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pronounces that dread sentence which even still breathes out his boundless love to man. As ye have done no act of kindness towards my muchloved brethren, ye have done it not to me; you have acted long in consort with my infernal foe; depart from me, ye cursed, into that everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his accursed adherents.

That natural evil is the offspring of moral evil, is an axiom which the revolt in heaven evidently propounds. We find no mention of the former, either in the invisible or visible creation, previous to the commitment of the latter. The wages which sin incurred on our earth, was death; but the pangs annexed to dissolution, and all other sufferings imposed on mankind, do only serve, we must again repeat, to constitute our trials.

But to illustrate this point more clearly, and vindicate God's faithfulness to man, let us take a short, but more attentive survey than is usually done, of the conflict with which our great progenitor was destined to cope, while in an innocent, perfect state, and evil on our earth, as then, remained unknown. That he was both innocent and perfect in his primary estate, we have already found reason and Scripture uniting to prove. "And the Mosaic account of the formation of man, teaches us to entertain the most exalted sentiments of his distinguishing excellencies, by informing us that he was made in the image and likeness of God. For what more can be said of a creature, than that he is made after the similitude of his

Creator? He was upright; the original word signifies, straight, direct; no error in his understanding, no obliquity in his will.”*

"God-like, erect, with native honour clad,
In naked majesty, seemed lord of all,
And worthy seemed; for in his looks divine,
The image of his glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude, severe and pure."
MILTON.

On his secondary endowments, Dr. South finely observes, "That all those arts and inventions which vulgar minds gaze at, the ingenious pursue, and all admire, are but the relics of an intellect defaced by sin and time; and certainly that must needs have been very glorious, the decays of which are so admirable."+"Thus formed

* Horne.

+ This wise and just observation does, we conceive, propound such matter for inquiry as would occupy a volume, by suggesting the following considerations. How highly must the pristine inhabitants of our terrestrial globe have been benefited by the surpassing excellence of that original intellect, of which it pleased the Creator so immediately to adjudge the most unequivocal proof! For the Lord God brought every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air unto Adam, to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowls of the air, and to every beast of the field. What a perfect intuitive knowledge must he then have possessed of their different natures, uses, and appropriate destination! Is it probable that he who had been previously invested with dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over all the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth, should have had his occupations and researches confined for above nine hundred years solely to one spot, and the satisfaction and advantages resulting from explor

and favoured, he was introduced upon our globe, which had been previously commanded into ex

ing distant realms and traversing the ocean be all reserved for his enfeebled offspring? Would not the benediction pronounced by God himself, which bade these creatures be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, soon impose the necessity of their dispersion? And must not Adam have been well acquainted with what situation, soil, temperature, and atmosphere was best adapted for them? Did not a constitution, designed for immortality, occasion that longevity and freedom from disease, both in our great progenitor and his descendants, which produced a speedy population to multiply on earth, and must also have rendered the migration of the human kind equally indispensable?—a circumstance which the brief relation proves had certainly taken place; for at a period of one thousand six hundred and sixty-six years, subsequent to man's original formation, we read, that God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth, and the earth was filled with violence! But it will be said that the effects of this dispersion were by the deluge completely swept away. But the same commandment was immediately renewed; for God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth of the ark, thou and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee; bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee of all flesh, both of fowl and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth, that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth. Could Noah, who survived the flood himself three hundred and fifty years, and his three sons, who probably long outlived their father, have been ignorant of the proper means whereby to distribute them, when this distribution again became essential?— could they be uninformed of the art of navigation, who had themselves for above two hundred days inhabited a machine that went upon the face of the waters-upon those mighty waters which so exceedingly increased and prevailed on the earth as to cover all its highest mountains, and which bore up the ark, and lifted it up above the earth ?-could they who built the ark have been unacquainted with the method of form

istence, decorated and illuminated for his reception, from thence to behold the splendid and

ing such machines as would, when need required, transport them over the seas?-and must not they, again, have been possessed with the most perfect knowledge of every living creature, who had had the charge of them so long within the ark? Must not they have known what zone, what tropic, what continent, what island, was best adapted for them? And may we not infer, that wheresoever they were placed by them, that there they still remain? Is not the history very explicit as to how the islands of the Gentiles were peopled? And does not this circumstance probably account for that change of colour which has been effected on a considerable portion of the human raceon that portion whose lot was cast to dwell in Afric's burning region? For a continued and unvaried residence for near four thousand years (or indeed a much shorter period) under the immediate influence of the vertical and meridian rays of a tropical sun, it is presumed, would so totally change in the course of its descent down through succeeding generations the original complexion, as to produce the effect demonstrated by the appearance of the pristine inhabitants of hot countries-for men of colour are never found in cold ones-and in proportion to the heat unto which the natives are exposed, the skin is tarnished, till it is ultimately burnished into a shining black. We say the natives, for more modern settlers in these torrid zonesthough a long residence in them produces a very visible alteration in their complexions, and those of their descendants-are still preserved, by their habits and precautions, from that exposure to which the wild and primary inhabitants have been so long enured; nor has the length of the residence of any of these been perhaps of sufficient duration to bring about in their posterity the alteration effected on the Negroes of both the East and the West Indies, whose ancestors have inhabited these countries for a series of past ages. And the supposition as to the means by which the change in question has been effected on so many of our species is, we think, fully confirmed by Scripture, -“I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. Look not upon me,

magnificent scenery in the heavens above and the earth beneath, to view the bodies around him

because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me." (Solomon's Song i. 5, 6.) And the Ethiopian, while he remains an Ethiopian, cannot change his skin; though when he leaves that country, and marries with fair women, his descendants, in the course of a few succeeding generations, regain the original colour of their antediluvian ancestors, and the black-a-moor is washed white. It has been remarked, that there is also some little difference in the anatomy of a negro's head from that of other persons; and this little variation in the formation of their bones has been by anatomists very wisely and rationally accounted for; it having been, by experiment, very clearly proved that this effect has been produced in animals who were primarily tame and domestic ones, but who, on being turned out and becoming wild and savage, had a very material change effected in the formation of their bones. And nearly as wild and savage are the habits and pursuits of an untutored Indian, as are those of the brute creation in an untamed state-at least they widely differ from the habits and pursuits of civilized nations. These wretched people, there is every reason to believe, are the descendants of Ham; for the prophecies pronounced by the patriarch Noah, the great father of the new world, are so very remarkable and explicit, as to prevent the possibility of their being easily mistaken. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan, (the son of Ham,) a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. (And let us not forget that we are the brethren of Ham's accursed descendants, and all proceed from one and the same common stock-from one and the same universal and general ancestor.) And Noah said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem, (his descendants were blessed above all other people, as from them proceeded the star that came out of Jacob,) and Canaan shall be his servant: God shall enlarge Japheth; (and in the ensuing chapter it is added, that there were born unto Japheth, Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah. And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and

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