having already endeavoured to acquit God of all alleged severity against you on the score of your guilt and helplessness by nature-and that, by directing your eye to the amplitude of the compensations which are so fully provided and so freely offered to you in the gospel.

Death reigned universally from Adam to Moses; and the term 'even' directs our attention to a class more unlikely than the others to be made partakers of this fatality, and therefore serving still more effectually to mark how far the effect of Adam's sin was carried among the great human family. The death of those who arrived at maturity may have been ascribed to their own wilful transgressions against the law of conscience. Each personally sinned against the light of a known duty. Each transgressed the prohibition of an inward voice, just as effectually as Adam transgressed the prohibition of that voice which was uttered from without. And each therefore may have been conceived to die in the way of retribution for his own personal and particular offences. But to preclude this inference altogether, and to make manifest the law of Adam incurring the guilt of a sin unto death for himself and for all his posterity, we see that this penalty of death is laid even upon those, who could not sin after the similitude of Adam's transgression-who could not, by any voluntary and deliberate choice, put forth their hand to any actual violation-or, in other words, as is generally understood-Death reigned even over infants, who were incapable of sinning as Adam did, when appetite prevailed in its contest with the sense of

known duty, and with the fear of known and threatened consequences. There is no internal war of the soul in the heart of an unconscious babe; and yet it too may share in that sad penalty of death which was pronounced upon Adam, and falls without exception on his posterity of all classes and all ages.

In our former illustrations we have attempted to show, how the elements of the corrupt nature may all enter into the composition of infancyhow as surely, as the ferocity of the tiger exists as an embryo disposition at the very first breath of the animal, so surely may the unfailing germ of a sinful tendency lie incorporated in the heart of a babe among the other ingredients of its moral nature; and which only needs time for growth, that it may break out into the development of actual and committed sin-that thus, in fact, every child is born in spiritual death; and brings into the world with him that character of the soul, which, if not regenerated and made anew, will be his character through time and his curse in eternitySo that though this native sinfulness may not be apparent, till it come forth at a more advanced period in sinful performance-yet it has just as firm and solid an existence in the frame of an infant, as the tendency to bring forth sour fruit in a particular tree, was a tendency which adhered to the sapling many years before the period of bearing, and was even infused into the very seed or acorn from which it has germinated. But should the spiritual death of infants not be palpable, the literal death which forms part of the sentence is

exemplified on many of them; and, just as the order to burn thorns and briers would be carried into effect on the youngest as well as on the oldest specimens of a produce so obnoxious, so death goes forth the executioner of an unsparing sentence upon all ages—and the babe of a week old, sinless though he may be in respect of his outward history, yet, with a soul tainted by corruption and a body on which the curse of mortality may at any time be realised, does he share alike with the hoary offender in that sentence, of which, as it respects the infant, no other account can be given than that, as in Adam he sinned so in Adam he dies.

'Who is the figure of him that was to come.' Adam is here stated to be the figure of Jesus Christ; and this statement completes our information respecting the whole amount of the mischief entailed upon his posterity. his posterity.

Experience tells us that from him we inherit a depraved tendency to evil. The moral sense tells us, that we justly incur guilt for the sins of our corrupt nature. But neither the one nor the other, do we think, tells us that we are responsible for the sin done by Adam in paradise. The information however, which we cannot get from either of these two sources, we get from Scripture-when it announces to us that Adam is the figure of Christ; and that what of righteousness we derive from the one, we derive of guilt and condemnation from the other. Now we know, that it is not enough to derive from Christ the cancelment of all the debt that we have already incurred neither is it enough to derive from Him a new and a holy nature, under the workings of

which, we aspire after a heavenly character, and at length reach it. In the midst of all our aspirings, there is a mingling of sin so long as we are compassed about with these vile bodies; and as God will not look upon us with regard, unless we offer ourselves to Him in a righteousness that is worthy of that regard, we need to have the righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed to us, just as much as we need His sanctifying grace to be infused into us. And accordingly we are told in express terms, that the merit of Christ's good actions is ascribed to us; and, if Adam be the figure of Christ, this benefit that we obtain from the latter has a counterpart bane that has descended upon us from the former -or, in other words, the demerit of Adam's bad action is ascribed to us. And as, under the second economy, we are held to be rewardable for the obedience of the one-so, to complete the figurative resemblance, we, under the first economy, are held to be responsible for the disobedience of the other.

This part of the doctrine of original sin we hold to be matter of pure revelation—a portion of God's jurisprudence, the whole rationale of which we cannot comprehend; but not, as we have endeavoured to show, in any way at war with tenderness and love to the children of men. For, leaving the two cases of heathenism and infancy to Himself, what have we who are neither heathen nor infants to complain of? Is it that our estate by nature has been left so heavily entailed by our first progenitor then there is a surety provided, to the benefit of which we are all most abundantly welcome; and by the acceptance of which, the estate

is disburdened, and fully restored to all the value it ever had. I am glad to have been a sharer in all the miseries of Adam's rebellion, as that is the very circumstance which has marked me out as a welcome sharer in all the privileges of Christ's mediation. I am glad to have incurred all the forfeitures which were laid upon Adam and his degenerate offspring, as this is the very thing which has brought me within the scope of a most glorious amnesty and a most ample restoration. I will not quarrel with the doctrine of original sin, but hold it a kindness to have it laid before me as to me it is the very finger-post which points my way of access and of triumph, to that righteousness which is unto all and upon all who believe. It is a singular dealing of God, that He should rate me for another's sin, and evinces His ways to be not as men's ways; but I will not complain of it, as I have a most secure and honourable refuge in another dealing of God's, equally singular, but in which it is my chiefest interest and will at length be my most exalted felicity to acquiesce-even that He should reward me for another's obedience; and that, instead of looking to me as I am in myself, or looking to me as I am in Adam, He should look unto me as I am in Christ, and lavish upon me all that benignity which He feels towards His only beloved Son in whom He is well pleased.

In the three verses that follow, we have such a parallel drawn between the evil entailed upon us by the first Adam, and the good purchased and procured for us by the second Adam, as to evince that there is something more than compensation