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

be safely concluded from the fact, that persons having a good voice are very seldom entirely in tune; it is only now and then, at long intervals, that such individuals feel themselves in complete possession of their faculty.

The same remark applies to the higher and more interesting case of a public speaker, as it is well known that he is able only to exercise his talent to his own satisfaction, and so as to do justice to himself, on rare occasions and in seasons peculiarly happy.

2. Adam suffered nothing from the pain of apprehension. As he knew no evil, either natural or moral, so he feared none. He knew not what it was to tremble and look upward; to suffer from a blow not yet inflicted, and to experience the dread of affliction to be worse than the reality. In our present state our fears may answer the best of purposes, as they put us on our guard, and move us to caution and to vigilance, and often successfully put us on escaping from many an evil under which we might have been made to labour. But still they are the occasion of much sore travail under the sun.

That many an hour has been imbittered to us by the fears of evil that has never befallen us is perhaps not a matter seriously to be regretted, for independent of the benefit, in the shape of caution and vigilance we derived from them, there may be advantages of a moral kind deducible from our apprehensions. And it is moreover true, that to be saved from fear, while we are exposed to danger, is so far from being a good, that it would be a serious evil to us. But Adam was equally a stranger to all experience of calamity, and to all apprehension of it. Deducting the amount of all this wo, still there is a mighty surplus of misery to be accounted for.

3. Adam was free from the torment of sinful and unruly passions; such as anger and malice, lust and resentment, envy and jealousy; and the only fellowinhabitant of earth was as pure and as holy as he was himself.

It needs neither sage nor moralist to tell us how large a part of all that man suffers is to be traced to these accursed passions. So truly is this 'the case, that this single idea of being exempted from these tormenting inmates of our corrupt hearts might occupy a long discourse. We might tell you a little of the woes of him in whose bosom anger burns like a fire, imbittering life to the man who entertains it: or of malice operating with all the steadiness of principle, and with diabolical zeal rejoicing in iniquity and in wretchedness or of impurity craving indulgence which brings bitterness and remorse into the soul: or of revenge glowing with a hunger only to be satisfied by the sighs and the tears, perhaps the groans and the death struggle, of the unhappy victim, revenge which pursues its object to perdition, and leaps with him into Tophet; for he that forgives not shall not be forgiven. We might tell you how envy pines and sickens, and gnaws its own vitals, at the sight of excellence: or of jealousy which frowns upon a rival and plots his injury though at the expense of private and the public peace. We might tell you of wars and calamities, and we might dwell on the picture till our very hearts grew sick with the catalogue of woes. But Adam, as yet, had never tasted of the tree which bore fruit giving the knowledge of good and evil. Not one of all these accursed feelings found entrance into his heart. On the contrary, love and peace, purity and kindness, complacency and overflowing

comfort, filled and possessed his heart with continual rejoicings.

4. Adam was free from the torment of an accusing conscience, he knew nothing of the insufferable anguish of a wounded spirit, he knew not what it is to prefer strangling to life. All other misery is light compared to this, for the spirit of a man may sustain his infirmity, but this is what none can bear. We have all felt the anguish which belongs to remembered transgression and forfeited peace. Some of us can recollect sleepless nights, during which we watered our pillow with bitter tears, and breathed from a burdened heart fruitless and unprofitable regrets. This suffering, if it issue in true repentance, is not to be repented of; but still in itself it is painful. To be without this visitation of an alarmed and disturbed conscience, when we have so much occasion to entertain fear, would not be desirable. Viewed in connection with the effects it may produce, it is a dispensation of mercy. But happy Adam had neither the grief resulting from "the barbed arrow of a frowning God," nor had he any occasion of alarm; all was peace and rectitude; his heart was a quiet home.

5. We shall merely mention farther, that Adam was not born to see his Eve decay and die, and then himself to sink and expire. He was neither exposed to the fear, nor to the visitation, of death.

II. The happiness of Adam was abundantly greater than is explained by these remarks: for to be free from misery which we have neither felt nor imagined is not a proof of happiness in the individual of whom this can be said. But our common parent had, in addition to a blessed exemption from all the miseries under which we labour, and in addition to a happy