mandments from the Father. This did the Godhead unto creation; and this creation must seal to and exemplify. Accordingly it was required of man, the sovereign lord over all things created, to bring that sovereignty into submission, and receive a commandment from God with respect to one thing. Lord of his body, he must forbid it to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil lord of creation, he must be willing to acknowledge another Lord in respect to that. Having a will, he must do worship with it to the absolute will of God: and, while so exemplifying and sealing to the one great Godhead-act of selfdenial, the mother-law of creation, and creation's preliminary condition, he will be upheld in that estate which God himself pronounced very good; but, if his will, of its own accord,

yielding to any suggestion whatever, do not use its liberty. for declaring a higher will in God, which it loveth to worship and its commands ever to obey, then will he come into the estate of death" dying, thou still die." This penalty of death, as the event hath proved, standeth not merely in the termination of life by the disunion of the body from the soul and its resolution into original dust, but in despoiling the soul of its love and likeness to God, in the bringing of it under a law, which is called in Scripture "the law of sin and death." And not only so, but the whole world, which was made dependent upon the will of man, cometh under the same law. Death is not an historical event, done and away with, but a new state of being; which hath, indeed, an historical manifestation in the separation of body and soul, but a continuity also, in the deadness to the word and alienation to the will of God, in which man, as he is naturally, liveth and moveth and hath his being. When God said," In the day thou eatest thereof, dying, thou still die," he meant that which came to pass upon creation, and hath been seen and felt in creation ever since that day; namely, the state of moral death in which we are, drawing on to and concluding in, the state of moral death which we come to in the grave, together with that state in which the body and the soul are until the resurrection; but beyond the resurrection I do not believe that the penalty pronounced against Adam extendeth. The resurrection, and its future consequences holdeth of another man than Adam: "As in Adam all die, so in Christ all are made alive." From Christ, therefore, and not from Adam, depend the issues of the resurrection. By making this revolution of the world's estate to turn upon one act of the will of one man, our Creator shewed, first, the supremacy of the will, which the body and all nature followeth, like a servile thing as it is; secondly, the abiding, cleaving guilt and penalty of one act of sin, which rather than pass over, God will cancel the goodness and make away with the life of his creation; and, finally, the entire

oneness of mankind, that death in the root should spread death through the whole tree: that poison introduced at one point of the system should equally affect the whole body. For though by the Law the mortal offence was made to abound, before the Law, and since the accomplishment of the Law by Christ, God would have us to understand that death, with all its forerunners and consequences, is the consequence of Adam's one transgression. Now if we consider the end and dignity of man's creation to be an image and likeness of God, and to act the part towards God and towards the lower creation which Christ had acted towards the Father, in ever sacrificing his own selfexistence for a commanded existence, in order that there might be a creation both good and blessed; the wonder is rather that man should not have been at once annihilated, when he refused to conform unto Christ and to be the guardian of the world's well-being. But if annihilation had followed, how would God's original purpose in creating man have been attained? It would have been frustrated, but not attained. One word of God must not undo another; therefore there never can be such a thing as annihilation. God had further purposes than creation in reserve for man-purposes of grace and glory-of which we shall by and bye unfold both the beginning and the ending.

V. Of the Change which passed upon Man and the World. The devil, or serpent, who is the head of the evil angels (Rev. xii.), had made himself a party in the evil transaction, thinking to gain his ends of man by bringing him under the curse of death; and, revealing his character of "a liar," he said, "Ye shall not surely die;" of "a murderer," by being the occasion, and in some measure the cause, of all death. Yet, as his manner is, he mingled truth with the lie, saying, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil;" which also God confirmeth, "Behold, the man is become as one of Us, knowing good and evil." This "one of Us," may mean the Second Person, who in the form of the Christ Adam knew well; by the greater glory of whose person and extent of whose knowledge he was therefore capable of being tempted. "To know good and evil" pertained to God alone, until it became the part and property of man by the fall. To the devil and his angels pertain the part and property of evil; "evil is their good." Man had the part and property of good only; a most excellent portion! But having eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," a new world opened upon his view-" his eyes were opened"—and the consciousness of the evil made him cover his nakedness, which before he observed not, and hide himself from the sight of a pure and holy God. This, now, is the first difference between man as he is and man as he was created,-that his soul is now conscious

of good, and its opposite, evil; it discerneth differences; and in so far forth hath attained a new feature of likeness unto God. But in preferring the evil he is most unlike unto God, and like unto the devil; the servant of the devil, and not of God; and therefore God interdicted him from that perilous promotion, as well knowing that it would bring, along with the knowledge, the domination also of evil. Yet if man, knowing the evil, can be made to abhor it, he is only the more complete an image of God, who knoweth it and abhorreth it: but this he can only be through God informing him with his own Divine holiness. And so the way is opened up to the great work of Incarnation by means of the devil's wiles, who maketh the snare to his own feet; and forthwith God's purpose of having in man his full and perfect image, one knowing evil yet doing it not, one avenging evil though at the expense of his own life. On every hand now the will of man is solicited to evil: he cannot see good without seeing evil; and he hath ever the Godlike office of choosing the one and abhorring the other. That which appertained to the single act of eating or not eating the forbidden fruit, now appertaineth to the whole world of reason and sense. The temptations are infinite, in the invisible world of thought and the visible world of sense. This is the difference between the soul fallen and the soul unfallen. Upon the body of man, which originally knew neither infirmity nor pain of hunger or of cold, nor want of any kind, nor liability of death, nor capability of it; to which all creation ministered, the animals their various gifts, the vegetables their various nourishment; in which there was nothing holding of disease or indecency or corruption, nothing unsightly, nothing unsavoury, but, contrariwise, all radiant and blessed as the creative finger of God could make it ; behold and see what hath ensued,-pinching hunger and starving cold or feverish heat, filthiness needing constant ablutions, disease and pains without number, life attended with continual affliction, and death at any and at every turn, from the hour of conception till the hour of dissolution! Upon the lower creatures the like misery, so far as they are capable of it; and upon the earth a continual running to waste and wildness, unless it be waited upon evermore with the sweat of man's brow. And besides this, upon woman was imposed a place of inferiority and subjection, in punishment of her forwardness in the transgression, as also of pains of conception and of child-birth: while upon the serpent lay the curse of having his head bruised by the Seed of the woman, whom he thought to have utterly destroyed, but who shall utterly destroy him, and cast him out both of heaven and of earth, into the deepest hell. The devil had succeeded in introducing his empire of evil into the knowledge and experience of mankind, and so placing man in the middle ground between

good and evil, looking upon, and with a nature holding of, both. But man still retained and is answerable for the exercise of his will. He is not brought into any necessity of choosing evil by all the natural conditions into which he is brought. We will to do evil; we are not by God constrained to do it. We seal to Adam's act of our own accord, and not of constraint. It is possible for man to stand girt around with all those natural evils and yet to be without sin. The man Christ Jesus hath so stood; and in so standing, he hath proved that it was no obligation of sinning bound by God upon our mortal nature-which were to make God the author of sin-but a new world of temptation introduced into the former world, which was of all temptation void. The world, by the first transgression, hath become the free stage for the controversy between good and evil; and man, who was made the ruler of the world, is the champion by whom the controversy is to be brought to rest for ever. If man can present to God what man was entrusted with,-His own spotless image, and the world free from sin-then man hath not only served his end of creation, but the higher end of defeating the powers of evil, which had thought to defeat and undo man. This, no doubt, was the ultimate end intended of God in the creation of man, for God doth not shift about or devise expedients. Our object must now be to trace out the development and attainment of that glorious purpose which God had in the creation of man.

VI. Of the Source of a New Life and Blessedness to Mankind in the Christ of God.

From the consummation of the first transgression until now, man hath been in a state of death, according to the word of God; and the question ariseth, Is he not then done for? will God revoke what with his mouth he hath once spoken? The answer is, God's wonderful ways with men are not exhausted in his creation he made man for his image, and to be his lord: the devil hath interfered, and man hath yielded up the dominion to him, and is in bondage; he is a sinner, and is under guilt; he is a betrayer of God's trust, and is morally dead. But there is mercy with God, as well as goodness; forgiveness, as well as justice; and grace, as well as judgment; and there is life out of death. All these have already been realized in the one act of Godhead preliminary to creation, wherein the Son maketh free sacrifice of his self-existence, becometh the Lamb slain, and out of death ariseth the Christ, or Anointed One, who receiveth gifts from God. His life as the Christ is all a life out of death, and his possessions as the Head of creation are all possessions purchased by his willingness to take upon him a derived life. Adam was the son of God, and to shew the holy submission of the son of God was he created this refusing to do of his

own will in one particular, he is now forced to do in all particulars, if he would see life and blessedness. For now, by his own guilt, he is concluded dead; and in dying he manifests God's justice, in being willing to die he approves God's justice: but if he can be brought into the condition of putting himself to death, he doth then enact God's justice in the sublimest form; and is holy in the very highest sense,-holy at the expense of his own life. Into this condition he is actually brought, and this is the standing of man as a sinner. The life of the Lamb slain, the fulness of the grace and mercy which is treasured up in Christ, is made known to him, and he is required to use it as a fountain-head of life welling out of death, and to use that new life in doing universally that which formerly he had refused to do particularly. Having now had his eyes opened to the guilt of sin, and being made acquainted with his own impotence, he is required to confess the guilt of sin, to feel the humility of a guilty creature, to cast himself upon the mercy of God, to receive life from the dead Lamb of God, and with that new life to make war upon himself and all his members, and upon the course of the world, and upon the devil; and justify God, yea, serve God, in putting them all to death; and to receive grace for grace, and fulfil the God-head act of self-sacrifice, and be a witness of the glorious and eternal blessedness which out of that act is to come forth to the whole world. Thus, being a son, and for his sin having become an enemy, he is, through the grace which is in Christ, made a destroyer of his own enmity, and an heir of the eternal life which is contained in the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Moreover, this world to come is the very world which God beholdeth in Christ from all eternity, and which was really the first in the Divine purpose. For every thing seen as existent in the Christ, is seen as coming into existence through death. What we behold is not a creation destroyed, an idea of God marred or defeated; but it is a creation growing into that stable form in which it existed from the beginning in the Divine idea. Sin hath disclosed to man the guilt of a sinner, and taught him the dependence of a creature, and declared the mercy and grace of God; but it hath not interfered with God's original design of bringing into being a creature which should come to its glory through the way of death, as Christ cometh to his glory through the same. He would have done, and could have done it without sin and suffering to man by the ordinance of the forbidden tree, which was in effect the same prostration of the creature; but man would have the other way, of knowing good and evil, and he hath got it: but the end is plain, and the course of God is the same, and every defalcation in his creature only revealeth new funds of Divine excellency in the Creator; and so we shall see it to be unto the end.