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matter of just curiosity, infinitely more interesting must be our future destination; and this also is only to be learned from the sequel of the sacred volume. Our religion, which is coeval with the world itself, shall only be consummated with the world's destruction. It began with the creation of man, and will be completed by his resurrection and final judgment; when, as we are informed, Christ shall come and gather his saints from the four winds. And think not that this religion has ever changed, even from the time of our first offending parents: the condition of man, indeed, hath undergone various revolutions, but Christ expected or given hath formed the immoveable basis of our faith.

Assuredly nothing can be conceived more worthy of God than his having first prepared and chosen for himself out of a guilty world a people who should be a palpable example of his eternal Providence, a people

Herodotus is assigned to the 1st year of the LXXIVth Olympiad, corresponding with the year 484 before Christ *.

*L'Art de vérifier les dates.

whose good or bad fortune should depend on their piety, and whose temporal state should bear testimony to the wisdom and justice of Him who governed them: such a people were the Jews. But after God has established by so many sensible proofs the immutable truth, that he alone conducts as he pleases all the events of the present life, it was time to raise man to higher thoughts, and to send down his Son upon earth, to whom it was reserved to discover to a new people, gathered together from all the nations of the world, the secrets of the future state.

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The Mosaic account declares, and reason might establish the same truth, that "God saw every thing that he had made, and, "behold, it was very good." But is such the present state of man? You have only to cast your eyes around for an answer to the question. It is clear, therefore, that some tremendous mischief has been introduced, and at a period so remote that no record exists of the fact, but one most miraculously preserved. It is clear also that the evil was derivative, descending interminably

from father to son. It would be incumbent on those who deny their assent to the Scripture narrative, adapted to these circumstances, to present another in its place. But none such exists. The Scripture also, which points out the evil and its source, prescribes the remedy. Let us seize this, my brethren, and grace shall more than repair the ravages which disobedience communicated to our nature. That living soul which was first introduced into the corporeal frame of man by the breath of his Creator shall return to him who gave it; not, indeed, as some philosophers have idly dreamed, to be reunited to God as a portion of his substance, but to be judged by him; to be judged by him for the things done in the body; for the conduct observed during a short period of trial here upon earth.

To innocence the best of us cannot pretend: but O may every stain be washed out by the tears of penitence and the blood of the Lamb; and may we be wholly sanctified by the blessed and eternal Spirit of God! The body, then, also, on the original

formation of which such pains appear to have been bestowed by its all-knowing artist, will be raised again to join its associate, and to reap with it the promises which God hath made to them who love him, in regions into which sin and sorrow cannot enter.

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