their case the perfect development of the hair has been as much interfered with as that of the branch of the hawthorn, or the leaf of the furze.

The same views have been taken in regard to the Thistle. The calyx in their case is the organ on which it is alleged the blight has become permanent. This, it is held, has been arrested, and there has been deterioration. The mistake is again made in believing that the curse was made to fall on the vegetation itself, and not on the soil. These things have been put forth with pious intent, no doubt, and have served for purposes of moralizing; but in seeking evidences of blight, the evidences of blessing, which are ever higher and even more influential, have been lost sight of. This is apparent when we see in the transformed branch-bud, or leaf-bud, or in the hair, adaptations to the place in nature assigned to the characteristic plants, and means for the preservation of the species on the earth. It is true that, under certain methods of cultivation, the spines in some of these plants can be greatly modified or even done away with, as in the case of the Rest-harrow, for example, in which accidents of soil show us the prickly Rest-harrow (Ononis spinosa) passing into the unarmed variety (Ononis inermis). But in other cases cultivation only gives length to the spines. The situations which, as God's means for carrying out the curse, they occupy in the desert, the wilderness, the barren land, the soil "nigh unto cursing," demand an armature suited to their positions for self-defence in growth and in seed-bearing. In the case of the thorns and thistles, as in very many other allusions to external nature in the Word of God, to claim that certain spiritual truths necessarily underly them, is to lose what they do teach, if these claims cannot be shown to fit into well ascertained facts in science. There is far more and far deeper meaning in connection with the wisdom of God in creation-in seeing, as here, that the spines on certain plants are proofs of God's goodness in adapting them to circumstances in which they may propagate their kind-than there ever could be in connection with his wrath, if well-founded scientific objections can be made to the latter view. When the Creator gave to some reptiles their terrible poison-fangs, and to some insects their deadly stings, he had as high ends in view in the economy of nature, as he had in making other reptiles harmless and other insects stingless. That he sent the poisonous serpents among a backsliding people, and the hornet against the enemies of a nation that trusted in him, in nowise warrants us to conclude that this was the only purpose which these forms of life served in the world. And that he used the thorns and thistles in carrying out

the curse on the ground after the fall, does not imply either that they were themselves accursed, or that they serve no other purpose still but that of hindering fertility. A little thought, touching the economic uses of certain species belonging to both kinds, might supply much interest to all.

In verse 19, an aspect of the curse much more awful than any yet. referred to is brought out with much distinctness :-"In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread, till thou return unto the ground: for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." In the original terms of the covenant regarding the tree of "the knowledge of good and evil," the penalty is thus stated-" In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." This was well understood, and acquiesced in by our first parents. Accordingly, when the subtile tempter raised the question so abruptly-"Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" Eve's reply acknowledged the rectitude and propriety of the prohibition" And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it;" and the threatened penalty was fully in view, for she added, "Lest ye die." The responsibility of Adam and his wife, indeed, stood in this clear understanding of the will of God. The prohibition was disregarded, the covenant was broken, and the penalty was realized. Even at that moment man in a sense died, and all in him—" Death passed upon all men." The death was double, as shall be seen:-The soul became dead to God and all good, "dead in trespasses and sin ;" and the body, after a time, was to die, in the sense of dying under which animated matter may come-it was to return to the dust whence it was taken.

What, then, was implied in all this?-1, Loss of friendship with the Creator on earth; 2, Exclusion from eternal life with him; 3, The realization in man of a power not of God-in a word, SIN, the corruption and blight both of his moral and his spiritual nature; 4, The death of the body, physical death as well as spiritual, and the liability of the body, thus separated from the dominion of the pure and the spiritual, to sickness, to disease, to infirmity. Gather, then, together all the elements of positive degradation which the Scriptures associate with the condition. of the fallen race, and it will be found that all were implied in, and are accounted for by, that transaction in Eden, when man voluntarily separated himself from God and became associated with the nature, and in one sense with the destiny of the tempter. But, granting all this, a

question of great moment has been put touching this death now linked up with the nature of man. In the progress of science discoveries were made which gave opportunity to those who are ever on the watch to find a joint in the harness of truth: it was found that, before the days of Adam in Eden, whole races of animals, some of them high in organization, had lived their day and then passed away-had, in short, died. But, it was asked, does not the Bible pledge itself to something very different? Does it not account for all death by tracing it to Adam's sin? These questions still continue to be put, and now not by gainsayers only, but by seekers after truth likewise; and they thus demand a full answer. The general geological facts which bear on this subject are thus graphically stated by Mr. Hugh Miller:-"This early exhibition of tooth, and spine, and sting-of weapons constructed alike to cut and to

pierce to unite two of the most indispensable requirements of the modern armourer-a keen edge to a strong back-nay, stranger still, the examples furnished in this primeval time, of weapons formed not only to kill, but also to torture-must be altogether at variance with the preconceived opinions of those who hold that, until man appeared in creation, and darkened its sympathetic face with the stain of moral

guilt, the reign of violence and outrage did not begin, and that there was no death among the inferior creatures, and no suffering." If the reader will glance at any of the tables given above, in which the succession of life on the pre-adamic earth is indicated, it will be noticed that traces of reptiles have been found at a place so low down in the fossiliferous rocks as the Devonian, or Old Red Sandstone. In the diagram copied from Owen, the Enaliosauria, or sea-lizards, are seen to have their largest development in the Lias and Oolite, and to reach into the Trias below and to the Chalk above. Forms of crocodilian life had their distribution from the Lias up to the top of the Tertiary. Traces of licertian life occur in the Devonian, in the Permian, Trias, Chalk, and have their chief development in the Pleiocene tertiary. Serpents, we have already seen, run through the whole Tertiary group. The teeth of some of these predatory reptiles, shown with the bones of the head in figs. 63, 64, indicate the formidable character of the creatures to the other forms of life amidst which they lived. The same facts are seen in connection with the flying lizards, which range from the Lower lias to the Middle chalk.

Fig. 64.

The Pterodactyles were believed by Cuvier to have lived on insects ; แ "but," remarks Buckland, head and teeth of two species are so much larger and stronger than is necessary for the capture of insects, that the larger species of them may possibly have fed on fishes, darting on them from the air, after the manner of sea-swallows and solan geese." The same author, alluding to the Icthyosaurus, says " Its enormous eye was an optical instrument of varied and prodigious power, enabling the Icthyosaurus to descry its prey at great or little distances, in the obscurity of night, and in the depths of the sea."

Skeleton of Pterodactylus Crassirostris.

If, again, we look at the pre-adamic mammals, which lived as do the lions, tigers, and hyænas of our time, the conviction will be forced on us that the ages before Adam must have witnessed death in many of

its most revolting forms-not death instantaneous only, but the process of dying lengthened out by the gradual torture of the prey, as may be seen in the case of the cat when it has captured a mouse. The remains of Carnivora, or flesh-eaters, met with in the well-known bone caves, &c., tell the tale of the existence of animals which preyed on each other the tale of death in its most hideous forms among the lower animals-death by violence. This conclusion is arrived at by a process of induction which cannot be called in question. "Every organized being," said Cuvier, "forms a whole, a single circumscribed system, the parts of which mutually correspond and concur to the same definitive action by a reciprocal reaction. None of these parts can change without the others also changing; and consequently each part, taken separately, indicates and gives all the others." Cuvier took the lion (Felis leo) as the type of a carnivorous mammal, and, after much study and much and varied comparison of the lion with other Carnivora, he came to the conclusion that the form of the tooth alone is sufficient to enable the anatomist to determine the place of the animal to which it belonged, even though no other parts of its bony structure should be found. Professor Owen has carried this principle much farther, and is in the habit of determining the position of animals in the zoological scale from other mere fragments of the osseous skeleton. Guided, then, by this principle, anatomists have shown that it is beyond doubt that many life-destroying animals existed in pre-adamic times. I have given this prominence to these facts because the present state of science demands their recognition. And if those who have received willingly the Bible as an infallible record do not look at such facts, and ascertain what their relation is to the Bible, if they have others who may any, be actuated by motives of enmity to revealed truth will be sure to do so. Besides, the greater the prominence that can be given to alleged antagonistic facts, the brighter will the testimony to the truth become, when the point of harmony is broadly indicated.

What are the scriptural testimonies on this important subject? Do these shut us up to the conclusion that all death is the result of man's sin? The chief passages of Scripture, in addition to those already quoted, bearing on this are these:-"Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law; for sin is the transgression of the law" (1 John iii. 4); "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. vi. 23); "Wherefore, as 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); "When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished,