that a great deal of God's existing constitution of the world is anticipatory. The atonement, for instance, was a primal fact; it was not an after devised remedy for an untoward and unexpected disease, but it was set forth and arranged and spoken from the depths of eternity. I cannot explain why sin was permitted, or why man should be responsible, since the atonement, and of necessity the fall, were to be; nor can I explain many other things in God's creation. But I think it is in perfect harmony with many other analogies that God should have made carnivorous animals by an anticipative fiat, where he foresaw there would inevitably be death and ruin. That all would have been peace if sin had not intruded, our Lord's miracles seem to me to prove. They show what creation was before man fell, and what it would have continued if man had never fallen, by giving instalments of what it will be when the regenesis comes, and all things are rectified and restored again. His miracles were not merely feats of power, but they were essentially redemptive. When he healed. the sick, when he opened the eyes of the blind, and restored hearing to the deaf; when he expelled the demons, when he raised the dead, when he restored broken relationships - in all these facts he not only showed power, but he showed also that the hand of the great restorer was touch ing creation's jarring strings, bringing them back to their ancient and primeval harmony, thereby showing to man what nature once was, and what nature shall again be, when he shall come, as he promised, and restore all things.

I gather in the word of God these indications or proofs of what I have now stated, and I see no reason arising from geological discoveries, for departing from the old conviction, so universally cherished, and, I think, so justly, that death is the fruit of sin, and that wherever death's foot print is, there sin's stain has previously been.

No one looking at man as he now is, would come to the conclusion that he was made just as we find him. We cannot believe that man was made originally to die; there is nothing in the constitution of his body to indicate this as a primal law. On the other hand, medical men and physiologists have said, that if a stranger could come from another orb and examine the human body in full life, he would pronounce it a perpetual motion; that its machinery must go on for ever. There is no ultimate physical reason in the world, why, when man comes to fifty or sixty years of age, the crows' feet, as they are called, should appear at each eye, and whiteness glisten from his hair, and infirmity, weakness, feebleness, decay, seize every limb. Such a change is explicable on other grounds than physical organization; it is only explained by the judicial sentence, “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

It is also worthy of remark, that facts lead to the presumption that after the Fall man did not die so soon as we do; for we shall read that the patriarchs lived, some seven hundred, some nine hundred, and some even a thousand years. It is worthy of notice that the sentence of death took effect by degrees, and after the flood only do we find man's life shortened to a period approaching its present length, the last time that it was shortened; when the duration of human life was reduced to one hundred and twenty years. Such, I believe, is the natural period of human life. There is no fiat of God shortening human life since that; and there is no passage in the word of God that will warrant the conclusion that the limit of man's natural life should be seventy years of age. I know that some persons will ask, Have you not read the 90th Psalm, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow?" But recollect when that

Psalm was written, and by whom. In the first place, it was written by a man who lived to a hundred and twenty, and therefore this could not describe himself. And in the next place it proves, not confutes, my position; for Moses says, "Instead of our years, in this wilderness condition, being what they have been, they are reduced to threescore years and ten, and if we should stand the wear and tear of this condition and reach eighty, we find it labor and sorrow." This is a complaint that their years were so few, and that complaint embosoms the conclusion that properly and in better circumstances they were much longer. And as Moses, who wrote that Psalm, lived to a hundred and twenty years, I am still of opinion that if men were more temperate, and more attentive to sanitary laws, humanly speaking, a hundred and twenty would be their present age. If men were more temperate, more attentive to their sanitary condition, if they would believe that their air is of more importance than their food, and that temperance and moderation are the obligations that Christianity prescribes and prudence and experience suggest, they would live to a greater age, in all probability, than they do now. Much, however, of the shortness of life is just in consequence of the sin of man, and it is only the rebound of the ancient sentence, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." In proportion as Christianity attains its ascendency in the heart of man, and its influence over all the habits of man; in proportion as the precepts of Apostles are transferred to the practice of daily life, man in some degree overcomes the state into which the primal sin has plunged him, and approximates to that glorious and ultimate state in which, when Christ shall come and restore lost paradise to rejoicing man, all things shall be.

I cannot in this address enter upon the moral effects of man's sin. I will reserve that, with the great remedy, for

my next. Let us learn, then, to look upon sin as essential evil; let us explain the sad and sorrowful experience of man, not by blaming God, but by blaming ourselves. Whence sin came, why sin was permitted, I cannot explain. All I gather from the Bible is, that nowhere is it said that God made it. He made the sky, the sea, and he made the dry land; he made the hills, and the great deeps; he made the leviathan of Job, the crocodile of the Nile, the insect that flutters in the sunbeam, and the ephemera that dies in a day; but I do not find that he made sin. And whatever sin has done is not God's doing; and wherever its responsibility lies, it rests not with him. O glorious grace, then, O transcendent love, that when man had committed suicide, God, who had no hand in the suicide, has mercifully interposed himself, and his hand alone has provided, out of our death, life; out of our ruin, restoration; through the precious blood and the glorious sacrifice of Him who is the way, the truth, and, what poor Eve only was in type, the life, and the source of all living.

CHAPTER VI.

REDEMPTION.

"Redemption! 't was creation made sublime.
Redemption! 't was the labor of the skies:
Far more than labor, it was death in heaven.
A truth so strange, 't were bold to think it true
If not far bolder still to disbelieve."

"And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field: upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children: and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it; cursed is the ground for thy sake: in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life: thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground: for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. Unte Adam, and to his wife, did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them. And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man: and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." — GEN. iii. 14-24.

IN the former chapter I stated that we have here the record of the curse pronounced in the case of disobedience