Still, combining other Scriptures with the brief notice there, we may come to a few general conclusions, insufficient to gratify curiosity, yet full of important instruction.

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1. It is evident that man was created in blessedness. was made in the image of God; therefore, in the purity and felicity connected with it. He was placed in the garden of Eden his only employment, to dress and keep what was a garden even in the youth and freshness of the world. He was favoured with direct and frequent communion with his Maker, who was his heavenly Father. It is most significantly said of Adam, "Which was the son of God." He was blessed with the society of a help meet for him. That all this must have constituted a condition of blessedness, is plain. In the sacred and lofty imagery of the Book of Revelation, for the delights of the people of God in heaven, this condition supplies a name : They shall eat of the tree of life in the paradise of God."

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2. But though a condition of blessedness, it was one of probation. That is, man was a moral agent, endued with certain faculties and powers. He was placed in a situation for their exercise, and for the trial of his moral principles. Established virtue must be tried virtue. Angels had their probationary state. The outward act, on which felicity was suspended, was comparatively trifling: the easier, therefore, the trial: the surer the test: the greater the transgression. The possibility of failure was involved in the trial.

3. The period of the probation was limited. The exact limits are not revealed to us. Death, we know, is the penalty of sin. It was not, therefore, natural to man, speaking in reference to his original nature. Death came into the world by sin: but for sin, therefore, man would not have died. At the close of the allotted period, in some way to us unknown, he would have been removed to the "heavenly country." That such a removal is possible, we have mysterious indication in the case of Enoch, and of Elijah: caught up at once, with no painful loosenings of the material tabernacle, from the earthly to the heavenly paradise. Even from the foundation of the world was man's permanent home prepared for him, where, in confirmed.

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purity and felicity, he might for ever glorify the benevolence of God, his Creator, his Father.

II. I proceed to notice the melancholy fact in the history of man, recorded in Scripture, usually, and with emphatic significance, denominated the Fall.

I meddle not with difficulties: I confine myself to instructive facts. Man was capable of sinning; able to stand, free to fall. The possession of moral power was one of the distinctive characters of his nature. He was tempted; so says the history. The motive to sin sprang not up of itself. It came from without. A solicitation to evil was presented, listened to, accepted. Man believed the tempter; allied himself with rebels; became guilty (I use a human illustration) of high treason. He at once forfeited his title to the provided inheritance, and lost all personal meetness for it became personally exposed to the curse of the law which he had broken.

Remember the peculiar position of the first man. He was the federal head and representative of a species. That whole species was placed under a constitution first given to him. Obedience on his part would have transmitted what we may term the family estate, unimpaired. His posterity would have been liable to personal forfeiture, but there would first have been the title to the inheritance. By his fall, guilt came upon the species. The forfeiture prevented the transmission. All that man would have received from Adam as the federal head, in case of obedience, through Adam's disobedience he has lost. The whole race participates the forfeiture. Thus has judgment come upon all men to condemnation. By one man's disobedience all men are constituted sinners,—guilty, and sinful before God.

III. Let us now come to the cheering facts connected with what the Scripture calls the redemption that is in Jesus.

The Gospel is evidently, eminently, a restoring system. In every part, the kingdom prepared from the beginning is kept in view. It exhibits a second Adam, the Lord from heaven; telling us that the first was a figure of him that was to come. That he is the Son of God, that all our trust might be in God; the Son of man, by miraculous conception, by proper incar

nation, that he might be our kinsman, possessing legal right of interfering, and buying back the forfeited inheritance. Such is the value of his redeeming acts-his passion and death, as a true atonement, that he has obtained, as the Son of man, the inheritance which man had lost, and has power to bestow it on all who are one in and with him. "When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers."

IV. We shall now be prepared to notice the method by which a personal title to this glorious kingdom is to be obtained and secured.

We are children of Adam by birth. Original sin is, therefore, birth-sin. We are not born Christians, but made such. I inquire not now into the dispensation of infants. They are safe with him who, in the days of his flesh, declared so plainly his good-will towards them. The Gospel is a practical system. It refers to man, as capable of personal acts. By what personal act does man obtain a title to the inheritance, which Christ has to bestow? Our whole restoration is by Christ. The method by which personal title is to be secured, declares this. That we may be entitled to the inheritance, we must be children; that the filial relation may be restored, guilt must be taken away: and as guilt was expiated by the atonement of Christ, so has God appointed that the merit of that atonement shall be rested in, and appropriated by living faith, that salvation might be felt and declared to be all of grace. Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus; and if children, then heirs. Convinced of alienation and guilt, sinfulness and misery, the sinner flees for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before him. Justified by faith, he is adopted; receives the Spirit of adoption, attesting his pardon, enabling him to look forward for his heavenly inheritance with joy, and working in him those filial dispositions by which he obeys God and becomes prepared for heaven.

V. Let me now take the text as a solemn admonition.

You believe in all that Christ has done and suffered; and that he shall come again to judge the quick and the dead. He shall come in his glory, and with his holy angels; and, seated on the throne of his glory, before him shall be gathered

all nations. He judges them. He divides the sheep from the goats. He places the sheep on his right hand. Behold the whole company of his pardoned, sanctified, and obedient disciples. "Then shall the King say,"-O solemn moment! Can even they who wait for the joyful sentence forget that once they were guilty rebels; and that by his grace they are saved? He speaks: O may we be among them to whom he shall speak!" Come, ye blessed; inherit the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world." Here is the original inheritance, prepared for man; in which, therefore, the whole nature of man shall be blessed. The inheritance adapted to his nature, suited for him, prepared by the benevolence of God. How much heightened in glory by the redemption of Christ, who can tell? It is given by the Saviour. And they to whom he gives it shall go into life eternal.

See, then, the true blessedness of man. Hereafter, in possessing the inheritance; here, in possessing the title to it, and the meetness for it. O see that you seek for this. Through the merit of Christ, the inconceivable glories of heaven may be all yours. Do you feel the curse of the law? the bondage of sin? the dread of the future? O hasten to Christ! Believe in his name. Do his commands. You shall at last enter through the gate into the city, and be ever with the Lord.

THE WICKED AT THE LAST JUDGMENT.

"Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."-MATTHEW XXV. 41.

THE solemn account of the great principles on which the judgment of the last day will be conducted, here given by our Lord, authorizes the distribution of men into two classes, not relating to their external circumstances, or the position they occupy in the world, but to their state in reference to God

and eternity. Our Lord denominates them the righteous and the wicked. Those who have had supreme regard to God as their chief good, and sovereign Lord; and those who have said, in effect, Depart from us. Who is the Almighty, that we should serve him?”

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The "Son of man shall come in his glory; before him shall be gathered all nations." And then shall the separation be made. In the field the wheat and the tares grew together. Christ had said of his disciples, "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world." And St. Paul, even when enjoining the members of the church not to have familiar communication with sinners, intimates that there was an intercourse which was unavoidable. But at the close of

the entire period of human probation, "the end cometh." The distinction existed before. It is now to be marked; and the mark is to be public and final. The distinction of character is to govern the distinction of state. The righteous shall receive from the Second Adam the inheritance lost by the first; gloriously heightened, according to the principle stated by the Apostle: "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." And they shall go into life eternal.

We shall dwell on the sentence to be pronounced on the wicked. Hear it we must. There is no avoiding the last judgment. But O, with what different feelings will the righteous and the wicked hear the sentence which shall fix the eternal condition of all that had lived in forgetfulness of God! Heard by the righteous, it will awaken humble, adoring, ecstatic gratitude to Him who has delivered their souls from death. Heard by the wicked, it will give maturity and establishment to the deep despair already possessing

their soul.

My design is not so much a doctrinal discussion, as to assist devotional and profitable meditation; for which purpose I shall direct your attention to the various points presented to us by the awfully significant language in which the King, on his judgment-seat, shall assert and maintain his authority upon all who had both trampled upon his law, and neglected his salvation.