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penalty of sin, the last enemy that is to be overcome, emancipates the disciple of Christ from all his miseries, loses its power over him, and is annihilated.- "There shall be no more death there, neither sorrow, nor weeping, nor pain; all tears shall be wiped away from all eyes." The ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads."-" This corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality." Blessed be God! Blessed be God for the thunders of His wrath! Blessed be God for His curse denounced against sin!

Yes, let us bless God; for, be it remembered, His curse might have been eternal, and have seized our souls without the hope of deliverance. But instead of this, observe, that all the clauses of it refer exclusively to this present life. I mean not to say that the sin of Adam did not, as well as every sin which we commit, deserve an eternal condemnation; on the contrary, we believe that, had he not been reconciled to his God, that one sin, were it the only one of which he had been guilty during the whole of his life, would have excluded him for ever from the presence of his God. But with regard to us, his fallen

children, God would not have extended the punishment of his sin beyond the limits of our time of trial. We might have been condemned eternally for our own sins, but not for that of the first man. I am aware that, in this opinion, I am opposed to the systems of theologians, whose judgment, in other respects, I regard with the highest veneration. -But we are not expounding the systems of men; we keep strictly to the Word of God, as expressed in our text.-Ah! I cannot too often repeat it; let us bless God for the terms in which He has couched His sentence! chastisement of the fall is temporal, the blessings of deliverance are eternal. We, fallen like Adam, are corrupt; we are born estranged from God; we live afar off from Him, until we are brought back by His grace to our primitive destination; we suffer the temporal consequences of the fall; but we have a remedy; the way to Eden is re-opened to us; we have a Saviour; our sins, those very sins, the wages of which is death eternal, have found an expiation; we may obtain pardon; the Lord even waiteth that He

gracious.

The

may be

Who, among you, O immortal beings! who,

among you, will refuse to hasten, that he may have part in the amnesty, the pardon, the deliverance? Ah! remember, that now the fatal consequences of sin reach to an illimitable eternity. Remember, that if you neglect the remedy which Christ offers you, there is no other remedy to which you can have recourse. Remember, that if the temporal curse lead you not to the Saviour, the curse pronounced against your sins, shall be an eternal one. My God! "how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?"

MEDITATION VIII.

THE NAME OF EVE.-THE COATS OF SKINS.

GEN. III. 20, 21.

And Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them.”

AMONG the passages of history, which have been handed down to us in the Sacred Writings, there are few, perhaps, more touching than that which records the sickness and miraculous cure of the pious Hezekiah, king of Judah. He had but lately been delivered, by the intervention of the Divine power, from the grasp of the proud and warlike Sennacherib, the full weight of whose vengeance, the haughty harangue of Rabshakeh had given him reason to anticipate. Happy and grateful at seeing that the God of Israel had heard his fervent supplications, he was once more established upon the throne of his

fathers, which, for a moment, had been shaken to its basis. But another trial awaited him : "In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, came unto him, and said unto him; Set thy house in order, for thou must die, and not live. Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall, and prayed unto the Lord, and said, Remember now, I beseech Thee, O Lord, how I have walked before Thee with a perfect heart, and have done that which was good in Thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore." He weeps, being in doubt if his prayer shall be heard; his heart melts with grief and anguish; for the preservation of all the people of God, whom he has rescued from idolatry, and who are now threatened with an exterminating war, seems to depend upon his life, and he sees himself cut off in the midst of his days. I feel it quite impossible to render the spirit of that touching and pious elegy in which he breathes forth the grief of his heart. “I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my years. I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord, in the land of the living: I shall behold man no more with the inhabi

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