the offenders themselves. The nature they inherit from Adam cannot be more hateful to God, more necessarily subject to eternal death, than the nature of Adam himself, after it had been degraded by his own crime! If our first parents, then, were allowed time, and gifted with a power of escaping eternal death, provided that they did not obstinately persist in guilt, and contumaciously refuse and despise the mercy of their God— offering them his pardon for their past sins, and his aid to resist future temptation-surely we must believe that the same grace and the same aid have been extended to every one of their posterity who does not on his own part cling to guilt, despise the mercy, and refuse the assistance of his God. But this conclusion, which would be matter only of rational inference, if we knew no more of the expectations of man than we could collect from the brief and obscure account of his fall, and immediate punishment, is raised to certainty by the history of the subsequent dispensations of God to man. This history proves distinctly that our first parents and their progeny, immediately after their fall, when they had violated on their parts the covenant of works, under wich they were placed at their creation, were mercifully admitted into a new covenant, the covenant of faith in the divine promise of a future Redeemer to spring from the seed of the woman, and crush the head of the serpent. And animal sacrifice seems to have been immediately instituted as the sign and pledge of that covenant; the type of that great sacrifice to be in the fulness of time offered up by the crucified Saviour; and an emblem of the atonement to be made by him for the sins of man; since "without blood-shedding there could be no remission."* This was the faith by professing which, "Abel offered up a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous; God testifying of his gifts, and by it, he being dead, yet speaketh"†speaketh the mercy of God as the only source of salvation to man. The same faith actuated every succeeding patriarch, all of whom, "having obtained a good report by faith, received not the promise; God having provided some better thing for us, † Ibid. xi. 4. Heb. ix. 22. (says the apostle, who proclaimed to the Gentiles the glad tidings of redemption,) that they, without us, should not be made perfect."* This faith, then, is the great principle, the adoption of which is the universal condition on which the mercies of God have been held out to the children of Adam from the fall to this hour, and will be held out to the great day of final retribution; when the object of this faith, even Christ himself, will appear in the clouds of heaven, to judge men according to the terms of this gracious covenant. Every other part of the doom pronounced against man, when considered in connexion with this hope-inspiring promise, was not more clearly a punishment fully merited by his crime, than a merciful corrective of the evil propensities in which that crime originated; and a guard against the future influence of similar temptations. He had fallen by yielding to inordinate sensual propensities—the violence of these, toil and pain were calculated to subdue. He had been seduced by pride and ambition—the necessity of daily labour for his daily bread, the weight of care and sorrow, and still more the prospect of approaching death, had a powerful tendency to humble and moderate the soul, to expel the fumes of pride, and expose the folly of ambition. 1 Thus the new state in which man was placed, was adapted to his fallen nature; and he was brought under the influence of those means which experience proves are amongst the chief of those employed by the Holy Spirit with effect, as the instruments for correcting and reforming the evil principles of man. 16 Upright creatures (says the sagacious Butler) may want to be improved; depraved creatures want to be renewed. Restraint and discipline, which may be in all degrees and sorts of gentleness and severity, is expedient for the former, but absolutely necessary for the latter. For these, discipline of the severer sort must be essential, in order to wear out vicious habits; to recover their primitive strength of self-government, which indulgence must have weakened; to repair, as well as to raise into an habit, the moral principle, in order to their arriving at a secure state of virtuous happiness."† Heb. xi. 39, 40. † Analogy, part 1, ch. 5, sec. 3. Thus, in the punishments which were inflicted for the first offence of man, was mercy blended with justice, and the severity of judicial rigour, softened down into the salutary exercise of parental discipline. The account which the sacred history gives of the fall of man and all the circumstances which attended it, is indeed so brief, that if it stood alone we could form only probable conjectures as to the extent and importance of many of its chief consequences. Thus the depravation of nature, transmitted from the guilty parents to their degenerate posterity, is indeed experimentally proved by the atrocious guilt of their first-born, and by the deplorable depravity of the entire human race. Yet, is only thus briefly and obscurely intimated in the original narrative, and not as a part of the punishment denounced against them, but rather it would seem as if a natural consequence of the relation between parent and child. "In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; male and female created he them; and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth."* Undoubtedly this indicates that as Adam's moral likeness to God before his fall consisted in uprightness, innocence, obedience, truth, and piety; so, after his fall, when these perfections were exchanged for guilt, vicious propensities, disobedience, impiety, and falsehood, (first felt and acknowledged when our offending parents perceived themselves "naked" in the presence of their Lord and Judge, and were "afraid,"†) the likeness of their changed and depraved characters appeared in his descendants-awfully attested when it was declared, that "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man upon the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the earth was also corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold I will destroy them with the earth."* Yet amidst this dreadful depravity, and the awful punishments which followed it, we see, however briefly traced, proofs of the long-suffering mercy of God, in extending the acts of grace and means of salvation to the greatest offenders. Thus, when the "Lord had respect to Abel and his offering, but unto Cain and his offering he had not respect;" and when "Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell," the ever-present and ever-vigilant Spirit of God did not despise or desert this wretched man, assailed as he was by the furious passions of pride and rage, envy and revenge. No; the Spirit of God warned him of the temptation under which he laboured, and the guilt into which he was about to plunge; and expostulated and strove as it were to snatch him as a brand from the burning. "For the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door" (i. e. a sin-offering lieth even at the door, ready to be offered in atonement of thine offence). "And unto thee shall be his (thy brother's) desire, and thou shalt rule over him," i. e. if thou shalt thus expiate thy guilt by offering up such a sacrifice as did your brother, by my divine command, "you shall retain your pre-eminence of primogeniture ; your brother's desire will still be unto thee, and thou shalt rule over him."+ Surely nothing could be more timely and merciful than this gracious warning from God. And as certainly there are traces of the same mercy in the very nature of the punishment inflicted upon Cain. His guilt is indeed completely detected, exposed, condemned. He was degraded by banishment from the family of Adam, thus to humble his pride, and to check the spread of that malice and enmity which his presence might continually excite. He was also driven from that place which was consecrated to the worship of God, whose allegiance he had shaken off; and it was added, "When thou tillest the ground it shall not henceforth yield unto * Gen. vi. 5, 6, 11, 12, 13. † Gen. iv. 1 to 15. This interpretation is, I think, most irrefutably established by Archbishop Magee, in No. 67 of his Dissertations on Atonement and Sacrifice-v. 2, p. 243. 2d Edit. thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be upon the earth." He was thus detected, degraded, and terrified, condemned to severe labour and to perpetual banishment. We can however perceive that every part of his sentence was corrective as well as punitive; and that he was not cut off, but his life spared, if haply he might repent and amend. And last of all we see that when he complained, "my punishment is greater than I can bear," and (as if he believed himself no longer under the divine protection, and therefore in terror and despair) exclaimed, “it shall come to pass, every one who findeth me shall slay me”this terror and despair is instantly removed. "For the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken of him seven-fold; and the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him." Surely every part of this transaction is utterly inconsistent with the idea of predestinarian necessity and unconditional reprobation-whether we consider the merciful interposition, warning, but not controling the sinner; the punishment, in every part, tending to correct, but not to destroy him, the respite of a protracted life, to give him time to repent; and the assurance of divine protection still extended over him to preserve him from despair, and "keep alive a principle of dependence on the mercy of his God." Now, if from these facts it appears that Cain was not a predestined and reprobated sinner, where are we to look for one in all the race of Adam? Our next object of inquiry will be; that glorious scheme of redemption adopted by divine mercy for remedying, as far as possible, the mischiefs of the fall; renewing within the children of men, who would not obstinately resist the divine grace, the image of their God, and ultimately exalting them to a higher state of perfection and happiness than that from which they fell; that "as sin reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ, our Lord."* And oh, my fellow-christians, let us be warned by the fall of our first parents and its miserable. effects, to take heed that we do not abuse our means of grace, and despise the proffered mercy of our God. And deeply conscious as we must be * Rom. v. 21: |