It is a famous question, which I shall not disturb, whether the benefits of the atonement by Jesus extend to other beings besides man. Why, my brethren, such a catastrophe as the Fall - who will believe that it could ever be obliterated from the memory of man? And if our ruin, much more surely would the promise of our redemption be transmitted - a promise which in so peculiar a manner assured the guilty that "the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head," and which was performed when, "the fullness of time being come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." A truth this, wholly inexplicable to the infidel, but quite incontestable for all that, and to every Christian admitting of an easy solution. If not universal expectation of a glorious person to be the renovator of mankind, and to impress a new character on the spirit, habits and morals of the earth.
First, then, it is a fact deserving more attention than has, I think, been bestowed upon it, that among the nations there has ever existed a Turning, then, from the mysterious, unutterable glories of this "new thing which God has made in the earth," let us come to what we may compass by our thoughts let us confine ourselves to the very significant title applied to the Redeemer in our text regarding the term "Desire" as referring to the expectation, and the wants and the happiness of the whole human family. Amid the wreck of past ages, that transaction stands alone by itself, in unique and solitary grandeur: and stand it forever shall, amid the waste of future ages, the great epoch in the cycles of eternity, the masterpiece of infinite power, and wisdom, and love, to absorb our expanding souls long after this globe shall have been purged by fire, and when all its records and annals shall have been forgotten. Of this stupendous and overmastering deed of love, how can I worthily speak, who am a man of unclean lips, and live among a people of unclean lips? Well have we done, to commence from it a new era in the biography of our race. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory '' when, with adoring confidence, each of us can exclaim, "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief?" * Preached before the Southern Baptist Convention, at its first annual session, in Richmond, June 10. Such is the prophecy and if this wonderful event, dimly anticipated, could agitate and transport the inmost spirit of patriarcli and prophet, flooding them with rapture, what should be our emotions now - now when he has come when we have seen "the Brightness of the Father's glory," "come forth from the Father, and come into the world " when he who, "being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God," has "made himself of no reputation, and taken upon him the form of a servant, and been made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, has humbled himself and become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross " when we can say, "without controversy great is the mystery of godliness, It declared that the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity would be seen among sinful men that he who from everlasting had dwelt in light unapproachable, would assume some form, and make his entrance upon this globe that the invisible and ever-glorious, whom no man had seen, or could see - the Eternal, forever concealed behind stars and suns, would veil his effulgence, and come into the world. "And the Desire of all nations shall come." - Haggai ii :7 Pillars of Orthodoxy, or Defenders of the Faith The Desire of All Nations, By Richard Fuller Baptist History Homepage
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