the work of redemption, which by his death was completed as to the purchase and the pledge; which by his resurrection was begun as to the operation of the Spirit?-for I reckon that not the conception of the fleshly body, but the resurrection of the glorious body of Christ, was the beginning of the redemption of the world. This idea of the natural world, as being merely the promise of a birth, we must leave to be opened up at large when the Lord may give us opportunity: it forms the basis of what is called "natural religion;" which is not, as they define it, to discover a religion distinct from Christianity or revelation, but to shew that nature, or rather the culture of nature's barrenness and the promotion of her well-being, is really a lower revelation, a preparation for what hath been brought to light by Christ: so that, as Paul saith, "the invisible things of God from the beginning of the world are clearly seen, even his eternal power and Godhead." This idea also contains the link between all natural sciences and the revelation of our redemption; making nature the hand-maiden of grace, and every thing venerable in society to serve for the outward court of the Christian temple.

But without going further into the demonstration of this doctrine, it is easy to discern from what hath been said how it should be possible to express the things of the spiritual world, or the world to come, by means of the laws and ordinances of the world that is seen: for the one is, as it were, but a part of the other, or rather, the same revealed in a lower degree, and upon a smaller scale. It is the same work of Christ

which it manifests, though only in a state preparatory for the great work of salvation. I regard all the ordinances of human life, by which the living creatures preserve themselves from immediate death; but especially all the ordinances of God whereby human life is preserved and the generations of mankind continued-our proceeding from the loins of a father, and being carried in a mother's womb, and suckled at her breast; the helps of our childhood from pastors and teachers, until we arrive at the maturity of our strength; the laws by which we prosper in our affairs, and the warlike attitude of defence on which we are forced ever to stand against surrounding enemies; especially the medicinal helps against sickness, and, above all, the provisions against premature death:-all these, the laws of human life and well-being, I regard only as so many removes from death inwards into the realm of life, and so far forth a redemption from the primeval threatening of God: all flowing from no other fountain than the well-spring of the Redeemer's righteousness. They are a partial redemption from death, being the institutions of God for proroguing the penalty pronounced upon the first transgression: and whence can they come but from the merits of the Lord? And coming thence, for what end should they come, but to prepare the way and shadow forth the manner of that great work which he came to fulfil? They are a twilight, in which are seen adumbrations of the true things, of the very same things which shall yet appear to us in clear and open day.

You

may depend upon it, brethren, therefore,

that the laws of all life, vegetable, animal, mental (soulal), and spiritual, are one and the same, though different in degree; and all derived from one and the same sacrifice of our blessed Lord and Saviour, offered from all eternity; without which there would have been no life, but an universal death. And you may rest assured also, that the lower is always typical of the higher; and that the knowledge of the higher is best ascended into through the progression of the lower. We ought not to wonder, therefore, that the Holy Spirit continually useth the emblems or symbols derived from vegetable and human life-the sowing of the seed and the harvest, the birth of the child and the full-grown man-to set forth spiritual things withal. And you ought not to say, they are finely chosen similitudes, but, they are rightly appropriated types. And, however much our men of taste and sentiment do laugh at the spiritualizings of our fathers, I dare to believe and to say, that to spiritualize nature is rightly to interpret nature; and that the greater part of our Lord's discourses are nothing but Divine exercises of this kind; and so of his parables also.

With respect to the Parable of the Sower, therefore, to the study of which these observations are intended to open the way, I observe, that the niggard earth, cursed in consequence of man's transgression "Cursed is the earth for thy sake " -is not, as it were, another thing from man in the curse; but, both in the cursed and the blessed state, is a part of the appendages of man, made for the possession and comfort of his body, and now reduced to be the penance and burden of his body; yet not separated from him, but bound unto

J

him by stable and unrelenting ordinances of the Creator. In his Fall it fell, and in his rise it will rise again; and if in his Fall it fell, and in his rise it is to rise again into glory, then, certainly, in this intermediate estate of being it is connected as closely with our present intermediate state of grace, and as respondent to the conditions of man, as it was heretofore, or shall be hereafter. Well, then, I believe that this Parable of the Sower, taken, not from an accidental, but from the substantial property of the earth, which is, to nourish human life, doth, not by accidental similitude or resemblance, but by real propriety, represent the husbandry according to which the Father, the great Husbandman, doth proceed in tilling the field of this fallen world, and bringing forth a harvest from the barren and accursed substance of the human soul. "The field is the world"not, is like the world-" the sower is the Son of Man, and the reapers are the angels: the wheat are the children of the kingdom, and the tares are the children of the evil one;" and so on throughout:-not a mere accidental resemblance, which the ingenuity of our Lord discovered, and his good taste and fine feeling of propriety accommodated; but a true emblem or symbol, which his all-comprehensive wisdom knew, yea, and in creation appointed; and which his all-interpreting Word explained, as it had originally constituted it. For, brethren, it was the same Christ who pronounced the curse upon our first parents, and upon the ground for their sakes, that now comes to pour out in these parables the remedy of redemption which there is for all things, from the ground upwards to the soul of man.

Therefore, the niggard and barren earth, which beareth only thorns and briers, and most noxious weeds, and wild incumbrances of the liberty, and offences to the order and taste of man, who was constituted its lord, is to us, not an accidental resemblance, but an actually constituted symbol of the soul of man, which produceth under the curse only the fruits of unrighteousness, the grapes of Sodom, and the clusters of Gomorrah. It is not like a white sheet of paper, as some metaphysicians have dreamed, but it is like the cursed earth, which of its own accord, and in itself, produceth briers and thorns and thickets, where the wild and savage passions, like the wild beasts, do find their coverts and their dens. If you would have the true idea of the natural man, look upon the thickets and sunderbunds of Asia, or on the wide grassy plains and pampas of South America, or on the impenetrable forests of North America, wherein the wild Indian roams, or the back-woods-man plies his long and weary toil. As these disgust the finest tastes, and offend the most orderly feelings of man; as they disappoint the desires and expectations of the careful husbandman, who expects every corner of every field to be producing some wholesome nourishment for man and beast; so doth it offend God, yea, in an infinitely higher degree doth it offend him, to look upon man's natural estate, producing only the fruits of unrighteousness, and yielding none of the frankincense and myrrh, and finest wheat, and purest grapes, for which it was originally planted of the Lord. "I planted thee wholly a good vine, and a right seed; but thou hast brought forth unto me only the