woman, (though he had persuaded her to obey him rather than God) should not be his willing slave; but that, on the contrary, there should be enmity or hatred between them, and between her seed and his seed-that in the end the seed of the woman should entirely get the better of Satan, who never should have power to do lasting harm. The word seed means a son who should be born of the children of the woman; and in the New Testament is the history of this Son, and of the manner in which Satan was by him overcome. The words of this promise are, "I will put enmity between thy seed and his seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." Now, a person who has a blow given him on the head, has a serious harm done to him: but a hurt upon the heel, though it may give pain, may do him no serious harm, because the head is the principal part of a man's body, and a great hurt upon his head will kill him. In the end this promise shall be made completely true. In the history of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is in the New Testament, we shall see that He gave Satan's power a blow from which he never can recover. But we have continual reason to remember his enmity against us. By his having persuaded Adam and Eve to sin against God, all the pain and sorrow that has ever since been in the world was brought in. They were driven out of Paradise. The ground was cursed for their sake, so that weeds and thorns spring up from it, and we are obliged to labour by the sweat of our brow to make it bring forth corn for our daily bread and pain and sickness, step by step, bring death. Do you think it hard that we, their children, should suffer because they sinned? It must be so it is always so; we see that it must be so every day. If a man, by idleness, or even by misfortune, becomes poor, his children are poor too. There are many diseases which pass from parents to children. Their bodies, and what is worse still, their minds, are hurt by whatever has hurt them; and if you saw a sickly father, you would think it quite natural that his child should be sickly too. If you met a beggar in rags, you would expect that his children should be in rags too: but you would be very much surprized if the children of a rich man were not well fed and well dressed. And just in the same way, when Adam and Eve sinned, their children became sinners too; for sin is the worst of all diseases, and has quite changed man's nature. Before sin came, man naturally loved God and delighted in serving him: now he is afraid of him, and naturally dislikes his service. Prayer. O God, have pity upon us, for we are sinful and poor, and if thou dost not help us, most miserable. When Adam sinned, sin came upon all his children, and we confess that we deserve the same punishment; for ever since we remember, we have chosen the bad rather than the good: we know what is right, but we do what is wrong; but we believe thy promise, that in the end the Devil shall not get the better, and we pray thee, for thy dear Son's sake, to put enmity between us and him all the days of our lives, so that we may be always striving against his power by trying to love thee and to hate sin. We believe that thou wilt make us able to do this, because we depend upon thy promise, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. III. The promise of God to Adam and Eve, that they and their children should not be left in Satan's power, was made at first in very few words; and these words were spoken not to them, but to that wicked Spirit himself, just as he was pleasing himself with the thought that he had got them quite into his power to do with them as he liked. "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and his seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." These were the words of the promise when it was first made, but it was afterwards repeated again and again, and each time more clearly, more distinctly. As the world went on, it became filled with people who were born from the children of Adam and Eve. From time to time God took care that they should know that they still belonged to Him. He chose different persons, whom He particularly taught to know him; and by them He sent messages to all the rest of mankind. * These messages were in many different words, but they all said the same thing, that when the right time came, a Saviour should be born into the world, "in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed." The Old Testament tells of men growing so very wicked that God drowned them all by a flood of water, except Noah and his family. It tells of Abraham the friend of God. Of the giving of the law, and the histories of the different Prophets and holy men to whom God spoke very clearly of what He was doing, and of what He meant to do to save men from the power of the Devil; but here it is enough to tell you that every promise of the Saviour, who was to come, grew more and more clear, till at last it described him so distinctly, that when He did come every body might know him by the description, if they chose to compare God's words with what they saw and heard of him. The time too for his coming was fixed, so that as it was near they might expect him. Now all this is written in the books of the Old Testament—and God in a wonderful way took care that nothing should destroy them. Cities were burnt, kingdoms were destroyed, every thing on the face of the earth was changed again and again, but these books were always saved. They were God's own word, and He took * Gen. xii. 3; xxviii. 14. + + + The history of the flood is in Gen. vii. Of Abraham, from Gen. xii. to xxv. Of the giving of the law, Exod. xix. Of the different Prophets in the Books that are named by their names. Isaiah vii. 14-16; lii-lv. care that nothing should hurt them, so that men might always be able to read in them all that He had done and all He promised to do for them. We have them still, though the world is now nearly six thousand years old. Prayer. O God, we thank thee and bless thee for the wonderful way in which thou hast kept, through so many changes, the books of the Bible. If we had not them, we should not know how much thou hast loved us; how greatly thou hast had pity upon us; we should not know the promises by which we hope to be saved from Satan's power now and for ever, through our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. IV. "Man disobeyed God, and so brought sin and death into the world." These are words easily said, but if we do not take time to think of all they mean, we shall never know what a terrible thing sin is; what a terrible punishment it brought upon us. We are very apt to pass painful things lightly over. We know that the world is full of bad people, but till they hurt us we do not think much about them. We know that all must die. We often hear that such and such a one is dead, but till some one dies in our own home we do not think much about death at all;—of our own death even then very little. But there is nothing in life that so well teaches what God in his holy word has called "the exceeding sinfulness of sin" as death, and all the sad suffering that death brings. In every pang we see, still more in every pang we feel, God says to us, "See what sin has done." Man was not at first made to die, he never was intended to suffer pain, and it is in the still night as we watch by the bed on which some one we love lies dying, with out our being able in the least to keep death away, or to save from one single pain-it is then we feel what a terrible thing sin is-how dreadful was the fall of Adam from the state in which God made him. Perhaps it may seem to you hard that his one sin should be the cause of so much misery, but you must understand that this one sin was a free choice ;-two things were before him, good and evil;-he chose evil, and evil has been the consequence. By his sin he passed out of a state of happiness, and into a state of misery, and in this state of misery we were all born, because we are his children. He chose Satan rather than God, therefore Satan's subjects we are born. His sin was greater than we can now understand, for we are all now so full of sin, that to sin seems quite a natural thing. It was not so with Adam and Eve, they were in the image of God, they had no natural inclination to sin as we have. If you heard of the son of a rich man turning a thief, you would think his sin much worse than if he had been a poor man who wanted bread, because you would know that the rich man had every thing he needed of his own. You would say that he was not to be pitied-that it was wickedness without any temptation; and you would say right. If besides his being rich, he had always lived with good people, and had been taught every thing that was good, you would say this made his sin worse and worse, and you would say right, but Adam's sin was far, far worse. We are not able to tell the greatness of it, for we are not able to understand what it was to be, as he was at first, perfectly without sin. Great as his sin was, God's love was greater; he had pity on him and on his children. Prayer. O God, thou art our Creator. Thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us. We have sinned and we must die, but death came not from thee, and thou hast found a way by which death |