See there, in that house of mourning, the pale and ghastly corpse extended on the bed. Descend into the silent grave, and view the putrifying flesh, and the mouldering bones. Ah! where are we! to what are we reduced? Is this that heaven laboured form, which wore the divine resemblance? Yes, yes; sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”

But can we venture lower still in our meditations, into those dismal regions, where God's mercies are clean gone, and where he will be favourable no more? Hear how they shriek and roar; see how they toss in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone !-Unhappy beings, what brought you to that place of torment? "We are filled with the fruit of our own ways, and are reaping the wages of sin." Yes; it was sin which laid the foundation stone of your prison, and filled it with these inexhausted treasures of wrath and indignation.

Not in the rational creation only we discern the fatal evils of this accursed thing. "The whole creation groaneth and travailleth in pain together until now." Once it died of a dropsy of waters, in the days of Noah; and shortly will expire in a fever of flames, when the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat." Even now the

husbandman, conscious of the siekliness of nature, acts like physician to the earth. Sometimes he opens her veins with a plough, and eovers with soil, as with a strengthening plaister; sometimes lays her asleep, by suffering her to lie fallow for a time.-Without these necessary precautions, she would refuse to yield her inerease, and cleanness of teeth would be in all our borders.

Is it a small thing for sin thus to affect the whole creation ? The garden of Gethsemane knows, and Calvary can tell, how sin hath affected even the great Creator. Bread of life, why wast thou hungry? Fountain of life, why wast thou thirsty? Why wast thou a man of sorrows, O thou consolation of Israel? Thou glory of the human race, wherefore wast thou a reproach of men, and despised of the people? Thy vissage was more marred than any man, and thy form than the sons of men. Sin nailed thee to the cross; sin stabbed thee to the heart; sin, like a thick impenetrable cloud, eclipsed thy father's countenance to thy disconsolate soul; sin laid thee in a grave, O thou resurrection and the life!

Who would have believed, that the enemy would have entered within the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem, pulled angels from their thrones, and brought even God himself from his

high habitation, from excellent glory, from ineffable joys, to poverty and reproach, to sorrow and tribulation, and to the most inglorious death!

O heavy burden! under whose weight such multitudes of creatures groan, which made the mighty God, clothed with our flesh, to sweat great drops of blood, though sinners walk lightly on beneath the mighty load. O dreadful plague! O formidable sickness! not to be chased away by a less costly medicine than the most precious blood of Christ, by whose stripes we are healed. O deadly poison ! even when presented in a golden eup, and sweet unto the taste, it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder, and never fails to prove bitterness in the latter end.-Nor can it be expelled by any other way than lifting up the son of man, as Moses lifted up the ser-pent in the wilderness. O mighty debt, whose payments could impoverish him, whose is the silver and the gold; who, though he was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might be made rich!" O ugly stain! O inveterate pollution! not to be washed away by all the rivers that run into the sea. In vain we take unto us nitre and much soap; in vain we use our most vigorous endeavours to purge away our blot. Sooner might the Ethiopean change his skin, and the leopard his spots. The only fuller that is equal to this mighty.

work, is he who purges the conscience from dead works, to serve the living God.-The blood of the lamb is the only purgatory that makes you whiter than the snow.

When, O when, shall I hate thee with a perfect hatred, thou worse than death? When shall I be afraid of thee alone, and be ashamed of thee alone,? O thing exceeding sinful! When shall I be delivered from thy abhorred dominion? O when shall thy destructions have a perpetual end?

On man's extreme misery by sin.

WHO can refrain from tears, whose eye of reason hath snatched but a cursory glance of mankind's numerous woes? Who but he whose heart is made of stone, and is lost to every impression of benevolence? As the dancing spark flies upward, so man is born unto trouble. Unhappy creatures, that kept not your primeval state! Full early you revolted from your creator God, in whose smile alone your happiness might dwell. The sparkling crown of innocence is fallen from your head. Hence all these fatal evils of your race. Ah me! what ghastly spectres are these See moon-struck madress replenishing the melancholy bedlam, and tortur

ing despair, a terror to herself, and all around her. See there oppression with iron hand, and heart of steel; poverty with her hollow eyes, her tattered garmants, and sordid habitation; and all the family of pain, who tear the pillow from beneath their head, while sleep affrighted flies from our eye-lids.-Shall I mention in the next place, drudgery with her grievous looks, toiling at the oar, or stooping under the burden? Alas! with what laborious efforts do mortals spend their vitals, to gain a wretched sustenance for themselves and their tender offspring, to be defended from the gnawings of hunger, and the power of chilling cold?

What creatures are not armed against thee, O man, who all espouse their maker's quarrel ? There are, whom the angels of darkness harass with dreadful temptations, and still more dreadful possessions.-The angels of light loathe and detest such polluted beings, and frequently have been the executioners of direful vengeance. I might relate the numerous ills to which we are exposed from the inhabitants of the air, the beasts of the earth, and even the fishes of the sea. How hateful to men the holiest race of scaly serpents, hissing adders, ravenous lions, prowling wolves, hideous and weeping crockadiles? And even the pung race of locusts and