the divine law. In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die, was the divine threatening before the first transgression. Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return, was the sen

tence of God after that fatal act 5.

Where, then, The crown is

is the boasted dignity of man? fallen from our head, woe unto us, for we have sinned".

But it is further to be remarked, that even TRUE CHRISTIANS, though pardoned and adopted through Christ their Saviour, still bear the earthy image; as we have borne (says the Apostle, speaking of himself and other sincere believers) For though Christ be in us, the body is still dead because of sin". Christians are indeed born of God, united to Christ, accepted and justified by faith, led and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, entitled to the promises, and heirs of heaven. They love God, and they obey him. But still they are in the earthly house of their tabernacle, and they groan being burthened. For we know, says the Apostle, that not only the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now; but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption; to wit, the redemption of our bodies?.

5 Gen. ii. 17; iii. 19.

7 Rom. viii. 10.

9. Rom. viii. 22, 23.

6 Lam. v. 16.
2.

8 2 Cor. v. 1',

Christians feel the same imbecility, the same corruption, the same dishonour in their bodies that other men do. They are even exposed to all this with a quicker perception of frailty than others, and with all those ardent desires to have their conversation in heaven, which none but themselves can know. They fain would rise with Christ. They fain would die unto sin. But an earthy body drags them down to the things of sense and time. The support of their fleshly frame, the seasons of sleep or repose, the interruptions of weariness and disease, the calls of appetite, and the languors of advancing age, not to speak of the endless direct temptations to sin and resistances to spiritual services, which their bodies occasion, remind them daily that they bear the image of the earthy. With all their endeavours and prayers, and all the aids of divine grace, they sink continually to earth, and cleave to that dust to which they are so intimately allied. They are thus perpetually taught the exercises of mortification and selfdenial, and are led on in a course of deep contrition, humiliation, and watchfulness, before their God and Saviour.

And if we bear this image of the first Adam in these general circumstances, how much more do we bear it in circumstances of DISEASE and DEATH. The Apostle especially has his eye on these in the language of the passage from which

my text is taken. The expression, It is sown in corruption, in dishonour, in weakness, &c. refers to the grave in which the bodies of the saints are deposited. Then it is that the picture has the strongest resemblance. Then the likeness to our fallen parent is most striking, as well as most humiliating. See the affecting spectacle of man as he hastens towards death! Behold Job stripped of all his consolations, oppressed with an afflicting distemper, and lying on a dunghill. What an image of the earthy! View Lazarus stretched in agony at the rich man's gate, while the dogs come and lick his sores! Represent to yourself the man bound with an infirmity thirty and eight years, as he lay by the pool of Bethesda. Or turn from these descriptions of the Sacred Volume, and look at the scenes of actual sorrow as they crowd around you. Withdraw the veil of treacherous mirth and of the momentary intoxication of pleasure, and lay open the real misery which sin has brought into the world. Read the countenances of the sick and the dying. Hearken to their groans. And then hasten to that silent tomb to which the remains of mortality are consigned. Go near and stoop over the yawning grave. Observe the silent mourners resign the lifeless frame of a beloved relative to the parent earth. The tomb is closed. The once active body moulders in the

grave. The worm feeds sweetly upon it. And is he gone? Is the great, the rich, the learned, the honourable, the beloved, the pious, devoured by one insatiable enemy? Does man, a sinner, return to the earth again? Is he in a few days mingled indiscriminately in one common ignominious forgetfulness? Surely then, man in his best estate is altogether vanity-he bears the image of the earthy.

And if this were all that could be said of him, mournful, as well as brief, would be his history. But, blessed be God, we sorrow not as others which have no hope for those that sleep in Jesus 2. The Apostle calls us to consider, not only the present frailty, but, what is now to be noticed,

II. THE FUTURE GLORY OF THE CHRISTIAN. We shall also bear the image of the heavenly. The true Christian will hereafter resemble the glorious body of his Saviour, as on earth he resembled the ignominious body of his first progenitor.

By the HEAVENLY we are to understand the Last Adam, (v. 46;) the Second Man; the Lord from heaven, (v. 47;) Jehovah, our Righteous ness3. He who was with God and was God.

1 Job, xxiv. 20.
2 1 Thess. iv. 13, 14.
3 Jer. xxiii. 6. 2 Cor. v. 21. 4 John, i. 1.

He who was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and whose glory was beheld by the disciples, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth 5. This divine Saviour was made, indeed, in the likeness of sinful flesh, took upon him the form of a servant, and was tempted in all points like as we are1. He was even crucified through weakness, when he bore our sins in his own body on the tree; but he was still the Lord from heaven, God manifest in the flesh. And after he had risen from the dead, and had ascended with great triumph into the kingdom of heaven, he assumed a glorious body. He became head over all things to the Church; the first-born from the dead, that in all he might have the pre-eminence. He sat down on the righthand of God, angels and authorities and powers -being made subject unto him'. Now he is the heavenly Lord, shining for ever as the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his person. Now he wears that illustrious body of which some irradiations broke forth on the Mount of Transfiguration, when he appeared in glory, his countenance being white and glistering, and his face shining as the sun, and his raiment being white as the light 3. Now he

5 John, i. 14. 6 Rom. viii. 3. 7 Phil. ii. 7; Heb. iv. 15.

8 2 Cor. xiii. 4; 1 Pet. ii. 24; 1 Tim. iii. 16.

I Pet. iii. 22.

9 Eph. i.; Col. i. 18.

3 Matt. xvii. 2.

2 Heb. i. 3.