send them into the swine, but he did not hinder them from taking their
own way. It is thus clear, from Scripture, that such a power of that
which is spiritual over brute nature as seen in the temptation, is more
than once recognized in the Word of God. This of itself strips the
narrative of much of its strangeness; it indeed removes its chief diffi-
culty. Even in man's relations to the lower animals we see something
of the same kind: we see him leaving the impress of his mind and
affections on the beasts put under him so strongly, that they show the
power of both in their actions. "In our common life the horse, and the
dog no less, are eminently receptive of the spiritual conditions of their
appointed lord and master, Man. With what electric swiftness does the
courage or fear of the rider
pass
into the horse; and so, too, the gladness
or depression of its master is almost instantaneously reflected and repro-
duced in the faithful dog!" The poet carries these thoughts into other
relations, and addressing Satan, the "ruthless murderer of immortal
souls," he pictures him as bringing down man, "whose spirit goeth
upwards," to the level of the beasts, "whose spirit goeth downwards:"-

"Thou play'st the Lion when thou doost ingage
Blood thirsty Nero's barbarous heart with rage,
While flesht in murthers (butcher-like) he paints
The saint-poor world with the deer blood of saincts.
Thou play'st the Dog, when by the mouth profane
Of some false prophet thou doost belch thy bane.
Thou play'st the Swine, when plunged in pleasures vile,

Some epicure doth sober minds defile.

Thou play'st the Nightingale, or else the Swan,

When any famous rhetorician,

With captious wit, and curious language, draws

Seduced hearers, and subverts the laws.

Thou play'st the Fox, when thou doost fain aright
The face and phrase of some deep hypocrite."

Such figures are no doubt fanciful; but may not our Lord have had in view the same aspects of truth when he characterized the crafty king as "that fox Herod," and the bitter-hearted pretenders of his day as a generation of vipers?"

There are, however, many other difficulties connected with this transaction. Does what we know of the habits of serpents warrant us to speak decidedly as to their cunning being greater than the other "beasts of the field which the Lord God has made?" There may be much in the noiseless way in which the serpent winds its deadly coils around its victim, and much in the fascinating glance of its bright eye to suggest

something like this; but there can be no doubt that it is far less subtile in its mode of taking its prey than many other creatures are. There is no necessity here to make out a disposition of superior subtilty in order to corroborate the words in Genesis iii. 1. Its craft is directly associated with the evil Will which was now acting on it and through it, in the manner indicated above-the will of him who was "a liar from the beginning." The first words spoken declare, by their abruptness, point, and power to arrest the attention of the good, were it for no other purpose than to put the speaker right, that the evil mind now acting on it was full of "all subtilty and all mischief." As thus used by Satan, "the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field." There is literally nothing in this passage to indicate that craft and cunning are affirmed of the serpent, apart from its presence as completely under the control of spiritual wickedness. The complete identification of the beast with the bad angel is all that is referred to. Thus there is no break in the narrative, no filling in of an explanatory sentence between the former and latter parts of the verse, such as 'When the devil had entered into it,' "he said unto the woman." The act of possession, of entering in, and complete subjugation of the brute to the evil spiritual nature, is not described here. In some other cases the link missing here is supplied. Thus, in the account given by Mark (chap. v.) of the demoniac at Gadara, it is distinctly said "The unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine, and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea." So, too, when the devil took complete control both of the mind and body of Judas, it is said, "And after the sop Satan entered into him." "He then, having received the sop, went immediately out; and it was night." (John xiii.)

The direct address of the Creator to the serpent has been surrounded with unnecessary mystery-" 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. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."-(Ver. 14, 15.) The reptile and its indwelling evil spirit are now regarded as one, and the address, which proceeds on the recognition of this relation, is of two parts, answering to the two natures—the body of the reptile, and the mind of the evil spirit. This direct mode of address to the lower animals has its illustration in the narrative of creation. Thus to the fish of the sea and the fowl of the air God said—" Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters

over,

in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth." The expression of the will of the Creator became thus a law of their being. There is, morethe well-known revelation of a yet higher influence of God over his creatures in 1 Kings xvii. 3, 4-" Get thee hence and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there." In 2 Chron. vii. 13 he speaks of himself as one that can "command the locusts to devour the land." And in Amos ix. 3 we have the striking words-" Though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite them." Many other passages will readily occur to the reader; and though, as is the case with the last quoted, the words may sometimes be highly figurative, they yet illustrate this sovereignty seen in the curse pronounced on the serpent. The chief difficulty remains. The general and popular impression of the 14th verse has been, that there were no serpents before the time of our first parents, and that at the fall some change was made in the structure of this creature. Is there anything in this verse which shuts us up, of necessity, to this impression? I think not. There were serpents on the pre-adamic earth whose structure was analogous to the true serpents (Ophidia) of our day. Geological discoveries have put this as much beyond doubt as the fact that there were shellfish in those primeval times. Professor Owen has pointed out in the following table, copied from his work on "Palæontology," the distribution of the Reptilia in pre-adamic times.

It will be seen from this table that the Ophidia range from the top of the Chalk, up through the Tertiary group of rocks, and culminate at the top of the highest member of that series-the Pliocene.

VOL I.

"The earliest

P

evidence," says Professor Owen, "of an ophidian reptile has been obtained from the eocene clay of Sheppey; it consists of vertebræ indicating a serpent of twelve feet in length, the Palæophis toliapicus. Still larger, more numerous, and better preserved vertebræ have been obtained from the eocene beds of Bracklesham, on which the species Palæophis typhæus and the Palæophis porcatus have been founded. These remains indicate a boa-constrictor-like snake of about twenty feet in length. Ophidian vertebræ of much smaller size, from the newer eocene at Hordwell, support the species Paleryx rhombifer and Paleryx depressus. Fossil vertebræ from a tertiary formation near Salonica have been referred to a serpent, probably poisonous, under the name of Laophis. A species of true viper has been discovered in the miocene deposits at Sansans, south of France." In Professor Owen's description, many years ago, of the species first named, one of those inductions in regard to associated forms of life occurred which are so often to be met with in natural science. We are well acquainted with the favourite food of living pythons and boas, and proceeding on this knowledge, he added-" If, therefore, there had not been obtained direct evidence of both birds and mammals in the London clay, I should have felt persuaded that they must have coexisted with serpents of such dimensions as the species of which the dorsal vertebræ are here described."

There can then be no manner of doubt that serpents existed in preadamic times, and that their structure, and, by fair inference, their habits, corresponded with the structure and habits of those which now inhabit various parts of the world. This fact is of course fatal to all attempts to make out a case of direct interference with the structure of the serpent because of the transaction in Eden. Neither does it favour any speculations, professedly based upon the inductions of " philosophic naturalists," as to the serpent being the "extreme of animal degradation," even its very type and exemplar. "How remarkable the fact," says Hugh Miller, "that the reptile selected as typical here of the great fallen spirit that kept not his first estate, should be at once the reptile of latest appearance in creation, and the one selected by the philosophic naturalist as representative of a reversed process in the course of being -of a downward, sinking career, from the vertebrate antetype towards greatly lower types in the invertebrate divisions!" The remark, however, is more striking than true. It might be shown that the structural peculiarities of the Ophidians have much about them to indicate a connection between them and the fishes below them, on the one hand, and the birds and mammals above them, rather than, on the other hand,

GENESIS III. 1; XLIX. 17: JEREMIAH VIII. 17: AMOS IX. 3: MATTHEW X. 16.

JW Lowry sculp