his image. The crown is thus a second time put upon our head. What we had lost in the first

Adam, is made up, and more than made up, to us in the second. Behold, then, the mystery of grace, and the manifold wisdom of God! Behold, and "let wonder still with gratitude arise," and

reach the noblest strain!

It is by this participation of the divine nature alone that we can properly understand our original dignity and glory. No man can form a true idea of the image of God in which the first man is said to have been made, but he who possesses a portion of that image restored to him by grace. Who can understand a father's nature, and all the idiosyncrasies or peculiarities of that nature and constitution, like his own son who participates in that nature, and has only to advert to those peculiarities of feeling in himself, and draw from thence his conclusions? Just so is it that a partial restoration to God's likeness capacitates us to rise in our contemplation to the height of our original from whence our nature has descended, and been dashed, and broken by the fall.

In order to ascertain what the sacred writers mean by the "divine nature," we must advert to the significant and chosen epithets by which in several places it is designated. We We may select the chief of these, and view them in their natural and legitimate import; and, by their collected sense, form a just and proper conception of what

is intended. Even those who participate not in the blessing may have a general apprehension of its nature, while those who do will attain to a much more correct and definite idea. The number and weight of the epithets themselves attach an immense importance to the subject, since it is not conceivable that what is so frequently and variously brought before us can be deemed of slight and trivial consequence. Let us ponder, then, in devout and profound meditation on what has fallen from the lips of our divine Teacher, and the pens of his inspired Apostles, in relation to this theme.

Let us attend, in the first place, to the designation of this new nature which our Lord employed in his conference with Nicodemus. That venerable personage accosted him as a divine Teacher, proved to be so by his miraculous powers. He sought the interview on purpose to be made acquainted with the precise nature and character of Christ's religion. Our Lord commences with no secondary matter, but goes at once to the centre of his doctrine, which had afterwards to be more fully made known and expounded. The kingdom I am come to establish, says he, must be entered by a NEW BIRTH: Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Ye must be born again!" He prefaces it with the solemn asseveration of verily, or amen, which he repeats

no less than three several times. And upon the learned Jew misapprehending him, and attaching a carnal sense to the birth of which he spake, he corrects him, saying, in the clearest and plainest manner, that it was not the birth of a man or a human being that he spoke of, but of his becoming a new creature by a divine and spiritual operation upon his mind, without which his natural birth, though repeated a thousand times, would effect no improvement. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh," is a carnal nature: but "that which is born of the spirit is spirit," a spiritual and holy production.

Here, then, this "divine nature," in its origin and result, is set forth with a divine simplicity; and at the same time with a divine certainty and authority. It is ascribed to a direct operation of the Holy Spirit upon the mind itself, changing its character, and making it of natural, spiritual; of carnal, holy; and of earthly, heavenly. As a birth it imports no transient act of the Spirit, penetrating but little beneath the surface of the mind; but one entering into it, and issuing in a new and permanent production. A production preserved in the soul by the same influence, and abiding in it as a new power, to be there as long as the soul shall last; being, indeed, identified with it, and made an essential part or quality of it. As a birth it includes the completeness of all its parts, and hence receives the appellations elsewhere of a

new creature, and a new man in Christ Jesus; but complete at first only in the numerical sense of all its parts or rudimental forms, yet advancing in growth and development till it attains its full perfection. To this the same agency that originated it is continually requisite, and is graciously insured. God, who leaves nothing that he begins imperfect, will never leave this new spiritual creation till it is perfect. He will not forsake this work of his own hands. "He that hath begun a good work in you will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ." We are renewed, therefore, more and more in the spirit of our mind and as the outward man perisheth, so the inward man, we are assured, is renewed day by day.

The principle of this inner birth is divine, and as such imperishable. It is often spoken of in the scripture under the idea of a new and SPIRITUAL LIFE within us. A life of itself, the seat of which is in our natural and intellectual being, though distinct from it in either view, and in no sense produced by it or with it. It owns for its origin the same quickening power as that of the new birth, being one and the same thing, and though the author of it is then more usually represented to be the Son of God, than the third person of the Trinity, yet still it is by the same Spirit that he forms it in our soul. "The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a

quickening spirit." And "as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom he will." "And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins." "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." How positively does the great Apostle speak of this spiritual life as an object of his own consciousness? "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." The same thing he predicates of the christians of Colosse, in the letter he indites to them, and subscribes with his own hand. "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory." Precious is the life divine that thus unites us to Christ, and which, like the flame enkindled by the solar heat, aspires ever upwards to its source!

But how is this life produced in us? What are its distinguishing properties? It derives its very name from the power and energy which it imparts to our mental functions, as exercised upon invisible and spiritual objects. It is different from the angelical life in this respect, though having reference to many of the same objects; adapting its mode of operation by our faculties to their ordinary mode of acting in relation to other objects. The believer by his consciousness of the