of all historical events, but the miracles of
each dispensation are found in a wonderful degree to correspond with
the relationship of God to man in each of the separate epochs. The same
superhuman consistency is found to pervade all the works of God, both
where nature and grace are separate from one another, and where the
common laws of nature are burst through, and the material universe
is made as it were the bondslave of the unseen. The impiously meant
assertions of unbelief are fulfilled in a sense which unbelievers little
look for; and they who cry out in their hatred of miracles, that all
things are governed by unchanging _law_, may learn that in truth
unchanging laws do rule over all, although those laws have a range and a
unity in the essence and will of God, of which mortal intelligence
never dreamed. The natural and the supernatural, the visible and the
invisible, the ordinary and the miraculous, the rules of the physical
creation and the interruptions of those rules,--all are controlled by
one law, shaped according to one plan, directed by one aim, and bound to
one another by indissoluble ties, even where to human eyes all seem lost
in confusion and thwarted by mutual struggle.