SERMON I.

OUR FALLEN NATURE;

OR THE TOTAL ABERRATION OF MAN FROM

ORIGINAL RIGHTEOUSNESS.

ECCLESIASTES VII. 29.

'Lo! this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.'

SUCH is the verdict, in which the Royal Preacher sums up his reflections on the moral condition of the human race. By long observation and not a little experience he had learned, that the whole world was indeed lying in wickedness,—that an unspeakable mystery of iniquity was continually at work among the children of men; while many an humbling conviction had taught him that his own heart was deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, whence the inference was easily drawn, that the same power of inbred depravity was not unknown in the flesh of others.

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Convinced, then, that man was a fallen degenerate being, the inspired penman makes no unprofitable inquiry into the origin of evil: enough for him, yea, and enough for us likewise, to know that our first parents having transgressed and fallen, their descendants are sinful enough to feel, that as by one man sin entered into the world, so came death and all our woe by sin. Let this suffice, without vain disputations upon its origin, or fruitless investigations of its windings and degrees, its infinite diversity of form or circumstance, its depth of criminality, or positive turpitude. We may be sure that sin is hated by God with perfect hatred, as being most opposed to his own spotless nature,-as that which he allows in none and condemns in all; by reason of which, as found in every one, he hath concluded' or shut up the whole world in guilt, and for which all must perish, who have not found, or do not find, in Jesus Christ the Righteous, the propitiation for their sins, as well as their Advocate with the Father.

To return, however, to the Royal Preacher; upon these principles it is that he contents himself with tracing all the thousand branches of the broad stream of actual transgression to its real and only source, original sin,' as theologians have since called it; and perhaps a better and more comprehensive term could not have been employed. The text is the expression of the inference he draws, in which he concisely shows that

the spring of all human folly, iniquity, and abomination, is the apostasy of the creature from his Maker, the lamentable fall of man from that primitive rectitude, in which he came clothed with immortal youth, and bright with unsullied beauty from the hands of his God! 'Lo! this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many in

ventions.'

What a concise and useful comment have we in these words upon the first few pages of the Bible. The first six chapters of Genesis are so many sections of the earliest moral history of man, of whose creation in the image of God, after his similitude, we are informed towards the end of the first; and while that teaches us of the holiness in which man was made, the second implies the happiness in possession of which he commenced life; the third narrates the success of the tempter, and the consequent fall of the victims of his malice. There the annals of all our woe begin. The next chapter records a consummation of positive crime, in the murder of Abel; the fifth writes the motto of mortality and he died,' with one exception, on the graves of the best men in the line of Seth; and the last draws an awful picture of the increase of wickedness then become general, and the apostasy of all but the family of Noah, who alone finds grace in the sight of the Lord, while the world of the ungodly is doomed to the tremendous judgment of an universal flood.

Thus much will suffice for the general view of our subject: the more particular exposition of the doctrine contained in the text will now demand our attention, which is to be directed to these Two POINTS in chief.

I. THE ORIGINAL RIGHTEOUSNESS OF MAN IS MAINTAINED, God made man upright.'

II. HIS DEPARTURE FROM ORIGINAL RIGHTEOUSNESS IS DECLARED, But they have sought out many inventions.'

Here, then, have we two leading doctrines of Scripture, which in themselves are inseparably connected, the one always involving, or at least implicated with the idea of the other: for we cannot speak of man's primeval rectitude, and the real dignity of human nature yet in paradise, without the contrast striking us,-the thought, alas! being too forcibly brought home, How art thou fallen, lost, undone! Neither can we treat of the radical depravity of the human heart, or refer to that inbred corruption which doth remain even in them which are regenerate, without sensibly feeling at every turn the loss of that divine likeness which we once possessed, since he, whom God made upright hath sought out many in

ventions.'

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And now may the Lord be with us, as the Spirit of understanding and knowledge: may He bless the humbling truths which shall follow,

to the prostration of our hearts, and sanctify whatever is in accordance with his Holy Word, to the instruction and edification of the soul.

I. The ORIGINAL RIGHTEOUSNESS of Man, which the text maintains, is first to be considered,- •God made man upright.' This term relates not to the erect attitude of the body and lofty countenance with which man is graced, while the eyes of other animals are prone on earth; although possibly there may be some allusion, in the expression employed, to our peculiar bodily structure, which of itself teaches us to lift those eyes to God which nature elevates to heaven.

But the language of inspiration reveals still more, and teaches us to refer that uprightness in which God made man to his moral character and the perfections of his mind. Man was formed a rational creature and endued with an intellectual soul. As he came from his Maker's hands he was perfect, or rather, to keep to the language of scripture, good. God saw every thing that he created and made, and it was 'good'

very good.' Thus man was upright originally, without the least obliquity, though capable of being perverted; with a will in unison with the mind of God, though free to rebel; with a nature consisting of an intelligent immaterial soul, and material organic body; each complete in their kind, devoid of spiritual fault or physical defect,