not to pronounce dogmatically, because there are difficulties surrounding all subjects, more or less. Well, there is difficulty here; but you have heard me try to explain it; that in Paradise, when all the beasts of the field and the birds of the air were collected together for Adam, our forefather, our representative, and our head, to give them names, I do not believe that the lion and the tiger were then bloodthirsty; I do not believe that there was such a thing as death in the brute creation until man rose up against God, and the brutes against him, and against each other. It was man's primal revolt from God that shook the confidence, and paralyzed the harmony, and peace, and goodwill of all the dumb creation. Now the zoologist meets that in a moment by saying, Do you mean to say that the lion was then a graminivorous animal? The mere naturalist argues that the lion and the tiger must always have fed upon flesh. Everybody knows that the lion's teeth are canine; everyone knows that the viscera of a graminivorous animal are six times his length; the viscera of a carnivorous animal only three times his length; and that the very physical organization of the tiger and the ox indicate what they are to feed upon. All that is quite true; but I have heard a remark made by those that have thought upon the subject, which I think solves the difficulty, that God made these animals with an anticipatory reference to the fall; it was no untoward accident that surprised him; it was no unforeseen event; it was provided for in Christ, who was set up from before the foundation of the world; and it seems very probable that God made the animals in Paradise with a reference

to the long six thousand years they would have to live; and that their habits were foreseen, and taken into that great scheme over which God was to reign for ever and ever. But this we are perfectly sure of, that whatever explanation be given, there was no death in Paradise till man sinned. It is no answer to this to tell me what the geologist can tell me, that death took place in pre-Adamite ages; that we quite admit. The evidence is irresistible. If you go to the British Museum you will see the fossil remains of animals devouring each other; and these fossil remains are many of them ten, twenty, thirty, a hundred thousand years old. Well, then, you say, here was death before Adam. I admit it; there was death before Adam. But I cannot explain why there was death before Adam in this earth in a former condition; but as I have constantly said, and as the Bible says, death is the result of sin. I can show you that there was sin in the world before Adam. You can show me from science that there was death in the pre-Adamite ages: well, I cannot show you the very sin that brought in that death, but I can show you that there was sin; for the angels that kept not their first estate sinned, it may have been ten hundred thousand years ago; we know not when it was. And I have often thought, and I think it is not an unlikely thing, that the fallen angels were really inhabitants of this world in its pre-Adamite condition. The reason why I think so is this: nothing can explain Satan's anxiety to get Adam and Eve out of Paradise, and to get them plunged into misery, and sin, and sorrow, and if possible hell, except some personal stake that he felt

to be involved. Now when I read the story of the fall, it has often struck me that Satan must have felt thus:-That happy couple that God has wedded, and placed in that beautiful spot that he has made so lovely for himself, where once there was desert, was once my rest, was once my home; I was sent from thence I am determined that as I have been thrust out, they shall not continue in it. You know what spite is, you know what hate is; you have heard of a man who is thrust out from a house being determined that the person who has thrust him out shall not have a quiet day nor a peaceful night in it. Satan looks very much like an ill-natured man, thrust out of a house, the rent of which he could not or would not pay, and very anxious to dislodge his successor, just because he is his successor, and for no other reason. Read the story of the fall in Genesis, and see if there is not a high probability that Satan felt he was cast out of a lovely spot, and that he was determined that, as he could not have it, nobody else should enjoy what he had forfeited. Well then, . if that was the case, we can show sin before Adam; who knows but that this earth may have had death introduced into the contemporaneous dynasties with the angels? Of course I am speaking so far merely from probability; where revelation is silent we can say little; but where science objects, we can show that its objections are not conclusive; that there are high probabilities, I have no doubt a certainty, though we cannot see it all, that the Word of God speaks truth, that there is no death except by sin, and that wherever there is death or has been death

in any dynasty in the past, that death is the shadow

that follows sin. These animals were made to live in peace and harmony in Paradise, but man sinned, and they rose up against him and against each other. But in the resurrection, in what he calls the new birth of creation, there shall be no lion, not at least in the sense of a ravenous beast. We are told in the 65th of Isaiah what shall be their condition: "The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock; and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord."

And then he says in the last verse, "The ransomed of the Lord shall return;" now in that tenth verse the very words are music: "the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow;" the sorrow that breaks the heart, the sorrow that is deepest, the sorrow that can find no tears; sorrow over the dead that pass into the shadow of the tomb, sorrow over wrecks of all we love; sorrow at griefs, and disappointments, and pains, and sin, and shame, and all the progeny of sin; 66 sorrow and sighing," like the mists of a summer morning, "shall flee away," or be dissolved into bright sunshine for ever and ever.

273

THE REFORMER HEZEKIAH.

ISAIAH XXXVI.

AFTER reading, in the Second Book of Kings, a succession of disastrous reigns by men who had the name, without the dignity or a sense of the duty of princes in the land, we come to the reign of one king, illustrious for all that was faithful and noble, patriotic and good-Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, a bad man, but the son of Abi, a truly good mother; and we read, as his character, "he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David his father did." Here is laid down the great principle of human conduct; not that which gains the most extensive popular éclat, not that which seems sustained by the wisest or the most brilliant expediency; but that which may be condemned and deplored by the mere men of expediency in the world, but which is right in the sight of God; and we may lay it down as a law invariable in its action, what is right in the sight of God is most expedient in the experience and the history of mankind; what seems expediency is not always so, and is not always necessarily right. What is right is always in the long run expedient.

1

The first thing he did was to remove the high places, and break the images, and cut down the groves, and break in pieces the brazen serpent. He