SERMON V.

"Did not I see thee in the garden with him ?"-JOHN, xviii. 26.

THIS was one of the many searching questions put to Simon Peter on the night of his sad apostasy, with a view to fix upon him the charge of being one of the adherents of the condemned Nazarene. And methinks, if there was one inquiry which was more fitted than another to excite in him the bitterest compunctions of remorse, it was this very question-" Did not. I see thee in the garden with him?" Other remarks made in reference to Peter, such as the allusions to his Galilean dialect and provincial accent, would rather have a tendency to irritate and harden him; but here was a direct, though unintentional appeal to the most endeared recollections treasured up in his memory, and to the tenderest associations that could be awakened in his breast. If conscience had spoken, would it not have said "What! Peter! hast thou not been with him in the garden?—the place so well known to Judas and the rest of you, whither Jesus so often resorted for secluded and heavenly converse with his disciples -the garden where he but a little ago distinguished you and the two sons of Zebedee, by his kind preference in taking you apart with him from the rest ;— the garden where you have been witnessing the sore

agony of his spirit, and the bloody sweat of his body, and the strong crying of his tears;— the garden where he so gently said, Simon, sleepest thou? Couldst not thou watch with me one hour?'-the garden where, to shield you from punishment, he miraculously healed the wound of Malchus by you inflicted, and with generous, self-sacrificing devotedness said to his pursuers, If ye seek me, let these go their way;' -the garden where he has afforded you so many and varied proofs of his rich loving-kindness, and of a friendship stronger than death."

Reflections such as these might have been expected to arise in the mind of Peter, on hearing a question so pointed and personal; but, alas! Peter's conscience was for the time as much asleep as his body had erewhile been in the garden. This and every other interrogation he answered with a flat and false denial; every implied reproach he met with perjury and curses; the scrutinising look of one after another,yea, the concentrated gaze of all, he bore with stolid unconcern and hardened insensibility, until "the Lord turned," and, without putting one question, or breathing one reproach, simply looked upon Peter-(oh ! what a look must that have been!) and then, but not till then, did Peter think of his having been with him in the garden," and when he thought thereon, he wept.'

But let us leave the case of the Apostle, and see how this question may be applied to ourselves, and adapted to our present circumstances. We propose to take it out of the connexion in which it was originally uttered, and give it amplification and expansion. We do not (be it carefully observed) bring the words of the text forward as containing in themselves the proof of any

doctrine or any duty whatever; we fully admit that the only meaning which they can be supposed to express is what we have already stated; and we are anxious you should understand, in the outset, that we are simply and solely to employ them in the way of suggestive allusion, or (if you will) accommodation—a mode of scriptural instruction, for the occasional use of which we have the highest authority, but which it never becomes an uninspired teacher to employ without guarding his hearers by some previous explanation, similar to what has now been offered.

The course of contemplation, then, which seems suggested by these words, and to which (as not unsuitable to intending communicants) I would endeavour now to guide you, is this-I would invite you to behold and see "every sinner in the garden of Eden with Adam, and every saint in the garden of Gethsemane with Christ;" for it is an indisputable Bible fact that, as in the first Adam we all sin and die, so in the second Adam all Christians believe and live. Now it is a striking circumstance, which cannot have escaped your notice, that if it was in a garden man fell, in a garden too he was raised from his fall. In the garden of Eden the first Adam sinned unto death, and we in him; and in the garden of Gethsemane the second Adam began to suffer unto death, as our substitute and surety. In a garden the one, aspiring to the rank of God, allied himself to the devil; in a garden the other, by humbling himself unto the dust, exalted us to the enjoyment of God and the glory of heaven. In a garden our first father indulged his own will, to the contempt and defiance of God's, and instead of the expected sweets of fruit forbidden, tasted the bitter

fruits of sin and death; in a garden the second head of the human family sacrificed his own will to his Father's, and in place of the cup of bitterness and trembling, which did not pass from him till he had drunk it to the dregs, has given us the cup of salvation and eternal joy. It was not unfitting that in a place where the patient infected himself and his posterity with the mortal disease, in a like place the physician should pour out the healing balm of his blood-that there, where the old serpent bit us with his envenomed tooth, even there the woman's seed should bruise the serpent's head. Adam, by his disobedience unto death, has profaned and blasted our gardens of pleasure; Christ, by his obedience unto death, has secured and sanctified our paradise restored.

Proceed we, then, to the first part of the contemplation which these words suggest. Let us look at the character and conduct of every sinner, and we shall see him virtually in the garden with Adam. More particularly, 1. When I see a sinner deliberately violating any express command of God, I say to him, Do not I see thee in the garden with Adam? For what did Adam do in the garden? Oh, says some scoffer, he only ate of a fruit he should have let alone, -it was wrong to be sure, but, after all, there could be no great harm. Now, it is clear that any one who can bring himself to speak of Adam's first sin in that spirit of trifling levity, shows most lamentably that he is one of Adam's fallen children, and that he has no correct notions either of the claims and rights of God, or the obligations and responsibility of man. I am not now speaking of the effects which followed on the eating of the forbidden fruit, although even from these

you may perceive that the prohibition to taste it was in itself most wise and gracious as regarded the creature's best interests. But without taking at all into account any of the consequences that ensued, we must place the essence of Adam's guilt in the direct violation of a plain, intelligible, express command. God said, "Eat, if you will, of every tree but that." Adam said, "Though I eat of no other tree, of that will I eat." You stand amazed and shocked at the sad perversity and bold presumption of a creature whom God had so honoured and blessed. But I ask you, have you never acted in the self-same manner? You will say, perhaps, that it is true that we are all sinners, and that you are a sinner like others; but these vague and general acknowledgments are worth nothing, for they really mean nothing. We take you, each one of you, there where you sit, we insulate you, whether man, woman, or child, from those beside you and around you, we speak to you as if we were alone with you before God,-we bid you search the records of conscience, and tell us what you read there. I am not now alluding to sins of infirmity, when you may have been overtaken of a fault, nor am I referring to any of your actions of which the guilt may seem doubtful, nor to the many imperfections, short-comings, and defects, which cleave to the best actions of the best. But, passing over all these things, what I ask you is this, have you never, in the full knowledge and recollection of what God had commanded, and of what God had forbidden, done what, at the time, you knew and felt to be wrong? Have you never, yea, have you not often, done deliberately, wilfully, knowingly, just the very thing which, at the moment, and