kept holy by mankind : "He blessed it and sanctified it "* as a day of rest, of rejoicing, and of worshipa day which softens the hardships of toil, and brings with it forgetfulness of worldly cares, and causes the beings, whom God has made, to remember their Creator, to love him, and to praise him. Two things there were which God ordained in Paradisemarriage, and the sanctification of his sabbath of rest: the one an emblem of that hallowed union which connects at this hour the Saviour Bridegroom with his bride the Church; the other a type of that heavenly sabbath, which, as we are assured in the Epistle to the Hebrews, yet remaineth unto the people of God;" of the time to come, when they who are entered into his rest shall cease from their own works, as he did from his. May we, then, hold them both in reverence, as creatures devoted to our Maker's will, and as members incorporate in the mystical body of his Son, the blessed company of all faithful people. Abundant proofs have been afforded us, in the details of the creation now gone through, of the infinite power, wisdom, and goodness of our Creator: we shall behold him next in the exercise of two other of his divine attributes-his justice and his mercy; attributes, of which the revelation occupies the succeeding pages of the Bible; of which the full disclosure will take place when the end cometh-when the Redeemer and Judge of all men shall appear in his glory, and the secrets of all hearts shall be unveiled, and every tongue shall confess to God. IN CHAP. III. THE FALL OF MAN. the account of the Creation given by Moses, no mention is made of any class of beings above the brute animals, of a different nature, or of a higher order than man. It is nevertheless highly probable, that in the numberless worlds which fill the starry firmament, inhabitants exist, suited to the peculiar circumstances of their situation; and it is certain from other parts of Scripture, that God did create and use for his own wise purposes, a multitude of intelligent beings, called spirits, or angels, of whom a portion continued steadfast in their obedience and love for him, while others fell away from this their first estate, and aimed at independence, and became workers of evil. The chief of these is called in Scripture by various names, but usually by those of Satan and of the Devil; the former signifying the adversary, and the latter, the accuser or calumniator; while in one passage of the book of Revelation, he is called in addition to these names, "that old serpent, which deceiveth the whole world."* This latter title of his deserves our particular attention, as affording us a key to the meaning of Moses, in that portion of his history on which we are now about to enter. His appellation of the old or ancient serpent, is calculated to carry back our thoughts to the very earliest ages; and if he deceives the whole world we shall feel no surprise, however much cause we may have for sorrow, if we find that even our first parents were not exempt from his delusions. We have every reason then, from the whole tenor of Scripture, to believe that it was he, * Rev. xii. 9. who, entering into the animal called the serpent, the noted subtilty whereof made it the fitter instrument for his deceitful operations, spake by its mouth to the woman, whom he contrived to approach when apart from her husband. He began by an affectation of surprise, that God should have forbidden them the use of every tree of the garden; and when set right as to that point, by her assurance that there was but one tree forbidden them under the penalty of death, namely, that which stood in the midst of the garden, he dared to insinuate that their Maker had deceived them, both in keeping back the true reason for issuing his injunction not to eat of it, and in threatening them with such consequences of their disobedience as never would ensue. "He said to the woman, Ye shall not surely die; for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."* First, we see, he endeavoured to shake her confidence in God, and then to excite her to seek a state of guilty independence, and even equality with him-he taught her to look upon herself as one jealously kept down in a state of existence unworthy of her, and thus he practised upon her vanity and ambition, which he knew were among the weak points of the human heart. Moreover he seduced her to come within sight of the forbidden fruit, knowing how much the allurements of outward beauty contribute to temptation. Nor did his devices fail of their effect: she was deceived by them: she forgot God, and believed the tempter. Being then in the transgression, she lost no time in causing Adam to share it with her-" she ate herself, and gave also unto her husband, and he did eat." He, we are told by St. Paul, was not deceived" as she had been: he saw the danger 66 * Gen. iii. 4, 5. + Ver. 6. 1 Tim. ii. 14. impending over her, and chose, in conformity with his first determination of cleaving to her, that she should not encounter it alone. The only immediate consequence of their eating of the fruit of knowledge was, "that they knew that they were naked "*—their simple innocence was gone-they looked upon each other for the first time with a feeling of shame. They soon invented some expedient for the covering of their bodies, but the shamefulness of sin they were unable to hide from themselves or from each other, far less from God. They attempted it, however; for when they heard his voice borne towards them upon the evening breeze, that which was once so sweet and pleasant to their hearing was now a sound of fear; and anxious to avoid, or to put off at least, the formidable interview, they "hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden." So miserably poor was the result of their newly acquired knowledge, that they thought thus to escape from the sight of their Creator. And thus it is with sinners always; every sin indulged in makes them form more unworthy notions of God, till they begin to question his seeing them at all. "Tush, say they, how should God perceive it? is there knowledge in the Most High?" But our guilty parents were not suffered to remain long in their fancied hidingplace. God called on Adam, and asked him to explain the reason of his unusual conduct; and when he pleaded his nakedness as his excuse, he soon found that this plea led him to the very point which he was most anxious to avoid. "Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?"§ Adam could not deny it—but what he could he did : he endeavoured to relieve himself from some portion * Gen. iii. 7. ↑ Ver. 8. + Psalm 1xxiii. 11. § Gen. iii. 11. of the blame, by throwing it principally indeed upon his guilty helpmate, but partly also, by implication, upon Him from whom he had received her. "The woman, whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat."* The principle of self.. preservation prevailed here over the strongest ties of earthly affection: Adam, who had had hardihood enough to share his wife's transgression, was now desirous to save himself by throwing the main burthen of it upon her. Such is the heart of man! Can we sufficiently distrust its purposes? Can we watch the thoughts that arise out of it too carefully? Can we pray with too ardent a desire for its purification through grace? Can we be too cautious, lest we "say when we are tempted, I am tempted of God?" It was next the woman's turn to answer: her confession was of a brief and simple character-acknowledging that she had been deceived, and pointing out the deceiver. "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat."‡ She says nothing in answer to the charge of having led her husband also into sin: she could not do it without in a certain degree recriminating upon him, and in that case silence was her best apology. God having thus interrogated the two parties who had been guilty of the transgression, proceeded to pass sentence upon the evil being who instigated them to its commission, without previously putting him upon his defence, or inquiring into his motives. Such condescension, we may well suppose, would have availed nothing in the case of one so thoroughly depraved and vicious as this evil spirit, who, as our Lord says of him, is a liar, and the father of lies,§ and who, it may be, also had already deserted the creature which he had possessed to serve a temporary purpose, and left only the dumb serpent to encounter the curse of Gen. iii. 12. + James i. 13. |