The Dispensations.
Consider the leading dispensations under which mankind has been placed.
I. A single arbitrary restriction, issued merely as a test of obedience, was the first of them.
II. The dispensation of experienced punishment on the part of the parent, of ancestral precept on the part of the children, next began and ran its course.
III. An additional dispensation was instituted in the announcement of the Deluge to the patriarch Noah and the direction associated with it to commence the building of the Ark.
IV. In the next dispensation human law was instituted and sanctioned by Heaven. It was the dispensation of the magistrate.
V. It was succeeded by the dispensation of Divine law, promulgated with the most awful solemnity and having annexed to it the most tremendous sanctions.
VI. With Samuel and the succession of prophets commenced a new era, about three hundred and fifty years after the giving of the law.
VII. The final dispensation was now at hand. The great Deliverer appeared, and revealed a wholly new arrangement, under which and in virtue of which God would henceforth deal with man. The new light which had fallen from heaven upon a benighted and lost world may be reduced to three particulars: (1) perfect absolution from the guilt of past sin; (2) a communication of Divine strength through outward means; (3) a perfect and explicit law, embodying the purest morality which it is possible to conceive.
E. M. Goulburn, Occasional Sermons,p. 285.