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please God by his own devices.
g the hollowness of his heart, he
other Abel. God called him to
but, in hardened impudence, be
per?" The Lord pronounced
a fugitive and vagabond on the
, remorse seized his soul; and
t is greater than I can bear !!!
t misery! God determined he
divine abhorrence of his crime;
lest any finding him should kill
ook the presence and ordinances
a city, and became a miserable
ly increased and walked in his
were ingenious artificers, but of
mech took to himself two wives,
dreadful sin of polygamy.
ts of Cain flourish in the earth,
luence upon the children of God.
ul women, contracted marriages
re giants in wickedness. Says

CHAPTER II.

Primitive state of Man. His trial and apostacy. Promise of a Saviour. Institution of sacrifices. First fruits of the

Spirit.

THE primitive state of man was one of holiness and unmarred felicity. The first exercises of his heart toward God were love and reverential fear. Between him and the Father of his spirit existed a free and blessed intercourse. His soul was a stranger to selfish and corrupt affections, and was filled with joy in God and his perfect administration.

As a moral agent, he was subjected to that law which requires all rational beings to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, strength and mind, and their neighbour as themselves. To make special trial of the first parents of the human family, God placed Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, in the midst of all that could gratify the taste or delight the eye; and there, while he gave them the full indulgence of every thing else, forbade their eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. reward for obedience, he promised them eternal life; everlasting holiness and happiness in his presence. For disobedience, he assured them that dying, they should die; that sinning, renouncing the dominion of their maker, and departing from all holiness, they should sink for ever under his wrath and curse. The trial God had a right to make; for he was their creator and lawgiver; and so bountiful had he been to them, so small was the thing denied them and so great were the motives to entire abstinence. that disobedience would call for the severest judgments. The trial was one of greatest consequence to them and their posterity. In it was involved their eternal well being. They were to secure a state of perpetual holiness, or to reject their Maker and become totally depraved in their moral affections. And, as it had become a law of creation that every thing should bear the likeness of its progenitor, the moral state and character of all future generations depended on the issue.

At this moment of solemn trial, Satan, the chief of those Angels who kept not their first estate, but revolted from God and were cast out of heaven, appeared in the garden of Eden, in the form of a serpent; and full of envy, resentment, pride and malice, sought their ruin. He addressed himself craftily to the mother of men, and endeavoured to excite in her mind an unbelief in the threatening as the word of God. Failing in this, ho

made her a promise of an understanding like that of the gods; excited her curiosity; tempted her appetite, until, impatient of divine restraint, and renouncing her confidence in God for confidence in the Serpent :

"She pluck'd; she ate;

Earth felt the wound, and nature from her seat,
Gave signs of wo that all was lost."

Adam soon ventured on the same ground of infidelity, and with his wife, apostatized from God. Their moral character was now wholly changed. They no longer appeared before God in prayer and praise as dear children, but hid themselves from his presence in conscious guilt. And when called to account for their conduct, instead of confessing their sin and imploring pardon, they had the effrontery to charge their sin upon others; yea, indirectly, upon God himself.

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This was the moment when angels looked for their immediate destruction. But said God, "Stay them from going down into the pit, for I have found a ransom. A Saviour was promised. A tremendous sentence was pronounced upon the serpent, the animal in which the father of lies approached the innocent pair, that mankind might ever have before their eyes something that would powerfully remind them of this event; but reaching beyond that, even to Satan, the old serpent, the deceiver, insuring his destruction and the destruction of his cause by Jesus Christ, the seed of the woman, the saviour of sinners. “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel." This promise was the light and hope of a ruined world. To lead mankind to rest upon it, sacrifices were immediately instituted. Over the blood of beasts, they were to be brought to feel their sinfulness; that there was no access to the Father without an atonement; and to look forward, in faith and hope, to the Lamb of God that should take away the sin of the world. The first transgressors were the first fruits of the Spirit. Convinced of sin, terrors took hold on them, and they fled from the presence of the Lord. The voice of mercy melted their hearts. God gave them life. Adam, who had before called his wife Woman, now called her Eve, because she was the mother of all living; of all, who, according to the gracious promise, were to be raised to immortal life and Eve, at the birth of her first born, (evidently rejoicing in the promise respecting her seed which should bruise the serpent's head,) exclaimed, “I have

gotten a man, the Lord" the promised deliverer. With the coats of animals which they no doubt offered in sacrifice to God, they made themselves garments and were clothed.

Thus early did Christ gain a victory over Satan, redeem to himself a peculiar people, and

ESTABLISH A CHURCH IN THE WORLD.

But the race had become rebellious; and because of the apostacy, God cursed the ground, and drove the transgressors from the beautiful garden, lest, by being suffered to remain there in the enjoyment of their former privileges, they should partake of the tree of life ;-i. e. be insensible to the evil of sin, and fancy that they could gain heaven by their own obedience. They went forth to a world of thorns and briers; there to beget a race from their own fallen nature;—a race corrupt; enemies to God; who, through voluntary transgression, would bring upon themselves innumerable evils in this life, and become exposed to eternal death.

How many of their offspring were trained up for heaven by their daily sacrifices and instructions, we know not. One interesting, lovely youth in this family, stands on record, “an heir of the righteousness which is by faith." Abel believed in God. In hope of eternal life through the promised seed, he offered a lamb from his flock. The doctrine of the cross was foolishness to Cain. He scorned the thoughts of receiving salvation through the merits of another, and, trusting in his own righteousness, he brought only an offering of the fruit of the ground. The Lord rejected it, but had respect unto that of Abel. Cain's anger rose. He fell upon his brother and slew him.-Awful fruit of the apostacy! Solemn stroke! The first of unnumbered, that should fall from the hands of wicked men upon the followers of the Lamb. Abel perished; the first martyr to truth. Heaven's portals opened wide to admit the first of the ransomed of the Lord, who should come to Mount Zion, washed, sanctified and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of God. Him angels welcomed with joy as a spectacle never before witnessed in their happy regions; while he, being dead, by his faith yet speaketh to all the children of men, assuring them that a sacrifice, offered with an honest and true heart, a deep sense of the guilt of sin and a firm reliance on the atonement of Christ, will render sinners acceptable to God, and fit them for glory.

Having laid his body in the grave, his parents returned to their dwelling, cast down, yet not destroyed. They trusted the promise of God for a righteous seed, and the Lord remembered

them in mercy and sent them another son, whom they called Seth;-manifestly a pious man, for said his mother in holy faith, God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel.

In their posterity, of the third generation, in the days of Enos, they witnessed a general out-pouring of the Spirit. "Then,"

says

the inspired historian, "men began to call upon the name of the Lord." Whether we consider these words as denoting that then prayer became a duty of common observance, or that in that age men first erected houses of worship, and assembled for prayer and praise or entered into covenant with God and professed themselves his people, it is manifest there was a general and great revival of religion; for nothing else could have induced men to do either of these things. This was in about the 235th year of the world, when the church was probably large and many were prepared for heaven.

Of the state of religion in the three succeeding generations we have no account. Probably there was no other out-pouring of the Spirit, and the love of many, who had turned to the Lord, had waxed cold. In the seventh generation from Adam, we find Enoch, a man eminently elevated above this world and devoted to God. He was a prophet of the Lord, and uttered a remarkable prophecy of the coming of Christ to take to himself the kingdom and the dominion, and to judge the world." And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam," says Jude, " prophesied of these, saying, behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them, of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed; and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him." What a view does this give us of the wickedness of man at that period! How solemn was that voice echoing through that world of sin and transgression-like the last trump in the morning of the resurrection! If many mocked, with what anguish must they have remembered it in a future age, when the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the floods came and swept them all away!

Enoch lived a life of faith, maintained holy fellowship and sweet communion with God; and God testified his delight in him by translating him, soul and body, to heaven, not suffering him to taste death. By this great event also, God gave his church a lively assurance of a future world, and the resurrection of the dead. All who had died were sleeping in their graves. No specific promise had been given that the body should be delivered from the ruins of the fall. Here the saints

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