I.-1. Now, with regard to the first of these points, I need not prove that we are, in one sense, plainly said to be "naturally dead in sin,” as being born under a liability to death, temporal and eternal, in consequence of Adam's transgression. But we must also observe,-to adopt the common scripture expression, as well as the language of the text,-that that original guilt introduced a present and immediate deadness of the soul, besides the threatened punishment of bodily decay, and the curse of future and everlasting woe. By one man," in every view of the question, "sin entered into the world, and death by sin.' When God forbade the eating of the forbidden fruit, he said, "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die;" and when the deed was done, the curse was fulfilled. Man did not, indeed, at that moment die naturally, but still that threat was not unfulfilled, for the evils of mortality then at once invested his frame, and« sorrow, and sickness, and labour, and trial, turned his earthly being into one continued process of lingering and progressive dissolution. Spiritually, however, he did die even then. He did die,-not only in the impending danger of eternal misery, but in the immediate withdrawing of God's quickening spirit,-the stoppage of that fountain of

*Romans v. 12.

spiritual life which flows from heaven alone. There was a change, at that very moment of his first transgression, that took place in man,-a change to a state which is,

with great propriety, Then first the good

compared to that of death. ness of his heart died within him. Then first the image of God faded from his soul. Then first was sorrow heard of, and misery and labour which had been as yet unknown. A new scheme, indeed, was offered him by the atonement of Christ to restore him to the favor of God. But still man had become an altered creature, and had lost even the taste for what was good. The life that he had once rejoiced in,-the life of the best energies and faculties of the soul,-the life of that which truly constitutes an immortal being,had passed away. Man had become spiritually dead; and that which had once been a blooming and flourishing plant of Eden, was now torn from its native soil, and cast by the way side, withered and decayed.

2. Such was the condition to which Adam's transgression brought us. Such was the state in which we all were born, "shapen," as we were, "in iniquity, and conceived in sin." I will not now pause to shew how entirely man deserved this and brought it upon himself. I will not now dwell on, (that which belongs to the second part of this

discourse,) the efficacy of Christ's religion, if properly made use of, to remove the evil; but I would observe that it is not only original, it is also actual sin that brings us into this same miserable condition which is figuratively described by death. We ourselves are doing this, while we call ourselves Christians, even with the blessings of the gospel within our reach, when, by thought, word, or deed, we wilfully offend our God. Lightly as we pass over the transgression, and readily as we forget it, the consequences are not so easily escaped. Not only are we displeasing our heavenly father, but we are also destroying ourselves. One by one, we are killing every seed of goodness that might have sprung up within us. We are resisting that Holy Spirit which might have fertilized and animated the sluggish soil of our torpid nature. We are turning it,as far as all goodness is concerned,-into a barren and lifeless waste. We are paralyzing the best affections of the heart. We are darkening our prospects. We are destroying the vitality of the soul. And it is well if all of us, when we are tempted to sin, were we to reflect,-not only on the omniscient eye that witnesses the deed, not only on the future retribution that awaits it, but on the immediate desolation we are inflicting on ourselves, -the poison and the death we are introducing into

our souls, the obstruction we are causing to that growth in grace which might have been proceeding there, and the withering of that holy plant of piety, which, under divine culture, might have been growing up in our hearts, and which, but for the negligence of one unguarded moment, might have put forth successively its blossoms and its fruits in the richness of their full maturity.

For we must observe that the analogy conveyed in the text consists not only in a general resemblance between the death of the soul and the death of the body, but will admit of a very close and particular application.

(1.) And this comparison will hold good even if we regard death as the mere departure of life from the body. There is no life (actually) in the dead; and there is no life (figuratively) in the wilful sinner. He cannot be said to live the life of man, whose ways resemble those of "the beasts that perish" rather than those of an immortal creature. As there are differences in the constitution of material things; as, for instance, there is "one kind of flesh of man, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds; and there are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestial; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestial is another;"*

1 Cor. xv. 39, 40, 41.

SO

also is there a different kind of life apportioned to the different orders in the scale of creation.

We

that the earth lives, if it can cherish vegetasay tion that vegetation lives, if it grows and expands and blossoms. The animal world have life as long as they can move and feel. But wherein, as distinguished from these, consists the essential characteristic of the life of man? Where can we trace it but in the energy of an aspiring intellect, -in the pulsation of an awakened heart,—warm with proper feeling, and alive to its lawful affections? Where are we to look for it but in the exercise of those faculties which anticipate their future destiny ;-the direction of hope and ambition to their own real and legitimate objects;-in the activity of man's moral powers,-the regulation of them so as to act up to the intentions of nature, and complete the designs of Providence? these things, or, in other words, in the devotion of all his energies to that which is his reasonable service, the performance of his duty to God and man, and the seeking his most lasting good, in these things, I say, really consists the life of man considered as an immortal spirit. The sensualist, the covetous, the carnal minded, may assign him a lower place in the scale of being. The voluptuary may regard him as the mere creature of animal sensation. The politician may

In