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The condition in which God placed man at the first, was one of blessedness and freedom. That into which he fell by sin may properly be described as a state of discipline. Not that the first was in such sense one of blessing as to preclude all restraint; for that would appear to be incompatible with the safety of any created being. But certainly, its larger and distinguishing features were the abundance of its blessings, and the small amount of its prohibitions; together with its utter ignorance of all sorrow and bereavement.
Nor again is this later dispensation, in which we find ourselves, destitute of all blessings. On the contrary, it has some which may be said to transcend any that were received under the first. For that union with the Divine nature, which we enjoy in Christ Jesus, surpasses surely all the glories of our earlier state. Then, indeed, man walked outwardly with God, and was made in His image and likeness; but now He dwells actually in us, and makes us, by an ineffable mystery, not simply like, but one with Himself.
The difference then consists not so much in the amount of blessings attached to each; for in that respect, ours is not without considerable advantages of its own. But the difference I would notice between the two dispensations is this, that now the chiefest blessings we can attain to or hope for, are won by a process of discipline; that, in fact, instead
