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CORRESPONDENCE. 
God’s purposes are immutable and irrefragable. “ His counsel shall 
stand, and He will do all bis pleasure,” however circumstances and crea¬ 
tures may seem to frustrate it. And this unity and immutability of design 
preclude the supposition that Creation could ever have had any other 
Head than Man. If, in former ages, the dominion of this world had been 
vested in some other race—corporeal or spiritual—that headship must 
have been displaced for the human; which hypothesis seems scarcely 
reconcilable with the declaration that “ all things created, visible and 
invisible, were created— -for Him” who is “ the first born of the whole 
creation”— 7rp(OTOTOK09 Traces KTiaetios. 
We may with reverence predicate what God would do or would not 
do under certain circumstances, from what He, the Immutable, has done. 
Look at what actually occurs in circumstances parallel to those of the 
suppositious case of a former unknown Head falling into apostacy. Adam 
fell from his allegiance, and thus lost his place of rule. What does God 
do ? Does He displace Man, and set up another dynasty ? Ho : God 
never acts thus. He stablislies the dominion in the person of his own 
beloved Son. The dynasty of Man as Head of Creation can never be re¬ 
moved, but it must be vested in another person ; and God becomes Man, 
in order that the counsels of God may stand, and the headship be no more 
liable to lapse. 
This grand plan of the redemption of Creation was no after-thought, 
no device to patch up what had unexpectedly been spoiled; but the great 
end for which all things were originally made. Erom all eternity, in 
the Divine prescience, “ all things were made for” Christ; and from all 
eternity the human “body” was “ prepared” for Him (Heb. x. 5). 
But geologists assure us that Creation—material creation, animals 
and plants on this very earth of ours—existed millions of ages before the 
headship of Man commenced. Hay, more; that Creation went on in ruin , 
for these countless periods; that vanity, suffering, pain, rapine, and 
death, was the undeviating rule. Hay, more; that there was an indefi¬ 
nite succession of universal ruins; that creation succeeded creation, fauna 
after fauna, race after race, through those doleful ages,—every one of 
which, without a solitary exception, fell into ruin; nay, never knew any¬ 
thing else but ruin. Shall Christians have such thoughts of God as this ? 
Perhaps it may be replied,—“ But do we not see a creation actually 
going on in ruin around us ?” Most surely we do. But Bevelation fully 
explains the otherwise astounding fact. Indeed, if the Word had not 
distinctly stated anything on the subject, I think we should be amply 
warranted in inferring the revealed conclusion. I take it to be an in¬ 
controvertible position, that, in a perfect government—such as that of 
God must be—there never could be suffering except as the result of sin, 
sin personal or sin putative. Wherever we see suffering, we have aright 
to assert, “ That being has sinned, either personally, or in its represen¬ 
tative, with whom it is identified in the Governor’s sight.” This posi¬ 
tion seems to me impregnable; because, to suppose a creature suffering, 
except as the result of sin, is necessarily to impugn either the power or 
the justice of the Creator. There is an implied compact in the relation 
