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that the Son of God alone could do) but instrumentally and conditionally, with the steady abnegation of himself, who, for a selfindulgence which he was forewarned would be mischievous and fatal, squandered away his birth-right and his father's favour?

But consider the destiny of the children of God, even in their passage through this life. Already they possess honour and immunities, greater (for any thing we can discover) than all that Adam lost. Their mortal, sinful bodies, are made the temples of the Holy Ghost; the habitations of the Father and the Son. "Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him " "The fellowship of the Holy Ghost" is with them2, their "fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ 3." The Father Almighty, from the unapproachable light in which He dwells, looks down with smiles of love upon the universal family in heaven

1 John xiv. 23.

2

2 Cor. xiii. 14. Phil. ii. 1.

and earth, in which His Eternal Son is "the first-born among many brethren '." The Son of God is living for their sake: interceding for them; subduing their enemies ; dwelling in them and among them; feeding them with the heavenly food of immortality, to the strengthening and refreshing of their souls; cleansing their vile bodies with His most precious body, and washing their souls in His most precious blood. The Holy Ghost is abiding within them; to give them comfort and direction, to help their infirmities, and to make intercession for them "with groanings which cannot be uttered?." The Angels of God are "sent forth to minister for them "," having it in charge to keep them in all their ways. They are knit together in one body and communion. They have Christ for their head. They are members of Him, and of one another. They are intimately and vitally conjoined and identified, with all that is good, with all that is true, with all

1 Rom. viii. 29.
3 Heb. i. 14,

2 Rom. viii. 26.
4 Ps. xci. 11.

that is wise, with all that is powerful in the universe of God.

Our first father, with every thing to lose, and nothing to gain, except an uncertainty, (or rather except what must have been certain destruction and a curse, unless he would make God a liar) did, on this desperate venture, cast away all his present and substantial good. Free from the inborn downward tendency of evil passions, free from the associations, and maxims, and tyranny of a world of evil,—he fell.

The child of God-not the man of genius, or learning, or education, or refinement; but the most unrefined, uneducated, illiterate, and unintellectual being, that ever toiled in slavery, or dragged on existence in a mine-with all the evils of that inward disease of unbelief which his parent's sin has entailed on him, with hereditary violence of passion, with the incrustation of a thousand bad habits and indulged propensities, amid the confusion of a state, where virtue continually appears forsaken and vice triumphant, and the contagion of a world whose atmosphere is death, and

whose morality is falsehood, is destined, by the aid of Him "who helpeth them to right that suffer wrong," to arrive at such a certainty of faith, that, not, if the heaven should open and an angel should descend to announce another Gospel, could one doubt be created in his bosom 2, and such a loyalty and fidelity of love, that he could not be induced, even if not one human being on earth stood faithful but himself, to deny his Master's name, and forsake the way of His commandments,-I do not say, if he could thereby purchase a fairer paradise than that which his father lost, but if it were to deliver him from the certainty of unextinguishable fire. This is the destiny, this the grandeur, this the sublimity of moral greatness, which the most ignorant, the most unintellectual of the children of God, even in this world, are capable of achieving. And is it then surprising, that we should be expected to suffer something in a struggle so glorious? Is it surprising, that we should be called to bear many a trial, and

1 Ps. cxlvi. 6.

2 Gal. i. 8.

shed many a tear, in the attainment of a spiritual dignity and rank in God's creation, which angels look up to with reverence and admiration?

Whether, then, we consider our future or our present destiny, it is not surprising that we are called on to endure temptation.

II. But, passing from this general consideration of temptation as the condition of our present state, it will appear equally evident, that there is nothing surprising in our particular temptations.

1. First, then, we ought not to feel surprised by temptations to which the whole human race are exposed. We are very apt to imagine that there is something peculiar in our case; and, instead of being alive to the sorrows and infirmities of others, we dwell with fretful impatience on our own, until we have magnified them beyond their real importance, and have persuaded ourselves, that, as it is more difficult for us to serve God than for others, sins will be overlooked in us, which would not be over

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