woman is first singled out as its subject; first in the transgression, she was doomed to be first also in suffering. Her sorrow is described in Scripture as the keenest which human nature feels-a sorrow that brings her sometimes to the grave, and leaves only the motherless memento. The next punishment denounced upon the woman is her dependence on man, or the surrender of her individual freedom, in order to accomplish the ends of her existence upon earth. The whole history of our race is the clear, and often the painful evidence of this. True it is, this subjection is illuminated where Christianity prevails by compensatory glories; and the loss of liberty is forgotten in her inheritance of love, so that, inferior as she is by nature, she rises to an equality by

But this blessing is not of nature, but from the gospel; and woman, in Christian lands, does not present the complete fulfilment of the curse denounced originally upon her. In heathen lands the curse is visibly struck into her experience; for there she has neither the dignity of woman, nor the protection of the slave, nor the joys of the mother. Woman remains in India just as she was left at the fall-the inheritor of a corroding and consuming curse, which cleaves to her like life itself.

The next portion of the curse fell upon the ground: it was once created beautiful, prolific, and good; but when sin fell upon it, like a blot radiating from the centre to the circumference, the curse of barrenness followed immediately. It is now sown thick with graves. The cypress grows where the tree of life stood; and melancholy requiems and moaning and groans have taken the place of its primeval jubilee. The rose that Eve carried forth from Paradise withered in her hand, and turned to corruption; and the sun that rose so beautifully that morning, set in storms. The rolling thunder and the rending lightning still leave wrecks behind them. The yawning earth occasionally gulps down great capitals, and buries a mighty population in a common tomb. The roaring flood sweeps away corn, and cattle, and villages, and all man's husbandry, to the main; and the unsatiated sea still buries proud navies in its waters, and roars for yet nobler victims; and hailstones descend like destroying angels from the sky, and blast the choicest fruits of the soil; and famine, and pestilence, and plague still indicate their common parentage—the

curse. These groans of creation are the echoes of the judgment pronounced in Eden-these seared and blasted deserts are made so by the sirocco of sin; the infected house proves the presence of the infected tenant; disorders in the estate give evidence of moral disease in the owner of it. The world lost its beauty when man parted with his innocence; thorns sprang from sinseeds, and earth grew barren because her lord had become guilty; and we have only to see disorder in the elements, to be satisfied that there is a difference between man and God. Earth becomes rebellious, selfish, avaricious-must be ploughed and torn by instruments of iron, and watered with the tears of man's eyes, and fertilized with the sweat of man's brow, before it will yield him any sustenance. Of itself, it produces only weeds that are worthless, or fruits that are poisonous, and always insects that eat up what we sow-as if nature were indignant with man, and desirous of avenging her wrongs upon him. Man rose against God, and that instant all creation rose against man. And "we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." See the slave in the mine, the husbandman in the fields, the sailor on the ocean, the soldier in battle, and the labourer in the workshop, in order to perceive the rebound of man's sin in Paradise; and where there is less physical, there is more mental wear and tear and where wealth is the greatest. it is only the glittering mask that conceals the agony within. The curse cleaves close to the human heart-corrosive, consuming, defying all antidote but one; sometimes covered, sometimes gilded, but never extirpated, except in the experience of the child of God.

"In the day thou eatest thou shalt die; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," is a no less obvious result of the primeval curse. Disease, consumption, fever, gray hairs, and death, constitute the long, dark procession from the gates of Paradise, and disappear only in the receptacle which none can stave off the grave. Infants and aged patriarchs die; kings on their thrones, and judges on their tribunals, die; and no sanctuary or altar-horns can protect from the stroke of death. beauty or birth can bid away the king of terrors; the Methuselah of a thousand years, and the infant of yesterday, must dic.

No

Adam bore patiently the calamities of the fall till he saw for the first time death, in the cold limbs and pallid face of Abel. Death is the image of sin, the portrait of our guilt, the wages of iniquity.

Banishment from Eden was also a portion of the primeval curse, for it is written, "He drove out the man." Eden lost its attractions, for man had lost his susceptibility of them. The tree of knowledge waved its branches from afar, but it was as the memorial only of our crime. The tree of life lost not its magnificence and glory, but man had no access to it. He who lived the one day beneath the wing of angels, wandered the next day under a roofless world; beginning that distance from God, the utmost aphelion of which is hell. The curse fell on man's intellect also. Once his soaring thoughts reached the presence of the seraphim; and ever as they rose in the heights, or descended in the depths, he saw in the one the image, and in the other the footprints of Deity. This great intellect is now darkened, distorted, enfeebled; and its powers frequently lavished on ignoble and unworthy objects. Has not genius frequently aided the assassin, and become the ally of the robber? Has it not carried ambition to thrones through a sea of blood, and avarice to fortune through all kinds of tortuous and wicked courses; manifesting itself as the drudge of sin, the hack of Satan, the pioneer of accumulated evil? In poetry, which ought to sing only the good, the beautiful, the true, how much of evil has genius manifested? If Milton has celebrated in song the glories and also the exiles of Eden, has not Shelley gilded with its charms what he had depravity to imagine-souls without hope, and a world without God? If Cowper has covered with new beauty domestic life, and real religion, and Christian worth, has not Byron withered with infidel sarcasm whatever of divine holiness or human happiness he was permitted to touch? Nor has science escaped the universal curse. Has not geology emerged at times from its subterranean researches, and shouted in triumph, "No God?" Has not astronomy risen on outspread pinion, and, after visiting suns and systems, alighted on the earth, and told mankind that in the vestiges of creation there is no vestige of a Creator? Have not Volney and others visited the

east and the west, and opened the sarcophagi of ancient kings, and explored pyramidal chambers, and traced the Nile, and crossed the Jordan, and sailed upon the sea of Galilee, and walked in Gethsemane, and stood on Ararat, Zion, and Calvary, and denounced the everlasting gospel as a fable? Have not naturalists gazed upon the light of morn beautiful as an infant, and on the shadows of evening mellowed like age, and on the buds of spring, and on the falling leaves of autumn, and on the drifted snow, and on the driving showers, and alleged that they saw nothing higher than the balancing of the air, the motion of the earth, the evaporation of the waters?

But this, the curse on man's mind, as well as every other vestige of its presence, shall be no more at all. The vast universe shall yet glow with Deity; creation shall be seen to be the chamber of his presence, the dwelling-place of his power, the receptacle of his designs, the autograph of our Father; and astronomy, and literature, and geology, and chemistry, and poetry, shall hear with arrested ears and delighted hearts the "Lord walking in the garden" of creation "in the cool of the day." Isaiah lx. shall become actual:-" Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: all they gather themselves together, they come to thee thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side. Then thou shalt see, and flow together, and thine heart shall fear, and be enlarged; because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee. The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall show forth the praises of the Lord. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee: the rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee: they shall come up with acceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the house of my glory. Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows?

Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the Lord thy God: and to the Holy One of Israel, because he hath glorified thee. And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee for in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour have I had mercy on thee. Therefore thy gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night, that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted. The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir-tree, the pine-tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary; and I will make the place of my feet glorious. The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee, The city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations. Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck the breast of kings: and thou shalt know that I the Lord am thy Saviour, and thy Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob. For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron: I will also make thy officers peace, and thine exactors righteousness. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise. The sun shall be no more thy light by day, neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. Thy people also shall be all righteousness: they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified. A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation: I the Lord will hasten it in his time."