in various degrees, withholding them from many, bestowing them partially on some, and, in their ripened fulness, only on a few, then do we discern the same features marking the new which we saw tracing the old, we see on both the print of the same footsteps, the impression of the same seal, and this, surely, instead of being an argument against, is an evidence in favour of, both having proceeded from the same hand.

It might be worth while, before we conclude, to inquire, Who objects to revelation that it has not been universal? For a city under a siege, it may often be better tactics to make an occasional assault on the enemies' lines, than to linger merely in an attitude of defence within the walls. If we could ascertain who our opponents are, we might discover some point in their lines as vulnerable as that which they are assailing in ours. But whoever they are, to whatever sect they belong, whether that of atheism, deism, mahommedanism, or heathenism, we might retort their own objection upon their own faith. The test which they are applying to revelation, would, if a sound one, be fatal to their own creed. Neither atheism, nor deism, nor mahommedanism, nor heathenism, much less any one form of heathenism, has been universal. But in nineteen cases out of twenty, we should probably find the objector under the banners of deism, believing in one God, but believing in no light, but that of nature, which he has shed over our hopes. On him we might resolutely turn and point his own objection against his own faith. If universality is essential to truth, or, at least, to religious truth, has deism been universal? Have all men agreed in worshipping, and worshipping, by the light only of nature, one God? We need scarcely answer the question; Deists, as every one knows, have been about the most thinly scattered of all sects. Any one of the countless forms of idolatry has numbered a more numerous body of followers than they. Mahommedanism has been far more extensively spread than the opinions which they hold. A single generation of a single nation of the believers in revelation, would probably outnumber all the followers of deism in every age. If universality is essential to truth, there is no truth in the opinions which they hold, no truth in anything which is believed on the subject of religion at all. But it is a maxim among logicians that that which proves too much proves nothing.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE REV. HUGH BINNING. COMMUNICATED BY THE REV. WILLIAM BURNS, Minister of Kilsyth.

(Continued from page 357.)

THE prevailing of the English sectarians, under Oliver Cromwell, to the overthrow of the Presbyterian interest in England, and the various attempts they made in Scotland, to alter the constitution and discipline of the Church, were the greatest difficulties which the ministry had then to struggle with. Upon this, Mr Binning made the following most excellent reflection, in a sermon preached on a day of public humiliation:

"What if the Lord hath defaced all that this kingdom was instrumental in building in England, that he alone may have the glory in a second temple more glorious." And when he observed that the zeal of many for the solemn league and covenant (by which they were sworn to endeavour the preservation of the reformed religion in Scotland, and the reformation of religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland,) was not attended with a suitable amendment of their own lives, he takes up a bitter lamentation over them in a selves with the noise of a covenant, and a cause of very remarkable paragraph: "Alas! we deceive ourGod; we cry it up as an antidote against all evil, and use it as a charm, even as the Jews did their temple; and, in the meantime, we do not care how we walk before God, or with our neighbours. Well, thus saith the Lord, Trust ye not in lying words, saying, the these.' If drunkenness reign among you; if filthiness, temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are swearing, oppression, cruelty, reign among you, your covenant is but a lie, all your professions are but lying words, and shall never keep you in your inheritances and dwellings. The Lord tells you what he requires of you; is it not to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with God?' This is that which the grace of God teaches, and this he prefers to your publie ordinances, your fasting, covenanting, preaching, and such like." When the unhappy distinction betwixt the public resolutioners and protesters took place in the Church of Scotland, Mr Binning was of the latter. This some of the evils in his own time, and being of a charitable distinction proved to be of fatal consequences. He saw and healing spirit, with the view to the cementing of differences, he wrote an excellent treatise on Christian love, which contains very strong and pathetic passages, most apposite to the subject. He was no fomenter of faction, but studious of the public tranquillity. He was a man of moderate principles and temperate passions, far from being self-confident in the managing of public affairs, never imposing or overbearing towards others, but willingly hearkening to advice, or yielding

to reason.

After he had laboured four years in the ministry, serv. ing God with his spirit in the Gospel of his Son, warning every man, and teaching every man, with great ministerial freedom, that he might present every man perfect in Christ Jesus, whereunto he laboured, striving according to this working which God wrought in him mightily, he died of consumption, when he was scarcely come to the prime and vigour of life, entering on the twenty-sixth year of his age, leaving behind him a sweet savour after he was gone, and an While he lived, he was highly valued and esteemed, epistle of commendation upon the hearts of his hearers. having been a successful instrument in saving himself and them that heard him, in turning sinners unto righteousness, and in perfecting the saints, and died much lamented by all good people, who had the opportunity and advantage of knowing him. He was a person of singular piety, of a humble, meek, and peaceable temper, a judicious and lively preacher; nay, so extraordinary a person, that he was justly accounted a prodigy for the pregnancy of his natural parts, and his great proficiency in human learning, and knowledge of divinity. He was too shining a light to shine long, and burned so intensely, that he was soon put out, but now shines in the kingdom of his Father in a more conspicuous and refulgent manner, even as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars for ever and ever!

The last sermons he preached were three on Romans viii. 14, 15, "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba,

Father." He concluded the last of these discourses with a reflection on these words, "We cry Abba, Father." "This," says he, "is much for our comfort, that from whomsoever and whatsoever corner in the world prayers come up to Him, they cannot want acceptance; all languages, all countries, all places are sanctified by Jesus Christ, that whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord, from the ends of the earth, shall be saved. And, truly, it is a sweet meditation, that from the ends of the earth the cries of souls are heard, and that the end is as near heaven, as the middle, and a wilderness as near as a paradise; that though we understand not one another, yet we have one loving and living Father that understands all our meanings; and so the different languages and dialects of the members of this body make no confusion in heaven, but meet together in his heart and affection, and are as one perfume, one incense, sent up from the whole Catholic Church, which is here scattered upon the earth. O that the Lord would persuade us to cry this way to our Father, in all our necessities." Thus having contemplated that subject, concerning the adoption of children, he was taken hence, to the enlargement of the inheritance, reserved in the heavens for them, and the Spirit called him, by death, as the voice did John the divine, "Come up hither."-Rev. iv. 1.

He was buried in the church-yard of Govan, where Mr Patrick Gillespie, then Principal of the University of Glasgow, at his own charges, caused a monument to be erected for him, on which there is, to this day, the following inscription in Latin :—

"Here lies Mr Hugh Binning, a man illustrious for piety, eloquence, and learning; a master of languages; an eminent philosopher and divine; moreover a faithful and eminent preacher of the Gospel, who, being taken away in the midst of his usefulness, in the twenty-sixth year of his age, A.D. 1523, changed his country but not his society, inasmuch as while he lived he walked with God. If you inquire farther, I am silent about other things, seeing neither you nor the marble can contain them."

He left behind him a disconsolate widow and an only son, called John, after his grandfather, to whom, at the grandfather's death, was left the estate of Dalvennan, but John having been engaged in the insurrection at Bothwell Bridge, 1679, it was forfeited till the year 1690, when, by the eighteenth Act of Parliament, in the same year, the forfeitures and fines past from the year 1665 to the 5th November 1688, were rescinded. His widow was afterwards married to one Mr James Gordon, a Presbyterian minister in Ireland. She lived to a great age, and died at Paisley, in 1694, which, when the people of Govan heard of, the savoury memory they still had of their worthy pastor made them desire the friends of the deceased, to allow them to give her a decent and honourable burial, beside her deceased husband. "To this day," says the compiler of his life, "1768, Mr Binning is mentioned among the people of Govan, with particular veneration." The books published at different times, under his name, which are contained in the quarto edition, Glasgow 1768, are all posthumous, and for this due allowance must be made. The good effects his discourses had upon his bearers, and the importunity of many judicious and experienced Christians, to have them published, that they might have the same influence on such as should read them, encouraged some worthy ministers to revise and print them. The first of his works which was printed is entitled, "The Common Principles of the Christian Religion clearly proved, and singlarly improved," as a practical catechism, wherein some of the most important foundations of our faith are solidly laid down; and that doctrine, which is according to godliness, is sweetly, yea pungently pressed home, and most satisfyingly handled. Mr M Ward, speaking of this performance,

says, "That it was not designed for the press, that it contained only his notes on those subjects which he preached to his flock." This book is an excellent exposition of the Westminister Confession, as far as it goes, viz., to the twenty-first question. Mr Patrick Gillespie writes a preface to the readers, wherein he expresses his high opinion of it, in the following encomium: "In this book Mr Binning explains many of the fundamental articles of the Christian faith, and had he lived to have finished this work, he had been, upon this single account, famous in the Church of Christ." The work in question was so greatly esteemed in this country, that before the year 1718 there had been no fewer than five impressions, and all these being sold off, a sixth was made in the same year. Mr James Coleman, minister at Sluys, in Flanders, translated it into the Dutch language. In the year 1670, another posthumous work was printed, entitled, "The Sinner's Sanctuary," being forty ser mons on the eighth chapter of the Romans, from the first to the sixteenth verse. A pure stream of piety and learning runs through the whole of it, and a very peculiar turn of thought that exceeds the common rate of writers on this choice part of the Holy Scriptures. Dr Hatton, Dr Manton, and others, have expounded this chapter ably, but, so far as he goes, Mr Binning is not exceeded by any of them.

A third Treatise was printed at Edinburgh in 1671, under the title, "Fellowship with God, being twentyeight Sermons on the 1st Epistle of John, chap. i. and ii., wherein the true ground and foundation of attaining the spiritual way of entertaining fellowship with the Father and the Son, and the blessed condition of such as attain to it, are most succinctly and dilucidly explained." This book was revised and published by one, who, in his Preface to the reader, styles himself, "His Servant in the Gospel of our dearest Lord and Saviour." He commends the Treatise in these terms: "Here are to be found, conviction for atheists, piercing rebukes to the profane, clear instructions to the ignorant, milk to the babes in Christ, quickening and reviving to such as faint in the way, restoratives for such as are in a decay, reclamations after backsliders to recall them, breasts of consolation for Sion's mourners; and to add no more, here are most excellent directions to serioas seekers of fellowship with God, to guide them in their way, and help them forward to the attainment of that fulness of joy, which is to be had in fellowship with the Father and with the Son.'

The author of the Life prefixed to the edition 1768, from which the preceding account has been chiefly extracted, says, that the rest of Mr Binning's practical MSS. were revising for the press. It does not appear that these have ever seen the light.

In the year 1829, the late venerable Mr Brown of Whitburn published a small work, entitled, “Evange lical Beauties of the late Rev. Hugh Binning, with an account of his Life."

The Edinburgh Christian Instructor, in reviewing this little work, remarks as follows: "We can hardly help thinking it discreditable to the religious taste of the present day, that the works of Binning are so little known. He is a writer of no common order. Although young in years when he died, his judgment and his piety were mature. He was a burning and a shining light while he lived, and his works are fitted to perpetuate and diffuse, now that he has long since gone to his rest and his reward, the illumination which he and a solidity of thinking about them, a richness of gave out in his life and preaching. There is a depth scriptural and pious sentiment, coupled with an exuberarce of beautiful and striking illustration, such as none

There is a neat reprint of the twenty-eight Sermons on Fellow ship with God, by the London Religious Tract Society, in which obselete words are exchanged for others of the same meaning, or explained by a note; a very valuable present to the public.

but a very highly gifted and a sanctified mind could command. We see in them, in fact, a delightful union of true genius, with the most exalted piety; of the fervour and the flow of youth, with the riper judgment and experience of age. There is originality without affectation, a rich imagination without any thing fanciful or extravagant, the utmost simplicity without any thing mean or trifling. We are not conscious of overrating his powers when we say, that neither in the richness of his illustrations, nor in the vein of seraphic piety which pervades his writings, is he at all inferior to Leighton, whom perhaps he, on the whole, most resembles. In what we have said of Binning, we are fully borne out by the recommendations of his works prefixed to this selection, from the pens of the Rev. Dr M'Crie and Rev. John Brown, Edinburgh. We rejoice to see this selection made from the works of one of whom we think so highly. We hope it will be the means of bringing into notice the whole works of the author."

We confess we feel mortified that it should still be the reproach of the religious public of Scotland, that the real excellencies and attractive beauties of Hugh Binning's writings, have not, as yet, been so discerned and felt, as to have brought out a reprint of his works, and in a form worthy of their intrinsic value. We do not do justice, in fact, to the eminent fathers of our Church, among whom Binning, unquestionably, holds a distinguished place.

PART. I. DERANGEMENT.

BY THE REV. JAMES ESDAIle,
Minister of the East Church, Perth.

THE question about the origin of sin is very different from that which has been so long agitated about the origin of evil; a problem which has puzzled philoso. phers from the earliest period of mental inquiry, and has led to a more useless expenditure of talent than any subject which has engaged the attention of the human mind. But they who have discussed this question most profoundly, have seldom considered sin in the list of evils. They seem rather to have considered it as a hardship that the natural propensities should ever be checked, or lead to disastrous consequences; and they have always manifested a tendency to charge God foolishly, because they were not permitted to indulge, without restraint or fear of punishment, the appetites and passions inseparably connected with human nature. Those on the other hand, who know sin to be the transgression of the law of God, are convinced that it is the greatest of all evils; perhaps the only real evil which exists in the world; and that in proportion as it is removed, misery and fear will be banished from the abodes of men.

To be sure even angelic purity, could it be attained on earth, would not exempt the possessor from the stroke of death. But death to a good man is not in the list of evils: it is the messenger that sets him free from the bondage of corruption, and introduces him to the liberty of the sons of God. Neither can death, whether regarded as the fruits of sin, or as the law of nature be regarded as an evil: as the fruits of sin, it is a well-deserved punishment, and prevents the world from being over-run with the greatest of all monsters,-immortal sinners; as the law of nature, and extending to all created beings, it is the means of removing the present actors from the stage, after they have fulfilled their part, to afford room for new occupants, who, in their turn, give place to others; and thus death, which

every individual dreads so much, is made the means of multiplying life to an indefinite extent by a constant succession of living creatures, who enjoy the blessings of life, and transmit this boon through countless generations, till the end of the world.

Death was the wages of sin only to man; he had a charter of immortality, on condition of perfect obedience: it could not be so, in regard to the other creatures, they were incapable of sinning, and could not deserve death as the fruits of delinquency; but they fulfilled the purposes of their creation infinitely better by death, and the reproduction of the species, than if they had been permitted to live for ever. And if we may believe geologists, myriads and millions of animals, of strange shape and character, had lived and died before man was created. Milton seems to be strangely at fault, both in his philosophy and divinity, when he represents the beasts and birds of prey, as, for the first time, pouncing on their victims after the fall. Eve is represented as expressing to Adam an anxious wish to remain in Paradise, even in their fallen state.

"So spake, so wished much humbled Eve, but fate
Subscribed not; nature first gave signs, impressed
On bird, beast, air, air suddenly eclipsed
After short blush of morn; nigh in her sight,
The bird of Jove, stooped from his airy tour,
Two birds of gayest plume before him drove;
Down from a hill the beast that reigns in woods,
First hunter then, pursued a gentle brace,

Goodliest of all the forest, hart and hind."-B. xi. 101. Did the poet imagine that the eagle was originally formed to feed on grain like the pigeon, and the lion to eat straw like the ox? Their structure, internal and external, demonstrates that they were intended from the beginning to be what they now are. Man alone had it in his power to operate a change upon his moral nature; and it is the history of that change, and its consequences, to which I am now to call the attention of the reader.

The Sacred Scriptures alone give us any distinct account of the original condition, and subsequent history, of man; and so precise are they on these points, that we can trace an unbroken chain of history from Adam to Moses, and from Moses to the latest of the prophets, all of whom bore testimony to Him who was to be sent for the regeneration of a lost world. The first momentous events in the world's history, by which the condition of man has been affected ever since, are stated in concise and simple terms in the sacred records. The sum and substance of them may be given in the words of the apostle, By one man's disobedience sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death hath passed on all men, because all have sinned." There are many things connected with this event which the restless curiosity of man would wish to know, but which God has thought proper to conceal, we may be sure, because the knowledge of them is not necessary for our happiness; and, besides, however much may be imparted, there is a point where we must at last stop, and resolve all into the sovereign will and pleasure of the Most High.

66

If it should be asked, why was man permitted to fall? it might be asked in return, why he should have had a security against sin, which was not even afforded to the angels? for many of them fell from their high estate, and are "reserved in chains and darkness till judgment;" or, as the very learned Joseph Mede translates it, "reserved for chains and darkness at (the day of) judgment." But we may ask farther, would it have been an advantage to be secured against the possibility of sinning? If any are disposed to think so, they must be prepared to maintain that it would have been better for man to have been in the situation of the lower animals, who are kept from sinning by the necessity of their nature, and not by voluntary choice. Had man been placed in such a state as this, he would have been incapable either of sin or of

God made man in his own image, one of the most distinct impressions of which is absolute freedom. He was made "sufficient to have stood, though free to fall," whilst every motive was supplied to preserve this freedom in its proper exercise; the ample bounty of heaven left him nothing to desire but to seek to do the divine will; and it had a necessary tendency to impel him, nay, to do all but compel him, to yield a ready and cheerful obedience. One restraint only was imposed, but it involved no hardship; on the contrary, it was essential to his freedom, it was necessary to constitute him a moral and accountable being; for had there been no law, there could have been no transgression; and a moral law was entirely out of the question; that law was given only to check the enormities of sin; it would have been inapplicable and unintelligible in the state of innocence; it would have been to forbid what man had an absolute repugnance to do. But to abstain from a certain fruit, to which man had neither proclivity nor aversion, was the simplest and most reasonable test that could be proposed to try the allegiance and fealty of man to the Being who had endowed him with such high privileges, and who had imposed only one restraint, the inconvenience of which he could never feel, with the whole riches of the world, besides, open to his enjoyment. The prohibition should have been to him a source of happiness; in everything else he acted in conformity with his own pure and untainted feelings; with regard to this, it should have been his pleasure "unargued to obey ;" a dutiful child requires no reason but a parent's will.

The probability is, that man would not have fallen had he not been tempted. But the adversary was at hand, who, artfully and successfully, for his own purposes, plied his temptations, and induced the unfortunate pair to forfeit their happiness, and become rebels against their God. On this deeply mysterious subject we must repress our curiosity and be contented to rest satisfied with the limited information which the Scriptures afford. We learn, then, from this record that there was a revolt among the angels in heaven, and that the apostates were severely punished on account of their rebellion. "God spared not the angels when they sinned, but did cast them down to hell." 2 Pet. ii. 4.

It farther appears, that these corrupted beings, like corrupted mortals, find their chief gratification in opposing the will of God, and in alluring associates to the cause of rebellion. What induced the angels to sin we know not; this, however, we know, that they must have fallen by abusing the freedom which is essential to men and angels; and this, farther, we learn from these important facts, that no beings but God, including in the term the divine persons who constitute the godhead, are absolutely perfect and impeccable. "There is none good but one, that is God;" all other beings stand only in him; whilst they look to him they are happy, and prevail by his might; the moment they think to stand by their own power, their strength is withered, their glory is departed, and they are, for the time, outcasts from happiness and heaven. These are no unimportant lessons, and they are emphatically taught by the revolt and punishment of the apostate angels, and by the misery which man brought upon himself by his wilful fall.

With regard to the fallen angels, their exclusion from bliss is perpetual and irreversible; with regard to fallen man a remedy has been provided, a ransom has been found. Man had a feeble and insufficient apology, which he did not fail to urge, viz., that he had been misled by the insinuations of the serpent. This was a very insufficient excuse for violating a positive command of God, and, therefore, man has been made dearly to pay for his

that the glory of God was interested in defeating the work of the devil, and in not permitting this fair world to be made desolate, or to become a den of demons; although, therefore, the sentence of death was carried into effect, yet the penitent and pious were encouraged to hope, and look for "a better resurrection." The chief of the fallen angels, through whose temptations man fell, was, perhaps, the very chief of the celestial intelligences subordinate to God. We learn from Scripture, that there is a gradation of dignities among thern, designated by the names of" thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers; " and that all these were made by, and subjected to, the Son of Man. Col. i. 16,17. The poet who sings of Paradise lost and regained, adopts this idea, and represents repugnancy on the part of the first apostate to the supremacy of the Son of God, as the cause of the revolt of the angels, and of their expulsion from heaven. A poet's fancy is no good authority in divinity; and the super-eminent genius of the poet in question, is not sufficient to sway our judgment, especially as he combines unparalleled absurdities with unattainable poetic excellence. Nevertheless, we may safely conclude, that it would not be the weakest and least influential of these spiritual beings that would venture to rebel, and seduce others from their allegiance. Being baffled in his attempt, and his hopes in heaven being blasted for ever, he cast his eyes on the new made world, and its sinless inhabitants; (if geologists will permit us to speak so, for they imagine that the world was created millions of years before man ;) the ambition of reigning in their hearts, and of defeating the work of God seized his mind, and he succeeded to the extent of seducing them from God, and securing an inordinate predominance over their feelings and affections.

But all this was without any benefit to the tempter himself: for He, whose almighty power he had in vain attempted to resist in heaven, had prepared for him a still more signal discomfiture, by enabling even weak and fallen man, whom he had seduced, to cast off the yoke of sin, and "to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy."

I have gone as far on this subject as I dare venture; but I have scarcely presumed to speculate beyond the plain letter of Scripture; at least, I have stated nothing inconsistent with its doctrines and its spirit. These high mysteries are frequently brought before our view in Scripture, and the contemplation of them will not be useless if it leads us to adore the unsearchable ways of God; to be thankful for what he has revealed; and to testify our dutiful submission, by humble acquiescence in the appointments of his wisdom. The subjects which I have brought before the contemplation of the reader, are not mysteries without a meaning; they are connected with all the best and highest hopes of men; the whole scheme of our salvation hinges upon them: this scheme was laid in the counsels of God before the foundations of the world: it was fixed and determined in the mind of the Eternal, that the Son of man should be manifested to destroy the works of the Devil: this was not an expedient resorted to as the means of remedying an unforeseen evil; all the evil which sin should produce had been foreseen, and a remedy provided: "We are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before the foundations of the world, but was manifest in these last times.' 1 Pet. i. 19, 20.

Thus, then, the fall of angels, the fall of man, the mysteries of redemption, and the everlasting triumph of the Redeemer, are all inseparably conjoined: and who shall dare to complain, or who may venture to say, why are things ordered thus? Still less reason will we have to murmur or repine, when we come to

consider the exalted views which the Gospel revelation | has given us of the character and attributes of God; which have been brought to light solely by the manifestation of the divine goodness, in providing a remedy for the infirmities and the sins of men. This, I hope, will sufficiently appear when we come to consider the means which God has provided for the adjustment of the evils and irregularities which sin has introduced.

In the meantime, let us attend for a little to some of the most prominent of these evils. "The wages of sin is death.' If death implied an extinction of being, to many it would not be formidable; if formidable to any, it would be so chiefly to the virtuous and good, whose sober habits and well regulated minds enable them to enjoy many rational comforts, which naturally attach them to life, and would make them regard death as the greatest of evils, did they consider it as the final termination of their being: the virtuous Hezekiah seems to have been, for a season, under the influence of such feelings. The wicked, on the other hand, whose habits are alike foreign to virtue and to happiness, and who can see nothing but misery and confusion in this world, or, at least, can taste no true enjoyment, might regard death as 66 a consummation devoutly to be wished: ' and there cannot be a more decided proof of the ineffaceable conviction of future responsibility, than the fact, that so few of the wicked and miserable have dared to put an end to a wretched existence. In so far as regards the general economy of nature, death cannot be accounted an evil: one generation passes away; but the loss is soon repaired, and the affairs of men go on with renovated vigour, and increased knowledge, from the accumulated wisdom and experience of the ages which are past. Why should the present race of mortals monopolize the blessings of existence? In so far as the wisdom and goodness of God are concerned, we may safely say, that these attributes are more conspicuously displayed in giving life and enjoyment to successive millions of beings, than if these blessings were perpetuated to the present generation of men and animals, which could only be done by the exclusion of

successors.

But there is a strong additional reason for the removal of man from the present state of being. He cannot even bear great longevity. Take, for example, the antediluvian world. With Adam for a preacher of righteousness among his descendants for nine hundred and thirty years, the knowledge and worship of God were received only by one branch of his family. Though they could have no difficulty in counting kindred, and must have seen that they all belonged to the same stock, yet "the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was full of violence." What else could be expected from sinners who lived nearly a thousand years, who might almost be said to have the seeds of immortality remaining in their constitution, and probably expected that they might escape the sentence of death? I am fully persuaded that the world never saw, nor can form a conception of such horrible wickedness as was conceived and practised by sinners unrestrained by the fear of death, and of judgment to come; which must, in a great measure, have been the case with the wicked who lived before the flood.

Give earthly immortality, then, to sinners, and this fair world is instantly converted into a Pandemonium; remove the fear of death, and there would be no need of any other hell than this earth: even now the thoughts and imaginations of the hearts of worldly men are evil continually, prone to mere animal gratifications, averse to all spiritual contemplations, bent on encroachment, intent on aggrandizement, mortally hating all and sundry who present any obstacle to headlong indulgence. These are genuine and characteristic features of unrenewed human nature, and all the restraints arising from fear of punishment, poverty, and disgrace, are daily

found to be insufficient to repress the ebullition of those fiendish and beastly propensities. It was in mercy. then, that God smote the earth with sterility, and armed every element of nature against the life of man, and raised up competitors in the brute creation to dispute with him the earth's sovereignty, that the daily call for food and security might draw his attention from the indulgence of his grovelling propensities, and compel him to a certain degree of energy, from the necessity of studying the means of self-preservation.

Do we not see, then, the goodness, as well as the severity of God, in making death the wages of sin? Men, indeed, regard it as the greatest of all evils; but God has made it the door to immortality, and the inlet by which souls, purified by divine grace and the discipline of this world, are prepared for the enjoyment of the kingdom of the just. Viewing death, then, merely as a measure of the divine government, it appears a wise and salutary arrangement. It is the vent by which the world is cleansed from its moral impurities; it is the door by which the righteous escape from the miseries of the world, to exchange their sufferings for everlasting happiness; and it makes room for countless millions of intelligent beings who may glorify God on earth, and enjoy him for ever in heaven, instead of those blessings being confined to one generation of men. Nay, were death excluded, and the world stocked with beings as pure as Adam in the state of innocence, even this would be a limitation to the exercise of divine mercy, for the world would soon be filled; there is no room for the unlimited multiplication of the species, except by the removal of old actors from the scene, and the introduction of new aspirants after "glory, honour, and immortality." In this sense, then, it may justly be said, that "death is swallowed up of victory," and that his very ravages contribute to augment the number of the blessed. True it is, we may contemplate with horror, the multitude of thoughtless victims who are daily hurried into eternity. But it will not always be so: Christ's "unsuffering kingdom yet will come," when the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth; when men shall be born only to be blessed; till the number of the elect shall be filled up, when Christ shall have delivered the kingdom to God, having put all enemies under his feet. I shall endeavour to illustrate this part of the subject in another essay.

THE PILGRIM FATHERS AND THEIR
DESCENDANTS.

BY AN AMERICAN.
COMMUNICATED BY D. D. SCOTT, Esq.
No. I.

THE first English settlement in New England was made by a part of the congregation of the Rev. John Robinson, driven with their pastor by persecution from the north of England to Holland, in the year 1608. Having remained, first at Amsterdam, and afterwards at Leyden twelve years, a part returned to England, and sailing from Plymouth, reached what is now called Massachusetts Bay, and in 1620, founded a town which they called Plymouth. Their number was about one hundred persons. After almost incredible hardships, their settlement began to assume the appearance of prosperity. In less than ten years, their colony increased to 300 persons.

In 1628, a new colony went out from England and founded the town of Salem; and in 1630, another and much larger colony was sent out, and founded Boston. This colony and that of Salem, were under one government, of which John Winkoop was the chief or governor. From these original colonies, many new settlements were made in their respective vicinities. As they were all