Behold him mark with a failing eye the lowering gloom of the gibbet, the horrid recesses of the gaol. Follow him to the throne of Tyranny; to see man, blasted and withered by its touch, and the fiend himself rioting on sorrow, tears, and death. Finally, adventure with him to the field of battle, and see him tremble and faint at the shouts and groans, at the sight of immeasurable fury, carnage, and woe. How would his heart rend asunder with agony, how would his eyes weep blood, at such a view of this miserable world?—at the remembrance, that both the authors and the subjects of these sufferings were his own offspring. Where would he now find his Eden; where his purity, justice, truth, and good-will? Where his converse with God; his familiarity with angels; his Immortality ?"*

And here let me add the thoughtful reflections of one who thus laments the ravages of wrongdoing :

"What havock hast thou made, foul monster, sin!
Greatest and first of ills!
The fruitful parent

Of woes of all dimensions! But for thee,

Sorrow had never been. All noxious things,

Of vilest nature! Other sorts of evils

Are kindly circumscrib'd, and have their bounds.

* Dwight.

The fierce volcano, from his burning entrails
That belches molten stone and globes of fire,
Involv'd in pitchy clouds of smoke and stench,
Mars the adjacent field for some leagues round,
And there it stops. The big-swoln inundation,
Of mischief more diffusive, raving loud,
Buries whole tracks of country, threatening more;
But that too has its shore it cannot pass.
More dreadful far than these-Sin has laid waste,
Not here and there a country, but a world:
Despatch'd at one extended blow

Entire mankind; and for their sakes defacing
A whole creation's beauty with rude hands;
Blasting the bearding grain, the loaded branches,
And marking all along its way with ruin.
Accursed thing! Oh! where shall fancy find
A proper name to call thee by, expressive
Of all thy horrors? Pregnant womb of ills!
Of temper so transcendantly malign,
That toads and serpents, of most deadly kind,
Compar'd to thee are harmless. Sicknesses
Of ev'ry size and symptom, racking pains,

And bluest plagues are thine. See how the fiend
Profusely scatters the contagion round!

Whilst deep-mouth'd Slaughter, bellowing at her heels
Wades deep in blood new spilt; yet for to-morrow
Shapes out new work of great uncommon daring
And inly pines till the dread blow is struck."*

These, then, are the sad consequences involved in the conduct of our first great progenitor in

*Blair.

throwing off the costume of heaven, and putting on the habiliments of hell; or, in other words, casting away from him his Robe of Innocence, composed of Righteousness and True Holiness, and putting on the Cloak of Guiltiness, composed of Injustice and Rebellion. The question now is, having put off this Beautiful Garment, how can he put it on ?

CHAPTER III.

"But, O my soul, with rapture hear
The Second Adam's name;
And the celestial gifts he brings
To all his seed proclaim.

Praise to his high mysterious grace!
E'en by our fall we rise;
And gain, for earthly Eden lost,
A heavenly Paradise."

THE PREPARATION MADE FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE BEAUTIFUL GARMENT.

HAD we been present among the angelic hosts on the day Adam and Eve were driven out of the garden, we might, perhaps, have heard those happy beings lamenting the sad condition into which the guilty pair had fallen; and we might have noticed, when the question passed along their shining ranks, "How can he be restored ?"-that

Yes it appears that even those wise and holy beings, who for untold ages had been taught lessons of wisdom and goodness in the high

E

school of heaven, could not discern how even the Allwise God could forgive and save the guilty rebels, and yet maintain his truth and justice inviolable. They had seen satan fall like lightning from heaven," and even the hope held out to the human transgressors was to them, with all their knowledge, an unfathomable mystery. But "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor ? or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.”

"With God all things are possible;" that is, all things holy, and just, and true; not otherwise : for he says, "I the Lord your God am holy.”— "A God of truth, and without iniquity; just and right is he."-It is "impossible for God to lie."

God could not but punish sîn in mau, for he had declared he would; and now he could not but save him from his sin, for he had promised he would. How could he then be "a just God and a Saviour ?" We shall see.