the disgrace entailed upon her children; and has followed to the prison and to the gallows tree, remembering only that he was her hushand, and that he was about to suffer. Yes, her desire is still toward her husband. Patience and tenderness are still the palm of woman.

But that husband-how does the judge say that fidelity shall be met. Be met too often with unfeeling coarseness! Be met with a selfish and tyrannical spirit, that shall sufficiently mark him as a creature most debased. We appeal to all nations, we appeal to all ages, we appeal to the votaries of all religions. What is the state of woman, and what is her standing among Mahomedans and Pagans? What is thy condition, daughter of Eve, in every country under heaven, where the glorious gospel of the blessed God has not elevated the morals and softened the feelings of more powerful man. Thy husband rules thee- -"with

a rod of iron." Cherish then the interests of the gospel of salvation. Bow to its influence; circulate its fame. That only can relax this penalty of crime, and convert the sulky and the selfish tyrant into a kind and noble-hearted man.

To man, thus fallen from his high estate, fallen from the tenderness and nobleness of uncorrupted feeling, the Judge now turned himself. But he did not utter, as in the case of Eve, the denunciation of the penalty in a single sentence. Adam had offended with a still higher hand, against greater light and higher obligations. The Judge dwells upon his sentence, varies the delineations, crowds the terrific scene, speaks in succession of sorrow and of labour and of death, till the astonished culprit might have well exclaimed, in the language used by one of his descendants, "deep calleth unto deep; all thy waves pass over me."

"Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou

eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

You never saw this world, as Adam saw it. You know nothing of that period when all the creation shewed a willing and a cheerful subjection to his sway; when the elements of nature were sweetly attempered, and when the earth seemed cheered as with one perpetual spring. But you do know much about the sad reverse here so faithfully portrayed. We need not tell you that the elements of nature often exert their mighty forces to strew desolation round. You have seen whole tribes of this creation armed against the life of man; you have heard of pestilence borne upon the wings of the wind; you have seen distress and perplexity overtake all ranks and ages; hoary hairs without consolation or resources; the face of youth and innocence bowed down to the ground with sorrows; you know, in one word, that no condition is exempt from pang.

Nor need we tell you of the toils to which our nature is subjected. Almost every thing that ministers to the life of man is now procured with toil; the ingredients of his comforts must be sought with many cares. Let him choose what spot he may, under climes of any temperature, in soils of any quality, his portion is still the same, “in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." Does he seat himself in the fruitful vales of Sodom? Does he prepare to sow his seed in soils such as that which blesses our own favored land? Need we tell you that the finest soil and happiest climes will pour forth of their exuberance, but it will be the rank and rapid growth of weeds and nox

ious plants, injurious to every thing connected with the comforts of his being. The thistle and the thorn, the ironweed and nettle, hundreds upon hundreds of similar noxious plants spring up unsown, flourish uncultivated and unless often displaced by long and painful labour, im‐ pede and destroy the more delicate productions, which minister food to man. Thus the showers of heaven descend, but it is to weeds they impart new vigour; the tropical sun shoots down his beams, but it is the seed of weeds that ripens. But this is only the heritage of a fertile soil; men may seek the means of living where their cares will be less encumbered by these unwelcome visitors. They may do so, but then it is in lands whose scanty vegitation insures a toil by no means less arduous; toil to procure a mere meager subsistence from lands so poor, under climates so inhospitable that the hardy and obtrusive ironweed or thistle can scarcely find a foothold. Yes, the earth has been smitten with a curse, and left to herself she expends her strength on vegetables that minister toil but no nour ishment to man. He must labour-and if he choose another occupation, yet still the earth produces not spontaneously, others must cultivate the ground for him, and he must toil for others in some other way, that he may share with them the product of their labours.

But why attempt to delineate what you all know very well. This world of ours is too well known as a place of care and labours, too often does the bursting heart throb with woes unspeakable, too often does it sicken with loss and disappointments, to permit any to call in question the sentence of that day when man became an outcast from God's fair paradise. ******

SERMON VIII.

BIOGRAPHY OF ENOCH.

"And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah And Enoch walked with God, after he begat Methuselah, three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years. And Enoch walked with God, and he was not; for Gen. v. 21-24.

God took him."

"Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live forever?" This was the reflection borne home by one of the prophets on the disobedient and perverse of his day. And if ever there were an appeal calculated to pour contempt on the crooked and short sighted policies of man, this is that appeal. What avails now to any of the fathers the memory of departed joys? These are only "soft and pleasant to the soul" as they ministered to the character of their eternal state. Of what avail to you, when one hundred years go by, will be many of those successes which now give most delight; many of those objects about which you feel the deepest interest? Early very early was our race compelled to learn that their greatest interests have little to do with time. Speedily did the winding sheet give lectures on the tenure by which we hold our portion in the present life; and the lips of many

U

a corpse, pale and cold in death, uttered lessons on the magnitude of our eternal interests more impressive and commanding than arch-angels tongue could speak.

Years rolled on; and though in the earlier ages of the world human life was protracted to a very great length, though men might count their centuries more frequently and more abundant than we can now sum up our tens, yet successive years will sppeedily make up their thousands; and almost as soon as the first generations began to blossom for the grave, an occasional comment would be year by year occurring on that first denunciation, "dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return." Suppose then that now, in the earlier times of Enoch, many had bowed to their dwelling in the dust. Suppose Adam and his Eve gone to join their son in Paradise. And Cain already summoned before the last tribunal.-The spirit of piety perished not with Abel, nor with the father who had taught him. A bright succession of patriarchs and good men kept piety alive on earth. Each in his turn was made acquainted with the promise, and each in succession declared it to his children that "the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head."

Thus while the dust again mingled with the dust, the promise and the sacrifice taught them to expect salvation; aud they knew that the spirit returned to God who gave it. But we are no where told that they knew any more. And while the bosom of piety imbibed many a serious lesson from the examples of mortality occurring all around it while it was guarded from temptation and solaced in its sorrows by the thought that its own turn would in due time come; still nature, ever true and strong in its attachments, must have felt for the tenement of clay. They