strayed long before. How cruel would it be for a mariner, who finds his brother driven on the ocean far from land, his compass lost, and without a chart to guide him through the trackless deep, to do no more than tell him he has missed his course; and, having told the unpleasant tidings, to bear away and leave him in his wretchedness and wandering. But Scripture not only exposes, it also corrects our errors; it finds us wandering, by a constant progression, from the living God; it reveals to us our condition, it corrects our errors; it leads us back again; we return unto Zion, weeping as as we go. It sheds a light by which a path, otherwise not to be discovered, that leads into the right way, may be discovered. The lapse of Adam; the folly of the children of Seth; the sin of Cain; the devotion of Abel; the prevarication of Abram; the elevated faith of the father of the faithful; the treachery of Jacob; the constancy of Joseph; all are circumstances that tend either to correct the errors they expose, or to recommend the virtues they describe. Many a lesson of incalculable value, on the subject of sin and penitence, may be gathered from the Old Testament histories.

4. It is "profitable for instruction in righteousness." Scripture not only forms our opinions when they are right, it not only exposes our wanderings, and reclaims our errors, but moreover instructs the reclaimed wanderer in what is holy and acceptable to God. How much this was needed, appears from the false ideas entertained of righteousness wherever Scripture was not. Among the Greeks and Romans, ambition, though it spread its conquests at the expense of sufferings intense and wide, was held to be praiseworthy: pride, though it swelled and corrupted the heart, was

esteemed to be laudable: indulgence, though it trampled on the restraints of temperance and purity, was looked upon as venial imprudence. Such was the instruction in righteousness which was afforded by the wisest of unenlightened men; for they thought no crime of rapine and of blood might not be excused by a patriotic desire to exalt one's country, though with the ruin of peaceful and surrounding states. Of this Cato's "Delenda est Carthago" is a memorable proof; and stands in gloomy contrast with the divine injunction, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;" and with the lovely exemplification of this precept in the conduct of the good Samaritan. Now Scripture, in its historical details, is a teacher of righteousness. The justice of God is taught in the exclusion of Adam from paradise; his goodness, in the original provision made for his restoration to happiness; his grace and love, in the contemplated and typified sacrifice for sin; the character of acceptable worship, in the rejection of Cain and the approbation of Abel; the divine condescension and the nature of communion, in Enoch's life and translation; the nature, the power, and purity of faith, in the character of Abraham.

III. The object for which Scripture was inspired.

"That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." We might at first be led to imagine, that, as this epistle was primarily designed for the use of a minister of the gospel, this clause had an exclusive reference to certain attainments more eminently qualifying for the discharge of his highly important duties, which, by diligent study of the Old Testament, were within his reach. And we do not mean to deny that such a sense may be fairly affixed to the passage. While we make this admis

sion, however, we cannot concede that this passage belongs exclusively to ministers of the truth. Private Christians need to be made "perfect" and to be "throughly furnished." The perfection here in ques tion seems to us to be that of knowledge in all matters which respect doctrine, reproof, instruction, and correction. And knowledge, as it is itself a means to an end, is greatly to be desired.

"Some have not the knowledge of God, I speak this to your shame," 1 Cor. xv, 34. "If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them," John xiii, 17, in which passage knowledge is spoken of as being indispensable to performance. The study of Scripture, and such acquisitions therein as are here specified, give stability to our religious principles, steadiness to our experience, and consistency to our conduct; and perhaps, one reason, and the most important of many, why we have so little of all these is, that we do not use the appointed means; but it is to our shame, that when God hath revealed himself to man, we should be so little alive to the importance of receiving what revelation contains.

"That we may be throughly furnished." But for the discoveries and examples of faith, man, with the best intentions of doing what was right, would often be at a loss how to proceed. We cannot err for want of light, for we are "throughly," that is, abundantly "furnished." For this reason, we have the history of one patriarch after another, of one great event and then of another; we have "line upon line, precept upon precept," that the truth which does not strike in one example may fix attention in another, and that none may fail of the benefit which these histories were intended to convey.

That the bearing of these remarks may be fully understood, it may be proper to announce that we offer them to you as a preface to a course of week-night lectures, on the historical Scriptures, the series to commence with the original innocence of man; his fall; the corruption of man and the deluge; and proceeding to give you in detail the history of the patriarchs. The instances and examples of faith which they present are many and valuable.

ADAM IN PARADISE.

"So God created man in his own image: in the image of God created he him: male and female created he them," Gen. i, 27.

THE subject of our last lecture was of so vast a character, and the remarks which it invited were so many and so various, that the difficulty lay in selecting and comprising such as might form a single discourse, and, at the same time, sufficiently explain the matter for the purposes of general edification.

We are now to speak of Adam as he came from the hands of his Creator; and, on this subject, our information is confined to a few hints which the sacred writers were instructed to give; and these must form the elements and ground-work of our observations.

To apprehend what Adam was in a state of innocence, we must inquire into the character of that great and gracious Being after whose likeness he was created. According to St. Paul, Rom. i, 25, "the Creator is blessed for ever," and a similar expression occurs twice

in the writings of the same apostle. Now you need not to be informed that the terms "blessed" and "happy" are convertible ones, and that the blessedness in question implies happiness. As it exists in God, it must do so in its perfection. And since man was made in the image of the divine blessedness, he also was perfectly happy. He had not, and could not have, any proportion to the divine capacity of happiness, but after his measure, his cup was full to overflowing.

The happiness of Jehovah must be such as to secure a perfect exemption from misery, and a perfect enjoyment of unutterable felicity; and Adam, created in his image, was exempt from all that misery, and had all that happiness, of which his nature was capable, and in the most ample degree.

I. He was a stranger to misery in all its forms. He knew nothing of pain or other causes which produce it. He was incapable of disease in any degree, however slight, and there was of course no tendency to disorder in his pure frame, and there was nothing on any side to create suffering. No accident was likely to occasion an injury or a wound: and thus Adam was completely exempted in his state of innocence from all that misery which his descendants, ever since his fall, have been daily enduring from this fruitful source of manifold distress. There is no arithmetic by which to compute what proportion of the sum total of misery belongs to disease; but although computation is out of the question, every man's experience and observation are sufficient to show him, that a world in which disease had never appeared must have been a vastly different one from that which we now inhabit.

That we rarely enjoy the perfection of health may