the scene which is before you, the punishment of sin, the curse of God's violated law! Man, that is born of a woman, is born in sin, and hence he is born to trouble. 66 Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground, yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward." (Job v. 6. 7.)

V. Bodily pain is another of those evils which the curse has brought upon the world. "To the woman God said, In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children." And we find, by common experience, that sickness and pain are the usual forerunners of death. If, therefore, we look abroad into the world, and count the wide ravages of disease and pain,-if we estimate the multitudes of our fellow-creatures who are writhing with agony, and the numbers who are wasting away with sickness, we discover one more of the baneful and withering effects of the curse of the broken law. It is needless to point out minutely the accession which has thus been made to the catalogue of human woes. We know how truly it has been said of man," His flesh upon him shall have pain, and his soul within him shall mourn." (Job xiv. 22.)

VI. But again, the curse of the law extends,

"Dust thou art, and

moreover, to bodily death.

unto dust thou shalt return." Now death is, in prospect, dreary; in its circumstances, painful; in its eternal consequences, more awful, as a curse, than tongue can tell.

It is dreary, we say, in prospect. The Scripture speaks of men as being all their lifetime in bondage through fear of death. And we know how nature shrinks from dissolution. Almost every language of the globe is provided with some soft expression which it substitutes for the name of this last enemy, because the plain, blunt sound, ' to die,' has always been ungrateful to the ear of man. But the softening of the name has not availed to remove the terror of the thing; and death, to the present moment, has continued to be the object of man's aversion or his dread.

Some, however, it may be said, have wished for death, and others have made light of it; how then can it be affirmed that all men dread it? There is one answer to this, which, so far as relates to the wanton mockery of death, or to the madness of self-destruction, shall suffice. And it is this; that we are not here regarding man under the influence of temporary or accidental circumstances, with his heart either enveloped in the sparks of vanity, or plunged into unholy despondency and grief, but we are speaking of man

with the sober and abiding feelings of his nature about him, and in exercise. With regard, however, to the weary wish for death, there is yet another answer to be given. The wretch, it is said, has sighed for death. True: bending beneath the pressure of present misfortune, and having in prospect an evil yet to come, he chooses the rapid approach of the future evil, as being the less of two calamities. If death be not the object of his dread, it is only because there is something else more terrible before him. And this, moreover, is while death is at a distance. Let the last hour draw near even to the miserable, the hopes and consolations of the gospel not being taken into account,—and the nearer it approaches, the less welcome, for the most part, it will be. The old man in the fable, fatigued with his journey, and weary of his life, threw down the burden he was carrying, and called for death: death came to him; and he said, "No, I did not call thee."

It has been said that death is also painful in its circumstances. Who does not know how true this is? Besides the pains of an expiring body, there are commonly a host of afflictive circumstances which attend the return of man to his native dust. Witness, for example, the heart-rending parting with family and friends :--witness the

agonising soul of a parent who calls for a child to breathe upon it a last farewell, and to create it an orphan, and to leave it, perhaps, without a guardian or friend upon the earth :-or, think of the grief of survivors; the last looks that have been cast upon the departed; or the tears that have bedewed the margin of the grave;-and then, I ask not for the language of fancy or of

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passion, say not that death is cruel, or that death is unsparing, or that death is a tyrant, but take up the language of sobriety and truth, and humbly acknowledge, that " by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." (Rom. v. 12.)

Death is, moreover, awful in its consequences. The body of a sinner drops into the grave; that is little his name perishes from the earth; that is less but his soul departs into an eternal state; and that is everything. And here all calculation of the bitterness and extent of the curse must cease. We can see how it abides with a man, and afflicts him, through life; but we cannot discover it as it remains with him after death. We can see it walking with him during his pilgrimage on earth, as it were in the distinct and familiar form of a well-known enemy. We can watch it at one time planting thorns in his path, and at

another loading him with burdens, and compelling him to bear them. We behold it at every turn of the way oppressing him with difficulties, or poisoning his enjoyments, or afflicting his soul with misery. We can thus, as it were, see the curse of the law as it accompanies a man through life-but when it has brought him to the valley of the shadow of death, we can see it no longer. It takes an unearthly form, and snatches up its victim, and hurries him from our sight, and buries him in impenetrable darkness; and all that we can say is, He is gone, and the curse of the law is with him.' We know indeed that the soul does not perish with the body; we know, likewise, that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, and that the soul which departs under the curse of the broken law must be cast from the presence of its Maker, and be a partner of misery for ever; but,--the amount of its misery, and the extent of infinite duration,these things are equally removed from human apprehension. We cannot estimate the consequences of death to one who departs into the unseen world at enmity with God.

We have arrived now at some answer to our question, What is the force of the curse pronounced against transgression in our text?' It implies the darkening of that bright image of