This is all that science tells us, or can tell us of what life is. But it amounts to nothing. It is curious, interesting, wonderful, that cells should have this power when they are living, but it does not the least explain why they have it, or how they came to have it. We have not got an explanation, but only one more fact that needs explanation. And the only possible or conceivable explanation is that God wills it so to be. It is God Who has created the cells with this faculty, and who directs them in its use. Therefore life is not the mere living substance, but it is the presence of the Divine will in that substance that makes it live.

It is the same with our spirits. We can give no explanation of how they live other than that it is the will of God that they should. It is His life that is in them. So says the writer of Genesis,' The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.' And so David, Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled : Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and Thou renewest the face of the earth.' And St. John,3 In Him was life; and the 3 i. 4.

1 ii. 7.

2 Ps. civ. 29.

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life was the light of men.' Therefore it is God dwelling in each created thing, body and spirit, that makes life, and it is His withdrawal of that presence that makes death. When He withdraws from the body it dies, when He withdraws from the soul it becomes as dead. Christ said,' 'I am the resurrection, and the life;' and, Whosoever believeth in Me shall never die.' And therefore the warning to Adam was 'If thou disobeyest the command of God, His presence will be surely lost to thy soul.'

Yet not to such a degree as to cause it to perish absolutely. For the body we know may lose consciousness of life and yet live. That happens when we sleep, or faint, or are stunned. Life by God's will remains, but only a half life, a life without sense or understanding, a death in life. So may it be also with the soul; God may permit it to exist without the consciousness of existence, that is without the knowledge that He still is present with it and is preserving it from utter extinction. Then it may be called dead since it knows not that it lives. It refuses to recognise Him, and in consequence so far as it knows He has left it, and therefore it is dead. This is the

1 John xi. 25, 26.

death that Adam and Eve incurred when they ate of the forbidden fruit.

In that moment they were sensible of the change. They were afraid, and hid themselves lest God should see them. When He called them they made pitiful excuses: the man blamed the woman, and indirectly blamed God Who had made the woman, and the woman blamed the serpent; therefore as they had rejected the companionship of God, they were driven forth from the garden He had planted for them. The death they had incurred came upon them, in their being, by their own act, outcasts from life in the presence of their Maker.

Even so is it in actual fact with us now, as it was represented to be with our first parents in that allegory. When we have disobeyed the commandments of God we are afraid of Him, we fly from His presence, we refuse to think of Him, we have lost Him, and so we are dead-dead, as St. Paul says, in trespasses and sins-dead, as Christ says, as the dead we bury. We are driven forth from the Eden of His presence; and our own consciences and the Word of the Spirit are the angel with the flaming sword that bars our return to bliss.

But in God's infinite mercy not for ever. The

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SORROW AND LABOUR

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sentence He pronounced was not for punishment, but for reformation; it was not annihilation, but pain and toil. To the woman He said, 'I will greatly multiply thy sorrow,' and to the man, ‘In sorrow and in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.' Yet in the next generation we are told that the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering,' and even to Cain He said, 'If thou doest well shalt thou not be accepted?' At a later time we hear of Enoch, who walked with God, and was not, for God took him.' Therefore we see that the sentence of banishment was not necessarily eternal, but that it is in human power to have it revoked. Only this must be on the terms originally declared, that we shall abandon our rebellion against the commandments of God, submit ourselves wholly to His will, and so return to His presence and regain the life we had lost.

By what means shall this be brought to pass ? There are a thousand efforts made by God to effect it; let us at present consider but that one which is set forth, in the words we have just heard-sorrow and labour. These are our fate in this life; it may seem that some have more and some less, but from them no human being has ever been wholly exempt. Sometimes, indeed, they even seem to fall

more heavily to the portion of the righteous than to that of the wicked. This apparent inequality troubled David, and the Psalms often speak of the contrast. But if we would only think that these burdens are not punishments meted out for sins, but means by which the real punishment may be escaped, the difficulty would to a great extent vanish. The true punishment of sin is loss of God's presence and favour and love, which may be temporary, or may be eternal. The trials of this world are not for a moment to be set in the balance against that awful doom. Still less are they to be computed if they become the means of rescue from it.

This is really what sorrow and labour do. They teach us, as nothing else would, our entire dependence on God. They teach it by making us feel our impotence, and His power. When they wear us slowly down, or when, it may be, they overwhelm us in a flood, then at last we begin to understand how vain is our persistence in our own way, how hopeless is our struggle against the Omnipotent. No teaching of words, no pointing to examples, no arguments addressed to the reason, would have this force. Every day we see these fail to keep men in the strait path of righteousness. In