The chief feature of similarity between the figure and the greater fact which it predicts is, that each stands for all his own; and this principle of God's government, introduced at the beginning, runs through to the end. The line of march was suddenly changed at the resurrection of Christ. Then the column left the narrow track of Palestine, and overflowed on the wide field of the world. Admitted into the capital of the Gentiles when Jerusalem fell, it speedily found a larger sphere and became a more numerous company. As centuries pass, it grows still greater; and now we look wistfully forward to that time when it shall reach from sea to sea when the kingdom of Christ shall absorb the kingdoms of the world-when the stream of the second Adam's children shall be co-extensive and coincident with that of the first. 2. These two representatives stood side by side from the first, and redemption began to flow from Christ as soon as sin was brought in by Adam. The promise did not tarry; it sprang at the gate of Eden, an echo of the curse. When the first man fell, and so entailed on all his posterity an inheritance of woe, Christ, within the veil unseen, began to be the head of a new and saved family. In eternity within he dwelt, and there he began to act the head of the redeemed, the moment that the first man outside became the head of a fallen You may Let a veil be hung up impervious to light and vision; it may yet be such that a magnet within will, when brought near the boundary, attract kindred objects on the outer side. observe them to quiver and move, and lift themselves mysteriously off the ground. The magnetic power from within grasps the objects that lie without, and leads them whithersoever it will. Under the Patriarchal and Jewish economies many felt the drawing of Christ's love who never with the bodily eyes beheld Christ. Caught by the deepest affections of their souls, they arose from the dust, and quivered tremulously after him, whom having not seen they had yet learned to love. Similarly in the days of his personal ministry, although he manifested himself only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, he had compassion on the surrounding heathen, and hastened forward to the day of their redemption. On one occasion he walked to the boundary of his allotted sphere, and touched the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. In that outer land a Syrophenician woman felt the drawing of his love, and followed him-the firstfruits of the Gentiles to Christ. 3. Another point of likeness lies in this, that on both sides equally it is by birth that the members are united to their head and his destiny. It is by birth that we are knit to our inheritance of sin. If we had not descended by birth from a fallen father, we would not have been in this condition of sin and misery. The thought sometimes presses for admission-What if we had never been born; or if we had descended from the holy?—but the conception is too hard for us. The mind cannot bear its weight; to entertain it long would overwhelm our faculties. Not only is the thing impossible of attainment; the conception of it exceeds our power. We have been born to this inheritance of sin and suffering; we cannot shake it off. We may weep over the discovery of our sad condition, and cry with an exceeding great and bitter cry, "Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?" but to that cry, apart from the gospel revealed, no comforting answer can ever come. The depths saith, "It is not in me :" it is not in earth, it is not in heaven, to cause that to be not, which is. By birthright our dark heritage is ours, and the link that binds us to it we cannot break. We are in it, and cannot escape. But be of good cheer, prisoner of hope: the chain that binds you by birth to the first Adam, it is true, cannot be broken; but if by a corresponding new birth you are one with the second Adam, you have no cause to weep. Greater is He that is for you than all that be against you. You cannot, indeed, escape from being a man; but if you are a new creature in Christ Jesus, the second birthright is as irrevocable as the first. If you are once born, nothing can separate you from your heritage, except to be re-born. But if you are born again, nothing can separate you from your new inheritance. Both birth-bonds are indis soluble. Though the weight of a world were fixed to you, and flung into infinite space, it would not avail to wrench you off your stem in Adam, with all the twofold death that it involves; but though all the weight of a world were fixed to a member of Christ, and flung free into infinitude, it could not separate the living member from the life-giving Head. It is a fixed principle of natural science that species do not change. In the material department of God's creation there is no way over from one nature to another once in a nature always in it, without a new creation. But that which is impossible with man is possible with God. He has undertaken in the gospel to make a new creature. As the principle operates in the first Adam's posterity, so it operates in the second Adam's posterity. "I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. viii. 38, 39). II. The difference. The chief point of contrast lies in this, that whereas Adam's seed derive from their head sin and death, Christ's seed derive from their Head righteousness and life. This birth is meanness, that is honour; this birth is darkness, that is light; this birth is death, that is life. One of the strangest facts in human history, —a fact which I suppose angels desire to look into, and yet shudder when they see--is that multitudes of the human race are proud of their first birth, and do not give themselves any concern about a second. They count the little great, and the great little; the evil good, and the good evil Woe to them that so turn upside down the very ground themselves must stand upon ! This contrast between the type and the thing which it represents, is over all. The two are in this respect not only unlike each other, but complete and absolute contraries. in part. It comes about in this way: When we derive a sinful nature from the first man, we have previously no other and better nature, that may mingle with it and mitigate its evil: we possess the evil all, and the evil only. The imagination of the thoughts of his heart are only evil, and that continually. In me, that is in my flesh-in all that I derive from man my fatherthere dwelleth no good thing. But on the other hand, the regeneration is not the birth of a being who did not previously exist. It is the getting of a new nature, indeed, and that a holy one, through union in spirit with Christ, the holy Man; but it is gotten by one who previously possessed an evil nature, and that evil nature is not wholly cast away. It is cast down from the throne, but not cast forth from the territory. It no longer reigns, but it continues to disturb. The old mingles with, and spoils the new. The two contend against each other; and there is not peace, but a sword. The actual life of a Christian, accordingly, is neither wholly carnal nor wholly spiritual-it is neither a straight line in the direction of goodness, nor a straight line in the direction of badness; it is a sort of diagonal, traced by the opposite pressure of the two forces. (See Rom. vii.). The union with Christ in the regeneration is likened to the grafting of a fruit-tree. Now the tree at the first, which springs from seed, is wholly evil-root and branch. When it is grafted it is made good; but not so completely as it was originally made evil. Its head is taken away; but its root, and lower portion of the stem, are left living in the ground. On this old stump a new and good branch is grafted. It is the new branch that grows upward and bears the fruit, but it must lean on and get its life-sap through the old root and stem of the old evil tree. though the good head engrafted always brings forth good fruit, the old evil root is continually putting forth shoots and buds and blossoms of its own, that are evil, and that waste the strength Under this, however, there are many specific which should go to the good. points of difference. 1. While Adam's seed in this world possess the moral nature of their head complete, Christ's seed possess the moral nature of their Head only in part. We get the evil in full, the good only Al A similar defect, from a similar cause, adheres to Christians as long as they are in this life. They are still the same persons that they were before. The lower parts remain: the physical frame and the intellectual faculties remain ; it is the higher or spiritual nature that has been radically changed. The old spirit has been taken away, and a new spirit inserted. The seed of Christ in the higher part, has been inserted in the seed of Adam in the lower part; and, alas! the fruit that grows even on a Christian tastes of the old corrupt root on which it still stands and grows. In some way, we know not how, the remnants of the old will be filtered out in the dissolution of death; and nothing shall enter heaven that would defile its golden streets, or be a jar in its new song. 2. The two bands are not equally numerous. Adam's company includes absolutely the whole of the human race; Christ's company is contained within it, and is therefore necessarily smaller, as the whole is greater than a part. 1 Cor. xv.: "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive." These words do not intimate that the two companies are co-extensive and coincident: no man with his eyes open can read the words in their connection, and think that this is their meaning. The meaning is, In Adam, Adam's all die; in Christ, Christ's all live. It tells that all who are in Adam die, and all who are in Christ live; but it does not tell how many either company contains. We know certainly from other scriptures that Adam's company consists of all the born, and Christ's of all the born-again. To cleave to the letter here, and understand it to announce that all the human race are actually saved in Christ, contradicts the whole spirit of the Scriptures, and makes both their exhortations and their warnings of none effect. God's creatures of the old and new creation seem to envelop each other, after the manner of a sphere within a sphere, the most precious being embedded in the heart. Humanity, comparatively small in bulk, is surrounded by the mightier mass of the inferior creatures, the beasts that perish. Men, immortal, made in God's image, lie in the heart like the kernel, and all inferior organized beings encompass it like a huge husk. The husk I will in due time rend and rot and return to the dust. But within the mass of humanity that remains is an inner seed, encased around by a harder, rougher shell. In the heart of humanity | lie the regenerate-the true, vital seed of the kingdom; and the crust that surrounds them, compact and highly organized though it be, will crumble and be cast away. The Bridegroom and they that were ready went in to the marriage; and the rest were shut out. When the Earth and all that it contained has passed away, Christ and Christians will remain, inheritors together and alone of the eternal life. 3. Another point of difference. Although we inherit this corruption from the first man, we personally have no immediate relation to him. We inherit directly from our own immediate forefathers. With Adam personally we have no personal relation, in the matter of a descending moral taint. Although it came from the first man originally, we received it from the last that stood before us in the line. If we could suppose our first progenitor to be from this time forth annihilated, we should remain in the same state, as to inherited corruption. We derived it not immediately from him, but from our nearest father. It is not thus in the relation between Christ and Christians. It is from him that their life flows as its fountain: but further, each generation of believing men, down to the end of the world, continue to draw their spiritual life and justifying righteousness directly and immediately from the person of Emmanuel. It is not that Christ gave forth a germ of new spiritual life, once for all, and that each new generation of Christians derive their better life from those that went immediately before them. No; the new creature does not propagate its kind. A Christian now gets his life as directly from Christ as those who lay in his bosom or sat at his feet. Death once imparted at the sources of humanity, runs down its stream; but life imparted to one man by the God-man Christ, needs to be equally imparted to every saved sinner, by personal relation with the Saviour. If the first Adam were annihilated, the born of the human race would still be born in sin; but if Christ were no more Christ, there could be no more for any man a new, a holy life. The difference is somewhat like that which may be found in nature between a tree propagating its kind by seed on the one hand, and a tree sustaining its branches on the other. When once the seed is ripened and cast, the progenitor tree may be burned; but from the seed trees of the same kind will spring. But even when the branch has been put forth by the tree, the branch is every year, and all the year, directly dependent on the tree. If the tree should die, all the branches would die too. The corruption we inherit from Adam, as the seed has come from the tree; the new life we can only have in Christ, as the branch lives in the vine. Adam might say, I was the tree, and ye grew from the seed which I shed; but Christ says, I am the vine, ye are the branches. And as Christians hold directly of Christ, Christ holds individually by Christians. The Vine bleeds and languishes when the branches are torn away. "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" The Head endures pain when the members are injured. How safe is that life which is hid with Christ in God! 4. Yet another point of difference. The gain by the second Adam is greater than the loss by the first. The Scripture intimates, indeed, that there is a likeness,—that Adam is a figure of Christ. But having made the intimation of the similarity, it proceeds immediately to intimate that there is also a dissimilarity: "But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many." (v. 15.) The gain in Christ is not merely the loss that we sustained made up. He pays our debt, and makes us rich besides. He sets free the slave, and makes him a son. "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." A blessed word this "much more"! There is a mystery here. We may stand on the brink of this great deep, and reverently gaze into its far-receding, limitless light; but this is a thing which we cannot fully comprehend; and attempts to be wise in it above what is written may do us serious harm. In Christ we are far better than we would have been as unfallen children of Adam. Had we entered the society of heaven as men that had kept their first estate, we should have been accepted as perfect men; but when a ransomed sinner is admitted to the joy of the Lord and the company of angels, he enters as one with Him who sits upon the throne. With man unfallen, there would, as far as we can see, have been no incarnation of the Eternal Son. God in Christ would not have been so near to us: we would not have been so near to him. The unfallen would have been good servants; but the ransomed, by brotherhood of nature with the Divine Redeemer, have attained the place of beloved children. Great was the joy set before our Redeemer when he undertook our cause: great is the joy he is reaping now when his work is finished. He has gotten a multitude, like the stars of heaven, nearer to himself, and higher than the angels. God compels evil to become the instrument of good on a wider sphere than this world. When a portion of the angels fell, that fall, by omniscient forethought and infinite love, was so directed that it set agoing a process which never ceased until it had raised from the dust a countless family of God's children to a higher place than angels ever held. This hope might be the source of unmeasured joy to believers. This union to the Lord that bought us, and this destined elevation to sit with him upon his throne, should surely cheer us in the house of our pilgrimage. This promised dawn should give us songs in the night. But he who hath this hope in HIM should purify himself even as He is pure. No unfair or foul thing should lodge in the bosom of the man who is already in a flutter of expectation,-as not knowing what moment he may be called into the presence of the Great King. FAMILY PRAYERS. AKE first the statement that unless our children are saved in early life they probably never will be. They who go over the twentieth year without Christ are apt to go all the way without him. Grace, like flower seed, needs to be sown in spring. The first fifteen years of life, and often the first six, decide the eternal destiny. The first thing to do with a lamb is to put it in the arms of the great Shepherd. Of course, we must observe natural laws. Give a child excessive meat diet,, and it will grow up sensual, and catechism three times a day, and sixty grains in each dose, won't prevent it. Talk much in your child's presence about the fashions, and it will be fond of dress, notwithstanding all your lectures on humility. Fill your house with gossip, and your children will tattle. Culture them as much as you will, but give them plenty of money to spend, and they will go to destruction. But while we are to use common sense in every direction respecting a child, the first thing is to strive for its conversion; and there is nothing more potent than family prayers. No child ever gets over having heard parents pray for him. I had many sound thrashings when I was a boy (not as many as I ought to have had, for I was the last child, and my parents let me off), but the most memorable scene in my childhood was father and mother at morning and evening prayers. I cannot for- | get it, for I used often to be squirming around on the floor, and looking at them while they were praying. Your son may go to the ends of the earth, and run through the whole catalogue of transgression, but he will remember the family altar, and it will be a check, and a call, and perhaps his redemption. Family prayers are often of no use. Perhaps they are too hurried. We have so much before us of the day's work, that we hustle the children together. We get half through the chapter before the family are seated. We read as if we were reading for a wager. We drop on our knees, and are in the second or third sentence before they all get down. It is an express train, with amen for the first depôt. We rush for the hat and overcoat, and are on the way to the store, leaving the impression that family prayers are a necessary nuisance; and we had better not have had any gathering of the family at all. Better have given them a kiss all around; it would have taken less time, and would have been more acceptable to God and them. Family prayers often fail in adaptedness. Do not read for the morning lesson a genealogical chapter, or about Samson setting the foxes' tails on fire, or the prophecy about the horses, black and red, and speckled, unless you explain why they were speckled. To read these portions without explanation to the children, is not rightly to divide the Word. Rather give the story of Jesus, and the children climbing into his arms, or the lad with the loaves and fishes, or the Sea of Galilee dropping to sleep under Christ's lullaby. Stop and ask questions. Make | the exercise so interesting that little Johnny will stop playing with his shoe-strings, and Jenny will quit rubbing the cat's fur the wrong way. Let the prayer be pointed and made up of small words, and no wise information to the Lord about things he knows without your telling him. Let the children feel they are prayed for. Have a hymn, if any of you can sing. Let the season be spirited, appropriate, and gladly solemn. Family prayer also fails when the whole day is not in harmony with it. A family prayer, to be worth anything, ought to be twenty-four hours long. It ought to give the pitch to all the day's work and behaviour. The day when we get thoroughly mad upsets the morning devotion. The life must be in the same key with the devotion. Family prayer is infinitely important. If you are a parent, and are not a professor of religion, and do not feel able to compose a prayer, get some one of the many books that have been written, put it down before you, and read prayers for the household. God has said that he will "pour out his fury upon the families that call not upon his name." Prayer for our children will be answered. My grandmother was a praying woman. My father's name was David. One day he and other members of the family started for a gay party. Grandmother said: “Go, David, and enjoy yourself; but all the time you and your brothers and sisters are there, I will be praying for you." They went, but did not have a very good time, knowing that their mother was praying for them. The next morning, grandmother heard loud weeping in the room below. She went down and found her daughter crying violently. What was the matter? She was in anxiety about her soul-an anxiety that found no relief short of the Cross. Word came that David was at the barn in great agony. Grandmother went and found him on the barn-floor, praying for the life of his soul. The news spread to the neighbouring houses, and other parents became anxious about their children, and the influence spread to the village of Somerville, and there was a great turning unto God, and over two hundred souls in one day stood up in the village church to profess faith in Christ! And it all started from my grandmother's prayer for her sons and daughters. May God turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest he come and smite the earth with a curse.-T. De Witt Talmage. D PILLOW-PRAYERS. BY S. S. H. E who knows nothing of pillow-prayers is ignorant of one of the sweetest modes of prayer practicable to man on earth. In heaven we may have no need of pillows, as it is said we are to have none for the sun. Nor shall we there have any need of the night in which to rest us; but here there is a night, and we need it. The day with its engrossments being gone, it is a most favourable time for the gathering in of our thoughts upon ourselves, our sins, our wants, fears, and hopes, |