hour when man apostatized from his Maker. What an immediate alteration took place at that very moment in man's character, state, and prospects! Before his fall, all was happiness and day but after it, all was misery and night! Strange, that in Eden should commence that night which has continued until now! that the Garden of the Lord should have been the scene of man's temptation and Satan's triumph! that the tree of life should, through infernal malice and human frailty, become the tree of death!

My brethren, let us not turn away from the subject, and reject the salutary lessons which it is calculated to teach us. Many of the false, and defective, and ruinous sentiments which have, at different times, obtained in the world, have arisen from partial and unscriptural conceptions in reference to the fall and apostasy of man. Upon this important and fundamental doctrine, so plainly revealed in the Sacred Oracles, and so perpetually adverted to by the compilers of our Liturgy-upon this rests the whole superstructure of

Christian Truth. If man be not guilty, how absurd to talk of the atoning Sacrifice of Christ! If man be not polluted and depraved, how unnecessary to offer him the cleansing and purifying grace of the Holy Spirit! Deny the doctrine of man's apostasy and ruin, and the word of Inspiration becomes immediately a book the most strange and contradictory; the whole mystery of the Cross of Christ a work of supererogation; and the proffered grace of the Spirit, as the Enlightener, Comforter, and Sanctifier, an undefinable something, without an existence or a name. Admit the doctrine, and man's misery gives opportunity for the exhibition of God's mercy; the Divine Oracles are welcomed, as unfolding that marvellous system by which God can be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus: while to the principalities and powers in heavenly places, is made known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God.

But it is not only to the commencement of this moral night that we direct your notice: consider

2. Its continuance.-The sad effects of the Fall were not confined to our first parents. Their immediate descendant, their eldest son, gave but too plain a proof that man was now "very far gone from original righteousness." Little did our first mother suspect that she should give birth to one, who would take away his brother's life. Awful thought, that the first human being born into the world should prove a murderer!

But what has been the state of our race from that period to the present? Have not the same corrupt principles influenced mankind, and have not the same dire consequences ensued? Age after age has passed away, but human depravity has continued its uninterrupted course. With the small exception of that little company of God's people, which He has had in every age, but who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God - with this exception, behold this moral night continuing to spread over our earth, at an equal rate with its population. Various dynasties of kings

have arisen, and have passed away: the four great Monarchies have appeared, have flourished, and have departed: philosophers have debated, and heroes have fought, and conquered: but, alas! darkness has still covered the earth, and gross darkness the people. The kings of the earth have stood up, and the rulers have taken counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed. A false philosophy has but too often hardened mankind in their vain deceits, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. While the shouts of conquering armies have proclaimed their victory over their foes; in the same hour, the piercing cries of the wounded and the dying, the tears of the widow and the fatherless, the shrieks occasioned by savage barbarity and brutal passion, all have served to testify that the conqueror was himself a slave; that those who shared his victory shared his degradation also; and that the mid-day of triumph and worldly glory was, in a moral point of view, the midnight of darkness and the hour of death.

Oh, awful picture! although not one half of its horrors has been told, or can be told. The period, however, is approaching when the whole shall be brought to view; when the earth shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.

It is not, however, merely in these strong and marked lines that the character and continuance of this spiritual darkness is to be perceived. Wherever men are seen living without repentance, faith, and holiness, there is this moral night. However orderly and decorous, however accomplished and polite, such persons are in darkness even until now. To keep them in that state, has ever been the great effort of him, who is emphatically styled the prince of darkness. How awful is the consideration, that such are his influence, power, and tyranny over the greater part of mankind, that he is termed the god of this world! For thus we find St. Paul speaking of him and of his deluded votaries: The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who