This is spoken of the day of the Lord overtaking the wicked and unprepared, “as a thief in the night." Our Lord uses the image to inform his disciples, both of the sorrow and the joy they should have after He had left them. (John xvi. 20-22.) The same applies to us. If God be giving us His blessing on all the sorrow, and trial, and trouble we suffer in this life, then may we regard our short time here as merely the travail of our souls, by which we are brought forth into the glorious liberty that remains for the children of God. When we enter that new world, our sorrow will be turned into joy, and we shall remember no more the anguish, for joy that we are born into that world; the Lord will see us again, and our hearts will rejoice.

Next observe how St. Paul also speaks of the woman's travail in 1 Timothy ii. 15. After saying that the woman was first deceived, he adds, "notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety." Now I think it is here, you will see, how God has remembered mercy in judgment. For what is the meaning of this promise? Note first what it does not mean. It cannot mean that all women, who have faith, charity, holiness and sobriety, shall be safely brought through

the labours of childbirth: we do sometimes see the most holy women are taken away at such times. We must remind you that the word translated "in," "in childbearing," is sometimes also translated through, or, by. So it is rendered in 1 Cor. iii. 15, "he himself shall be saved yet so as by fire." Now if we so render the word here, we come, I think, to this conclusion about the promise contained in the passage. Although the woman was more guilty than the man in “ being deceived and in the transgression," yet God mercifully means that she should be saved as well as man, and by the same means, which are, continuing in faith, and love, and holiness with sobriety, although she have this danger beyond what man has, viz., travail in childbirth.

Here then is mercy in the promise, that childbearing, though a season of sorrow and pain, shall not be to her destruction, although her sin deserves it.

Special mercies are often experienced by mothers at such seasons of special trial. The fears before-hand, the pains at the time, and the joys afterwards, have oftentimes been sanctified, so as to have brought forth the peaceable fruits of righteousness to those who were exercised by such afflictions.

But let us next notice the sentence passed

upon Adam of which the woman also is a partaker.

There are very few cases, if any, in which one person's sin does not bring evil upon others. Sin is like an infectious disease. And when others take it from us they have all the sufferings which follow necessarily with the disease. Eve's offer of the stolen fruit to her husband, made him a partaker of all the misery of the punishment which ensued.

Now the punishment of man may be said to be this. A curse has been passed upon the ground, the effect of which is, that man must labour for food to sustain life. "In sorrow" is he thus to eat all the days of his life; and then to return to that dust out of which he was formed.

Before man sinned, the earth brought forth nothing but what was good. Now we know it bears weeds, thorns and thistles, and that of itself, whereas the good seed degenerates or does not grow at all, unless great toil, and care, and cultivation be bestowed. Perhaps more than three-fourths of the inhabitants of the world are labourers, earning bread by the sweat of the brow. Some in the field, some at the loom, and others in all the various trades by which men seek a livelihood. Nothing, worth having, is to be had without labour.

The simplest food is bread. But look at the long and varied process of making bread. It takes a year before you can obtain a loaf of wheaten bread. The land must be tilled, the seed sown, the crop reaped, the ear threshed, the grain ground, the flour prepared, the bread baked, to obtain the staff of life.

Nor must we forget that part of this curse is felt in the labour of mind, which most of those have to go through, who have not to labour with their hands. More persons suffer in health from over exertion in mind, than by excess of labour of body. Nor are those exempt from the curse, who are so gifted with this world's goods, that they need not labour for a livelihood. They are partakers of sorrow, of afflictions in the body, of anxiety and vexation of spirit. As it is written, "man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward." See also an account of man's state here in Psalm xc. ver. 10. "The days of our years are threescore and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow: for it is soon cut off and we are gone.

It is because of this curse that there is nothing earthly that can give perfect satisfaction.

One man there has been on this earth, who

was more rich, more wise and clever and learned, more honoured and sought after, than any that were before him, or that will come after him. We may learn from the 2nd chap. of Ecclesiastes, that there was no pleasure or profit, no source of joy and satisfaction from earthly things that he left untried. But was Solomon freed from the curse of Adam? Hear his own testimony of how he found the curse affecting every thing, as you read in the 11th verse of that chapter. "Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit, (no real and perfect satisfaction) under the sun." And if you are in any way a labourer, forget not this. Many a one who labours hard perhaps for his livelihood, envies the lot of those who have riches at their command, and need not labour. But let such ever bear in mind, how the curse of Adam affects all alike. Riches bring cares with them. And what is worse when they are heaped upon us, it makes it harder for us to enter in at that narrow gate that leadeth to life. The honest and pious labourer who gains but sufficient for the daily maintenance of himself and family, is far happier than the richest and greatest monarch on the earth who knows not Christ and his peace.