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that are his adopted and regenerated family — an inheri tance which Adam never had a glory to which Adam could have never risen an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away. The first Adam fell in the most favorable circumstances; the second Adam gloriously triumphed in the most hostile circumstances. Our estate was lost in a garden, it was regained in a desert. The first Adam, with every thing in his favor, lost all; the second Adam, with every thing against him, more than regained all. Paradise lost is the history of the one; Paradise regained is the bright epitome of the other.

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Creation shall have a Sabbath. The Jewish Rabbis all say, whether they have got it from tradition, wherever they got it I know not, that the seven thousandth year of the world will be its great Sabbath, or, as it is called in the Epistle to the Hebrews, iv. 9, the oaßßarioμos, the rest that "remaineth to the people of God." We have reason to believe, then, that the earth is not finally cast off, that the devil will not have it as his possession. It is God's earth; it bears still the traces of his handiwork; his foot prints are over it; and though the trail of the serpent has polluted its brightest flowers, and sin, like a fever in its heart, has wrecked and convulsed it from its centre to its circumference, yet it basks in the hopes of a glorious resurrection. Earth shall put off its long working-day clothes, which it has worn for six days, or six thousand years, and put on its Easter robe, and be more beautiful than it was when it came from the creative word of God. I believe that where sin hath abounded, grace hath much more abounded; that there is nothing that we lost in Adam that shall not be more than restored in Christ.

But, will there not be those who shall be sentenced to everlasting misery? and that would not have been, you argue, if Adam had not fallen. But why are they sen

tenced to everlasting misery? Adam did not sîn against his will, and no man is cast out of heaven, or from the hopes of heaven, against his will. No man is lost in spite of himself. The devil worked in Adam to will and to do of his evil pleasure; and the Holy Spirit works in us to will and to do of his good pleasure. Adam was lost wilfully, wickedly, criminally; sinners now are lost exactly in the same way, because wilfully they reject the great remedy, the salvation provided in the gospel of Christ. Let us then know, that not one soul will be in the realms of the lost in consequence of Adam's transgression. I am not denying the inheritance of it, I am not denying the imputation of it; but I believe that not one soul will be among the lost in consequence of what Adam did, but that the condemning sin will be, "that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." This is the condemnation, that ye will not believe in the Son of God, whom he hath sent. Therefore, I believe that when earth shall be restored and replaced in its former orbit, and rebeautified with more than its pristine glory, Satan will not be able to count one wreck, or to lay his finger on one thing, animate or inanimate, and say, "This is suffering, because I succeeded." But every lost creature will have the corroding and the painful recollection, that that creature ruined itself, has passed into misery a suicide, and finds itself in hell because it would not open its eyes, and take the road to heaven.

It has been supposed, I may notice, by many eminent thinkers, that the whole picture of Adam in Paradise is not an historical fact intended to illustrate a spiritual truth, but, on the contrary, that the spiritual truth existed, and that Adam and Eve and Paradise are only the copies; in other words, that Christ and his church are the originals, and that Adam and Eve are the mere copies, and that they

were appointed as types and symbols of that which was to be.

Now, let us consider this:-We are all the children of Adam. We need not waste time in confessing the justice or the injustice of the fact, that he sinned and that we suffer. Our personal sins aggravate that suffering, and our hearts condemn us, and God is greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things. We feel that we are born in an abnormal state of things. God never made the world as it is, and he never made man as he is. Something has happened, some great catastrophe has smitten all, some 'dread eclipse has swept over all. We are not now as we originally were. The Bible explains the secret of it. It tells us that by one man's disobedience many were constituted sinners. (Rom. v. 19.) It tells us that in Adam all die. (1 Cor. xv. 22.) It tells us there is none righteous, no not one. (Rom. iii. 10.)

And, in the second place, we learn that we cannot retrieve our ruin. That gap must be gigantic that the vast genius of man cannot span. Man can transmit his thoughts upon the lightning's wings; he can span firths of the sea; he can cross broad and deep rivers; he can raise monuments of his genius that shall sparkle in the first rays of the rising, and reflect the last beams of the setting, sun. But man cannot cross the distance that separates him from God. Here we are without strength; here we are emphatically weak. And we need therefore to feel, not only that we are sinners, but that we have not in ourselves the force to alter our relation to God, and to reconstitute ourselves in that relationship which we have justly forfeited.

It is then to man thus helpless that the good news came, "In him we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins." (Eph. i. 7; Col. i. 14.) "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."

(1 Cor. xv. 22.)

"As by one man's disobedience many were constituted sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many" the vast multitude-"be constituted righteous." (Rom. v. 19.) His righteousness is our title; his blood is our atonement. And "to him that overcometh," he says, "will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God." (Rev. ii. 7.) In other words, Christ is the way back to heaven, and by and through him we have reaccess to our lost inheritance, a new and lasting title to the true and irreversible rest that remaineth to the people of God.

If, then, we are thus convinced that, whether we like it or not, we are involved in the first Adam's ruin, how blessed to us should the good tidings be that we are welcome, infinitely welcome, to share in the second Adam's restoration! The first we cannot help: it has come upon us without our thinking, without our responsibility, if I may so speak: but the second we may reject or we may accept. We may say, "We will not have this man to rule over us;" or we may say, "Lord, to whom can we come but unto thee? thou". the second Adam- "hast the words of eternal life." May He move our hearts by his Spirit, to embrace his blessed gospel, and thus to save our souls, for Christ's sake. Amen.

CHAPTER V.

THE CURSE.

"Her rash hand in evil hour

Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate;
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat

Sighing, through all her works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost."

"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. Unto 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.

I HAVE selected the sentence denounced on the human family, and on all associated with them, as the subject of

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