the moment when another object of affection was just coming into the world, to put a seal to a union already so happy; ask him, I say, what voice was heard at the bottom of his agonizing soul! He will tell you, that amid the darkness which enveloped his afflicted heart, he heard the voice of malediction, which spake in Eden. And will not the young orphan, which is destined never to enjoy the happiness of a mother's love, add its sad testimony to that of a mourning father? Oh, yes; on every side we shall hear the terrible words, condemnation and sin; on every side the voice of lamentation shall proclaim the eternal justice of God, and His horror of moral evil; and, to arouse the attention of the most careless, and make them serious, repeat, "I will greatly multiply the sorrows of thy pregnancy; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children."

But if such, since the fall, be the history of all the daughters of Eve, the sentence of condemnation reaches further. If the child of so many sorrows announces its entrance into life by cries of pain, through what a series of sufferings, infirmities, and sicknesses has that feeble creature, that miserable worm

of the earth to pass! How much must it yet cost her whom it has already cost so dearly! And where shall those long protracted miseries find a termination? Alas! they shall have no boundary but the tomb. Ah! it is not Eve alone, whom the sentence of condemnation reaches; it strikes the first man, and in him all his fallen race.* The righteous Judge turns to sinful Adam, already covered with confusion from a consciousness of his guilt, and trembling with fear. In vain has he endeavoured to exculpate himself by throwing the blame of his sin upon his wife; his excuses are not admitted; God reduces them to nothing by these considerations, which precede his condemnation: "Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it...." Here Adam has no more excuses; he is silent; "every mouth shall be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God." Trembling, he hears his awful sentence. . . . . But what! is it upon the abode of man, upon this earth, still sparkling with freshness and

We speak here only of condemnation to temporal evils.

beauty, that the first curse falls? "Cursed is the ground for thy sake; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee." What grief to guilty Adam! What a source of evils to his descendants! They are doomed to tenant a world cursed for man's sake! My brethren, have you learned to recognize in the thorns and thistles which overspread the earth, in its burning deserts, in intemperate seasons and devastating scourges, a fruit of sin and an effect of the malediction of God?-Receive instruction, you who appear to accuse the calamities of which this earth is the theatre, and cease to raise injurious doubts against Divine Providence. You also, who, while you sincerely wish to check every rising suspicion of the wisdom and goodness of God, yet sometimes feel your confidence shaken, at seeing the innumerable evils which seem to affect, without distinction, the righteous and the wicked, cease to see the original design of the all-wise Creator in those disorders, which have the appearance of impugning the Divine government, in those convulsions of nature; in those tremendous earthquakes, which consign whole cities, with their populations, to a frightful tomb; in those over

whelming inundations, which carry death into the abodes of man; in those hurricanes which ravage his possessions; in those hail-storms which frustrate the anxious expectations of the husbandman; in those famines and plagues which, like angels of destruction, seem as if they had received a commission to depopulate the earth. Remember that Eternal Truth declared, on the finishing of the work of creation, that "every thing was very good," and learn to see in those scourges, a fearful commentary upon the words which we are considering: "Cursed is the ground for thy sake!" It is not, then, the moral malady that preys upon humanity alone, that should cry to us, for our humiliation, man is fallen! but also these numberless evils and sufferings, which wring from afflicted nature its deepdrawn groans, this judgment of God in Eden, like a raging volcano, whose burning lava covers every point of this vale of tears, should humble us, and make us feel our sins, and, with a powerful eloquence, preach to us the justice of God and His hatred of moral evil.

God forbid, however, that we should be so ungrateful as to overlook the many proofs of

the Divine benignity, which the Creator has left for the good of His creature, upon this earth which He has cursed. God forbid that we should wish to damp your admiration of the sublime beauties which still are visible in the works of God. On the contrary, we feel that every thing in these works, is calculated to lead us back to our Creator, either through fear and awe of His divine majesty, when we contemplate the marks of His indignation and wrath, or through gratitude and love, when we admire the proofs of His goodness. God speaks to us in nature, as well as revelation, pronouncing, through its medium, sometimes a curse or a sentence of condemnation, sometimes a promise or a blessing. The hailstorm which devastates the fields, is as much a messenger of God as the dew that refreshes the ground. The loud voice of the rolling thunder, and the burning trace of the blazing lightning, speak to us of the Lord, as well as the majestic rising of the solar orb, or the melodious concert of the feathered tribes, which seem to celebrate its diurnal return. "There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard, their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words unto