oft forget the higher moral being with which they are furnished, and subject the conscience to the reason, alleging that it is only a form and application thereof: so that all the way from the lowest up to the highest, the inferior faculty swalloweth up the higher, and that noble nature which once wrought sweetly and harmoniously in Eden, and imaged out the nature of God, is like a mirror dashed upon the ground all broken and disarranged, and reflecteth but partial and distorted images of that glorious creature which man was at first made to be.

Of all which degradations the greatest is that we have this day undertaken to discourse of,-the degradation into which man is brought by his animal nature, the bondage of labour and drudgery, subjecting, and in the end annihilating, every higher faculty of understanding, reason, and conscience to expose which miseries, a full detail would require such a round of observation, such a condensation of materials, and such pictures of misery, as neither our faculties nor our time are equal to. To represent the forms of slavery in which man is held to his fellow-man in every quarter of the world, save some few blessed spots like this our happy island; and of these blessed spots, to represent the millions whose life is little better than physical toil, and refreshment of the frame for physical toil, with occasional gleams of bacchanalian joy, and occasional oblivion of care, purchased by the stupefaction or intoxication of fermented liquors ;-to draw out pictures of this kind were harassing; to harass my own imagination, and to harrow up the feelings of the people. And yet, as some basis of fact is always necessary

to be presented before reasoning, some picture of the state of things before speculating upon their improvement, I shall therefore, by the grace of God, endeavour to set forth,

First, The change which passed upon the condition of our first parents.

Secondly, Shew forth the form and pressure of excess of bodily labour, that particular evil which we have undertaken to discourse of;—and,

Thirdly, Treat of the effectual remedy and cure of the evils of labour, and bondage, and slavery.

I. In treating of the Fall, it is common with divines to say, that in the death threatened upon Adam for eating of the forbidden tree, was included three kinds of death;-death temporal, or the death of the body; death spiritual, or the extinction within the soul of its divine affections; and death eternal, or the everlasting separation of both soul and body from God. Inasmuch as this is to be regarded as a threefold division of the evil consequences of the Fall, it cannot be doubted as both accurate and complete: for certainly the body hath inherited death with all the diseases which draw on to it; and the soul hath inherited death in the midst of trespasses and sins, and, but through Christ, there is no deliverance of either from the everlasting consequences of sin, which they expressively call eternal death. These three forms of evil, death temporal, spiritual, and eternal, we admit as a good division of the consequences which have ensued from the Fall: but that the death threatened by God in Eden, was by God meant to denote, or by Adam received as denoting, this threefold death, is altogether a sup

position of their own inventing. The thing which God threatened by the word Death, is the same thing which he carried into effect by this curse, which contains no particular clause directly bearing upon the soul of man, or upon his condition hereafter; but clauses bearing upon the earth, upon man's bondage to it, upon his sorrow, and his returning to the dust from which he had been taken. But, though not expressed in the letter of the curse, there can be no doubt that all the spiritual darkness and deadness and error which are included under the word 'spiritual death,' have actually taken effect; for here is every living man a proof of the same; and as little doubt that separation from God, and loss of honour and glory for ever, and annihilation to good and happiness will take effect hereafter upon the impenitent, for the revelation of God declareth the same. Nevertheless, we think it is not sufficient to engross into the curse these clauses; but to see how, out of the curse hath come all the three forms of evil which are included in that threefold form of death of which the theologians speak. This is our object, not to deny any of the consequences, for one part of which we have the evidence of experience, and for the other the evidence of revelation: but to discover how these consequences flowed from the sad decree which was pronounced when man was transplanted from paradise to till the ground from which he had been taken. This curse of the Almighty, which is the evil charter by which Adam holds the dominion over the fallen world, continued to be the condition of human existence until the introduction of the Gospel, when another voice from

heaven pronounced the beginning of a better reign: Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and good will to the children of men.” Which two, the malediction of the first Adam's fall, and the benediction of the Second Adam's birth, do now contend and strive with each other for the supremacy of the world, and of every heart, and occasion the mixture of good and ill which exists upon the earth. They contend at present; but it is promised that at length the benediction shall overcome the malediction, when the kingdoms of the world become the kingdoms of God and of his Christ.

The curse passed upon Eve was, that her desire should be to her husband, and he should rule over her: so that into whatever condition man was to be reduced, woman was appointed to follow, upon whose nature these words imposed it as a necessity to subjugate her very affections to man, and to look up to him as a superior power. Therefore, in order to comprehend the condition into which the first pair were reduced, we must examine not the curse pronounced upon Eve, which went no further than to link her nature to Adam's, but the curse pronounced upon him, to whom her nature was indissolubly attached. Now, it is remarkable, that the words of this curse are dealt chiefly upon the nature of the ground, and not upon the nature of man. "Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of the face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return." The

spirit of the curse is against the earth, and it bears upon man through that medium by first bearing upon the earth. He is " adscriptus glebæ," as they were wont to say of the villains or serfs of the feudal time, a bondsman to the ground; and to make that bondage sorrowful, the ground is cursed with barrenness of things wholesome, and fertility of things noxious, of thorns and of thistles. From the action of this curse, man hath become sadly changed: the gold is become dim, and the fine gold is changed. His understanding darkened, his will rebellious against the will of God, his affections disaffected from heavenly things, his memory of God defaced, his whole spirit in dotage or in death, and his whole life a scene of prodigality and waywardness: sin reigneth in his members, and death by sin, and every evil and malignant passion hath a natural pre-eminence in his breast; and were it not for the restraints of society, of law, of morals, and of religion, would burst forth upon his neighbours; and against all these restraints, discovereth itself to an observant conscience in almost every word and every action wherein our own personality is concerned. This degradation of human nature is so complete, as to have brought at some period of its history almost every nation to the level, and often beneath the level, of the brutes that perish. And, at this day, in all regions where law and government and religion prevail not, and man is left to the solitary influences of his own bosom, what a low deformed creature he is, how cruel, how sordid, how base and brutal! And in every nation, at any time, when any thing occurs to dissolve a little the frame of society, and relax the vigilance of