Know, then, dear children, and remember, that you belong to an apostate race; that we are all, according to the declaration of God's own word, "born in sin," and "shapen in iniquity;" that we are "by nature the children of wrath;" that our native propensities are all of them corrupt; opposed to God; impelling us to habits and practices forbidden by his law, and unfriendly to our best interest. Remember, too, that, so far from being able to trust your own hearts to resist the temptations around you, and to guide you aright, they are all naturally inclined to that which is evil, and disposed to take side with the vanities and corruptions of the world. So that there is constant need of self-denial; of imposing restraints upon all our appetites and passions; and of submitting, especially in early life, to the counsels of the wise and the good, who have gone before us in the journey of life, and have had more experience than ourselves of its temptations and dangers. Hence it is, that so large a part of religion is represented in Scripture as consisting in opposing our own corrupt inclinations; in "crucifying the flesh with the affections and lusts;" in constant efforts to bring down pride and vanity; to mortify our evil propensities; "to keep under the body;" to "rule our own spirits;" and, in general, to gain the victory over ourselves. All these expressions imply that the course of true wisdom is a warfare with evil; that our most formidable enemies are within; and that resisting our own corrupt nature is at once the most constant, and the most serious part of our duty as accountable creatures. Nor is this all. Not only is our nature corrupt; not only are we from our very birth, prone to evil "as the sparks fly upward;" but we are also by nature under condemnation. In the language of that incomparable Catechism, with which you have been familiar from lisping infancy--and every doctrine of which, as I believe, is drawn from the Bible--"All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever." Such is the condition of our race by nature. Not only depraved and unworthy, but guilty, condemned, and perishing; not only in _danger_ of being forever lost; but already under a sentence of death, unless rescued from it by the power and grace of the Saviour. All the posterity of Adam are by nature, "dead in trespasses and sins," having no resources within themselves for regaining the favour and image of God. "The carnal mind is enmity against God; it is not in subjection to the law of God, neither indeed can be." So that, left to ourselves, we should infallibly go on in sin to eternal, merited, and hopeless destruction.