it, (though both must have a spiritual meaning, from being made the emblem of mercy, and the end of atonement) we will take up man from his wretched and helpless state, and put him into the hands of Him who interposed for his deliverance. But we would impress it strongly on the hearts of all, that the fruit of the tree of life is no longer within human reach, and that it can no more be eaten, but through the gift of Him, who came down from heaven to preserve the spiritual food, to prove himself the substance of this sacred figure, and to give life to the world. To him that overcometh, says our Saviour, in the same figurative language, will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of GOD.

The plan of restoration was no sooner revealed to our first parents, under the emblem of the seed of the woman that was to bruise the serpent's head, than it was accompanied with institutions and ordinances, symbolical of the event, and intended to perpetuate the memory of it. The nearer we keep to Adam, this promise of a second Adam, perfect and sinless, to stand before GOD, appears to be the constant

object of hope, and the subject of meditation. When Cain was born unto Eve, what was her reflection, I have gotten a man from the Lord; after he had killed his brother, and was driven from the presence of the Lord, her next offspring she calls Seth, because, said she, God has appointed me another seed. Thus keeping in view the promise made to her, and transmitting to her children the glorious inheritance to be derived through her.

The perpetration also of the horrid crime, the first entry of death into the world, furnishes questions that it would be hard to answer, but upon the supposition of such expected blessing. And the death of Abel, in its cause and consequences, brings a considerable accession of evidence to prove a believed inheritance beyond the grave, and the faith and worship of Him, by whose triumph over death it was to be secured.

Unless a resurrection unto life eternal had been specified, the loss of one child, thus cut off from every share of the promised restoration, could not have been compensated to the repentant mother by the birth of another.

Moreover, if Cain's hatred were heightened into revenge, from the signified rejection of his peace-offering, and the acceptance of his brother Abel's, there must have been some ordained mode of worship, some commemorative reference, necessary to be observed in the sacred office. Both sacrificed to their Creator; but the one, with a piety that looked to the recovery of what he had lost-the other, with a self-sufficiency that claimed as a right, what was to be a pure gift of grace and favour. Thus made to feel his inferiority and dependence, and sharpened into resentment by the dread of being supplanted in his birthright, Cain listens to the same wicked counsels, that had ruined his unhappy parent-that he was master of his own destiny, that the blessing belonged to him, and that God could not deprive him of it, without an act of injustice; but to frustrate any such intention, he had only to destroy his brother, and thus secure possession. The fatal purpose was resolved upon and executed.-And if by faith, as the Apostle argues, Abel offered unto GoD a more excellent sacrifice than Cain; if he obtained witness that he was

righteous, GoD testifying of his gifts, and by it he being dead yet speaketh; then the crime by which he fell, is an illustration of the great doctrines of the gospel-of the corruption of man's nature, the necessity of a Saviour, and the merit of his atonement; and it speaks aloud to many an unhallowed sacrifice of the present day, that the prayer which is not offered through an interceding Redeemer, will, like the sacrifice of the rejected Cain, want its essential and propitiatory form.

From the opposer of original sin, and from the presumptuous derider of atonement, we would also ask some reasonable solution of the origin of sacrifice. Will they make it consistent with any natural idea, will they discover in the blood of an innocent victim any thing recommendatory in itself of the offerer's suit and devotions? And though they should clear away, what they term, a load of superstition from the Christian worship, they will find it incumbring every altar of their favourite natural religion; they will find these absurdities forming the significant, and generally indispensible, part of all religious ceremonies; and how

ever disgraced, as we are ready to allow, with every abominable pollution, though retaining nothing to perfect the service, or to purify the offering, still in its expiatory form, in its propitiatory hopes, the sacrifice of heathen nations preserves the features of that sacred and solemn office, which was ordained to keep up the remembrance of guilt, till the full and perfect sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, was made by an eternal Mediator for the sins of the whole world.

If we except the translation of Enoch, and which seems to have been designed by the Almighty to continue and confirm to the righteous family the assurance of a happier stateEnoch walked with GoD, and was not, for GOD took him-there is little else left to characterize the servants of GOD, till the day arrives when Noah was to enter into the ark. Then, though the pillars of the earth were shaken from their foundation, and its apostate and rebellious inhabitants were swept away from the face of it by a deluge of waters, the building of GOD, the work of redemption, was not overthrown; and the church of the Redeemer, now confined