3 8 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. n. 



perfect life He consecrated alike all the parts and 

 offices of life. And by taking up with Him into 

 heaven at His ascension the results of His thirty years 

 of obscure physical labour, as well as the three years 

 of His spiritual ministry, and transfiguring them both, 

 He has abolished the distinction between secular and 

 sacred, and restored a real unity to human existence. 

 Order, beauty, harmony, life, joy, are all brought back 

 by Him. What a wonderful grandeur of meaning do 

 the revelations of science in regard to the chain of life, 

 from the lowest monad up to man, give to the old 

 words which we usually read with so little apprehension 

 of their significance : " A body hast thou prepared for 

 me !" Looking back from the incarnation through the 

 long dim vista of the world's development, we see how 

 God was slowly and gradually preparing a tabernacle 

 in which creation and the Creator should meet, not 

 in semblance but in reality. " In Him all things con- 

 sist;" or, as the idea contained in the Greek word 

 thus translated might be conveyed, He is the key- 

 stone that binds together and rounds to perfection the 

 glorious arch of the universe. "For it hath pleased 

 the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell," the 

 fulness of the creature and the fulness of the Godhead; 

 " and having made peace through the blood of His 

 cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; 

 by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things 

 in heaven." 



