ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul'." Here are two acts on the part of the Creator,-the forming the dust, and the breathing the life; and they are to the point here as illustrating the principle I have been insisting on. Man is confessedly formed on the same mould as other animals; his skeleton is like theirs; he is very like some of them. And unbelievers, in consequence, have been forward to assert that he does not really differ from them; and because he is outwardly like them, and has an organized body, and can be treated by medical art, as if he were but a framework of matter, and is obliged to employ his brain as an instrument of thought, that in consequence, he has not a soul; just as in regard to Judaism they have denied it to have a heavenly spirit in it, because it had an earthly body.

And the case is the same as regards the Sacraments of the Gospel. God does not make for us new and miraculous instruments wherewith to convey His benefits, but He takes, He adopts means already existing. He takes water, which already is the means of natural health and purity, and consecrates it to convey spiritual life. He changes the use of it. Again He selects bread and wine, the chief means and symbols of bodily nourishment,— He takes them, He blesses them; He does not dispense with them, but He uses them. He leaves them in appearance what they were; but He gifts them with a Divine Presence, which before they had not. As He filled the Jewish Temple of wood and stone with glory, on its consecration as He breathed the breath of life

1 Gen. ii. 7.

into the dust of the earth, and made it man; so He comes down in power on His chosen symbols, weak though they be in themselves, and makes them what they were not.

Now, from what has been said, this lesson may be learnt, that things of this world are only valuable so far as God's Presence is in them, so far as He has breathed on them; in themselves they are but dust and vanity; and it is as monstrous and insane, if we thought aright, to be enamoured of any thing earthly, except it be instinct with a light from heaven, as to desire to feed on ashes, or to be chained to a corpse.

This was the fault of the Jews, as regards their Law; and this is why St. Paul calls it "ordinances," "rudiments of the world," "weak and beggarly elements," "carnal," and "unprofitable." They were indeed at all times such, compared with the Christian worship; but they were peculiarly so, when viewed in their then state, when God had left them. The Gospel restored man to the same state, or rather to a higher state than that from which he had fallen. When Adam was in paradise, he had a gift which afterwards he had not,—the gift of the Spirit; he was inhabited by a divine glory, or heavenly power, which he lost on sinning; after sinning, only his natural soul remained to him; and when he died, then that soul went away too. The Gospel then is as far above the Law, even in the best estate of the Law, as the spirit is above the mere soul, as the man of God is above the natural man. Such was the Law at best, being but a step towards restoration in those privileges in which man was first created; framed by God, but not

the dwelling-place of God's Holy Spirit; only visited by Him from time to time, and having in it a certain Presence of God which sanctified it, and made it live. But when Christ came with the recovered gift of grace and glory, then that Divine Presence, whatever it was, which once had been in the Law, left it: then it was altogether dead, it was reduced back again to the mere condition of the world from which it had been taken; it relapsed into the deadness and unprofitableness of a fallen and perishable state of being; and for Christians to concern themselves with it, or to profess it, as the Galatians and others did, was as preposterous and as perverse as to join themselves to the world in any other way,-in the service of ambition and the pursuit of wealth. Well then might the Apostle say, in the words of the text, "After ye have known God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?"

And now, too, we are able to see how far the warning of St. Paul against subjection to ordinances applies to us. Granting that this age is in no danger of Judaism,— about which I will not here pronounce,-yet, at any rate, there are dead things besides the Law of Moses, on which we are in danger of setting our hearts. The Law became carnal when God left it; but there are things which never were otherwise than carnal, in which God never was at all: and these may be our temptations, as the Jewish Law was a temptation to the Jews. St. John says expressly, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world; for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the

eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but of the world." And again, "The world lieth in wickedness." The world may be in one age somewhat better or somewhat worse than in another, but it is in substance always the same. I mean, that the whole visible course of things, nations, empires, states, polities, professions, trades, society, pursuits of all kinds, are, I do not say directly and formally sinful (of course not), but they "come of evil;" they hold of evil, and they are the instruments of evil; they have in them the nature of evil; they are the progeny of sinful Adam, they have in them the infection of Adam's fall; they never would have been as we see them, but for Adam's fall. All of them, every thing in the world is in itself alien from God, and at first sight must be regarded and treated as being so; and though there are (blessed be God) exceptions to the rule through the power of the Gospel, and it is our duty to aim at increasing these, yet they must be proved to be such before we can take them to be such. Satan is the god of this world. God created all things good; but when man fell, an evil spirit possessed them, and they are evil till God touches them again with His Divine Light. In Abraham, He made a new beginning and sanctified a holy household, and that spread into a nation, and that nation became holy to the Lord. And then the mass fell away, and He preserved a remnant; and from it He has spread and diffused abroad a spiritual and regenerate kingdom far and wide, and this has encroached in a blessed way upon the world. But it is only in proportion as things that be are brought into this kingdom, and made sub

servient to it; it is only as kings and princes, nobles and rulers, men of business and men of letters, the craftsman, and the trader, and the labourer, humble themselves to Christ's Church, and (in the language of the prophet Isaiah) "bow down to her with their faces. toward the earth, and lick up the dust of her feet'," that the world becomes living and spiritual, and a fit object of love and a resting-place to the Christian.

Now it is plain how little the mass of men aim at taking their standard of things, or seeking a blessing on what they do, from religion. Instead of raising the world by faith to the level of a regenerate son of God, they debase themselves to the world and its ordinances. It is plain, as any one will find who gives himself the trouble to attend to it, that men in general do not give, or feel, or seek for religious reasons for what they do. So little is religion even the profession of the world at present, that men, who do feel its claims, dare not avow their feelings, they dare not recommend measures of whatever sort on religious grounds. If they defend a measure publicly, or use persuasion in private, they are obliged to conceal or put aside the motives which one should hope do govern them, and they allege others inferior,-nay, worldly reasons, reasons drawn from policy, or expedience, or common-sense (as it is called), or prudence. If they neglect to do this, they are despised as ill-judging and unreasonable. Nay, they are obliged thus to act, else they will not succeed in good objects, and (what is more to the purpose) else they will be casting pearls before

Isa. xlix. 23.