(1.) The unity of the plan of redemption lies not in its times and seasons, but in the higher connections of cause and effect, which, under God’s supernatural presence and agency, bind the whole together laterally, so to speak, as well as backward and forward.  It may be compared to the unity of a web, in which each thread of the warp extends from its beginning to its end, and each thread of the woof from one margin to the other; so that every part of the texture is connected with every other part without respect to nearness or distance.  So in the plan of redemption, events thousands of years apart and taking place in regions thousands of miles from each other, are as really connected as if they belonged to the same year and country.  And since they are thus connected in God’s plan, it is natural that prophecy should exhibit them in this connection, passing over, it may be, many centuries in silence; for it is the salient points of the church’s future history, the great crises in the process of her development, that the spirit of inspiration will naturally bring to view.  Prophecy relating to the last times is not a map, in which the distance from one point to another, with all the intervening mountains, rivers, and towns, is accurately marked; but rather a prospective view, which exhibits only the great features of the region that lies before the traveller.  He sees far off in the horizon the goodly mountains rising one behind another, and bathed in the pure light of heaven, with no ability to discern, much less to measure, the intervening valleys and plains.  Nay more, mountain ranges that are widely separated may appear to his eye as one and indivisible.

(2.) The plan of redemption has not only complete unity, but continual progress towards a high end.  It may be compared to a majestic river, fed by thousands of perennial springs, that cannot stay a moment in its course towards the ocean.  Its path is not always straight, but it is always onward.  Its current is not always rapid and broken, for it is not always obstructed.  Sometimes, like the Arar described by Caesar, it winds through level plains with a current so gentle and noiseless, that the eye cannot discern its direction.  Then it plunges over some Niagara, roaring, boiling, and foaming, and shaking the very earth with its mighty cataracts.  But it has all the power in the level meadows that it manifests on the fearful brink of the precipice.  To arrest its current in one place is as impossible as in the other.  Resistance cannot overcome its strength, but only bring it to view.  Let any number of Titans build up ever so high a wall across the level meadow, and the stream, every particle of which is pressed forward by an inward force, will quietly rise above their vain rampart, and then it will begin to thunder.  Since then God’s kingdom—­this river of God that is full of water—­is continually tending towards a high end, and since every event