God has formed out of the ground, and into whose nostrils He has breathed the breath of life, making him a living soul. Up to this point creation had given proof of the power, wisdom, and goodness of its glorious Author: man bears His image and likeness. Day and night, sun, moon, and stars, grass and herb and fruit-tree, the inbabitants of the waters, the fowls of the air, and every beast of the earth after its kind-these all in their measure tell what God is, as the furniture of a house and the household order tell something of the inhabitant; they declare His eternal power and Godhead; they are preludings of a fuller revelation ; but they do not represent Him; they are not His image and likeness. He is a Spirit, and could not disclose the fulness of His spiritual attributes in the architecture and glory of the material universe, or the lower forms of animal life, wonderful and varied as these are. Therefore He made man, stamping on him “a copy of His own archetypal loveliness ;” and man, endowed with reason, forethought, emotion, conscience, will, shows fortb what God is, as a child is the image and likeness of his father. Partaking such a nature he stands in a twofold relationship. On the one hand, he is God's subject, and God's will is the law of his being. On the other hand, he is creation's lord. The ground required tillage ; the seed required sowing; the herb and tree required culture, the beast of the earth after its kind required a master's guidance and rule; and to man, as God's vicegerent, the ruler's place was given : “ Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands ; Thou hast put all things under bis feet; all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas."

The first chapter speaks simply of man, created male and female ; the second names them man and woman, and tells how Adam was the first made, and how the woman, Eve, was taken from his side and appointed to be an help meet for him.

Placed in Paradise, everything lay within man's reach that was necessary to his happiness, to the perfection of his nature, and to the falfilment of his great destiny. There was sustenance for his natural life in the fruits with which the trees were laden ; in dressing and keeping the garden, maintaining its beauty and order, and bringing out its hidden riches, there was provision for healthful labour ; there was all the delightsomeness of pure human affection; there was incentive to the acquisiton of knowledge in the wonders of nature that surrounded him; there was scope for moral training in obedience to the Divine will, as it might be unfolded to him ; and, crowning all, thera was happy intercourse with God. We have no warrant, indeed, for attributing to the first man angelic endowments and virtues-such a picture is purely fanciful; but the inevitable impression produced by the sacred narrative is that nothing was wanting to his well-being and the development of his nature; a path of illimitable progression lay open to him, with no hint that he must sin in order to assert his free

dom and enter upon his true inheritance. It would almost seom as if in Paradise he possessed some "sense,” now lost, whereby ho stood in living communion with the spiritual world; or as if some window, since curtained or built up, stood open between him and the invisible - like that through which the prophet's servant saw the mountain full of chariots of fire and horses of fire round about.

The tepure of this happy estate man held by the obedience of faith. No moral code like the ten commandments was laid down for him ; he was to stand by simple fealty to God. And this fealty must be willing. Nothing of the nature of fate or destiny compelled him; no resistless " law," like that which keeps the stars in their courses ; he was endowed with the awful capacity of saying Yes or No to his Creator, and placed in freedom. Trustful dependence on God, conjoined with gratitude, issuing in free-hearted and loving obedience, was the very idea of his life.

As a test of this obedience, the tree of knowledge of good and evil was planted in the garden, within sight and reach, but fenced off by a "command," and man was forbidden to taste its fruit under penalty of death. “ In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt gurely die.” It was not the quality of the fruit that was fatal, but the disobedience to God. Not mere forfeiture of privilege is threatened---not mere suffering-not mere expulsion from the garden--but death. “ Dying thou shalt die”-an awful word, denoting more than that the breath should leave the body, yet not interpreted to Adam in its full scope of significance-only enough to create dread. As we find in reading the narrative, sin entered and death followed ; nay, the sinning was the dying, and the Divine treatment of man from this point assumes his death, and proposes to raise him from it. The full working out of death was not, indeed, manifest all at once ; but at once man took the place of death, and that whole primeval dispensation was brought to a sudden end. It was not that, immediately on the Fall, God exercised His royal prerogrative of mercy, and proceeded to re-knit the broken thread; but a new dispensation, established on different principles-on principles of grace-was initiated, under which a grander and diviner life than the Edenic was opened up to man, and God is manifested in redemption-glory. Had it not been so, the human family would have become extinct, as other races have, and the story of Adam and Eve would have been simply an awful episode in the history of the universe, for the warning of other worlds and other orders of being.

“ Thou shalt not eat; for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Is this, then, an appeal to man's self-love and dread of suffering ? Is he to be held fast in his allegiance by the operation of fear? Is he to obey, like a slave, under terror of a curse ? Does God begin His training of His creatures by issuing a threat ? Nay! here is no threat, but gracious forewarning adapted to a will-endowed and rosponsible moral agent. Without the "command" there had

been no summons to obedience-indeed, no adequate expression of the idea of obedience; without the exhibition of the penalty, man might have answered, " Why was I not warned?” but the loving Father fences entrance upon the road to death with a double fence. It should have been enough to say, “ Thou shalt not;” but He also shows what must inevitably follow if man shall fall off from God, and take the ordering of his life into his own hands; and this not merely that man in sinning may have no excuse, but that there may be a moral barrier in the way to death.

SIX SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE.

A STORY FOR NEW YEAR'S DAY. THE wind whistled round the off his overcoat, and herself hung it street corners. It had a loud, fierce on its peg on the rack, while out tone, and there was a shiver of came Mary, Kate, and Charley, each winter in its touch, that made the with a glad voice of welcome, and people hurry faster homeward, a kiss for papa. Somebody was while the gentlemen buttoned their practising in the parlour, and Mr. warm overcoats up to their chins, Brand going in smiled and nodded and the ladies drew their fur tippets to his young niece Annie, who was closely and hid their gloved hands at school, and whose every moment in the warm recesses of their muffs. was occupied. Gaily dressed little children skipped The supper-bell rang and they all along the hard sidewalks, and their went down to a table, which was merry voices blended pleasantly spread with hot muffins, nicely with the murmur of the streets. broiled steak, and the most delicate Night was drawing on apace, and apple fritters frosted over with the in many warm cosy houses the whitest of powdered sugar. Every curtains were drawn and the gas one sat down in the happiest mood, was lit, while smiling faces waited and supper was progressing pleato greet the home-coming of the santly, when the voice of one of the father.

servants was heard shrill and sharp, Mr. Brand was on his way home, in altercation with some one at the with a roll of something in one hand, basement door. and a great fat turkey in the other. 1 "Get out of this, ye beggar ! It was New Year's Eve, and Mr. Sure and Mrs. Brand has told you Brand was one of those who pro- once to-day that she could not see vided well for his household. He you. It's engaged she is, and I'll quickened in pace as he drew nearer not be after tellin' her to come from home, and finally ran up the brown her supper-table to see the likes of stone steps, and turned the latch- you ! " key hastily, as he came to a large “I'm not a beggar! God help house at the street corner. The me, and all that are poor like me, parlour door opened as he entered, and can't get their just dues from and a fair woman, with eyes as blue the rich! I'm not a beggar! If as the sky, and soft golden hair, Mrs. Brand is at her supper, I'll shading a lovely face, came out to wait till she gets through. My meet him. She helped him to take poor children have had neither dinner nor supper to-day, and very he sank to rest in his soft bed, of little breakfast; I want to see the that other mother, whose children, lady!”

with gaunt faces, and great sunken The thin, quivering tone, resolute eyes, full of dumb pain, were clutchin its entreaty, reached the dining- ing at her skirts for bread, which room, and a sudden silence fell on she could not give because the the group at the table. Mrs. Brand's ladies she worked for would not fair face flushed crimson, and a look pay her ? of trouble came on the calm brow Mrs. Brand took out her little cf her husband.

portemonnaie and counted out the “Go and see what the woman money. means, Kitty," he said kindly. “I'm sorry, very sorry, Mrs. Kelly, “If she has anything due to her, let that I kept you waiting for this ! it be paid at once. I thought you I did not know how much you always attended to these things needed it.” yourself.”

“The poor always need their “ I have been too busy lately on earnings,” said Mrs. Kelly, turning those committees," said the lady as to go, when Mr. Brand's voice she left the room, and presently stopped her midway. brought in to the fire and the light "Mrs. Kelly! Are you a widow?" a woman, whom she introduced as The pale face darkened a little and · Mrs. Kelly, and who would not sit she said : down, but said, in the same quiver- ' “Indeed, sir, I don't know. My ing voice:

| husband was as good a man, sir, as "I ouly want my own, lady! ever lived, and while he was at Twenty-pence for the sheet Ihome we wanted for nothing. He hemmed, three and sixpence for the is in the army, and the last I heard aprons, one and fourpence for Miss from him was before the battle of Annie's handkerchiefs. It's nothing -to you, ma'am, but my children are "You have children ?" starving.”

- Three girls and a boy," said Such a despairing tone as there Mrs. Kelly. was in the woman's voice'; such a "And you live ?" wan, worn look on her thin, pinched "At No. 21, --- Street, at the face; such a sad, brooding, tearless back.” look in her hollow eyes; such a She was gone, and the family tremulous working in the thin, poor went back to supper ; but the charm hands that wrought nervously with was broken. Presently the children her old shawl, as she stood there at went away, and the husband and the dining-room door! Oh, Mrs. wife were left alone. Brand! when you sent her word “Kitty,' said Mr. Brand, "the this morning that you were too busy woman is right! You were brought to see her, when you sent her word up in elegance and affluence all this afternoon that you had no your life, and you do not know how change but would pay her to the poor often suffer ; but I remorrow, when you wondered why member going hungry to bed many she made such a fuss about so small a night in my childhood, because a sum, did you think she looked my mother could not collect from like this? Did you think how much her rich debtors the scant earnings that six shillings and sixpence might that she needed to buy bread for be to her—though it was so little in us." your eyes? Did you think, bending "I do not often make any one lovingly over your cherub boy, as I wait, Henry,” said Mrs. Brand,

“ but you don't know how busy I swarming passages to the fourth have been lately. I'm on the com- floor, and the front room. mittee for preparing the dinner at “Come in!” said Mrs. Kelly's the Hospital to-morrow, and also voice in reply to their knock, and in on that for procuring subscriptions they went. to the Orphans' Relief Fund, and. On the ghost of a bed in the my domestic cares beside ; and then corner lay the ghost apparently of you know what these people are— a child, gnawing hungrily at a crust. sometimes they deceive us.”

Three years old, but with his little “Kitty," said Mr. Brand,“ in this face wrinkled, where it should have woman's case there is no imposture; been dimpled, thin and poor, and but that I may be sure of it, I'm drawn by hunger out of all childish going there to-night to see for my-roundness and beauty. Two older self. I cannot tell you how grieved girls were sitting on the floor close I am that any one should have to a fire, that seemed to be just been defrauded, even for a moment, made, and that was most reluctant of money lawfully theirs by my to burn; and the eldest child, a girl wife, or any member of my house- of ten years perhaps, knitting by hold."

the firelight, faint as it was. Mrs. " Defrauded, Henry!” said Mrs. Kelly had told the truth ; Mrs. Brand Brand.

needed not her husband's kindly “Defrauded! I mean the word, glance to convince her that there Kate, though it sounds harsh to you. was want here. Want even of six It is as literally a fraudulent act to shillings and sixpence! keep a poor woman waiting past Everything was clean, though her promised hour, for a few pence, never did cleanliness mantle such as it would be for me, in my busi- bitter poverty. Mr. Brand spoke ness relations, to disregard my obli- i first, for the poor woman had no gations, and allow my paper to be seat to offer him, and was too surdishonoured.”

prised to speak. 6 Well!” said Mrs. Brand, “I “Mrs. Kelly, you are a soldier's know you are right, though I never wife, and whether he be living or thought of it in that way before. But dead, I and my wife owe him a if you will go so will I.”

| debt, as we do to every man who is Five minutes after, Mr. and Mrs. holding a musket in the front to-day. Brand were on their way to To-morrow your little ones shall Street. They found the number have a New Year's dinner, and upon without difficulty, and penetrating the day after to-morrow, if you will a dark alley, came to the rear house. consent, you shall move to more The door was opened by a dirty old comfortable apartments, in one of woman, half dressed, with a tattered my houses. Mrs. Brand will get cap, ever elf locks of nasty grey you plenty of work, and will see hair.

| that you are paid.” “ Mrs. Kelly ! sure you'll find her. There were happy hearts in that on the fourth floor, front room. humble room that night, and hap: Mind your feet, Missis—the stairs pier ones in the mansion on the is broken in some places, and so is avenue. For the latter had taken the railing; stop a bit, you can take a look into the depths all round my candle, the poor critter has them, but so oft unseen, and had none belike !!

learned anew the meaning of the Step by step, up the crazy stairs ! Master's words, “ The poor ye have up, up, over the damp, dirty vermin.always with you."