Saviour, and be closely knit up with Him! Then, in the Holy Communion, partaking of the body and blood of Christ, how increasingly should we dwell in Him, and He in us! we receiving of His immortality; He, by His own body and blood, preserving our souls and bodies unto life everlasting.

Alas, how weak is the faith of the best of us! and how little depth of religion is there in our lives! and how very brief is the time which we give up to the salvation of our souls! and how little do we follow the example of Christ's humility! and how unworthy do we shew ourselves of our high calling! and how very poor is our love of God and of Christ! And all because we are not so earnest about our souls as we might be, but suffer this world to fill up our thoughts.

May God give us a spirit of self-examination, that, bewailing our numerous frailties, follies, ignorances, and iniquities in thought, word, and action, we may look unto Him who is "the first and the last," "the author and finisher of our faith;" who is now our Advocate, and will one day be our Judge. May God grant that when He, who once came in our flesh in great humility, shall come a second time to judge the world, we may be found an acceptable people in His sight; who liveth and reigneth with the Father, and the Holy Ghost, now and for ever. Amen.

SERMON II.

THE TWO ADAMS.

SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT.

1 COR. XV. 45.

The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening Spirit."

THE fact of our own individual existence, that we are living souls, that we breathe, that we move, that we have our being, is a subject upon which men are occasionally led to reflect, and upon which when they do reflect, they are amazed and astonished. That but a short time ago not one of those who now hear me, existed at all; that now we are each of us taking a certain part in the affairs of the present generation of mankind; that in a few short years we shall have ceased to be in the world; and that our places will then be supplied by others now not born: all this is a mystery which our deepest thoughts cannot fathom, and the widest range of our reason cannot comprehend.

And if this fact of our merely being living souls is a mystery beyond our comprehension, how

much more a mystery, even to the best of Christians, is that spiritual life which is proceeding in those who are members of Christ, "who have been born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God !"

On searching, then, into ourselves, first as human beings, secondly as Christian beings, we find two lives proceeding within us, each a mystery in its kind: the first our natural life, which we have received through our parents from Adam; the second our spiritual life, which we possess in Christ as spiritual members of His body. And as these two lives are different in their nature, so are they different also in their origin. Our first life, which is natural and carnal, we commenced on that day when our mothers brought us into the world, as children of Adam. Our second life, which is spiritual, we commenced on the day of our baptism, wherein we were made, as our catechism expresses it, "members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven."

Further, as names are the signs of things, so we may observe, that the Church,-willing to draw the widest distinction between our natural life and our spiritual life, our natural birth and our spiritual birth, our first birth and our second birth,gives us a new name at our baptism, a name not like that surname which we inherit naturally from our parents, but a Christian name, which the clergy

1 John i. 13.

man does not ask the parents to pronounce, but demands it of the godfathers and godmothers.

Now, it is not my purpose to inquire here, how it comes to pass that such vast numbers, who commenced a spiritual life at their baptism, fall away from the grace then given, and, as they grow up, quench the Holy Spirit and drop into deadly transgressions rather at this season I would follow the words of our text, and direct your thoughts from our natural life, and from our spiritual life, to the origin of the one and the Author of the other,—to Adam, that living soul, our first forefather, from whom our natural life is derived; to Christ, that quickening Spirit, the second Adam, in whom exists our life which is spiritual.

Our text declares, that "the first Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening Spirit." It will be my object this day to consider these two Adams, the fathers of our natural and of our spiritual life. These are the Two Beings, which, the more we look back into the dim distance of past generations, the more they come forward out of the multitudes of the millions who have lived and died, brightly and distinctly shewing themselves to our eyes (the second how far more brightly than the first!) as the two great visible beginnings, and fountains, and sources of all that is most wonderful, amazing, and important in the history of mankind. And well does it become us, at the present season, to

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consider in what the greatness of each consists ; how much greater the second Adam is than the first; in what particulars greater and more glorious.

First, then, we will contemplate the greatness of the first Adam, the parent under God, according to the flesh, of our natural life, and who "was

made a living soul." And here, in the first place, surely it was no common greatness, no ordinary lot, to be the first created into the world, without father, without mother, made in the image of God, and called expressly, by St. Luke, the "son of God." Surely it was no common greatness to be selected at the dawn of creation out of the infinite numbers of beings that were to be, and to receive the spark of life direct from God, and to be placed in a terrestrial Paradise, without sin and without death. Some persons are in the habit of regarding Adam as a being no greater or more wonderful than themselves: but let us grant to our first forefather his due honour. Let us confess that, if there were no other point in which he was great, yet that he infinitely exceeded ourselves in this point alone, namely, that we are the offspring of our fathers and mothers, but his father and his mother was God.

First, then, Adam was great as being the son of God: but, secondly, he was great also as being the parent of men.

1 Luke iii. 38.