gifts towards us sinners. ousness which we have mercy He saved us." We are reminded that we can do nothing, and that God does every thing. This is especially the season of grace. "Not by works of rightedone, but according to His We come We come to see and to experience God's mercies. before Him as the helpless beings, during His ministry, who were brought on beds and couches for a cure. We come to be made whole. We come as little children to be fed and taught, "as new-born babes, desiring the sincere milk of the word, that we may grow thereby." This is a time for innocence, and purity, and gentleness, and mildness, and contentment, and peace. It is a time in which the whole Church seems decked in white, in her baptismal robe, in the bright and glistering raiment which she wears upon the Holy Mount. Christ comes at other times with garments dyed in blood; but now He comes to us in all serenity. and peace, and He bids us rejoice in Him, and to love one another. This is not a time for gloom, or jealousy, or care, or indulgence, or excess, or licence;-not for "rioting and drunkenness," not for "chambering and wantonness," not for "strife and envying "," as says the Apostle; but for putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, "who knew no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth." 2 > 1 1 Pet. ii. 2. 2 Rom. xiii. 13. May each Christmas, as it comes, find us more and more like Him, who as at this time became a little child for our sake, more simple-minded, more humble, more holy, more affectionate, more resigned, more happy, more full of God. SERMON VIII. THE STATE OF INNOCENCE. ECCLES. vii. 29. "God hath made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions." THE state of our parents as God made them "upright" and "very good," in the day that they were created, presents much to excite our interest and sympathy, though we, their descendants, have passed away into a far different state. Since that time our nature has gone through many fortunes,-through much evil to greater good. That primeval state is no longer ours. It is no longer ours, though it is no longer forfeited. The penalties are removed; the flaming sword no longer bars the entrance of Eden; yet have we not returned to it. For so is it with all that happens to us, the past never returns, not in what it contained, any more than in itself. Each time has its own peculiar attri butes; it is impressed with its own characters. We recognise them in memory. When from time to time this or that passage of our lives rises in our minds, it comes to us with its own savour. We know it as if by taste and scent, and we know that that peculiar and indescribable token, be it good or bad, never can attach to any thing else. And what is true of indifferent things, is true also when right and wrong come into question, and in the great destinies of man. If we sin and forfeit what God has given, not God Himself (such seems to be His will), not God Himself, in the fulness of His mercies, ever brings back what we were. He may wash out our sin,-He may give us blessings, greater blessings than we had,-He does not give us the same. When man was driven out of Paradise, it was for good and all,—he never has returned, he never will return,-he has been born again, but not into possession of the garden of innocence he has a rest in store, and a happier one,a more glorious paradise, but still another. This being so, it would seem as if there was little to interest us now in the first condition of Adam. As lost, it would only raise remorse and distress; as found again, it is something new. And yet, though Almighty God does not bring back the past, His dispensations move forward in an equable uniform way, like circles expanding about their centre; the greater good to come being, not indeed the same as the past good, but nevertheless resembling it, as a substance resembles its type. In the past we see the future as if in miniature and outline. Indeed how can it be otherwise? seeing that all goods are but types and shadows of God Himself, the Giver, and are like each other because they are like Him. Hence the garden of Eden, though long past away, is brought again and again to our notice in the progress of God's dealings with us, not only in order to instruct us by the past, but unavoidably, if I may so speak, from the resemblance which one condition of God's favour bears to another; of Adam's first state to the Law, and the Law to the Gospel, and the Gospel to the state of rest after death, and that to heaven. For instance, the land that flowed with milk and honey, was but a visible return of the lost garden; and in a manner reversed the sentence of banishment which God has laid upon our first parents. Again, the reign of Christ too is imaged as a state in which the beasts return to the dominion of man, and are harmless. When the serpent is no longer venomous, and when "the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose," and "instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree;" when "the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands '." And so of the intermediate state; for our Lord says to the penitent thief, "To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise." And Isai. xxxv. 1; lv. 13, 12. |