might involve. Surely it is not too much to say that they might make this means of moral culture a priceless blessing to their souls. How could paradise meet the greatest of all their wants-the want of their newborn souls-without this one provision for proving and invigorating their loving obedience to their God? Need we then raise the question-What was God's purpose in this prohibition? The answer is at hand-Tổ accomplish precisely this result; to give the first human pair a test of obedience which should be naturally a means of moral culture and of growth in holiness. The horrible thought-that God meant and sought to make them sin-how can we say less of it than that it is born of Satan! For it assumes, as Satan did in the garden, that God sought, not their good, but their hurt; is not benevolent but malevolent! Our souls recoil from this assumption. Doth not the Scriptures say truly (Jas. 1: 13), "Neither tempteth he any man"? Never, for the purpose of drawing him into sin!-Is it replied:-God certainly knew they would eat that forbidden fruit; the answer is, Undoubtedly he did; but this proves nothing as to his purpose and aim in placing them under this moral trial. If it be yet saidHe might have made the trial so much less that they would have borne it successfully: the proper answer is, Who knows that? Who is wiser or more loving in such an emergency than God? Consider also that while God knew they would fall, he also knew that he could redeem the race through his Son, gloriously; and so could make the wrath of both wicked men and devils subserve his praise. We may account this to be his reason for subjecting the first pair to a form of trial (every way good and wise in itself and well designed)although he foresaw they would fall before it. It was still (as he saw the case through to its remotest end) better than any other form of trial; better than no trial at all, supposing such a thing in their case possible.

Thus may we vindicate God's ways in this transaction. It was kind in him to grant for their free use every other fruit in the garden-all they could need. It was right that he should impose some test of their obedience and love. Indeed it was a natural necessity of their moral nature that this question of obeying God, always and every-where, should come to issue.

As

surely as they were moral beings, capable of knowing duty and of doing it, born into being with susceptibilities to happiness which sometimes must be virtuously denied at the demand of God and of the greater good, so surely they must meet this trial sooner or later, in one form or another, until they become so strong in their holy purpose, so fixed in the spirit of love and obedience to God that temptation to sin is of course spurned away and duty is done for evermore without a question. Moral trial, therefore, if not in this precise form, yet in some analogous form, is the necessary means of developing moral strength and confirmed holiness; is therefore the natural pathway to the blessedness of heaven. Thus, with no wavering of doubt, we may vindicate God's ways toward man in this first great moral trial brought on our race.

In what sense was this called, "The tree of the knowledge of good and evil"? (Gen. 2: 9, 17 and 3: 5)————It brought the knowledge of evil by fearful experience; the knowledge of good to a certain extent by the freshened sense of contrast with the experience of evil. Sin gives to moral beings such knowledge of good and of evil-knowledge it were better far for them they should never have!

Was the fruit of this tree a natural poison? We do not know. God has not told us. It may have been or it may not. God does not base his prohibition on this ground. There are other grounds, all-sufficient, without this. It might perhaps be urged with some plausibility that the analogy of this earthly life favors the affirmative inasmuch as for the most part, God's prohibitions of food and indeed of animal indulgence in general, are based on this principle-Abstain from poison; do thyself no harm. God is not wont to prohibit aught that is good for food or pleasurable to any sense, except because it is pernicious, poisonous.

What was this threatened penalty? Death, in what sense?

In the same sense in which it actually falls upon all who reject Christ and fail of his salvation. Upon such the curse of the law falls without abatement or modification. Their doom must surely be taken as the exponent and measure of the meaning of this threatened death. Of course it includes the loss of God's favor;

the incurring of his frown.-That eternal death did not begin instantly was due to arrest of judgment for a new probation under the scheme of redemption; and to nothing else.

Was natural death a part of this penalty?-Plainly natural death became the doom of the race, equally of the redeemed and of the unredeemed, under the scheme of redemption-a scheme which carried with it more or less of earthly life before the death of the body. But this proves nothing as to the breadth of the original threatening "Thou shalt surely die." What would have been in respect to natural death if no scheme of redemption had intervened and the original threatening had been executed at once, we have no means of knowing. Mortality as at present resting on the race and terminating in natural death is one of the incidents of the new probation under mercy, and gives us no light on the other question, viz. What if no mercy had come in? In general, it is of small account for us to ask, What would have been if something else had happened otherwise than it did? e. g. What would have taken place if the first pair had endured all temptation? How long would the trial have continued? Would it have terminated by removing the tree, or by taking off the prohibition, or only by such complete victory over temptation that its presence could have been only a joy and a triumph? What part would have been borne by "the tree of life"? And after their sin, what if they had put forth their hand to take and eat of this life-tree?Speculations of this sort never make men

wiser.

III. The Temptation.

On this point the history is remarkably full and distinct. To those who have given attention to what may be called the law of temptation-the way it works and gains its object-little explanation of the narrative is needed.- We may note that Satan took care not to be recognized as an enemy; that he made his first approaches with subtlest caution and skill, bringing up the case of the prohibited fruit as a question-Is it indeed so that God hath said, Ye shall not eat of every tree? As if he would say-What do you think about this prohibition? Is it quite pleasant to be put under

such restraint?-When Eve recited the words of God's prohibition and added something more-viz. "neither shall ye touch it," it is at least supposable that Satan had already sprung in her mind the feeling that the injunction was indeed very stringent, perhaps unreasonably and unkindly so. It is plain that Satan is emboldened and now ventures to strike out squarely against God. Putting his word unqualifiedly against God's word, "ye shall not surely die," he became "the father of lies," "a liar from the beginning," and threw all the weight of his influence into the scale to break down Eve's confidence in God's veracity as well as in his real kindness. Then with Satanic cunning he took advantage of the name given to this forbidden tree to make Eve think that knowledge, great and enviable like that of the gods, would come from eating this fruit. Artfully he charges that God knew this, and sought by the prohibition to debar them from this boon of knowledge so desirable. The gilded bait was swallowed but too soon and too thoughtlessly! Eve had listened; she had more than half believed these lies; she still dallied with the temptation; she looked again at the tree and its fruit; she saw it beautiful and seemingly good for food; and, far beyond this, it appealed to her imagination as giving her that unknown wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods-so she took of it and ate! Then she brought of it to her husband. Her words to him are not on record. We are left to imagine how her example may have wrought upon him, and sympathy also with her doom if Adam thought of that; how the feeling-I must stand or fall, live or die, with this only human friend I have on earth-may have overcome every scruple. So far as appears he yielded without a word of question, much less of reproof. He yielded-and the awful deed was done!

IV. The Fall and its Immediate Effects. The first human pair are in sin; they have risen against God their Maker in rebellion. Instantly "their eyes are opened." They realize how strangely different are the sensations that come after sin from those that are before. The false hopes, the fascinations, the bewildering, bewitching charms of temptation's hour give place to the awful sense of folly and of wrong-a

sense of passing suddenly into a world of solemn and dread realities pertaining to God, duty, and doom. They knew that they were naked"; an awful sense of being unfit to be seen; a consciousness of being ugly, loathsome, as if the inner guilt of their souls stood out visibly over their whole bodies-this seems to have been their first sensation, and they set themselves to sewing fig-leaf coverings. As evening drew on they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden. That voice which up to this day had been their sweetest music now fills their very souls with shame and terror.

-It is remarkable that Adam's words and his acts also make so much account of his nakedness, apparently of person. Was it that his convictions of sin and guilt were yet superficial, so that his sense of shame for his sin turned his thought first to his personal nakedness? Had he yet to learn that "God looketh on the heart"? If so the Lord's searching question must have met his case- "Who told thee that thou wast naked"? How camest thou by this sense of shame, this dread of the eye of thy divine Father? "Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat"?- -Adam could not do otherwise than confess his sin, yet with an apology which almost or quite reflected upon God; "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me, and I did eat." The woman too sought to screen herself somewhat under the apology of a subtle temptation. "The serpent beguiled me and I did eat."

The secondary results of the fall appear in the curse severally pronounced of God upon the serpent, upon the woman, and upon the ground for his sake. As to the serpent, since he stands before us in this entire transaction as a double character, so the curse upon him comes in a sort of double meaning. The most obvious sense of the passage assigns a measure of this curse to the literal serpent-the animal under the guise of whom Satan beguiled his victim. But the responsibility and guilt being upon the very Satan, this curse falls chiefly on him. He is degraded, doomed to eternal shame; and in his great conflict against God and goodness, to disgrace, defeat and damning ruin. Words of telling significance were these;-"I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her