resurrection of the Saviour, may, I think, be gathered from this passage, where it is said, that He was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead;—and still more obviously from the text, (and this we hold to be the reason why it is said of Christ risen from the dead, that He is become the first-fruits of them who slept)" Every man in his own order-Christ the first-fruits, afterwards they who are Christ's at his coming." But there is a still more important set of passages that point, we think, to a very pleasing analogy, between Christ's resurrection from the grave, and the resurrection of our souls into newness of life-that ascribe both of these events to the operation of the same power; and regard it as alike the functions of the Holy Ghost, to have restored the natural life to the body of the Saviour, when it lay insensible in the tomb-and the spiritual to those who are dead in trespasses and sins, but are awakened from this death at the moment of believing in Him. And thus I would understand it of Paul that he longs to make sure of the renewal of his soul unto holiness, when he speaks of his desire to know Christ and the power of His resurrection; and I can enter into the analogy which he states in these words, that, like as Christ was raised up from the dead in the glory of His Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life-and that thus it is that we are planted together with Christ, in the likeness of His resurrection. We read in various places of our

being made conformable to His death by dying unto sin; and so are we made conformable to His resurrection by living unto righteousness. The thing is still more expressly affirmed in the epistle to the Ephesians, where mention is made of "the exceeding greatness of God's power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principalities and powers and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come; and hath put all things under his feet, and given him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him who filleth all in all." And then he adds, "you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins"-"Even when we are dead in sins, hath God quickened us together with Christ."

Now this analogy between the raising of the body and the regeneration of the soul, both of which are ascribed to the agency of the Holy Spirit, forcibly reminds us of the history of the material creation in the book of Genesis-where it is distinctly affirmed, that, at the very first footsteps of that glorious transformation, by which a dark and disordered chaos was evolved into light and loveliness and harmony, that then the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And so when the Spirit begins with the soul of man, it is a perfect chaos of moral darkness and disorder on which it has to

operate whence it gradually advances from one degree of grace and godliness unto another, till, as God rejoiced on the seventh day over that which a little before was without form and void, so God rejoices over us, when, in looking to the product of this new or second creation, He sees that it is all very good. You know enough, I trust, of our depravity by nature-to admit of our moral world that it is indeed a chaos-that, though there be occasional gleams of the bright and the beautiful, yet that the great master sin of ungodliness stalks triumphant over the face of society-that, though as in every companionship even of iniquity, there must be recognised principles of truth and honour and fellowship which bind together the members of the human commonwealth, and make it a possible thing for society to subsist, yet that, as if altogether broken loose from the great Original of being, each individually hath betaken himself to the counsel of his own heart and the sight of his own eyes. The enlightened assertors of a native and original corruption in our species, never dispute that there is much of the fair and amiable and upright in human intercourse; and that this gives rise to many fine and graceful evolutions in the walks of social life. But what they affirm, and they deem that they have the experimental light both of observation and conscience upon their side, is, that while busily engaged, whether in the virtues or in the vices of our intercourse with each other, we one and all of us by nature have renounced our proper

intercourse with God-that, intimately joined as we are to our fellows of the species by the ties of patriotism and neighbourhood and family affection, we live in a state of moral and spiritual disjunction from God—that just as if the gravitation that bound our planet to the great central luminary of our system were suspended, and it were to take its own random way in space-so have we broke adrift as it were from that main attraction to which all the duties and moralities of life are subordinate. And just as the stray world might still have active physical principles of its own-its cohesion, and its magnetism, and its laws of fluidity, and its busy atmospherical processes, even after the sun had ceased to have the imperial sway over it-So, in our stray species are there a thousand mutual and internal principles of constant operation—the resentment, and the love, and the domestic affinities, and the dread of authority, and the delight in approbation, and the sense of shame, and the mighty power which lies in the awards of the general voice -principles these, which, in their turn, either agitate or arouse or restrain or even embellish the face of society-Yet still may it be a society altogether without the regard or the reverence of God. In reference to Him, the family of mankind may be an exiled family; and while the men of its successive generations pass through the little hour of life, some deformed by earthly vices, and others decked in the ornaments of an earth-born morality, yet, equally aloof as all may still be from the virtue of that great

relationship which is between the thing that is formed and Him who hath formed it, it may still hold true of our species, that we by nature are in a state of disruption from God-asunder from Him as to all right and habitual fellowship in time; and, if we decline the reunion which He himself proposes, likely to remain thus asunder from the great fountain of light and love and happiness through all eternity.

Now that this is the very chaos in which humanity is involved, we hold to be pretty obvious from the broad and general aspect of society. But far the most useful conviction that can be wrought upon this subject, is that which is carried home to the bosom of individuals, by a manifestation of their own heart to the conscience of each of them. It is not possible to lay open the characters of all to the inspection of any; but it may be possible to lay open the character of any man to the inspection of himself and thus it is, that far the most profitable of all moral demonstrations, whether from the pulpit or from the press, are those which reveal to each individually the intimacies of his own spirit; and by which he is enabled, as in a mirror, to recognise such a likeness to the portrait of his own inner man as his conscience can respond unto. And therefore would we bid each unconverted man who is now present, to enter upon this recognisance of himself, and to see whether the very habit of his soul is not a habit of practical atheism-whether it be not true that God is scarcely if at all in his thoughts