most probably through freedom from sickness had no notion of its appearances, and who was himself the original cause of it. Alas, many of his sons since have had to weep over the remains of beloved children, whom some imprudence of their own has indirectly deprived of life. In the murderer Cain, Adam beheld with horror and astonishment the precipitate course of sin-how it could reach the goal almost in the instant of starting. What must have been his torture of mental anguish, when in Cain's conduct he saw the image of his own disobedience. He had diligently trained him in the ways of God; he had been ever stimulating him to good, by recounting the gracious promise of the recovery of eternal life ; he had been ever deterring him from evil by detailing his own fall and its melancholy consequences; he had been commending, exhorting, entreating, with all the authority and affection of a father: yet Cain disobeyed, even as he himself, in despite of His display of love and power, had disobeyed his own heavenly Father. Alas! the murder of his son was but a different shape of the sin which himself had committed. And now there was before him a lively and sure example of the manner in which it should go down, infecting all his posterity, showing itself among their thousands in a thousand horrible shapes, the conception of which baffled his imagination. In Cain too he beheld the first complete aversion from God. It was in God's very presence, amid prayers and offerings addressed to him, that Cain slew his brother. And now, in dogged impenitence, he went out from the presence of the Lord. He quitted the spot and household where God had vouchsafed his presence

at his altar, and not caring that it should be vouchsafed any where else, betook himself on his own ways, and went to another country, called the land of Nod. Our two first parents were thus reduced to their former solitude. One son had been lost to this life; the other but too probably to the next life also. How different was this solitude from their former! What a crowd of sad thoughts and horrible remembrances intruded into it! What a melancholy interchange of reflections and feelings by day! what feverish dreams and visions of the lost and departed by night! Alas! what a contrast to their solitude of Paradise. The only other spiritual beings of which they then could think, were God and his holy angels; now were added to the number the murdered and the murderer, and the tempter. In every region of reflection their sin met them, and brought sorrow and guilt before them, where formerly they had seen but bliss and innocence.

Cain began the first entire separation of man from God, and in him too began the distinction of the godly from the ungodly. Happy had it been for the world had this distinction been kept up. It was done away, and brought on the visitation of the flood. Adam lived not to see this fatal re-union. But he lived to see one half of his posterity living in utter forgetfulness and alienation from God, and producing shape after shape, in horrible variety, from the fruitful womb of his original falling-off. For a long period of years Cain and his children were his only posterity: what a heart-rending prospect lay before him here! How must he have groaned in anguish, and floated his bed with tears, and called incessantly

on God with ejaculations of repentance, and prayers for mercy, when the thought came upon him of having replenished earth with such a race; when he saw that the blessing of, "be fruitful and multiply," was already become a curse, and terminated in the fruitfulness and multiplication of a race of defiers of God, apostates from his faith, and open rebels to his will. While he was thus grieved, and burdened, and bowed to the dust, God had pity upon him, and after he had lived 130 years, gave him another son in Seth. Cheered with this light of comfort, renewed in hope, and trusting that he would replace the loss of his beloved and godly Abel, he named the child Seth (or, placed). In his line he may look for his promised Redeemer, every hope of whom seemed to be frustrated in the unholy seed of Cain. Nor was he disappointed here. Seth trod in the footsteps of Abel, and from him proceeded a race of spiritual priests of God, in every way contrasted with the progeny of Cain. The anguish which changed his countenance when he looked upon the elder branch of his offspring, gave way to smiles of joy when he turned it upon the younger. In the former he saw with terror and abhorrence the murderer Lamech, born too truly in his father's image, and Tubal-Cain, the artificer of brass and iron, the furnisher of ready implements of murder, whose invention has been hailed with the curses of mankind, and sung in strains of abhorrence by the poets of every civilized nation. But from this picture he could now turn to one of a very different subject, and with the grovelling, the worldly-minded, the ungodly digger of the dark bowels of the earth, and workman of the forge,

he could now contrast the heavenly-minded Enoch, who walked with God, and within half a generation after his death, displayed to mankind a palpable proof of their immortality by being translated alive into eternal bliss and glory. This posterity did not forsake him as Cain's had done: it clung to God, and abode where his covenanted altar stood. It arrayed itself in dutiful order of obedience under Adam as their patriarch; and now was Adam's soul enlarged and set free, after being so long pent up through the wickedness of Cain's sons. For this pious posterity, this his faithful family, he daily mediated with God by prayer and sacrifice as their priest; to this he imparted continual instruction, pouring forth all the stores which remained of his former spiritual knowledge and feelings, to this he recounted the once tasted blessings of innocence and immortality, and stirred them up to persevere and regain the prize; and to this he detailed the melancholy history of his fall, unfolded the artful devices. of the Tempter, confessed the intolerable anguish of the new state of sin, and entreated them with tears and prayers to beware of his example. And diligently he set before them the joyful hope of the Redeemer to come. This hope he so strongly impressed, that it went down through a long line of faithful successors, who carried it on ever brightening into greater and broader light and glory, by successive revelations of God, until it terminated, as a sunbeam in the sun, in the Redeemer of mankind, standing in the latter days upon the earth. A wide bow of light, spanning the abyss of darkness, connected the first and the second Adam.

Thus lived Adam, labouring with all his powers of example and preaching to undo the mischief which he had brought into the world, and comforted and comforting with the sure hope that all would be finally undone by one sprung from his own loins. The fruit of his instruction was seen in Noah, whose father Lamech sat for the first 56 years of his life at the feet of Adam. He lived not to see the fatal conjunction of the lines of Cain and Seth: he was spared the sight of the good mingling with the bad, and finally, (as evil is the stronger principle) completely corrupted, while the bad were not amended. He was spared the sight of all that preparation, and final burst of wickedness, which called down from heaven the visitation of the flood. He had numbered 930 years, and fell asleep in the sure and certain hope of the rising of the sun of righteousness, and comforted with the certainty, that although another's and not his own mortal eyes should see it, yet it would be seen upon earth, and cheer not only the living, but also fling its glorious light of blissful immortality through the silent chambers of the dead.