1 Chronicles 1:54

REFLECTIONS

READER! pause over this chapter, and mark the several important instructions it contains. What a subject of wonder, of humiliation, and of praise, is here! What wonder is opened to our contemplation in the astonishing succession of so many generations! What multitudes have sprung from one stock! And what an immense and incalculable congregation will it be, that shall; at length, be brought to stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, when not one, from Adam to the consummation of all things, shall be found wanting. What humiliation also, is in the subject of the genealogy of mankind, when we call to mind, that the whole race is alike polluted and fallen: All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is none that doeth good, no not one. And what a subject of praise doth this furnish, in beholding the long-suffering and patience of the Lord, in preserving the race of men from father to son, notwithstanding the universal depravity of all!

But, chiefly and above all, while we admire and adore the divine goodness and mercy in his condescension to the sons of men, think, Reader, of the everlasting love of God to our nature, in the provision made for the recovery of man from the fall, by the gracious interposition, benignity, and love of the Lord Jesus Christ! Oh! how highly ought we to prize the genealogy of Him, after the flesh, who came in the fulness of time, to repair the desolations of many generations, and to restore perfect order among all the works of God. Hail, thou holy, blessed, precious Jesus! Thou wast indeed free from the taint of the fallen race thou camest to redeem. Thou wast holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens. And how precious the thought, that thy righteousness, and thy blood, are the effectual source and cause of all our mercy. Blessed be our Jesus, that amidst all the dying circumstances of all generations, thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. Though all things perish, yet thou remainest: and though we all wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture are we changed, yet thou art the same, and thy years do not fail. Give us, precious Jesus, to rejoice in the everlasting duration of thyself and thy kingdom, and to look beyond the grave with this assured hope, that because thou livest, thy people shall live also. Amen.