ly opening the light of God's gracious coming interpositions.

4. God's open communion with man changed, to be only through mediation. The opening a way of redemption opened an occasion for a new probation. The first trial necessarily stood upon equity, giving an even-handed discipline in the cultivation of spiritual integrity and the control of sensual appetite. As this failed, eventuating in sensuality, and followed by a dispensation of grace resting upon a divine interposition, so it behooved to open a further trial for humanity on this new and more favored footing. But here God may no longer permit man to approach him in open communion, and he stand to his fallen and sensuous creatures with unchanged tokens of his former satisfaction. As a sinner, God, with all his compassion, must disapprove and rebuke man for the carnal disposition he cherishes, and refuse an immediate communion face to face in the light of his approving smile. This was signified by his exclusion from the "tree of life," and the guard of flaming cherubim which barred all future approach to its fruit from every quarter. God's favor is life, and man, spiritually dead in his carnal disposing, cannot appropriate that favor, nor taste its living peace and joy. He can come to it again only through the medium of the new dispensation of Grace, and standing before God in another's name, and not his own. His prayer and his thanksgiving, his whole worship of God and communion with him, must now be only through faith in

the promised mode of pardon and reconciliation. Hence so soon began offerings and sacrifices; and hence the clear interpretation of God's respect to Abel's sacrifice, and his rejection of Cain's. The former looked to God through a Mediator, the latter presumed upon the direct offering of his own gift.

5. God's dealings with man changed to blended severity and kindness. A determined and promised plan of redemption afforded an adequate ground for God to mitigate the original threatening, and confer much positive kindness, while putting man upon a new probation. There must be manifest severity in his dealings, to enforce the conviction of his displeas ure against their depravity; and this immediately began, by driving the first pair from the prepared Paradise which had been theirs in their innocence. The open world, in its uncultivated ruggedness, received them, and its thorns and thistles blasted and choked the vegetation they cultivated, and forced them with toil and sweat to eat their bread. The mind was to be burdened with care, and the body worn with labor; weariness, pain, and sickness must supervene to their exposures and privations till at length their fleshly tabernacle should fall again to the dust from whence it had been taken. In all this severity there is not the retribution in strict justice of the original threatening of eternal death, and yet it is a curse which even in a gracious administration makes "the creation groan and travail together in pain until now.".

But though God thus manifested his abhorence of their sin, there were many ways in which he proved himself placable and graciously inclined to help their wretchedness and restore them from their ruin. Their deepest suffering was yet so far a mitigation of their just penalty as to teach them clearly that by so much " mercy had already rejoiced against judg ment," and that in their very misery God was gracious still. Many good things were left for their enjoyment. Shut out of Paradise, but yet living in a world of many offered benefits; the earth yielded its harvests, though only through toil, and the brute bowed his neck in service, though more stubbornly and impatiently than before the fall. The sun shone and the seasons cheered, and social life offered its gladness, and communion with God was permitted through a Mediator, though no longer face to face. Earth was a wilderness compared with Eden, yet such as man might make to "bud and blossom as the rose." All good was forfeited, and unmingled evil deserved, and yet direct acts of kind care and help from God awakened hope and joy. The one recorded interposition where "the Lord God made coats of skin and clothed them," 1 had much more in it than the conferring of present relief and comfort. It told them plainly of God's regard for their welfare, and spoke strongly in present consolation, and for future expectation of further bounty. And this was doubtless but one of many instances of paternal minis

1 Gen. iii. 21.

tration to the need of his fallen children He was in it dealing with them in kindness and pity, not in anger; his own hand was helping them, and revealing him to be their benefactor, and not an inexorable avenger.

3. CHANGES IN REGARD TO HUMANITY IN GENERAL.

1. After his fall Adam ceased to act as public head of his race. Had the first parents continued spiritually disposed, their descendants would have formed their disposition and fixed their character under the conditions which the parents of the race must have induced for them, and which could then have been more advantageous for holding sense subservient to the spirit than was even the arrangement made for Adam. The body would have been "put under and brought into subjection" by both man and woman; God would have communed with them face to face; all would have been tranquil and serene within and without; and in such inner and outer conditions, it might strongly be expected that the successive generations of the race would open their moral agency in spiritual integrity, and grow more confirmed in virtue. But Adam's sin closed irrevocably all such opportune conditions. The ascendency of sense has put his spirit in bondage, and all such favorable prospective propagation of the race from him is blasted. The first parents now stand condemned and excuseless; selfconvicted of guilt, and subject to the penalty; and if justice be allowed its course, final condemnation must

immediately ensue; and thus at once would come the exclusion of any posterity by the infliction of eternal death upon the first sinners. All this is settled for Adam in Adam's first transgression. If God now, as he does, provide a way of redemption, and by this open the occasion for delay of punishment, and put Adam upon a new form of probation, and admit the incoming of a rising race of descendants, this cannot reinstate Adam in his former public headship, that he may act again for them as he necessarily must have done in his first trial. His fall has already shut up the bowers of Paradise, and precluded open communion with heaven, and the harmony of fleshly appetite with spiritual rule; and no subsequent act of his, under any form of governmental administration, can bring these advantages back for his posterity, that they may begin their moral agency and fix their disposition and character under these favorable influences once offered for the race.

What Adam may now do under the new administra tion of Grace, can go only for himself. If there come repentance, and faith, and return to allegiance, and thus to communion again with God, this can be for himself alone, and only through the mediation of the new covenant. He and the individuals of his posterity must each hereafter stand upon the responsibilities of personal agency. His first trial, from the necessity of the case, was as public head of humanity; and thus in itself representative and determinative of the forming conditions of character for all, settling