his own free will; his own free will must be tested and tried ;-but though his own free will shall fail, and he can no longer live by virtue of his own righteousness, here is a gracious means already presented, by which he might live through the merits of another, by the love of the Eternal One, who had before pronounced the dreadful penalty of death upon the offenders.

Are any of you enduring sorrow and suffering, brethren? Then, I say, strive to forget the present, by casting your thoughts back to the past, and forward to the future. Man's days are short and transitory, even with the longest lives. Think of that happy, upright condition, in which your first parents lived in Eden. Think of the great end for which you were made. See here the fullest assurance of God's love towards you. Or, if you meditate upon your fallen condition, go back to earlier days than those even of our parents' innocence, and see there, in the blood of the "lamb slain before the foundation of the world," both a means and an assurance of your recovery. Righteousness you can no longer hope for in yourself; but in the blood of that Lamb you may be cleansed of your foulest sin, if by faith you seek that mercy.

May we all, from the sad experience of the past, learn to have a reverence for the Word of God, and believe that he can neither lie nor repent,that His Word is unchanging and unchangeable,

like himself. In that Word we may see our fate through endless ages, if we will but look and examine for ourselves. Our first parents could have seen their fate in those fearful words-"In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." These, and similar words to these, are a mirror in which we may behold our own futurity. The course of this world, whether temporal or spiritual, public or private, is not governed, as persons are inclined to think, by a mere caprice of the Almighty, or left to drift on as chance may carry it. No! believe me, brethren, they are governed by predetermined laws, which the Almighty has thought right to lay down for Himself. These laws are laid down before hand, and you may read them in your Bible any day. By these laws you must live or die; and by these laws you may even now penetrate into the furthest end of time, and behold your eternity. In the promise of grace, or the denunciation of wrath which they proclaim, you may behold, as in a mirror, your everlasting condition. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting."

It is not now by your own righteousness that you can be saved; that time is past and gone. It is now by faith that we shall be saved. "The

just shall live by faith"-faith in the power, in the mercy, in the righteousness of the Lord Christ Jesus, a faith which shall cause us to believe Him, and to act upon his word. My brethren, our first parents had their trial to prove the uprightness and integrity of their hearts; we, also, must endure a like trial, not so much to prove our integrity and uprightness as to prove our faith. And every act we do, every word we say, every thought we entertain, will bear its certain testimony.

SERMON II.

"I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt.”Gen. xlv. 4.

THERE is something in the history and character of Joseph most eminently cheering and encouraging. It brings the brighter side of human nature before our minds, and teaches us how much there is sometimes in man to call forth our admiration in spite of his fall. It teaches us that, though the image of God, in which man was first made, has been much obliterated and defaced by sin, there are yet outlines and features here and there to be distinguished in his moral being which remind us undoubtedly of the great Creator's work, and bespeak us to be his children. The natural affection, the sweetness of disposition, the purity, the unbending constancy, the unflinching moral courage which we behold in Joseph, in spite of all his trials, difficulties, and temptations, present a picture to us which we are not prepared for. It quite startles us, and ought to teach us, by way of encouragement, how much a man by God's grace may do; what trials he can undergo; what temptations he can resist and overcome; how powerless, after all, the world the flesh

and the Devil may be against those who put their hope and faith in God.

The first remarkable fact which strikes us in the history of Joseph is the hatred of his brothers towards him. It appears that he was hated of them for two reasons,-first, because he was his father's favourite son, and then again because of certain dreams which Joseph had had, which declared to him, as he believed, that his parents and his eleven brethren should in some future day acknowledge him as their superior. He was binding sheaves in the field, he dreamt, and behold! his sheaf arose and stood upright, and their sheaves stood round about and made obeisance to his sheaf. And again he dreamt another dream, in which the sun and moon and eleven stars made obeisance to him. In the honest simplicity and sanguine hopefulness of his early childhood, Joseph declared these dreams to his brethren, signifying, perhaps, at the same time, the way in which he interpreted them. In consequence of these dreams his brethren envied him even more than before, and conspired against him to take away his life. On a certain occasion when sent to his brethren who were tending his father's sheep in Dothan, his brethren exclaimed one to another "Behold this dreamer cometh; come now, therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit; and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him; and we