Plan in History. By Rev. E. A. Lawrence, D. D. [pp. 555-564]

Plan i,n History.
goes on without the consent of any. All other authority and
law flow from His-His, from Himself. Other governments
are derived from, or dependent upon His; His upon nothing
but His own infinitude of wisdom, justice, and love.
This train of thought leads naturally to the absoluteness of
providence in history. The term absolute has two meanings.
When applied to human rulers, it usually suggests the idea of
wrong and tyranny, because, from human fallibility and selfishness, no one can long hold unlimited power without abusing it.
But when applied to the Supreme, the word has no such significance.
The God of history is absolute because he is independent.
There is no one to control or compete with Him, because He
has no superior or equal. His plan originated wholly in His
own mind, or, more exactly, was always in His mind. What
could there have been out of Himself to move Him to this when
there was nothing in the universe besides Himself? What necessity was upon Him for creating these worlds, and swinging
them into their orbits just as they now move, since there was
none for His making them at all, save in His desire to reduplicate ill others something of His own felicity? He was under
no obligation to bring chaos out of nothing. Nor, having done
this, was He compelled to bring order and beauty and fertility
out of chaos, except by His own love of order and beauty and
beneficence.
But even with the creation of man, and with a providential
history thus far drawn out, who shall say that it was not at His
option to sustain or not sustain what He had made? Why
might He not have suffered the race to fall into non-existence,
as He did suffer it to fall into sin?-yea, have remanded the
whole material world back into chaos, and chaos into nothing?
What hindered? No want of sovereignty, surely. For all the
inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing before Him.
What hindered? Nothing but the good pleasure of His will.
That was all.
This is the compressed essence of God's absoluteness in history; this, the only law or limitation which can in any proper
sense be affirmed of His government, His own good-pleasure.
"He doeth all things after the counsel of His own will." He
562
[OCTOBER,