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God, and fixed upon other things. Let us love this world no more with any degree of desire after the possession of what keeps us from God; but love and strive to obtain our better, our purchased inheritance above. Let the mercies of the everlasting promises of God in Christ be constantly before us, throughout the whole of our short and transitory abode in this world; and let us pray for that best of all knowledge, the knowledge of God and of Qurselves. Be Christ Jesus our example, as He is our only hope, and his redemption will be faithfully and fully accomplished, for our present and future blessedness.

And here the subject before us may be concluded as applicable to those who accept the merciful invitation of their Lord to the sacramental renewal of their baptismal covenant. But there are too many members of the church of Christ, (to our shame and grief in this Christian land be it spoken,) who seldom or never appear at the table of their Lord. They call themselves Christians; and by right of baptism, one of those two sacraments, which only Christ hath commanded us all to receive, they are so. But inasmuch as they refuse the other sacrament urged by the same authority, they are Christians only by name; they refuse obedience to a plain and an express command; and, so long as they persevere in this their

disobedience, they lose all claim whatever to the covenanted promises of mercy and forgiveness, as well for that as for all their other sins. They say that they are not fit. Rather, let them speak the whole truth, and say that they have no real desire to be made fit. Let them say, as the monitor within their own breast so forcibly tells them, that their care and love of other things, their anxiety after the possession of their own will, in frequent opposition to the rules and doctrines of religion, keep them far away from the care of "the one thing needful." Let them say, as the wicked have always said in excuse for the disobedience to the calls of religion, “I have bought a yoke of oxen, I have married a wife, I have purchased a farm." Let them say that they go their way, when summoned to the care of the soul, "one to his farm, and another to his merchandize:" some to the business, some to the pleasures, some to the known and acknowledged sins of a world, perishing through its own wickedness. How long these excuses shall operate in keeping them from any deep interest in things spiritual, and among the rest, from the Supper of the Lord, none can tell. They have long refused to prepare for the invitation of their Redeemer to remember Him thus on earth, that He may know and acknowledge them when He

cometh in the clouds of heaven at His judgment. They still refuse His proffered mercy, and, again and again, turn their backs upon the sacred ordinance before them, and, again and again, refuse this test of a Christian's faith.

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But, perhaps, they may refuse for the last time. God may no more invite them for ever. Before another opportunity shall occur, some one or more of those who thus leave this Holy Sacrament, may never return to it, but shall be summoned to their dust with this unrepented, unforsaken disobedience upon their soul. May this consideration be felt while forbearing mercy waits! May they carry to their secret chambers, and there, with God their only witness, seriously survey the past, and, in the hope of redeeming mercy, at length turn to that Saviour whose Gospel they have hitherto neglected, whose proffered mercy they have not yet applied to their own souls, to the injury of their own peace, refusing to "do this in remembrance of Him."

ON ORIGINAL SIN.

ROMANS, CHAPTER 5, VERSE 14.

"Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression."

THE first beginning of sin and evil is a subject so overwhelming in its difficulties, that, without the Word of God, no one can in any way whatever account for a truth, which is too painfully experienced by us all, ever to be denied. It is by the light of Revelation alone that we are clearly taught, not only how sin came into the world, and why it still reigns among us, but, far more cheering knowledge, how it hath already received its death-blow, and how it shall be finally conquered by the great conqueror of sin and death. By that light we are taught, that death, and with death all moral evil and temporal ruin, hath reigned over man as the corrupted race of sinning parents; a corruption moral and physical which God did not create, nor of neces

sity impose upon us. It is Scripture which teaches us how to find the original sin; it is our own sad experience which tells the painful reality, and confirms, with an assurance that nothing can resist, the bitter truth.

With the view of rendering this important subject, through God's vouchsafed aid, matter of spiritual usefulness to us all, let us consider the words of the text, as bringing before us the great scripture truth of original sin. This doctrine our own Church most seriously impresses upon us, and, in strictest agreement with the Word of God, plainly teaches us all, that original sin, so far as it at all concerns us to be made acquainted with it, is not the special instance of Adam's own sin, or our merely imitating his example; but that it is the moral effects of that sin, the corrupted nature, the loss of the image of God, in every one born from Adam.

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Adam and Eve, undoubtedly, sinned first, and so far were the cause of our sinfulness; but inasmuch as their sind was personal, the positive act of their disobedience to the law of God was most strictly confined to themselves; and we suffer, not for their sin, but in that we, through the fallen nature which we inherit from them, are actual sinners ourselves. The natural inclination to what is

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