vealed; for at the close of the six days' work "God" (it is written) "saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was VERY GOOD." This description applied with peculiar force to man, whom God had created "in his own image," after his "likeness;" that is, had endowed him with reason, power, virtue, and immortality. With regard to virtue in particular, Solomon declares that God made man 66 upright." But although created virtuous, and void of all defilement, our first parents were liable to temptation, and were made free to choose between good and evil; and no sooner had they been betrayed into an act of disobedience, that is, of sin, than the chain of love and union which had bound them to their Creator, was severed. Their original natural virtue was lost forever; their bodies were condemned to death; and, morally, they were dead already, prone to wickedness, and destitute of any power of their own to perform a good action. Such is the condition of those persons who "dead in trespasses and sins"- a condition common by nature to all mankind. - are It is a proverb familiar to reason as well as to religion, that no man can bring a clean thing out of an unclean," and the Scriptures teach us that the moral condition of Adam was transmitted to his descendants of all generations. "By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." "Through the offence of one, many are dead."—" By one man's disobedience many were måde sinners.” It is evident that the death which is here described by the apostle as passing upon all men, in consequence of Adam's transgression, is not merely the return of the body to the dust from which it came, but the alienation of the soul from God- a spiritual death-the total corruption of the human heart. For after confessing that in his flesh (that is, in his fallen nature) there dwelt "no good thing," he cries out, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"* Again he argues, that if "Christ died for all, then were all dead." Nor is it Paul alone who speaks of this spiritual death into which our whole species is fallen, for the same doctrine was familiar to the other apostles. Our Saviour himself also speaks of mankind, as "lost," that is "perished," and de * Rom. vii, 18, 24. Comp. Rom. viii, 6. clares that those who hear his word are "" passed from death unto life." At other times the same moral state is described under the figure of mortal disease. "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (or diseased.") "The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head, there is no soundness in it but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment." Such was the mental condition of a people who were blessed, above all the nations of the earth, with the light of God's countenance. And the same description applies to our fallen race in all ages, for "the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that, they go to the dead." Now, as in the history of the fall of Adam, the Scriptures give a clear account of the first entrance of sin into the world; so, in the doctrine that the heart of man is naturally corrupt, and dead to holiness -they afford us a satisfactory explanation of the tremendous fact, that * Eec. ix, 3. Comp. Gen. vi, 5. all men are sinners. This is the true account, this the intelligible reason, of the universal ungodliness of our species; of the bloody and perfidious deeds which stain the pages of history; and of all those open and secret sins, which in various degrees, and under different forms, have polluted the life and conduct of every man living. When Sir Isaac Newton had published his theory of attraction, and proved that it explained with nice precision, a variety of known phenomena -- accounting equally for the apple's falling to the ground, and for the orderly courses of the planets-all men were constrained to acknowledge the correctness of his philosophy. The agreement between the principle which he advanced, and a number of acknowledged facts, afforded an unquestionable proof that his theory was true. In like manner, when the Bible proposes the corruption of man as a principle; and when this principle is found to afford a satisfactory explanation of the appearances of sin, under every possible shape or combination, we are equally compelled to confess that the doctrine of Scripture is true; and as we trace Newton's discovery on a physical subject, to the unequalled powers of his reason, so do we ascribe the discovery made to us in Scripture, on this moral and spiritual subject, to the illumination of the Holy Spirit, who alone searches the heart of man, and reveals its true condition. Yet, Now that we are acquainted with Newton's theory of attraction, it appears so palpable, that we can scarcely account for its not having been before discerned; and now that we know the secret of human corruption, we are astonished that men should never have detected this obvious cause of their own transgressions. in reality, both these truths lay deeply hiddenthe one from every superficial observer of nature; the other from all men, without revelation. And there is nothing by which the discovery in either case is rendered so admirable, as by its simplicity—the native force of truth with which it commends itself to every understanding. But we have not yet stated the whole of our case; for as the wickedness of man is owing to the corruption of his heart, and his corruption to his fall- a chain, of which no man can deny the consistency so his fall is traced in |