that follows in the varied history of our world-man created happy, and provided with every means of continuing so, but becoming otherwise by a voluntary act of disobedience.

Death was the penalty incurred-the death and corruption of the body in the grave, and the soul's eternal condemnation in a future state. But our subject is rather with its consequences as affecting the present world. In the day they ate they died; that is, their bodies became liable to disease, suffering, and decay; their minds to error, ignorance, and sin. God's favour was withdrawn from them. The laws he had given remained written on their hearts, but their hearts were no longer disposed to keep them; for they ceased to love the Being they had offended, and now regarded as an angry master. Driven forth from a paradise in which sorrow could not reach them, the fallen pair went out upon the earth, accursed now and desolate, to win from it, by the sweat of their brow, what before it had borne them so abundantly. It did not please the Creator at once to destroy his work or to withdraw his gifts- they all remained, like a magnificent ruin, beautiful in disorder, and often dangerous in their beauty. With the fairest flowers of Eden came up the thistle and the poisonous weed-with the soft dews and refreshing showers, were mixed the storm and hurricane: it was then, probably, the animal creation received their mischievous and destructive propensities, and man found many a formidable foe amongst the creatures he was created to command; but none so great as the evil that had taken birth in his own bosom. Powers and faculties befitting an immortal being, and capable of growing improvement through eternal ages, were left at his disposal; but he had forgotten how to use them. Even his virtues, the traces of a holier nature that remained within him, assumed the colouring of sins, when he forgot from whom he had them, and took the merit to himself. Thus was our world placed in a condition of which the results might be expected to be exactly what they are-a strange mix

ture of all that is most beautiful, with whatever is base and unseemly-a picture of God's tremendous wrath, mingled with most tender and forbearing mercy. Well might he at the moment have restored his world to the unshapen mass from which he formed it, or have kept it for more worthy habitants; but he had an intention of mercy in leaving it as it was-in suffering his rebellious creatures to fill up the measure of their folly, that he might exercise upon them the utmost, of his love: when, having borne with their misdeeds, and suffered them to misuse his gifts through a long succession of ages and generations of men, he should at last restore his work to the perfection and purpose for which he formed it.

6

We are not told that Adam removed far from the spot at which he was placed at first: it was, therefore, from that part of Asia that the children of men gradually spread themselves to people the earth. We shall briefly revert to the little information we have of their early history.

Adam lived, it is said, nine hundred and thirty years. It may be doubtful whether those years were computed in the manner of ours; but certainly life was then extended much beyond its present period. Nothing is mentioned of his after conduct. In him, perhaps, the practical effects of a corrupted nature did not appear. God's signal vengeance on his first transgression, the bitter remembrance of the bliss he had forfeited, joined perhaps to the hope of future pardon through the promised Saviour, whose coming was already doubly predicted, might well recall him to such imperfect service as he was capable of rendering to his Maker: but in his descendants the evil appeared in all its malignity, and the first death was by a brother's hand. Cain, the eldest born of man, slew his brother Abel, because he had offered a sacrifice more acceptable to heaven than his own. Why it was so, we are not told. Probably because Abel offered the sacrifice God had ordained, and Cain something of his own devising.

But, though one such crime opens our nature's history,

it was probably by degrees that mankind grew to the state of disorder in which the Almighty afterwards beheld them. All evil has its progress and its growth. The habit of doing wrong increases our inclination to it. When a crime has been many times repeated, we cease to think of it so seriously. The mere contemplation of sin wears out our sense of it. It was so that mankind became gradually corrupted, and the laws of God were forgotten upon earth. We have not the means of knowing what were the habits, occupations, and improvements of mankind during this interval, neither to what extent the globe was peopled. It is likely that all improvement in arts and knowledge after the fall was made progressively the result of man's necessities and desires, urging him to discover and invent, first what was necessary to his wellbeing, and then what was gratifying to his tastes and feelings. Their powers no doubt were the same from the beginning; but they could not, as we do, profit by the experience and wisdom of generations gone before them. Some progress in invention they certainly had made: since one is mentioned as the father of those who handle the harp and organ; another as the instructor of all who worked in brass and iron; a third is called the father of such as dwell in tents and feed cattle-this being the Hebrew expression for the beginner, the first originator of any thing. Already, therefore, the deep mine had been ransacked for its treasures; unless, as is possible, they used only the small quantity of metal found on its surface. Man had claimed and reared the cattle for his convenience, and instruments of musick were invented for his amusement. Government, they probably as yet had none; and of their religious worship, no more appears but that altars were reared, and animals burned in sacrifice to the living God from the earliest period: no doubt at his express command, as types and emblems of the great sacrifice some time to be made for the redemption of the world. Of all else that was passing at this period, we are left in ignorance.

(To be continued.)

REFLECTIONS

ON SELECT PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE.

He went away sorrowful.-MATT. xix. 22.

HAD he been glad, as he should have been, he would not have gone away-had he stayed when he was sorrowful, he might have been made glad. But he went away, and took his sorrow with him, and sorrowful perhaps he remained through all eternity. So when the sound of unwelcome truth grates upon our ear-when our minds are disturbed by whispers that we are not meet for heaven-that with all our virtues we lack something yet-that God must have the first and not the last place in our affections-that earth must be sacrificed for heaven, time for eternity; then our hearts grow sorrowful, and we too in our folly go away. But goes not our sorrow with us? We turn from the preaching of the Gospel, we put aside the book that alarms us, withdraw from the friend who persuades us-but comes there no disturbing recollection to our bosom? The world laughs at our sorrow, and we learn to blush for it-mirth drowns íts voice, and we think it is silenced: but at every pausing of the idle laugh, does it not come again? Will there not be a time when, through a long eternity of remorse, we shall bewail our folly, that, having heard of the evil, we did not stay to learn the remedy?

Be ye angry and sin not.-EPHES. iv. 26.

THAT creatures so erring, so often offending as ourselves, should be excused for being angry at all, is a mark of God's great condescension to our weakness: but the first impulse of irritated feeling on just provocation seems to be excused, on condition that it be dismissed the moment it is perceived. It were well for our

tempers, if, whenever real or fancied wrong excites our indignation, this text would come into our minds-it is as if it said, "You are angry-pause-for one step beyond is sin."

Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife.—

PHIL. i. 15.

Do they not so now? Have young persons whose hearts are warm and their discretion weak, no need of caution, when they venture to talk about religion with those who differ from them? We are commanded to be ready to give a reason to those who ask us; but I fear many of us, and the younger by far the least so, are not disposed to wait till we are asked. It may be said the heart is too full of love towards God and religion, to suppress its feelings-like an abundant and overflowing spring, it cannot but escape unbidden from the lips. Would indeed it were so! But such is not the character given of the heart of man in general, even in its best estate; and they are something bold, who venture to give it of themselves. There are times, we know, when, even from the youngest, a word spoken in season for the honour of their Saviour, is accepted as a grateful sacrifice in heaven: but, ere we introduce the subject of religion, where our object is to teach and not to learn, ere we vehemently engage in it when introduced by those who differ from us, let us be quite certain of our motives. May they not be the love of argument, the desire of showing how much we know of religion, and how well we can defend it? Are we sure we are not more anxious to prove ourselves right, than to win others from their wrong? Is the irritation we feel excited by a sense of the dishonour done to God, or by the imputation of folly cast upon ourselves? At the best, if our motive be simply to turn our auditors from their errors, is it that God may be glorified, and a sinner saved, or that we may have the honour of their conversion? In short, when once warmed into argument, is there any