THE PLAN OF SALVATION. § 1. Crod has such a Plan.
The Scriptures speak of an Economy of Redemption ; the plan or purpose of God in relation to the salvation of men. They call it in reference to its full revelation at the time of the advent, the oiKovo/xta tot) TrXrjpwfxaTo^ rwv Kaipwv, " The economy of the fulness of times." It is declared to be the plan of God in relation to his gathering into one harmonious body, all the objects of redemption, whether in heaven or earth, in Christ. Eph. i. 10. It is also called the oiKovoixia rov iJivcrrrjpLov, the mysterious purpose or plan which had been hidden for ages in God, which it was the great design of the gospel to reveal, and which was intended to make known to principalities and powers, by the Church, the manifold wnsdom of God, Eph. iii. 9.
A plan supposes : (1.) The selection of some definite end or object to be accomplished. (2.) The choice of appropriate means. (8.) At least in the case of God, the effectual application and con- trol of those means to the accomplishment of the contemplated end.
As God works on a definite plan in the external world, it is fair to infer that the same is true in reference to the moral and spiritual world. To the eye of an uneducated man the heavens are a chaos of stars. The astronomer sees order and system in this confusion ; all those bright and distant luminaries have their appointed places and fixed orbits ; all are so arranged that no one interferes with any other, but each is directed according to one comprehensive and magnificent conception. The innumerable forms of vegetable
31-4 PAKT m. Ch. I. — THE PLAN OF SALVATION.
life, are not a confused mass, but to the eye of science arrange themselves into regular classes, orders, genera, and species, exhib- iting a unity of design pervading the whole. The zoologist sees in the hundreds of thousands of animals which inhabit our globe, four, and only four original typical forms, of which all the others are the development in an ascending order, no one ever passing into the other, but all presenting one great comprehensive system carried out in all its details. At the head of these innumerable lower forms of animal life, stands man, endowed with powers which elevate him above the class of mere animals and bring him into fellowship with angels and with God himself. As in all these lower departments of his works, God acts according to a preconceived plan, it is not to be supposed that in the higher sphere of his opera- tions, which concerns the destiny of men, everything is left to chance and allowed to take its undirected course to an undeter- mined end. We accordingly find that the Scriptures distinctly assert in reference to the dispensations of grace not only that God sees the end from the beginning, but that He works all things ac- cording to the counsel of his own will, or, according to his eternal purpose.
The Importance of a Knowledge of this Plan. If there be such a plan concerning the redemption of man, it is obviously of the greatest importance that it should be known and correctly apprehended. If in looking at a complicated machine we are ignorant of the object it is designed to accomplish, or of the relation of its several parts, we must be unable to understand or usefully to apply it. In like manner if we are ignorant of the great end aimed at in the scheme of redemption, or of the relation of the several parts of that scheme ; or if we misconceive that end and that relation, all our views must be confused or erroneous. We shall be unable either to exhibit it to others or to apply it to our- selves. If the end of redemption as well as of creation and of providence, is the production of the greatest amount of happiness, then Christianity is one thing ; if the end be the glory of God, then Christianity is another thing. The whole character of our theology and religion depends on the answer to that question. In like man- ner, if the special and proximate design of redemption is to render certain the salvation of the people of God, then the whole Augus- tinian system follows by a logical necessity ; if its design is simply to render the salvation of all men possible, the opposite system must be received as true. The order of the divine decrees, or in other words, the relation in which the several parts of the divine