destroyer of the human race.

Blessed indeed

would have been our first parents, had they endured the temptation. The tree of life might have been theirs and their children for ever. Like Enoch of old, they might have been translated, without sin, without sorrow, and without death.

SERMON VIII.

JAMES i. 12.

Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath prepared for them that love him.

IN how much wisdom and benevolence the trial of our first parents was ordained, it was my endeavour in the concluding part of my last discourse to shew. The light which we derive from the circumstances attending their fall is very considerable, and will enable us much more clearly to comprehend the nature of that more extended probation, to which we, their children, are exposed.

In the first place it will remind us, that we are degraded creatures, and that we are not in that state for which we were originally intended. In most of our speculations upon human nature, this is a circumstance which we generally forget to take into consideration. God created man in the image of his own perfection; by an exercise

of the free will, with which his Maker had endowed him, man fell, and by his fall became subject to the curse, which the Almighty had threatened as the consequence of his disobedience. And in this point of view the analogy between the natural and the moral world, is a very remarkable one; "Cursed be the ground," said the Almighty, "for thy sake." The appearance of all things around us is decidedly penal. This is a point which did not escape the notice of the heathens themselves. Hence the legends which we trace among them, of a golden age when the earth freely gave its fruits to man, without labour, and without disappointment. Both with regard to ourselves and the earth which we inhabit, there is a decided frustration of purpose. From the order, the fertility, and the beauty which yet remain, we are convinced that when the Almighty saw every thing that he had made, "behold it was very good." The storms and tempests which blast the labours of man, the accidents and diseases which shatter his frame, are the daily signals of a descending curse. So

in the human soul, many are the tokens yet remaining of primeval innocence, while at the same time the malignant passions by which it is agitated, and the selfish propensities by which it is debased, bear an undeniable testimony to the contagious entailment of our first parents' crime

and corruption. Revelation and experience coincide in declaring that the heart of man "is evil from his youth up ;"-that previous to any con tact with the world, evil preponderates over good in a tremendous proportion in every soul that liveth.

Another important circumstance, to which the history of the fall directs our attention, is, the mode in which the descending curse operates upon our souls. Among the many notions of a fall which are scattered through the records of heathen antiquity, we find no satisfactory account either of the cause or the effects of the awful calamity. In Scripture we have both. We have already seen the cause, in the disobedience of man to the one solitary command of God; let us now observe in what manner the crime worked its own punishment. The knowledge of good and evil which man fell from original righteousness to obtain, has been the main ingredient in the misery attending his fall. In his first state, there was but one object which could present to him the notion of evil; in his second state, that notion is multiplied to an infinite extent. The free will of man, which was originally confined to a single act, is now extended to every object of his life, and to every moment of his time. This enlargement of our free will implies in itself an enlargement also

of our trial and probation. The knowledge of good and evil, by the very ideas of sin which it suggests, awakens all those appetites and passions which must otherwise have been dormant, from having no objects for their exercise. Where there is no knowledge of good and evil, there can be no sin :-most merciful was God in withholding it from our first parents, and by their ignorance limiting their probation. Here then we are placed in a world of anxiety and pain, every object presenting to us a choice between good and evil; the allurements of temptation assail us from without, the wiles of our corrupted heart betray us from within. It is true, that we are not in that state of happiness for which we were originally intended, but it is equally true, that the state in which we are placed is neither of our own making nor our own seeking; the evils by which we are environed exist, if not by the purpose, at least by the permission, of the Almighty. Our trial is increased, and our days multiplied, not for our own transgressions, but for those of our first parents, and in the words of the prophet we complain, " that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." Hear then in reply the words of the Almighty by the same prophet: "are not my ways equal; are not your ways unequal?" If we will fairly consider the merits of the case,