e most perfect ordinance which could be framed to bless him
(or rather with a view to his full and perfect blessing, for they only
begin what higher influence must complete), by the Almighty Father's
wisdom, power, and love. I am very anxious that the full force of this
statement should be understood. It is quite possible to take the
following view of it:--Man having placed himself before God in the
attitude of a sinner, justice demanded that he should be sentenced:
toil, care, pain, and death _are_ the sentence, the expression of God's
anger against the transgressor, making man the outcast of His love; that
then, in pity, God took compassion on the outcast, and began a remedial
work, which, while leaving him still for the present under the action of
the sentence, sought to rescue him ultimately from its final doom. This
would appear to me a very imperfect and partial statement of the truth.
To me it seems as if the whole sentence were the expression of the
tenderness which began to work in the Father's heart in the very moment
of the transgression. The death which is the righteous doom, the
inevitable fruit, of sin, is in the very moment of the sentence held in
suspense as it were by the promise; and the toil, care, and pain which
are expressed in the sentence are the very first steps of the remedial
work. The sinner in the very moment of transgression is drawn to the
bosom of God's mercy. Since the first promise was spoken, the death
which was the sinner's doom can only be tasted in its bitterness by the
man who treats the promise as a thing of nought. And all the hard and
stern conditions of man's present lot, instead of being the doom of a
judgment from which mercy is moved to rescue him, are themselves the
motions of mercy by which the work of rescue is begun. This is the
principle on which alone it appears to me that the text can be
understood.

I do not propose to occupy your thoughts with any of what I may call the
minor mercies of the sentence, and the minor ministries of toil, care,
and pain to the true development of man. The sentence of toil at once
began man's higher education. It brought him firmly and sternly, but not
malignly, into contact with the laws which he had broken, and whose
penalties he had defied. Not a morsel of bread could he win without
again submitting to them; humbly, absolutely, utterly, he must become
their servant if he would win the lightest blessing from their hand. But
the blessing