inheritance children should be born into this world, a malignant delight in punishment, which would, were it widely current, make belief impossible to all whose special theological culture had not specially qualified them to believe a lie.

And it is mere idleness, as we have seen, to attempt to evade the difficulty on the ground that the sin is Adam's work, and that God simply recognizes and deals with it as a fact, of which He is not the author, but of which He is bound to take account. The sin is Adam's work, but who established that headship, in virtue of which Adam's nature and the fruit of his transgression descends to his sons? The law of inheritance is God's work, not Adam's. A man is responsible for his own transgressions, but what he shall transmit is beyond the sphere of his own volition. That goes according to laws in the establishment and maintenance of which he is utterly powerless, which have been enacted and are swayed by God. If each child born into our world brings into that world a nature which has become what it is by the sin of Adam, it is because God wills that under these conditions each human child shall be born and grow. Man is powerless here; God is all-powerful to do according to His own will. The power which made Adam could make ten thousand Adams, and renew in each generation the first, the typical experiment of free

will. But God, the infinite in wisdom and in goodness, has chosen otherwise; and He makes Himself responsible for the perpetuation of a sinful race in a suffering world. Paul's argument, in Romans v. 12-14, is decisive as to the relation existing by nature between the human members and Adam, the head. Death reigns over all; the infant, the veteran, the Jew, the Christian, the Pagan, are alike and equally the subjects of his sway, for they alike partake of the nature which Adam corrupted by his transgression, and they partake of the fruit of the transgression, which then. attached itself to the race. But guilt is another matter; it can attach to the individual alone, in the deliberate exercise of his developed will; through a deliberate, wilful choosing of the evil, when the good was plainly within his sight and choice. For what man is, as he comes into the world and grows, half conscious, to the full possession and exercise of his freedom, the Father of Spirits makes Himself responsible. It is not that God made a sinful nature, and ordained that man should inherit it; but man having made a nature sinful, God ordains that it shall perpetuate itself after its likeness in each generation, and takes upon Himself the burden of this natural corruption and misery of the world.

And the burden must needs be a very awful burden; a burden which must press heavily on the heart

of God; a burden which nothing but a great love and a great hope could bear. There was a moment when the pressure of the burden was overwhelming ; when what God saw on the earth was too terrible for Him to suffer it to endure:-" And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. . . . The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth... In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain wasupon the earth forty days and forty nights.... And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:

all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark." (Gen. vi., vii.)

This is a very terrible record; most terrible, if we try to imagine the cost of this patience, which at length was wearied, to the Being who had made Himself responsible for the possible existence of all this; not for its creation, but for its continued existence, with all the reproach which it seemed to cast on Heaven, and all the agony with which it tormented the world. The earth was corrupt and full of violence. The time had been when He had looked on all that He had made, and "behold it was very good;" and now it repented Him that He had made it. The agony of life had become too intolerable for Heaven to look upon, the desolation of earth too drear. This leads me to the main subject of this discourse.

The burden of existence, under the conditions which, created by the sin of Adam, have been perpetuated by the will of God. It was a simple matter, the creation of an Eden; a peaceful, joyous life smiled childlike in the face of Heaven, which

dropped responsive benedictions. Full of deep and solemn gladness, we can well believe, were those immortal spirits who watched the pathways of the young world, and wondered and gladdened at the beauty of the infant creation, with its ȧvýpiμov yéλaoμa, and the glorious godlike form whose hand grasped its sceptre, and ruled all its myriad dependent orders as king. When Creation emerged, rosy as a bride, and all begemmed with splendours, out of the dark womb of chaos, well might the morning stars sing together, and all the sons of God shout aloud for joy.

Alas, that so fair and bright a promise should be blighted so soon! We read on but a few pages in the only record that remains to us of that primeval time, and the earth is " full of deceit and violence," of woe and wailing, of bitter misery and shameful wrong, and God repented Him of His work. Already it had cost too dear-the cost that heaven chiefly recks of, the tears, and groans, and moans of men. It is a dread world for a loving and righteous God to create and sustain. We catch but a few faint notes of the great monotone of pain and despair, which goes up ever into the ear of Heaven from a world which God made to be so blest. Do you ever set yourself fairly to realize what lies bare to the eye of Heaven in the daily life and travail of the world? We talk of houses with their fronts off, and what they would reveal to us. Think of the