labour, in procuring for others their luxury and abundance? Let all who are in easier circumstances come forth from the solitude of an inhuman selfishness, and recognise a neighbour and a brother in the honest labourer of low degree; let them cheer such a one in his toils by many a timely attention to his interests, and, above all, to his offspring; let them do this, or let them rest assured that their present easy circumstances will stand them in little stead hereafter, or rather terminate in their greater condemnation. But I return to the divine sentence, every clause of which more plainly indicates and marks our pathway to the tomb. "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, until thou return unto the ground." By this expression we may conclude that Adam had been before apprised of the nature of death; that it was to be the dissolution of the frame, the separation of soul and body, the spirit returning unto Him who gave it, the body, thus rendered lifeless, to become a captive to the earth, on which he had so lately walked in exercise of a noble and a lordly dominion. The crown, however, has fallen from his head; and here he is well reminded of the lowly bed from which his Maker had framed and quickened him:-"out of it (the ground) wast thou taken;" but thy tenure of life is gone: "dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. In righteous consistency with this doom of our fallen parents we have now to witness their expulsion from the scenes and enjoyments of their short-lived perfection (v. 22) :— "And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us,"―i. e. in his own conceit,-" to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever," to prevent this height of presumption, and also to prove in a signal manner that man is not entitled to any remedy for his evil case, that he may not think so lightly of his fall as to imagine, that one moment he may eat forbidden fruit, and the next may prevent a fatal result by resorting to the tree of life,-man must at least be taught that, although the sin is his own, not so his recovery; it is neither in his power nor in God's will for man to rise as easily as he fell; if ever he come to put forth his hand to take of the tree of life, to eat, and live for ever, it must be as the child of redemption, as a new creature in Christ Jesus, as one brought back again, and adopted into a new sonship and a new inheritance, under the sanction of a covenant of a far better security than that which was now broken altogether, and past recovery. "Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man. And he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." I can only now, in conclusion, offer a few remarks, calculated to give the subject a personal application. That man is a fallen creature, we read; we profess to believe this statement as an elementary truth, upon which all other Scripture establishes its disclosures of mercy and judgment. Discredit that truth, and the whole interest of the Bible, in its present form, disappears with it. The main question, however, has yet to be answered,-have you felt, and that bitterly and deeply, in the conviction of your heart, that you have fallen after the similitude of Adam's transgression? And whenever the story of that original trespass is repeated in your hearing, do you feel yourself to have been represented, prefigured, and betrayed in and by your guilty progenitor? Did you enter into life according to that creation which received the impress of the Divine Image, or according to that degeneracy in which Adam is declared to have begotten a son in his own. image, after his own likeness? I know, my brethren, that the answer of your lips will be true, consenting instantly and fully to every Scriptural assertion on this subject. Look you, then, your conviction will be fruitless, and your confessions vain, if they do not proceed powerfully to influence you in the adoption and pursuit of that one course by which alone you can measure back the distance to which you have departed from the living God. In this our day of grace, conviction of sin is best proved, not by general confessions and despondent sighs, and unavailing admissions of human frailty, but by coming forth from our captivity, which is ended in Christ; by leaving forthwith that inner prison, from which Christ hath set his people free; by laying hold of that blessed hope which, if it were but truly and firmly entertained, could not fail to purify the entire character, to inspire the man with the heavenly vigour of a new creation, thus verifying the contrast presented by St. Paul in 1 Cor. xv. 22,-" As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Say, Christians, you who have made a fair experiment of the Gospel faith; who have indeed seen and felt the confusion and ruin of your nature, but have also built them again upon a sure foundation, which is Jesus Christ, to what did your first unfeigned conviction of sin fairly lead you? Did you rest under that conviction? Did it allow you still to go on dreaming life away, as you did before? Rather, did it not arouse you to an anxiety which left you not, until you really began to walk with God in newness of life? And now with filial fear and love you are living according to that grace of adoption which equally engages to sanctify and to save; and now in a state of discipline indeed, treading many a thorny path, to keep you in memory of the celestial Paradise, not calculating on exemption from the various pains and sorrows of mortality, but anxious only to turn them to a right account, you are humbly but firmly looking for the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls! O the sweet solace of such a faith-of such an influence as this! No Cherubims with flaming sword are stationed athwart that entrance into life which is consecrated and newly opened by the virtuous constancy and meritorious death of the second Adam, the Lord of your redemption. My beloved brethren, suffer the word of exhortation-Have you faith in Christ? Is it of any value? Will it prove sufficient to rescue your spirits from dismay in a dying hour? It must be of infinite consequence that you put your principles to some certain proof before the hour of your utmost need; and this you may do if you are but honestly desirous of knowing the present state of the case. You are not left to human opinion on this subject; you have an infallible test to which reference may be made! Holy Scripture describes you exactly, even in your secret principles, either as supremely loving, fearing, serving God, all which you can only do as an obedient believer in the Lord Jesus Christ; or that Scripture describes you as a lover of pleasure more than a lover of God; as attempting to serve God and mammon; as having the form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. Under the first description you are growing into a blessed maturity for heaven, and shall, in that case, most assuredly come there at last, through the great Redeemer's merits! But in the latter case, as the Bible is God's truth, you are on the very brink of that eternal ruin to which all must be consigned who know not God, and obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. THE FIRST FRENCH REVOLUTION. S. B. ACCOUNT of the victims of the French revolution, from the statements of the republican Proudhomme. Nobles Noblewomen Wives of labourers and artisans Religieuses Priests Common persons (not noble) Guillotined by sentence of the revolu Victims under Carrière at Nantes. tionary tribunal Women died of premature child-birth. In child-birth from grief. Women killed in La Vendée Children killed in La Vendée Men killed in La Vendée Of whom were children shot Children drowned. Women shot Women drowned 1,278 750 1,467 350 135 13,623 Priests shot. 300 It is in an especial manner remarkable in this dismal catalogue, how large a portion of the victims of the revolution were persons in the middling and lower ranks of life. The priests and nobles guillotined are only 2413, while those among the poorer classes exceed 13,000! The nobles and priests put to death at Nantes were only 2160, while the infants drowned and shot are 2000, the women 764, and the artisans 5300! So rapidly in revolutionary convulsions does the career of cruelty reach the lower orders, and so wide spread is the carnage dealt out to them, compared with that which they have sought to inflict on their superiors.-Alison's History of Europe. Surely we may say, "The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.' A CONSTANT READER. MEDITATIONS IN SICKNESS. How sweet in sickness, when the languid eye, And in its near approach, the pilgrim soul |