attack upon Adam and Eve, was to rouse their pride by reminding them of their dependance. Hath God said ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? Are ye not at liberty to consult your own tastes-to be guided by your own reason? Are you still in a state of childhood and pupilage-tied down by rules of which you cannot see the objectrestricted in the gratification of your rational and innocent desires? Is this the state to which you are condemned, and to which you submit? These were the thoughts which the serpent suggested to Eve-and from thoughts such as these few of her descendants are secure. There is a spirit of independence in the human heart, which may lead under proper guidance to the most desirable goal, but which unguided and unrestrained, as it too frequently is found, leads to that dislike of subordination and obedience which can have but one miserable termination. The young person who will not honour his father and mother, the aged who refuse to be subject to the regulations of society, the impious who scoff at the authority of God, are all under the influence of the same devilish delusion, are all sacrificing at the shrine of pride, are cherishing a viper, who will presently sting them to the quick. When you are asked, or when you ask yourself in the words of the serpent-"Yea hath God said ye shall not?" Answer-He both hath said it, and hath the right to say so. Neither conceal nor lament his superiority or your own dependance. Confess yourselves to be, as you most unquestionably are, responsible and therefore subject creatures. Subject to God's laws, whether you approve of them or not. Responsible for his gifts, whether you accept or despise them. Bound to comply with whatever he requiresbound to obey and honour those whom he has set over you-bound to abstain from every act that he prohibits and to forego and re

nounce not merely the one tree in the midst of the garden, to which his original restriction was confined

but every other fruit that the earth produces, every line of conduct which the world offers to your choice; all its pleasures, and all its hopes, if he should think proper to require it. The deceiver says, ye shall not surely die, though ye disobey the injunctions of Christ : truth pronounces an opposite sentence, and warns you, in spite of your present security, that the wages of sin is death. The obstinately wicked and foolish may defy God's power

Restraint and

may challenge his right to our services and our obedience-may pride themselves upon their imaginary superiority to prejudice, upon their hardihood and boldness in crime. But let not their example draw you aside-do not believe that you can be better or happier for aspiring to an independence of which you are not capable. control are essential ingredients in your well-being. The young can never be adequate judges of what conduces most to their welfare. Considered with respect to God, the whole human race are children, deeply in need of his parental care, bound to be grateful for his fatherly love, bound to submit to his fatherly correction. He hath said, ye shall abstain from sin, ye shall believe in Christ, ye shall embrace the Gospel, ye shall comply with its requisitions. And of all who neglect his mercy and his power, he has declared, they shall surely die.

The second great temptation by which Satan ruins souls, is the persuasion that sin will prove a plentiful source of satisfaction. We are made to believe that the tree is good for food; it appeareth pleasant to the eyes; and on these unsubstantial suppositions and appearances we are willing to risk the favour and support of God. Every thing that our first parents possessed was very good, and they might freely eat of every tree, save one. But that

one they chose to fancy more attractive than the rest, and they yielded to the strength of the at traction. And is not the same thing done by us, when we refuse to be contented with innocent pleasure, and covet some forbidden fruit? We imagine that it is good, preeminently good for food. We indulge ourselves in contemplating its pleasant appearance, and this anticipation of an unknown enjoyment is suffered to seduce us into sin. What right had Eve to think or say that the tree of knowledge was good for food-when the great source of all knowledge, all life, and all goodness, had forbidden her to taste upon pain of death? Supposing that the fruit was pleasant to the eye, of a more enticing form, and a brighter lustre, than the other productions of nature by which it was surrounded, where was the propriety or prudence of obtaining such a trifling prize, at a risk so incalcu. lably beyond its worth? There is one excuse, and only one, which can be urged for such monstrous folly; and it is an excuse of which we are for ever deprived. Adam and Eve had no experience of the melancholy effects of sin. We have ample proofs of the evil that follows in its train. They saw the brightness of its outward mask, but could not contemplate its ghastly features. They saw the painted sepulchre, but we enter into the chambers of the dead, and find them full of bones and rottenness. Whatever may be the appearance or promise of sin, we have but to look back upon our own experience, we have but to cast a glance around, and survey the uniform results of transgression; and we may be convinced that the tree is not good for food; that its colour and its shape are mere deceptions of sense, and that poison of the deadliest nature lurks beneath. Can you reflect upon a single breach of duty, which has procured you the gratification which it promised? Pleasant as it may have been for the moment,

can you now pronounce that it was good? If not, we may surely say, that your eyes are open, and that every crime of which you are guilty is a crime committed against your better judgment. Though the tempter says that you will rejoice in sin; that you will be the better for a lie or a fraud; for an act of disobedience to parents, or disrespect for their authority; for an act of profaneness against God, or for habitual neglect of him; every one who will take the trouble to observe and inquire, may ascertain that these representations are false. They spring directly from the father of lies, and are worthy of their ignominious sire. They seduce and betray the innocent; but are nothing better than a pretence in the mouth of the experienced sinner. He knows their utter worthlessness and if he ever denies the fact, it is with the silly hope of silencing his own conscience, or the detestable desire of overpowering yours. He knows, that in the long run the breach of God's commandments is neither good nor pleasant ; and may his example and his knowledge, prove a guide and a warning to you!

The third temptation distinctly alluded to as contributing to the fall of man, is the undue desire of knowledge. "God doth know, that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." You observe, that the expectation here held out, was not an expectation of the knowledge which is suited to mankind, but of some superior, and superhuman wisdom. "Ye shall be as gods." Had the inhabitants of paradise limited their desire of knowledge, to such as their Maker had designed them to acquire, the wish would not only have been innocent, but laudable. Wisdom exceedeth folly, as light excelleth darkness-and with the single exception of spiritual perfections, God has no greater gift for men upon carth, than a wise and an understanding

heart. But such wisdom never prompts us to the commission of unlawful actions, such wisdom is not to be acquired by transgressing the commandments of God. The tree to be desired to make one wise, is not the forbidden tree, of which it is death to taste; but the tree of life, which we may eat and live for ever. True knowledge makes men humble, pious, and obedient. False knowledge puffeth up, and gives us a desire of being as gods. There is much even now, which you had better never learn. The mysteries of infidelity, pollution, and crime, are mysteries of which it would be well, if we could all continue ignorant. But as this dreadful learning does exist in the world, and as their own or others frailty makes many men acquainted with it, the principal point to be guarded against, is the sacrifice of innocence for knowledge. Never desire to be acquainted with those subjects which are only known to sinners. Curiosity, under proper control, is a great source of human effort but let it not escape from the bands of virtue, or tempt you to pry into forbidden secrets. There is a bashfulness which may be numbered among the more peculiar ornaments of youth, and is not easily prized above its worth. But there is also another and a false shame, a shame of appearing behind hand in the ways of the world, which it behoves you to avoid or correct. If you associate with those who are less innocent than yourselves, they will ridicule your ignorance of the paths of vice, and invite you to partake of the fruit which makes one wise. But do not consent to purchase wisdom at such an unhallowed rate. Believe not that any one, whose good opinion is worth having, will think the worse of a young person for his want of that acquaintance with the things of this world, which is only acquired by crime. Be assured that the sinners, who may excite your envy, who may appear to your inexperienced eyes to be as gods, knowing good

and evil, be assured that such persons, though they make a mock of your simplicity, or affect to pity your misfortune, will wish, before their sun has set, that they could place themselves in your situation, and would renounce all the gratification of superior knowledge, could they recover the innocence they have lost. Wisdom obtained by wickedwill make them ashamed at For a season, a short season, it may be a boast and a pride, but the Lord God will say unto them, what is this that thou hast done? and they will be speechless, not knowing how to reply.

ness,

last.

Such are the temptations with which you and all men are assailed. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. The desire of independence, the desire of pleasure, the desire of irreligious and forbidden knowledge, such are not of the Father, come not from the God who has made and preserves us, but from the great enemy of our immortal souls, the tempter who would fain persuade us to make shipwreck of the faith-let not his persuasions gain admission into your mind-God has made us a way by which we may escape, when we are tried-let it be diligently sought out and warily followed. He has placed you from your birth in what may be regarded as a second paradise, in the church of his son Jesus Christ, where every provision is made for your spiritual support; and in which you may flourish and live for ever. If you had nothing to rely upon, except yourself, you would be placed in a most precarious situation: since the same tempter who subdued Adam is on the watch for your ruin, and your natural power of resistance is gone. But Christ supplies you with supernatural strength. His atonement, his intercession, his grace, his commandment, his church, his sacraments, are so many means by which he has undertaken to uphold you, so many pledges of his power and his love. And why should you

be regardless of his claims-why should you be dissatisfied with that ample range of knowledge and of enjoyment which is allotted to you by the dispensation of your Redeemer, and sigh for a more extended scope. You are placed in his own garden, in the vineyard that is walled in and fenced on every side, and prepared for bearing fruit in its season. You may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, of all the trees except the forbidden one, which produces sin. And why should you feel inclined to violate that solemn prohibition? Why, with so much real pleasure before us, with such noble opportunities for acquiring and increasing wisdom, you should fix your desires upon sinful enjoy. ment or unlawful knowledge, is a

problem which could not be solved without the aid of that book, which assures us, that although we were made originally upright, yet have we sought for ourselves many inventions-We have sought, and found, sin and death-We have deserved and we have incurred expulsion from paradise, and exposure to punishment. But may He, by whose sacrifice that punishment is removed, enable you to continue among the faithful members of Christ, to resist the temptations of pride and of pleasure, to sacrifice what is apparently pleasant to what is really and substantially good, to refuse and reject the fruit of which Eve took and did eat, and to stretch forth your hand unto the Tree of life, and eat and live for ever. M.C.

Job xxxix. 14.

Which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in dust.

"In our way over the plain, we fell in with an ostrich's nest; if so one may call a bare concavity scratched in the sand, six feet in diameter, surrounded by a trench equally shallow, and without the smallest trace of any materials, such as grass, leaves, or sticks, to give it a resemblance to the nests of other birds. The ostriches to which it belonged, must have been at that time feeding at a great distance, of we should have seen them on so open a plain. The poor birds at their return would find that robbers had visited their home in their absence; for we carried off all their eggs.

Within this hollow, and quite exposed, lay twenty-five of these gigantic eggs, and in the trench nine more, intended, as the Hottentots observe, as the first food of the twenty-five young ones. Those in the hollow, being designed for incubation, may often prove

useless to the traveller, but the others on the outside will always be found fit for eating."-Burchell's Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa.

Deut. xiv. 1.

Ye are the children of the Lord your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.

"A short distance farther, I met an old woman, who, having heard that I was desirous of knowing every thing relative to their customs, very good-naturedly stopped me to show her hands, and bade me observe that the little finger of the right hand had lost two joints, and that of the left one. She explained to me that they had been cut off at different times, to express grief or mourning for the death of three daughters. After this, I looked more attentively at those whom I met, and saw many other women, and some of the men, with their hands mutilated in the same man. ner."-The Same.