which woman came from her Maker's hand? When Adam woke, was our mother Eve such as this her daughter? If so, better he had never woke; it had been good for him to be alone. Nature, to say nothing of religion, revolts from the thought.

Now, it is common, enough to call such spectacles brutal; language which is a libel on creation, and a blasphemy against the Creator. Such scenes are not brutal. My very argument lies in this, that the brute beasts never present themselves in such a repulsive and revolting aspect. Under the impulse of instincts necessary for their well-being, for the due balance or races, and the general welfare of the world, they may, and indeed must prey upon each other; but did any man ever find them committing self-destruction? Do they ever pursue such suicidal conduct? Range the wide fields of nature, travel from the equator to the poles, rise from the worm that crawls on earth to the eagle that cleaves the clouds, and where shall you find any thing corresponding to our scenes of dissipation, or the bloody fields of war? Suppose, that on his return from Africa, some Park, or Bruce, or Campbell, were to tell how he had seen the lions of the desert leave their prey, and, meeting face to face in marshaled bands, amid roars that drowned the thunder, engage in deadly battle, he would find none so credulous as to believe him; the world would laugh the traveler and his tale to scorn. But should a thing so strange and monstrous occur--should we see the cattle, while the air shook with their bellowings, and the ground trembled beneath their hoofs, rush from their distant pastures, to form two vast, black, solid columns; and should these herds, with heads leveled to the charge, dash forward to bury

their horns in each other's bodies, we would proclaim a prodigy, and ask what madness had seized creation. Well, is not sin the parent of more awful prodigies? Look here-turn to the horrors of this battle-field. This is no fancy, but a fact-a bloody, sickening fact. The ground lies thick with the mangled brave; the air is shaken with the most horrible sounds; every countenance expresses the passions of a fiend. Humanity flies shrinking from the scene, and leaves it to rage, revenge, and agony. Fiercer than the cannon's flash shoot flames of wrath from brother's eyes; they sheathe their swords in each other's bowels; every stroke makes a widow, and every ringing volley scatters a hundred orphans on a homeless world. I would sooner believe that there was no God at all, than that man appears in this scene as he came from the hand of a benignant Divinity. Man must have fallen; nature, society, the state of the world, are so many echoes of the voice of Revelation; they proclaim that man is fallen-that the gold has become dim--that the much fine gold has perished; and, in words to which we again turn your attention, that we have defiled the land in which we dwell, by our ways and by our doings. Now, leaving the subject of Original, to speak of Actual Sin, we remark

I. Apart from derived sinfulness, we have personal sins to answer for.

Dispose of the doctrine of original sin as you please; suppose that you could disprove it; when that count of the indictment is canceled, what have you gained? Enough, more than enough, remains to convict us of guilt, and condemn all within these walls. You may deny Original, but can any man deny Actual Sin?

You might as well deny your existence; it sticks to you like your shadow. "If we should say that we have no sin, we make God a liar, and the truth is not in us." I say with God, "Come, let us reason together." Do you mean to affirm, on the one hand, that you have never been guilty of doing what you should not have done? or, on the other, never guilty of not doing what you should have done? Lives there a man so happy as to look back on the past and feel no remorse, or forward to the future and feel no fear? What is there no page of your history that you would obliterate-no leaf that, with God's permission you would tear from the book? Is there no action, nor word, nor wish of days gone by, that you would not, if you could, recall? To David's prayer, "Lord, remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions," have you no solemn and hearty Amen? If you could be carried back to the starting-pest, and leant again against the cradle, and stood again at your mother's knee, and sat again at the old school desk, with companions that are now changed, or scattered, or dead and gone-were you to begin life anewwould you run the self-same course; would you live over the self-same life? What! is there no speech that you would unsay? is there no act that you would undo? no Sabbath that you would spend better? none yet alive, none mouldering in the grave, none now in heaven or hell, to whom you would bear yourself otherwise than you have done? Are there none among the dead whose memory stings you, and whose everlasting state fills you with anxiety? Did you never share in sins that may have proved their ruin? and never fail in faithfulness that might have saved their souls? Oh! if every thread of our web

were yet to weave, what man would make the future a faithful,-I will add, fearful copy of the past? I will venture to say that no man living would; and that the Apostle has universal conscience on his side, when he says, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves." Our sins are more in number than the hairs upon our head; and I know no language nor attitude so becoming us as those of Ezra, when, rending his mantle, he fell upon his knees and cried, "Oh, my God, I am ashamed, and blush to lift up my face to thee; for our iniquities are increased over our heads, and our trespass is gone up into the heavens."

II. The guilt of these actual sins is our own. "Hast thou eaten of the tree?" God puts the question, and man replies, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." Adam points an accusing finger at Eve, and turning round to the woman, God says, "What is this that thou hast done?" She in turn lays the blame on the serpent, saying, "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." And thus and thus they shift the sin. We have "eaten of the tree;" and, unless it be to roll the guilt on Christ, we attempt in vain to screen ourselves behind another's back-to lay the burden on any shoulders but our own.

There are strong pleas which the poor heathen may advance in extenuation of their guilt; and, stepping forward with some confidence to judgment,—may urge upon a just and merciful as well as holy God.

They may say, we knew no better; no man cared for our souls. Great God! when thy followers landed on our happy shores, they brought no olive branch or

Bible, but fire, and sword, and slavery; and on the back of those who, bearing thy name, oppressed us, robbed us, enslaved us, and left us to die ignorant of thy love, we lay our guilt. Let them answer for us; place these Christians at thy bar; ask them "where is thy brother Abel?" and on their heads, not on ours, let thy dread justice fall. This wretched, ragged child, the victim of cruelty and neglect, who leaves hunger and a bed of straw to stand at the bar of God, may lift up his head at that august tribunal, and stand on his defence with more certainty both of justice and pity than he has ever met here below. In cold and nakedness, in hunger and thirst, in rags and ignorance, he was left to wander our hard streets, and, among all the Christians of this city, there was not one kind hand to guide his naked feet to Sabbath church or infant school. Poor wretch! the house of God was not for him; and now that he addresses one who will not refuse to hear him-child of misfortune!-now may he say, Merciful Lord! my mother taught me to steal, my father taught me to swear. How could I obey a Bible which I never learned to read? How could I believe in thee, whom no one taught me to know? Saviour of sinners! condemn me not; how was I to avoid sins against which I was never warned? I did not know what I did. Seizing thy cross, I claim the benefit of its dying prayer, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

What value may be given to these pleas-what weight they may carry at a tribunal where much will be exacted of those who have got much, and little asked where little has been given-it is not for us to say. The Judge of all the earth will do right. But this we know, that we have no such excuse to plead,