And "by one man, sin entered into the world." "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners." "By the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation." Rom. 5: 12-19. This is the record which the Holy Ghost, by the apostle to the Romans, has given of the connection. between the sin of our first parents and the misery of his posterity. It is a statement that must be true, because God has said it; this connection must be wise, because God appointed it. It must be good, because he who ordained it had in view the highest glory of his own unsullied name, and the highest good of the children whom he has made.

Such was the change that took place in the world in consequence of sin. What sin did for our first parents, it does for you. It was for their interest to be holy. It is for your interest to be holy. True it is that you do not stand in the same relations with those of Adam in the garden, but you live under the same moral government, with the same. promises and threatenings to induce you to yield perfect obedience to the same law of

the same righteous God. The same heaven of unfading bliss invites you to its everlasting enjoyment. The same curse hangs over your head, to fall for ever on the soul that sinneth against God. Now, in the morning of your career, make up your mind to depart from God, to break his law, to cast off his authority and plunge into sin, and that curse shall fall upon you here, and rest on you with an increasing weight through all eternity. You shall live in sin, and die in sin, and while you feel in your soul the fire that is never quenched, and the gnawings of the worm that will never die, it shall be the bitterest pang in the anguish of eternal woe, that when you resolved to-day to continue in sin, you knew the consequences and might have shunned them but for the wretched choice you made.

And instead of wasting the precious hours of time in vain inquiries as to the wisdom of the system by which you are involved in all the bitter consequences of our first parents' sin, will it not be far more for your present and future good to ask the way by which

you

may be delivered from "the wrath and curse of God," that now threaten your soul? Were

you in a burning house, you would seek to escape, before you sought the origin of the flames. If your best friend were sinking in the waves, you would be more anxious to know how he could be saved, than how he was thus exposed. You are in danger, near and dreadful. How shall you escape?

5

CHAPTER IV.

An ungrateful son-The Prodigal's demand-The father remonstrates, pleads, warns, but in vain-God thus reasons with sinners, sets life and death before them, and warns them of the future.

Nor many years ago, in the State of Maryland, there was a man whose experience so much resembled that of the father in this parable, that I must stop a moment here to mention the circumstances. This man was the father of two sons to whom a small property was left by a relative, on the possession of which they were to enter when they came of age. The "younger" of these "two sons" had in very early life, and through his youth, been wild and reckless; and so regardless of the little that from time to time had been committed to his hands, in fact had discovered so many indications of being a spendthrift, that his father was justly fearful that the property bequeathed to him

would soon be squandered, if he should have it in his power. As this property was in the hands of the father, to be kept until the children came of age, he declined paying it over, when the "younger son," on the day that he was twenty-one years of age, demanded it as his own.

The father had always been a kind and indulgent parent, and having never denied his children a reasonable request, he could not believe that any serious resistance would be offered to his determination still to retain the property in his own hands, and supply his son with its annual avails. Who, then, can imagine the surprise of that affectionate parent, when this beloved son, whom he had "nourished and brought up," prosecuted him in the civil courts, and by a regular process of law, compelled him to pay over the property which he held in trust.

The son received the money, and not many days after left his father's house, to enjoy, without restraint, the pleasures of the world. The rest of his history is that of all other prodigals. He spent all in riotous living.