And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away._” (Isa. xxxv. 1, 2, 5–10.) Sin, the sin of the first parent, which every child of Adam repeats, is the fundamental fact of man’s being; no religion, no philosophy, which makes light of it can lay firm hold of man’s conscience and heart. But, blessed be God, grace is the crowning fact; and it is the crown which will remain conspicuous through eternity. The sentence on sin then is a dread reality. “_The soul that sinneth it shall die_” remains as God’s judgment record, which no art or effort of man can cancel. But in this first sentence on His sinful child God has wondrously interwoven benediction and judgment, warning and promise, words of life and dooms of death. On the serpent the curse is decisive and final: “_And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life._” (Gen. iii. 14.) But the sternness relaxes and the doom melts into a promise, when the Judge addresses Himself to man. The very curse on the serpent is pregnant with blessing to the woman and her seed; the Executor of the Lord’s judgment on the tempter is the everlasting triumphant Redeemer of mankind. And throughout the sentence on our race blessing ranges in fellowship with judgment; and the sternest words, prophets of many ills and sorrows, are rich benedictions in disguise. And this “_cursed is the ground_” is amongst them. It sounds hard and stern, and prophesies a long and hard apprenticeship of toil and pain; but stern as it seems, it is part of the blessing and not of the cursing, of the benediction and not of the doom. It describes the first stage of the redemptive process of which the sentence on the serpent had spoken, and is the condition of man’s elevation out of the estate of a sinful, suffering, degraded creature to the friendship, fellowship, and likeness of God. In order that we may appreciate this, and see the true meaning and bearing of the judgment, I shall ask you to consider with me— I. The range of the sentence. II. Its work.