2. Now this is beyond a doubt the great duty of the Lenten Season. Lent is the great time of Converting the heart to GOD. To think over one's past life, and one's present state:to review one's sins, and to loathe and forsake them to make reparation where it is possible, -and to confess one's fault when one cannot repair it to inquire for the means of grace and the ways of serving and pleasing GOD, and to avail oneself eagerly of them :-to be more regular than ever in coming oneself, and in bringing others to Church, and to the LORD's Table to pray more regularly, more frequently, more fervently in private:—to make a fresh start in reading one's Bible, if perchance one has been growing careless in respect of it, of late-by all such methods we shall be obeying the Divine command. This, this is the Fast which the LORD approveth! For hear Him, even while addressing the men who lived under the former Covenant: "Is it such a Fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a Fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD? Is not this the Fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to

undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh ?"

You notice of course the many practical duties which the HOLY SPIRIT in this passage enumerates as constituting a true Fast. To limit oneself, or, at least, to mortify oneself, in the matter of meat and drink, is obvious: - but over and above that, there is everything which indicates a soul turning itself to God. It hears the command, "Blow ye the trumpet in Zion:"-and it obeys the voice,-like a dutiful soldier of the Cross. Already does it discern afar off the glories of Easter Day,beyond the sad solemnities of Holy Week, and the awful commemoration of Good Friday. To be worthy to "behold the King in His beauty," we must first have been, in our feeble measure, partakers of His humiliation. We must have taken to heart the Ash-Wednesday warning,"Turn ye, even to Me, with all your heart,and with fasting."

First Sunday in Lent.

SATAN'S USE OF INSTRUMENTS.

GENESIS iii. 13.

The Woman said, The Serpent beguiled me and
I did eat.

Ir is thought that we shall not do amiss if, on more than one of these Sundays in Lent, we bend our thoughts on that great transaction of which all the rest of Human History is as it were the development and consequence: - I allude to the Temptation and Fall of our first Parents. Generally, at this season, our LORD's encounter with Satan affords subject for meditation. We should never disconnect the two encounters for indeed the one is, to a marvellous extent, the very counterpart of the other. But it must ever be useful, that we should bend our eyes attentively and chiefly on the spectacle of our first father Adam's Temptation and Fall.

For you are requested to consider how fruitful in instruction cannot fail to be the Divine record of the process by which Sin first came into the World: how it cannot but wrap up within itself

the whole mystery of Temptation. Look only at the severe brevity of the narrative, on the one hand; the momentous issues of what is narrated, on the other :-and you must feel that every word deserves to be weighed and explained. -Again, consider how the story of the beginning of Sin, is introduced :-"Now the Serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD GOD had made." We are thus prepared to find the note of extraordinary subtilty clearly set on the entire transaction.

Once more. This was no chance encounter. The fountain-head of our Humanity, the first created Pair in their innocency, are seen on one side: the chief of the fallen Angels is seen on the other. Now his method of successful attack,their method of unsuccessful resistance,-must needs be brimful of teaching. It will be for us to take warning by Adam's fall; to gather instruction from every circumstance of his transgression.

The few words read at the outset of this short discourse are taken from the close of the Temptation of our first Parents, but they belong to the beginning of it. "The Serpent beguiled me, and I did eat,"-is Eve's account of her transgression; what Eve says when Adam charges her with the blame of his own downfall.

"Hast thou caten of the Tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat ?" (asked the Almighty Creator.) "And the Man said, The Woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the Tree and I did eat. And the LORD GOD said unto the Woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the Woman said, The Serpent beguiled me."

Thus then was the matter traced back to its beginning. The Serpent is the first agent mentioned. The story begins with him. With him, I say for though a Serpent alone is spoken of, -and though a Serpent it certainly was which tempted Eve, it is just as certain that Satan spake by the Serpent's mouth. The express de

claration of this fact is withheld until the Book of Revelation; but it is hinted at repeatedly throughout Scripture, and lies at the foundation of the whole story. And thus we are reminded at once of all those difficulties which have many a time occurred to us concerning the Divine narrative. The strangeness and abruptness of the entire story:-the impossibility that a serpent should talk :-Eve's holding discourse with the Serpent, unsurprised by its faculty of speech: -why Satan should have made choice of such repulsive agency in approaching our first Mother: