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SERMON V.

THE CARELESS WORLD AND ITS

PUNISHMENT.

ST. LUKE xvii. 26, 27.

“And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark; and the flood came and destroyed them all.”

"AND God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually; and it repented the Lord that He had made man, and it grieved Him at his heart."

(Gen. vi. 5.) How different was this from the benediction which the Father of the universe pronounced upon the world and its inhabitants, when they came forth from his hands, in all the freshness and beauty of recent creation! Then, sin had not tainted the divine image, which the finger of God had impressed on the chief of his works. Then, the heart of man was right before God, and his steps had not deviated into the ways of crooked perverseness. Then, the Creator viewed with satisfaction the beautiful work which He had made, and the hosts of heaven rejoiced over man, thus called into existence, to share with themselves, the bounty of their Lord. But disobedience soon destroyed the excellence of this work, turning its beauty into deformity. And it is worthy of remark, that the sin then committed was, to all appearance, in itself, a matter of trifling import. The first pair were not driven from paradise for any atrocious act of guilt, as we reckon by human measurement-but for a simple

act of disobedience, which, as it was without any aggravating circumstances, to render it peculiarly odious in the sight of man, is thereby calculated to demonstrate still more clearly the exceeding sinfulness of sin. The murderer, the covenant breaker, the adulterer, and the injurious, know that their course is an open violation of every rule of justice and maxim of morality; so that, if a retributive power exists, their iniquity cannot remain unpunished. But a man without much sense of religion, who is able to call to mind many praiseworthy acts, and who is conscious of being generally actuated by amiable feelings, is in danger of being deluded with a false view of his position before God. From this mistake he may be awakened, by considering the example of our first parents, who, for one simple act of disobedience, were expelled for ever, from the enjoyment of God's presence and favour on earth, and were placed under an everlasting curse, from the effects of which

nothing but the atoning sacrifice of the Son of God could save them.

No sooner had the justice of God visited the disobedience of Adam and Eve with expulsion from paradise, than a long train of evils, from which they had been originally exempt, came to aggravate the misery of their fall, by adding positive suffering to the privation of felicity. Laborious exertion, liability to disease, and the certainty of death, were but physical types of their great moral taint and its eternal punishment. By obtaining a triumph over the original parents of mankind in paradise, Satan established his accursed empire over their descendants, and by seducing them from their allegiance to God into rebellion, he acquired an unhallowed dominion, which he has ever since been permitted to exercise in this world, as prince of the power of the air. The heart of man was now exposed to those attacks, which were no longer warded off by the immediate communion with God, vouchsafed to him, while an

innocent inhabitant of the garden of Eden. Paradise was a fortress belonging to the Lord of hosts, which Satan had indeed successfully invaded, with intent to destroy, but in which he was never permitted to assume the tone of command. It was a stronghold of purity, from which the dupe and the deceiver, the rebel, and the instigator to rebellion, were alike excluded. The angel with a flaming sword, guarded its hallowed precincts from profane intrusion; and fallen man, thrust beyond its safe barrier, his soul deprived of the divine communion, and his body far removed from the healing influences of the tree of life, was left to languish in that world where Satan had established his kingdom, and where, with dispositions to go astray and a heart alienated from God, he became an easy prey to the destroyer.

But under the humiliating circumstances of his fall, man was not left without the hope of restoration to the divine favour; and a remedy was held out to

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