see every day, that we, the individuals of the human race, are born sinners; but we could not have known without revelation that the human race itself was born righteous. Its present state is not its nature, but its corruption: at its beginning some better thing was prepared for it. The evil which we see and feel in us and about us is man's work and not God's: it is, if I may so speak, the exception to God's creation, and not the rule. And how greatly does the knowledge of this fact minister to our moral good. How greatly does it teach us, with respect to this nature of ours, and this world in which we live, to think humbly, and to hope highly. To think humbly-for we and all around us are a work of God spoiled and marred :-at first all was good: when it came first out of His hands, it partook of His own perfection. It was ruined afterwards, by its own fault, not by His original design. What then if we should be the only part of His creation which has so fallen; if those other worlds, which even our bodily senses can perceive, should deserve the title of " good' still. Had our present condition been our original one, it might have been that of all God's creation; it might have been thought to have been beyond His power or His will to make any thing wholly good. But even we, of whom we know so much evil, proceeded from His hands pure. We must not think then that we are a specimen of God's

works; it is an enemy who hath done this: and we alone, it may be, of all His creatures, have been thus torn from our Father's care, and from the freedom of our birthright, to lead a life of sin and of bondage.

Again, the same revelation of our original righteousness encourages us to hope highly. We see a state of things which justifies the melancholy views which so many have taken of man's nature and destiny. Pain and guilt, suffering and death, teach us too plainly that our actual condition is not one of blessing. And our experience gives us no prospect of any thing better: what happens to one of us in these matters, happens to all. And it has been asked why we should expect any thing better; why our present condition, with so much of enjoyment as is even now intermingled with it, should not be all that God designed for us. It might have been so indeed, for all that we could know of ourselves; but God has told us that it was not. He made us good, and he bestowed on us His blessing. We are fallen,-grievously fallen; but because it is a fall, because it is not natural to us to be as we are, therefore we may hope to be recovered from it. We may yet hope to be what God designed us to be.

Thus in the very record of our creation there is contained a lesson best fitted to our actual condition, a lesson of humility and of hope. But most

certainly the hope would have been vague and uncertain, were it not for that positive warrant for it which God has given us in His Son Jesus Christ. To Him were repeated those words which had been uttered over the first man; to Him God said again for the first time since Adam's fall, "That in man He was well pleased." And as He was a man such as man was first created; good in the eyes of God, and fit for blessing; so God showed in Him what would have been man's portion from the beginning, had he never fallen. For death had no dominion over Him: but having died for our sakes, because He put himself in our place, He rose again to die no more, because life is the portion of God's children, whom He sees to be good, and in whom He can declare himself to be well pleased.

Now what I have here observed as characteristic of this first page of the Scripture, is characteristic of it all; and he who dwells upon its inspiration as thus manifested, cannot estimate it too highly. It is an inspiration which indeed stands alone, and which no arts of men have been able to counterfeit. It is marked by what it does not say, as well as by what it does say; by the absence of any thing to gratify mere curiosity, or excite wonder; by the presence of that very nourishment which our moral nature needs, whether for instruction or for encouragement, or for warning, or for comfort. It

is shown by meeting our wants in a way which we should not have thought of, but which, when once put before us, we find to be the very thing that we need. In this way there are some passages in the Old and New Testament sufficient of themselves to show that they are not of man, but of God. Such is that passage on which I have already dwelt, the revealing to us that God has given to man dominion over other creatures,-and such also is the passage to be found a few chapters later, conferring expressly the permission to use them for our food. How unlike are these marks of God's revelation, from the pretended revelations of men. And there are marks which it will be instructive to trace from time to time in following the course of the weekly lessons. This will teach us on the one hand to have a clearer knowledge of, and value for, the real inspiration of the sacred volume, and also will relieve us from any anxiety or alarm, if we find that to these things God's revelations have been limited, and that His word was intended to communicate as from Him no other knowledge but that which will serve to make us wise unto salvation.

RUGBY CHAPEL,

February 15th, 1835.

(Septuagesima Sunday.)

SERMON II.

THE FALL.

GENESIS iii. 15.

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

THESE words are a part of the sentence passed after the Fall upon the three parties most concerned in it, the woman, the man, and the serpent. I have said before, that there is much in these early chapters of Genesis which we do not understand, and which it is anything but wise to dwell on and argue from minutely, just as if we did understand them. But amidst passages of this sort there are others not only clear, but to be numbered with the most instructive of the whole Scripture, for the large and most profitable view which they afford of the condition of mankind. Of this kind are those verses of which the text is one; the judgment