its increase in power was not impeded by any of the hindrances that are common to fallen man. It suffered nothing from disease, nor from pain nor languor, the consequences of disease. Indolence, that great foe to increase of mental vigour, he was a stranger to; its enervating influence never came upon him. No debasing superstition ever enthralled his spirit; no prejudice ever obscured its vision; no proud, or sensual, or angry passion, ever disturbed its exercise; all was light, calmness, and order, and, according to its capacity, it expatiated through the regions of holy and heavenly knowledge, at pleasure, and without a chain. The power of abstracting the mind from whatever is trivial, impertinent, or vain, of fixing it intently on high and worthy objects, and of pursuing its search or its contemplations, free from the wanderings of foolish desire and from the incursions of a vagrant or polluting fancy-a power so necessary to any great increase of intellectual strength and elevation-he doubtless possessed in the fullest measure. And these endowments he possessed

as man.

How painfully affecting is the contrast between this exalted state of intellect, and that

of all other human beings! Does not he feel it, the studious youth, athirst after higher attainments in knowledge, and grieved to find himself so often and so powerfully impeded? How difficult, and frequently impossible, he finds it, to collect his scattered thoughts, and to fix them, and keep them fixed, on the objects of his study! What wild and capricious rovings of imagination! What strange and sudden intrusions of foolish, distracting, or even defiling images! What unwelcome recollections of low, frivolous, sensual, unholy ideas of things past, that memory would fain discard, will force admission! What unprofitable speculations, and visionary dreams of things to come! And these distractions will come upon the spirit, not only when the objects of study are truly important, and worthy of its most fixed and ardent application, but even in spite of the most powerful efforts to shake them off and to be free. Can any proof of the fallen state of man be more complete than is afforded by this impotency of mind, this want of command over its own faculties, this miserable tyrannising of its inferior powers over those by which it was designed that they should be controlled and regulated? Let the

young ponder this-it is a subject of the very first importance, demanding unprejudiced, deep, and solemn consideration. For, since the fact is so, that the human soul is the subject of such weakness, and the prey of such strange and deplorable disorder, so that its progress in strength and expansion is impeded in such mournful contrast to His holy mind who grew strong in spirit; is it not the highest interest of those who are beginning to lay the foundations of knowledge, with all seriousness to enquire into the cause of this ruin? Shall he who feels and laments the time that is almost lost, the labour that is rendered almost ineffectual through this mental confusion,and, above all, who knows that when he would bend his attention to things of infinite moment that relate to God, to the world to come, to his own present and future condition, the difficulties are greatly increased, and he becomes conscious of an awful indisposition to pursue such meditations, a very recoiling from them ;shall he not pause to ask the unspeakably important questions, Whence is this? and, Is there no cure?

Eternal thanks to the divine goodness! In the revelation of the word of God are given

full and satisfactory answers to these enquiries. To the first, He who is the Truth replies, "From within: out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts." Their source is not extraneous: the seat of the mischief is within;

-there is the root of the disease;-a heart fallen and corrupt through sin. To the second he answers, "I will give you a new heart. My grace is sufficient for thee; my strength is made perfect in weakness." Now, he who shall feel and deplore his ruin, and shall believe in these gracious declarations and promises, and be led to the fountain of renovating power with the prayer of the Psalmist, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me;"-he shall know that there is a remedy, and shall rejoice in what he feels of its present efficacy, and in what he anticipates of the perfect cure which it shall ultimately effect.

Let it be repeated, that it is of the very first importance that right views be entertained of this fundamental subject, and especially at the outset of life. Error, always injurious, on this point is fatal. It spreads its mist over all the perceptions of the understanding, occasions it to be the dupe of a thousand fallacies respecting

the whole train of moral sentiment, and leads to the most pernicious obliquity in its determinations. The doctrine, or rather the fact, of man's fallen and corrupt state, lies at the foundation of all the peculiar discoveries of revelation, every one of whose truths either expressly declares it, or presupposes it, or is necessarily built upon it. He, therefore, who at the commencement of life is either ignorant of it, or adopts some specious falsehood opposed to it, setting out in the path of error, becomes the prey of every artful deceiver, wanders wider and wider from truth, and not knowing, or refusing to allow, his moral disease, makes no application for the remedy; and, unless awakened by sovereign compassion to perceive his delusion, while confident in his ability and proud of his reasonings, increases in blindness and hardness to the end.

How safe and happy is that youth, who, convinced of his weakness and corruption, his liableness to error and proneness to evil, humbly hears the decisions of eternal truth, and, encouraged by its promises, thankfully obeys its injunctions. "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?" "He that trusteth in his own heart is a