4. This history teaches us the dangerous error of these men who suppose that they are acceptable to God, merely because they discharge the moral and social duties. None of these were violated by Adam, yet he fell under the sentence of condemna tion. Your religion (if I may call it a religion) might appear reasonable, if there were no God to whom you sustained important relations, and if there were no future world for which you were bound to prepare. But since there is a God and a futurity, it is the extreme of folly to rest on those hopes on which you lean. "You shall have your reward" in the esteem, the approbation and love of your fellow-men whom you benefit: but expect not the approbation of that God "who is not in all your thoughts." The young ruler in the gospel was as moral as you, yet he was not esteem. ed by the Saviour one of his disciples.

5. Finally, my brethren, let us all be led by this history to examine ourselves. Let us listen to the voice of God crying to us, "Where art thou ?" We were all born in the image of corrupted and fallen Adam, exposed to the curses of that covenant which he violated: have we been also "created in Christ Jesus to good works?" Have the lineaments of " the second Adam, the Lord from heaven," been impressed upon our soul? Have we from the depth of our misery looked with faith and love to him who "came to destroy the works of the devil?".

If we have not, in vain do we hope to enter into the Paradise of God. Satan may whisper to us, as he did to our first parents, "Ye shall not die;" but neither his assurances, nor our confident expectations of felicity, shall be able to avert from us the stroke of death, everlasting death.

SERMON XI.

CAIN AND ABEL.

GENESIS iv. 1—17.

IN the last discourse we contemplated the earth in its original glory, and afterwards despoiled of its beauty by sin: We beheld man formed in the image of God, and saw him afterwards deprived of this image and sunk in that abyss of guilt and wretchedness, from which he could be raised only by the grace of God. This grace was extended to him. Instead of that violated covenant which now spake nothing but indignation and wrath against our great progenitors, they were admitted into a new and better covenant, which was confirmed by significant rites, and which included the promise of salvation through a Redeemer. In the present discourse we shall see in the history of the two firstborn among men, an image of what we still behold upon earth, where some "through an evil heart of unbelief depart from the living God," and refuse to accept the offers of mercy made through the blood of Jesus; whilst others flee to his grace as their only refuge and sanctuary. We shall see the commencement of that combat which still continues between "the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent,"

the pious and the ungodly; the former fighting under the standard of the Redeemer and with the ar mour of righteousness; the latter endeavouring by every method, however unjustifiable, by secret arts and open violence, to injure the cause and the people of God.

To our first parents expelled from Eden, some consolation was communicated on the birth of their eldest son. Parental hopes and joys were then for the first time exercised upon the earth; and they were exercised with the greater force, because experience had not then shewn how often these hopes are blasted, and these joys withered forever. “I have gotten," exclaims the exulting mother, "a man from the Lord." She formed, no doubt, a thousand tender anticipations: She looked forward to the time when he would be adorned with every virtue ; when he would be beloved by God, and by those who should afterwards be born in the earth; when his affection and cares would cheer her declining years; when he would watch by her in her closing hours, smooth for her the pillow of sickness and of pain, and receive her last sigh. Her hopes were still more elevated if we translate her exclamation, as it may and perhaps should be translated, "I have gotten the man, even Jehovah," the promised seed, the predicted deliverer. She imagined perhaps that this, her child, would restore her to a felicity greater than that which she had forfeited by her sin; that

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he would introduce her to a more blissful Eden than that in which she had first opened her eyes upon the works of God; that he would banish every grief from her heart, and wipe every tear from her eye, and re-impress upon her the image of the Highest. To express her joys and expectations she called him Cain, a word signifying a possession or acquisition that is highly valued. (Deut. xxxii. 6. Prov. viii. 22.)

Alas! how dearly was she afterwards taught the vanity of earthly expectations! With what unutterable anguish did this son whom she prest to her bosom with so much extacy, wring her heart! How did he teach her the danger of making to ourselves an earthly idol, and suffering any thing below the skies to entwine too closely around our hearts! How did his conduct warn her to wait for the season appointed by God for the fulfilment of his promises; and to avoid hasty expectations, lest instead of a blessing, we embrace a curse.

But on this, se

She again became a mother. cond son she appears to have fixed less sanguine expectations, and he seems to have engaged a smaller share of her affections; she therefore called his name Abel, or vanity. Ah! my brethren, who of us has not found that those things which we most highly esteem, become often the sources of our deepest anguish; that our bitterest woes often

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