to ensure his happiness, or to restrain him from evil. That image of God in which he was created, and which, as has already been shewn, consisted in the perfect adaptation of all his faculties to their respective purposes, and more particularly in that perfection of the intellect and the will, which, until perverted by some extraneous cause, would operate in entire conformity to the Divine will; that image is now defaced, and no longer exhibits, as it originally did, the clear impress of the Creator's hand. The lineaments of its character are become faint, obscure, confused. It stands in need of the same Divine hand that framed it, to restore to it the lost similitude.

But though the Divine image is thus defaced, it is not utterly destroyed: though man be "very far gone from original righteousness," he has not so entirely lost sight of it, as to have no perception of its value, no desire to attain to it: nor, though he "cannot turn and "prepare himself by his own natural strength "and good works to faith and calling upon

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God," is he so bereft of all inclination to do so, as to be insensible to the necessity of making the effort. To suppose any greater change than this, seems to be neither warranted by fact, nor fairly deducible even from

the strongest representations in Scripture of our actual state. On the contrary, when St. Paul says of the natural man, "the good that "I would, I do not, but the evil which I "would not, that I do';" and when again he says, "If then I do that which I would not, "I consent unto the Law that it is good';" he describes a conflict between the propensity to evil and the approbation of good, which is irreconcilable with the notion that the Divine image is totally lost. According to the apostle's representation, so much of it at least remains, as to excite abhorrence of sin, and love of goodness; and although these may be too feeble, without further aid, to overcome the influence of vicious affections, yet that they are not absolutely dormant, much less extinct, within us, is manifest.

This point may perhaps admit of illustration by reference to the immediate effect of their transgression, upon our first parents; since we can hardly venture to impute worse effects of it to their posterity than to themselves.

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No sooner had our first parents committed sin, than it is said, "the eyes of them both were opened";"-they discovered their wretched state, and were "ashamed;"—they u Gen. iii. 7.

s Rom. vii. 19.

t Rom. vii. 16.

"hid themselves from the presence of God;" and Adam confessed, when called to account for his offence, that he "was afraid" to appear before God. Now, whence this discernment of evil, this sense of shame, this dread of punishment? Do such feelings indicate that total corruption of nature, that insensibility to evil, that antipathy to good, that absolute disinclination to distinguish between right and wrong, which some appear to consider as the invariable characteristic of the natural man? May we not rather say, that this consciousness of sin, of shame, of sorrow, and of fear, gave token that the sense of virtue and of duty was by no means entirely lost. They saw and dreaded the evil they had brought upon themselves: they felt and deplored the loss of the good they had forfeited. Were these symptoms of the annihilation of every good feeling? Were they not rather proofs of that compunction, that self-condemnation, which is ever most acute, where the consciousness of obligation is most strong and urgent? Something to the same effect may also be inferred from the very character and appellation of the forbidden fruit. It was called "the "tree of knowledge of good and evil :" and the tempter's prediction, that by partaking of it they should obtain that knowledge, was but

too fully verified. Heretofore, they had known good only; now, to their cost, they became acquainted with evil also: and the result of their knowledge was this, that misery was the consequence of the one, as happiness had been of the other. Yet neither does this imply an insensibility to the distinction between them. Rather it appears to have quickened their apprehensions in this respect, though disabled from averting the evil brought upon them.

Nevertheless, it by no means follows, that because we do not acknowledge the total extinction of the Divine image in man, we therefore suppose him to be now capable of attaining the proper end of his being, or of recovering what he has lost, by his own unaided efforts; or, in other words, that he does not stand in need both of redemption and of sanctification. Adam appears instantly to have felt that he had no power of himself to remove the evil he had incurred. His very nature was changed. Evil now formed a part of it. It was not simply the one transgression that was to be expiated, but an incalculable train of future transgressions, which he was no longer able, as before, to escape. Hence his case was become desperate. The necessity, therefore, of a remedy, which could only be provided by the mercy of his Creator,

is scarcely less apparent on this view of man's fallen state, than on that which ascribes to him nothing but unqualified malignity of purpose, the disposition of an irreclaimable fiend, rather than of a being yet reserved for further probation.

In this general conception of the subject it is safer to rest, than to attempt to unravel all the intricacies in which it has been involved. If we can discern enough to convince us that God was the Author of whatever was originally good in our nature, or of whatever yet remains of good in it; if we can also discern that whatever of evil has been introduced, is the work of man himself opposing the will of his Maker, or of a tempter instigating him to his misery and ruin; then will the divine attributes stand clear of any just suspicion, and the cavils of the profane and thoughtless be put to silence. More especially, if that same infinitely wise and gracious Power, who first created man for happiness and perfection, has interposed to rescue him from destruction, and has afforded him the means of rectifying the obliquities of his nature, and recovering his lost privileges; a theme of admiration is presented to us, even greater than that which preceded the evil we deplore. For if it be a nobler height of power and of goodness to