and land which they passed. There the rude altar, raised by superstition and ignorance, bowed down before these propagators of Christianity. There the proud king upon his throne thought of sin and trembled, when he heard the soul-moving tenets of the Gospel. There the low savage, untutored and unlearned, before untamed, was seen upon the bended knee, flocking to the standard of the great Jehovah! There was seen Christianity dispersing the moral darkness and gloom, in which the world was involved. There, under its mighty influence, sank idolatry and witchcraft, and up rose a religion, bringing with it all that is vital and stirring. The ordealfire was truly to be passed; the blood of martyrs was to be shed; but the one was soon extinguished, and the other dried up, by strenuous and God-like exertions.

But we must not confine our remarks alone to the effect, which the religion of Jesus Christ had upon the world at its first dawn. Look you to the state of the world, before the heavenly Messenger arrived.— What see you, but Adam's sin, pervad

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ing with dominant fury the breasts of all his children? The innocence and purity, in which our first parents were created, became tainted by disobedience, to that degree, that the inevitable result was the corrupted state of all the passions—those, which were before pure and holy, now became debased. Their innocence, which before was "as a veil, that shadowed them from knowing ill, was gone." Their native righteousness and honour, thus lost, left them naked to guilty shame. All good was gone-all evil got; the pristine ornaments, with which they were adorned by their Maker, were soiled and stained-they were despoiled of all their good, and on them sat shame and misery. The fleeting joys of Paradise were bought with dear and lasting woes. The last work of God's hands became mortal; death sat upon the countenance; his pallid touch was strongly marked and felt throughout the once immortal body. Shame, and disease, and misery rested upon the seat of faith, purity, and innocence. But Adam might have borne the change with a better mind

-a change, purchased by his own deservings-had not the knowledge, that his posterity should be cast, not in God's own mould, but in that of his own guilty self. His very sons-he knew-his own blood, derived from his own vitals, would, instead of heaping blessings upon their parents, only now send forth curses and groans. From an impure ancestor impure heirs must descend. Mortal can only produce mortal —sin only sin-death only death. Adam lived to see this-he might have been the first to taste the bitterness of dying. No; in his own sons was instanced sin, misery, and death. Adam thus saw what his disobedient hand had brought into the world. He saw the envy and sin of one son, and the murdered corpse of another: this was punishment to him, but a far greater still awaited-his own body, once to be an inhabitant of heaven, was now dissolving, by slow degrees, into the earth, out of which it was made. He clearly saw death approaching; he knew not where the grim tyrant would lead him; he knew not what punishment more he had to pass. But, in

this state of mental agony, the Son of God made a mighty intercession. He pleaded the cause of Adam before the Almighty Father, and resolved to become the sacrifice, which in the fulness of time should atone for his sin,-resolved, that his own death should be more beneficial, than Adam's sin was hurtful. Thus he was the advocate and propitiation; thus his merit restored that which was lost. He took not death from Adam and his posterity, but he indeed effected a change of life. The life of Adam was one of misery. Death was to bring a new life, a new state of being. From misery and toil he was ordained to pass through death, into a happy eternity. The blissful regions, before lost in Paradise, were regained, or rather exchanged for those of a celestial nature, by the interference of the Son of God. From that time, until he appeared on earth, types and shadows were strictly observed. Upon the head of the scape-goat, were "the trespasses and sins" of the people dismissed into the wilderness ; "the expiatory sacrifice" for sin was accepted by

God. The blood of the lamb, offered to God, was a type of the blood of Christ, which he poured down from the cross, and by which he redeemed his people from their sins. And though the whole offering was a shadow, it was still accepted by God, as a type of that great offering to be made upon the accursed tree. And, "when the fulness of time was come," he, who stood between God and Adam, came into our world, and stood in a corporeal form between God and us:-the Divinity took humanity-the Spirit was clothed in clay : God was manifest in the flesh; the shadow was turned into the substance; the type into the antitype; the promise of God was fulfilled; and the seed of the woman crushed the head of the serpent.

The long-promised Messenger arrived. All that the prophecies foretold hundreds of years before his era was fulfilled: and Jesus Christ, the Saviour of men, the meek and lowly Jesus, appeared teaching, preaching, and healing the human race: and, quickening" those, who before "were dead in trespasses and sins," and at last, himself

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