sweetly linked together, beholds in them "the things which are equal." There is spontaneous corrective and self-adjustment, all is in its level, and on the glory of the entire scheme there is this defence.

The proportion of faith is that to which we should direct our aim. There are no discrepancies in Scripture. No confusion should distort our principles. The truths of revelation, though sometimes they seem to stand apart, are all bound together, like mountain-heights swelling from the same base and commingled in the same heaven. Nor should we suffer a chaos of half-apprehended truths in our minds. As one of the chief pleasures of science consists in the perception of affinities and agreements, associating the detached and combining the remote,-so, Christian knowledge, next to its power in saving the soul, yields no purer joy than the comprehensive study of all revealed facts and principles, displaying their order, defining their province, and commanding their use. They are all coincident, cognate: they throw on each a mutual light and they stand to each in a reciprocal subserviency. They are the different members of the same body: they are the varying proportions of the same building. Nothing is without its function: nothing without its place. There is no extraneous, no irreconcileable, no confusing, element in Christianity. It is of one: it is one. And if we be Christians, our experience will be the counterpart of it. As it works out from apparent shocks and collisions its perfect unity, so shall our experience be wrought in the same way. "In obeying from our heart its form," whatever of its influences may seem to interfere with each other, they all will be found to "establish our heart:" as the opposing currents often swell the tide, and more proudly waft the noble bark it carries; as the counter-balancing forces of the firmament bear the star onward in its unquivering poise and undeviating revolution!

SERMON IX.

MORAL INABILITY.

JOHN vi. 44, 65.

"No MAN CAN COME TO ME, EXCEPT THE FATHER WHICH HATH SENT ME DRAW HIM.......THEREFORE SAID I UNTO YOU, THAT NO MAN CAN COME UNTO ME, EXCEPT IT WERE GIVEN UNTO HIM OF MY FATHER."

NEXT to the origin of moral evil,-the rise and outbreak of sin in the universe,-there is no fact so inscrutable as the condition in which human beings are born into this world. However we define ideas, however we explain terms, however we embrace theories, our entrance on this life, the initiative of our existence, is imperfect and disadvantageous. Such a statement falls very far short of the fearful fact. It is a most flattering view of our case. But we begin with this sparing representation. We can readily conceive a better lot than ours. Let us emerge into a sphere in which virtue predominates, or where rather it is only known. Let our infant forms be enfolded in undefiled hands. tendency move in us but toward rectitude and happiness. Such an ordination does not await us. The consequences of sin threaten our earliest life. But this is not the darkest feature of the dilemma. It might be something incidental, or inevitable, in a general system of governing mankind. The evil has struck

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deeper. Sin itself inheres in our nature. iniquity. We are altogether born in sins. of punishment. It is not an inheritance of retribution. These entails may operate. Yet they denote not that of which we speak. It is a depravity connatural and innate. It is spontaneous inclination to transgress. There is no exception. It is a universal law. Other descent may vary. A different habit of body and

state of life may be transmitted. Some receive the seeds of health, others of disease. Some come forth to abundance, others to destitution. Some accede to a name of honour, others to a

name of scorn. In these differences there is no little moral difficulty. But here is a process of degeneracy,-not more, not less, -depending upon no accident, subject to no anomaly, capable of no remission. This is true of all who have ever existed: it may be pronounced of all who shall ever live: "The children not being yet born, neither having done any good or evil.”

We are quite aware that much is advanced against these opinions. It is denied that there is any federal connection between Adam and his posterity. It is denied that there can be any imputation of his failure to his descendants. A whole array of disclaimers and protestations is set up against the supposition. An appeal is made to every attribute of justice, to every ground of reason. Our reply is simple: these enquiries respect not the present matter. Is a sinful nature or disposition common to us all? We leave questions of guilt, responsibility, penal infliction : we postpone considerations, how far we can be involved in another's act. We speak of no covenant of works. We rest on no experimental treatment of our nature. Does every man find in himself a sinful bias?

This we call a great and fearful difficulty. We do not wish to evade or slight it. We believe it to be a prominent, fundamental, Bible truth. We cannot fail to mark its reiterated and assured announcement in that inspired page. It is taken for granted when it is not affirmed. Scripture is based upon its assumption. Revelation has no meaning, proposes no design, if it be not the fact.

Nor are we now purposing to defend such doctrine. If men will reply that there is no source of depravity in the heart, that it is only external infection, that whatever of moral corruption we descry is the fruit of pernicious example, our maintenance is this: that the hypothesis does not account for the perpetuity of sin in the world if it be but incident to any individual or generation of men,—and that it does not offer any explanation why every individual and every generation should be seen proceeding

in the same character and addicted to the same courses. "They have all gone out of the way: they are together become unprofitable: there is none that doeth good, no not one.” "All we like sheep have gone astray: we have turned every one to his own way." "All flesh has corrupted his way upon the earth." "This their way is their folly: yet their posterity approve their sayings."

66

Shut the Bible. Do you clear the difficulty? You have still to deal with facts. They are the same whether it be received or discarded. They press upon us the same as if it were unknown. Infancy and youth exhibit no less aversion to piety and duty. There is no amended heart. There is no abated irreligion. The fountain of evil still overflows, and still feeds the desolating

torrent.

It is not that we wish to shrink from what is esteemed an invidious and polemical nomenclature. We shall not now quarrel with them who speak of the whole race having sinned in its parent. We shall not deny the application of the language, which speaks of all as "children of wrath," to those who are actually children, and who "have not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression." We shall not refuse the interpretation which is most literal of such texts as these: "For that all have sinned:" "Through the offence of one the many are dead:" "By the offence of one judgment came upon all to condemnation :" "By one man's disobedience the many were made sinners." Our statement, which is more limited, is all that we now impress: man naturally, that is, according to his present nature, inclines invariably to the sinful in character and action. We may affirm the fact in scriptural language: "Every imagination of the thoughts of the heart are only evil continually."

Now in the case of a Pestilence, committing its waste and havoc around us, we might not be wholly incurious as to the causes out of which it sprung. We might speculate upon the strange and portentous epidemic. Yet while it raged, and while our duty called us from lazaretto to lazaretto, from pallet to pallet, we should not, we could not, think of aught but of its form and cure. Any theory we must defer to future investiga

tion. Our language must be, The Plague is at its height, it widens its malignant fury, it mows down its countless victims ! Let us warn, let us save! Let us go forth with all the means of remedy, with all the powers of healing! If futurity can bring us leisure for after-thought, we will bethink us to study how the Calamity arose.

The predicament of man is very parallel. As the prognosis of bodily disease is variously described, so is moral disease as variously reported. But both diseases may fester on while it is the question of controversy. We speak of the spiritual virus. It has penetrated the system. We have not time to discuss, we may not possess premisses to decide, the manner of its introduction. There it is! "From within, out of the heart of man, proceed the evil things which defile a man."

Mark, then, the position of every human creature. He enters the world with this propension. No matter how it has descended, whence it has befallen, by what circumstance it operates,-with this intentness every man is found. He is seen a transgressor from the womb, at every time, and in every place. Not one has of himself, through any inclination simply his own, risen above this level. No mechanical law of general and outward nature has ever been fulfilled more certainly and constantly.

Three affirmations may be specified for the purpose of expounding the true state of man; this evil tendency-now only considered as a fact,-being allowed.

-Man is a voluntary agent. Material subsistence is unconscious; it would be foolish to speak of it as free. That portion of intellect which belongs to the inferior animals, which we may call instinct to distinguish its restriction, but which we cannot hope by so loose a term in any wise to explain, shows its want of liberty. There is no advancement, no variation, no originality, in them. They never abandon the past. They never improve on experience. The habitude of one is that of all. They innovate neither upon food nor habitation. But man's nature is hardly a chain round about him. You cannot, except as to ultimate conditions, know in what course man shall be discovered. You cannot divine his counsels and ends. He has a thousand points