exposing juncture; they have lived and died strangers to him, who lived and died for them; they have formed no friendship with him here; He now declares, I never knew you: depart from me, all ye who work iniquity. Revengeful of affronts, easily provoked, and prone to give offence, they now will feel the woe of those by whom offences come. Better, far better, had it been for them, if mill-stones had been slung round their obdurate necks, and they cast headlong in the lowest depth of the sea, than that they ever should have given just offence to any gentle innocents, who trusted in their Lord. But their wisdom descended not from heaven: their pleasure and pursuits, polluted all by carnal sensuality, their hearts by strife and bitter envyings, are earthly, sensual, devilish; (James iii. 15;) and as their tree has fallen it will for ever lie. He that is unjust will still remain unjust; he that is impure will still remain impure. (Rev. xxii. 11.) They who have long disturbed the peace of men on earth, will never be allowed to broach disputes above, but now henceforth for ever are consigned to dwell amidst endless discord and perpetual feuds, with those who once disturbed angelic peace in heaven. In these sad regions of eternal anarchy, they will meet their match, their tempter and accuser. Vain will be their appeal unto the awful crash of jarring elements, to screen. them from their Judge. They have long rejected here the tenders of his love, and He who alone could save them from impending fate, himself VOL. 1. I pronounces that dread sentence which even still breathes out his boundless love to man. As ye have done no act of kindness towards my muchloved brethren, ye have done it not to me; you have acted long in consort with my infernal foe; depart from me, ye cursed, into that everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his accursed adherents. That natural evil is the offspring of moral evil, is an axiom which the revolt in heaven evidently propounds. We find no mention of the former, either in the invisible or visible creation, previous to the commitment of the latter. The wages which sin incurred on our earth, was death; but the pangs annexed to dissolution, and all other sufferings imposed on mankind, do only serve, we must again repeat, to constitute our trials. But to illustrate this point more clearly, and vindicate God's faithfulness to man, let us take a short, but more attentive survey than is usually done, of the conflict with which our great progenitor was destined to cope, while in an innocent, perfect state, and evil on our earth, as then, remained unknown. That he was both innocent and perfect in his primary estate, we have already found reason and Scripture uniting to prove. "And the Mosaic account of the formation of man, teaches us to entertain the most exalted sentiments of his distinguishing excellencies, by informing us that he was made in the image and likeness of God. For what more can be said of a creature, than that he is made after the similitude of his Creator? He was upright; the original word signifies, straight, direct; no error in his understanding, no obliquity in his will.” * "God-like, erect, with native honour clad, On his secondary endowments, Dr. South finely observes, "That all those arts and inventions which vulgar minds gaze at, the ingenious pursue, and all admire, are but the relics of an intellect defaced by sin and time; and certainly that must needs have been very glorious, the decays of which are so admirable."+"Thus formed * Horne. This wise and just observation does, we conceive, propound such matter for inquiry as would occupy a volume, by suggesting the following considerations. How highly must the pristine inhabitants of our terrestrial globe have been benefited by the surpassing excellence of that original intellect, of which it pleased the Creator so immediately to adjudge the most unequivocal proof! For the Lord God brought every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air unto Adam, to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowls of the air, and to every beast of the field. What a perfect intuitive knowledge must he then have possessed of their dif ferent natures, uses, and appropriate destination! Is it probable that he who had been previously invested with dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over all the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth, should have had his occupations and researches confined for above nine hundred years solely to one spot, and the satisfaction and advantages resulting from explor and favoured, he was introduced upon our globe, which had been previously commanded into ex ing distant realms and traversing the ocean be all reserved for his enfeebled offspring? Would not the benediction pronounced by God himself, which bade these creatures be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, soon impose the necessity of their dispersion? And must not Adam have been well acquainted with what situation, soil, temperature, and atmosphere was best adapted for them? Did not a constitution, designed for immortality, occasion that longevity and freedom from disease, both in our great progenitor and his descendants, which produced a speedy population to multiply on earth, and must also have rendered the migration of the human kind equally indispensable?—a circumstance which the brief relation proves had certainly taken place; for at a period of one thousand six hundred and sixty-six years, subsequent to man's original formation, we read, that God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth, and the earth was filled with violence! But it will be said that the effects of this dispersion were by the deluge completely swept away. But the same commandment was immediately renewed; for God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth of the ark, thou and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee; bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee of all flesh, both of fowl and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth, that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth. Could Noah, who survived the flood himself three hundred and fifty years, and his three sons, who probably long outlived their father, have been ignorant of the proper means whereby to distribute them, when this distribution again became essential?-could they be uninformed of the art of navigation, who had themselves for above two hundred days inhabited a machine that went upon the face of the waters-upon those mighty waters which so exceedingly increased and prevailed on the earth as to cover all its highest mountains, and which bore up the ark, and lifted it up above the earth ?-could they who built the ark have been unacquainted with the method of form istence, decorated and illuminated for his reception, from thence to behold the splendid and ing such machines as would, when need required, transport them over the seas ?-and must not they, again, have been possessed with the most perfect knowledge of every living creature, who had had the charge of them so long within the ark? Must not they have known what zone, what tropic, what continent, what island, was best adapted for them? And may we not infer, that wheresoever they were placed by them, that there they still remain? Is not the history very explicit as to how the islands of the Gentiles were peopled? And does not this circumstance probably account for that change of colour which has been effected on a considerable portion of the human raceon that portion whose lot was cast to dwell in Afric's burning region? For a continued and unvaried residence for near four thousand years (or indeed a much shorter period) under the immediate influence of the vertical and meridian rays of a tropical sun, it is presumed, would so totally change in the course of its descent down through succeeding generations the original complexion, as to produce the effect demonstrated by the appearance of the pristine inhabitants of hot countries-for men of colour are never found in cold ones-and in proportion to the heat unto which the natives are exposed, the skin is tarnished, till it is ultimately burnished into a shining black. We say the natives, for more modern settlers in these torrid zones— though a long residence in them produces a very visible alteration in their complexions, and those of their descendants-are still preserved, by their habits and precautions, from that exposure to which the wild and primary inhabitants have been so long enured; nor has the length of the residence of any of these been perhaps of sufficient duration to bring about in their posterity the alteration effected on the Negroes of both the East and the West Indies, whose ancestors have inhabited these countries for a series of past ages. And the supposition as to the means by which the change in question has been effected on so many of our species is, we think, fully confirmed by Scripture, "I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. Look not upon me, |