ject, we are at no loss for information, and can hardly err, as to the divine intention, in the institution of those sacrifices in which the shedding of blood, and the extinction of life, was the main and the remarkable part. For surely we must see clearly by the light of innumerable portions of God's word, as well as by the whole context of scripture, that in the institution of these bloody rites, God designed to exhibit still more explicitly and distinctly to His fallen children, the promise already vouchsafed to them, that the seed of the woman should bruise that serpent's head, by whom at the same time his own heel would also be bruised; and we must therefore believe, that Adam, instructed by God, would discern in the death and sufferings of the animals he was from henceforth to offer in sacrifice, the great Antitype whom they were all designed to prefigure. In the beasts slain by our first father at the command of God, Adam would see the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world in Jehovah's purpose; the incarnate God, who according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God the Father, should in the fulness of time, be crucified and slain by the hands of wicked men. Rev. xiii. 8. Acts ii. 23. But in the sufferings and extinguished life of the sacrificial victims-a life extinguished by his own hand-Adam would also be admonished of his own sin, and would be reminded, that not only had his violation of the Law brought death upon the whole world which he inhabited, and upon all orders of its creatures, but more than this, that it had extended its baneful power into the highest heavens, attacking there the august person of the eternal Son, who in the ages to come should stand upon the earth in the likeness of the sinner, and bear his and that God would yet magnify His Law and make it honorable, without pouring out all the deserved vials of His wrath upon the guilty sinner's head. And wherefore doubt that some such revelations as these were made to Adam by his Maker, when God for the first time ordained the use of sacrifices? It cannot be that our first father was ignorant of the import of the sacrificial types, but rather it is probable that his knowledge was far more accurate on this important matter than is usually supposed, and that to the revelations first made to him in connexion with these mystic rites, that knowledge which his descendants afterwards possessed, ought properly to be traced up. That Adam discerned the transfer of sin from his own person to the person of the future Saviour, as clearly as we now discern it since the advent of Jesus, we may indeed not only fairly question, but disprove from scripture; but we must still admit that this precious truth must have been made known to him, and apprehended by his faith, at least in a degree. Nor can we reasonably doubt, that when the Creator clothed the polluted forms of His guilty creatures, with the skins of the beasts that had been previously slain and offered to Himself in sacrifice, that in that clothing, given them of God, our first parents would be directed by His Spirit, to discern the righteousness which God would put upon the sinner, in virtue of the death of the heavenly Lamb. And what is the righteousness which is imputed by God to the believing sinner? Is it not the righteousness of the God-man, Jesus? Is it not the obedience of the second Adam, which is transferred and reckoned to the first Adam and his seed, even as their sin is transferred and reckoned upon the person of the Lord Jesus? We know that it is so and how then shall we fail to perceive in that mystic clothing, which we are told was fashioned by the very hand of God Himself, the true emblem of that sacred robe which Jesus wrought for the covering of His elect bride, that the shame of her nakedness might no more be seen; or how question the fact, that to Adam and his wife it was revealed by the Comforter, that as the garments which they now received from their benign Creator, would effectually clothe their mortal bodies, so He would also provide for them, in connexion with the advent of the promised Seed, a vesture for their immortal souls, in which arrayed, they should hereafter, without fear, lift up their heads before the assembled universe of God, yea, stand unabashed before the judgment-seat of the God of the assembled multitudes of heaven! That the glorious doctrine of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to His believing people was not altogether concealed from Adam, we may well believe, although, as we also know, that precious truth could not be so fully apprehended by the faith of the ancient church, as by ours; for it must be admitted that they only discerned afar off, that glory of the only-begotten of the Father, which has been brought within the immediate view of the church of the last days. THE HEALING TOUCH. "COULD I but touch his garment's hem," She touched, and in her inmost soul Long had she sought for help in vain And now she has but touched the Lord, O woman! matchless was thy faith, And more, far more, a hope it gave Thy case was mine. A fell disease, Which seized me from the womb, Consumed my strength by marked degrees, And wrapt my soul in gloom; A deadly plague, which gnawed within, |