dered, when the woman saw the tree that it was pleasant, should have been the safeguards of her innocence. Sense was not meant for a base handmaid to immortal mind; a defenceless inlet by which the soul's strong hold was to be betrayed and taken. That opening had its outworks-it had its own peculiar guard, and should have tended to the soul's defence. If the woman had looked upon the other tree, sense would have helped her to the memory of God, and all the bliss she was putting to the

venture.

In the great moral dislocation of the fall, every faculty took its own course of wrong; one to its pride, the other to its sensualityagreed in nothing but to depart from God. Mind went to war with matter, judgment with feeling, intellect with sense; what was once combination, became contrariety, and man was left at variance with himself; a thing so shattered and broken, that no finite power can make its parts agree, or fit them once more to a whole. And thus it is, that while the pride of reason affects to despise all outward ordinances and visible demonstrations of piety, feeling is prone to cling to them too much; the one decries the help that sense affords, the other loses all spirituality in it. But God, the wise, the merciful, when he determined to recover and renew his fallen creature, had regard to each of his dispersed faculties, and suited his

ministration to them all. Those perverted senses through which the tide of corruption now flowed in with overwhelming force, sinking the soul in deeper and deeper night, were not given up by him, to be the exclusive ministers of evil; material instruments, seduced and seducing as they had become, were not so abandoned, that they should no longer have a voice to speak for God, or witness of his violated laws. Indeed when the divine image had departed, and the living soul, having put itself to death, proceeded to bury itself in the things of time and sense, man became so earthly, so animalized a creature, that the ministration of sensible things was found best adapted to his dulled intellect and blighted feelings. The work of redemption was begun in signs and shadows of the things to come: in typical sacrifices and ceremonial service; every truth was exhibited under some sensible image, and every promise ratified by some external pledge. "It shall come to pass," says the Lord to Moses, after the most impressive exhibition of his will, with all the blessing and the curse attached, "It shall come to pass when the Lord thy God hath brought thee in unto the land whither thou goest to possess it, that thou shalt put the blessing upon Mount Gerizim, and the curse upon Mount Ebal." We might have thought, that with all the supernatural evidences with which they were surrounded, the presence of God upon

the mercy-seat, the Urim and Thummin by which his mind was known, and all the miraculous interpositions of his power, there could be no occasion for such memorials to bring to mind the sanctions of the law, no need of material pledges of his threats and promises. Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringes of the border, a ribband of blue; and it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them." "How unnecessary! Could they forget the awful sentence that had just been executed upon the transgressor of the law? How ostentatious! Better write the law upon their hearts than upon their garments." Some reasoners would have said so; just as they say now, that it is better to be religious in heart than to make great profession of it, by separation from the world, observance of ordinances, and attendance upon sacraments. God thought otherwise. He knew the heart of man-he knew that the time would come, as it did come to the Jews, when the divine ordinances would be perverted and made the substitute for spiritual worshipwhen they would make broad their phylacteries and enlarge the borders of their garments, while they made the law of none effect through their traditions. And he knew the time would

come, as it is come to us, when the pride of man's intellect would revolt against all forms and institutions of religion, and make a boast of the spirituality of the gospel, while breaking its plain commandments in neglecting what has been ordained. But God yields no more to man's pride than to his sensuality: they are equally offensive to him, and equally in opposition to his will. To our weakness only he has bent himself; to our ignorance he has adapted the lessons of his wisdom, and to our imbecility the workings of his power. He does not require of us now the pure worship of heaven, but the humble tuitiveness of ignorance and simplicity: as little children "desire ye the sincere milk of the word that ye may grow thereby." He has brought down his high, and pure, and spiritual religion to the condition of an earth-born, earth-bound creature, preparing, but ill prepared as yet, for a sublimer worship. To help our infirmity, and restrain our licence, he has most graciously appointed, and through all time required, external aids and manifestations of devotion, outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace.

First, the Sabbath; remembrancer once of the finishing of creation's work; remembrancer now of the finishing of redemption's harder work: sweet emblem heretofore of the believer's rest in Christ; sweet foretaste now of our eternal rest: the Sabbath has been instituted from

the beginning, unchanged as the gracious purpose that ordained it; the blessing of man's innocence, the solace of his fall, the pledge, and symbol, and means of his recovery. "I gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they may know that I am the Lord that sanctify them." One seventh day the sentence of labor was recalled, the expulsion from Eden was as it were rescinded, that man might return and hold sweet communion with his God; remember what he had been, and be re-assured of what he will be. But even this institution, so gracious in the design, so delightful in the enjoyment, so beneficial in its effects; this dew of heaven on the arid earth, this breath of immortality in a dying world; even this finds no acceptance with fallen humanity. Wisdom disputes it, vice hates it, and independence treads it under foot. Religion can do very well without it; and spirituality does not so suffer under the deadening influence of week-day occupation, as to welcome the refreshment of the Sabbath service!

Preaching through an appointed ministry, is another institution that has existed from the beginning, at least of the economy of redemption. Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of judgment and of grace to come. Noah, the second sole progenitor of the human race. was a preacher of righteousness to his generation; and throughout the Jewish dispensation,