bly, harrowing ideas of the meaning of that mysterious threat impending over him, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Such a total and instantaneous change in the feelings and aspect of the mind has no parallel in nature, no likeness wherewith we can liken it to, save that of which it was not merely the type, but the spiritual realization, death; when the form that we beheld in the morning, in the bloom of youth and beauty, is stretched before us at evening a lifeless corpse. thou shalt die," which was to take place in the day man transgressed God's command, that change in the mind which instantaneously was the consequence of his so doing; and was the initial fulfilment and spiritual antepast of that fuller consummation of the sentence which was not to take place till dust returned to its kindred dust, out of which it had been taken. What the light is to the natural world, God is to the spiritual; and as we can easily conceive what sad consequences would ensue to the animal and vegetable world, which hang dependent on its cheering and fructifying beams for existence, were that bright and glorious luminary the sun to be withdrawn; we may, from analogy, imagine what must have been the state of utter desolation and bereavement of the soul, when "He, in whom it lived and moved and had its being," was, by the

For this was, indeed, that "dying

interposition of the body of sin and death eclipsed, and the light of his countenance shone no more upon it. Here, then, we have, from the pen of inspiration, a solution of the problem which has baffled the intellects of man at its highest pitch of cultivation in ancient days, and still remains one insoluble to every mind at the present day, that does not seek for its key in the Holy Scriptures, why man is displaced from that high post he seemed destined to fill in the creation of God, and occupies a much lower one than nature evidently ever intended him for; in which his every faculty is cramped, and his every power insufficient for the exercises in which it is his duty and his interest to engage, while yet he retains such a thirst after purer and higher sources of gratification than earth can ever afford, as betrays the link which bound him to his first parent, and dragged him down with him from his high elevation to this low standing place in the world. As all mankind were included in Adam, we have every reason to suppose that had he kept his first estate, they too would have entered upon his fair heritages, and come into the world heirs of all the blessings he enjoyed; consequently all were involved in his disgrace, and came into it stripped of all these goodly possessions which he had by transgression for feited, and, "begotten after his likeness" in mind and cir

cumstances, exiled from paradise, and the sword of the divine wrath flashing in their eyes, in place of God's voice of peace and love sounding in their ears, as it had done to Adam before he fell and this exclusion from the divine presence exists with every man in his natural state, who has not availed himself of the title to restoration, redemption has bestowed upon him. And though no fiery sword addresses itself to our senses, yet the intuitive consciousness of it remains in every unrenewed bosom. And this painful sense of estrangement from our Maker, the author and end of our existence, is felt by many minds, long before our alienation from him by reason of sin is discovered; and it is to be regretted that persons of this description are not oftener addressed as a separate class by preachers, since it forms a barrier as impassable between their souls and God, as that which our iniquities have raised up, and our sins have builded. Strong denunciations against gross and convicted sinners, fly harmlessly over their heads, who need an arrow winged with a much more delicate feather to bring home to their conscience the fact that they belong to that class at all, and who require to be taught that not only the deliberate violater of God's law, but the most decent and comparatively upright living man amongst us, "Except he be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Such igno

rance prevails both on the subject of the immaculate purity and the inaccessible holiness of the divine nature, before whom the highest cherubim veil their faces with their wings, and cry "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth," and before every manifestation of whose presence below, the holiest saints have ever fallen to the earth as dead men: and such false ideas are entertained of the inherent dignity and excellency of human nature, and so little is understood of the extent of men's degeneracy and deterioration by the fall, that the distance which exists between us, worms of the dust, and an unapproachably holy God, is so little known, that the instinctive sense of it which conscience retains, is unintelligible to many, who are conscious of its movements, and yet have a very indistinct apprehension of the cause which occasions it. So that many, whose feet are stumbling on the dark mountains of error on this subject, "seeking after God, if haply they might feel after and find him," crying, "O that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his seat !" were God to grant them their request, and the thing that they long for ;" and were one ray of the brightness of his presence to fall upon them, would cry out, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" The spirituality of God's law, too, and the heart-searching length it goes, is so little understood by most

men, as such glosses have been put upon its interpretation; and men are so accustomed to judge of it after the manner in which they see human laws administered; and also to take the low standard of virtue that prevails below, as an estimate of what prevails with God, that it is necessary to explain this more fully, before we can convince every man that, besides the exclusion from the presence of his Maker the fall has occasioned, each man has himself given a cause for this exclusion by his own individual sinsfor, alas! there is no human conscience that has reason to shrink back from the presence of God, only because our first Father has deprived us all of our natural right to draw near him as innocent persons; but every one has too much reason to do so on its own account, did it know what God is, and what sin is in his eyes!

Man's law, which reaches only to the hearing of the ear and the seeing of the eye, can take cognizance but of the outward act of disobedience; consequently, however appearances are against a man, unless suspicion amounts to proof, the law cannot touch him, he must go free. But God's law goes a length no human code ever reached; nay, if it tried to do so, must utterly fail of power to carry it into effect: transgression against it extends to the very thoughts, intentions, and inclinations to sin, secretly indulged in or purposed by the soul; and He who