God. Upon that animal the curse fell in part, in order to show Adam, by an additional instance, the vast evil of sin it was reduced in future to crawl upon its belly on the ground, as we see serpents do, having before in all probability moved erect, and in consequence of its new position, was doomed to lick up the dust of the earth along with its food-living in a state of constant hostility to man, doing him some harm, but suffering more from his superior power. But it was on Satan, the evil one, for what he had done while possessing the serpent, that the curse fell in its full force and most comprehensive meaning;-"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."* Satan was thus engaged, for his punishment, in a warfare, out of which he was to gather nothing but destruction: and who were his antagonists? First the woman, who was not to die, as he no doubt supposed she would, immediately, but to be the mother of a Seed, with whom, secondly, he was to contend in mortal conflict; whose heel he might indeed bruise, and thereby inflict upon him some injury, but who in return would bruise his head, strike at the very origin and mainspring of all his power to harm, and thus destroy him utterly as the promoter of evil in the world. This is the first pro phecy in the Bible; and all the subsequent prophecies and histories contained therein, lead and relate to its fulfilment. It is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who, born of the Virgin Mary, was peculiarly the Seed of the woman, and who, after many a conflict with Satan during his life, having endured a great fight of temptations, gained over him upon the cross a glorious victory, and will finally trample him under his feet, and put an end for ever to all his power of injuring Gen. iii. 15. mankind. The same curse upon the serpent which showed us our enemy, showed us also our deliverer : it was to our first parents, and through them to us, at once a warning and a blessing; it bade them not be ignorant of Satan's devices, and trust not in their own ability to withstand them, but in the God of peace and reconciliation, who, through his anointed Son taking upon him their nature, would hereafter bruise the enemy under the feet of his redeemed. Thus comforted and encouraged, both the woman and the man would hear their own sentences pronounced with a resigned and hopeful spirit-the woman, whose sorrow in bringing forth children was to be greatly multiplied, would yet rejoice in the reflection that one child so to be brought forth would bruise the serpent's head, and the thoughts of that future triumph would sustain the man under his weary labours, and though compelled to return to the dust from whence he sprang, he would feel sure that the death which was Satan's work, would be done away by Satan's overthrow. To him therefore Christ was held forth from the first as the resurrection and the life. And forasmuch as he saw plainly that death was brought about by sin, so would he be convinced that the abolition of death would be brought about by righteousness: that as, by the offence of one, judgment had come upon all unto condemnation, even so, by the righteousness of one, would the free and promised gift come upon all unto justification of life; and in that conviction he "called his wife's name Eve, the mother of all living." Thus we see that the faith of Adam was fixed upon a righteous, and, because righteous, a victorious and ever-living Redeemer: as far as the revelation went, he was a believer in Christ. As we proceed, we shall have reason to believe that it was yet further revealed to him in what manner the redemption was to be effected; and the occasion chosen for thus instructing him was probably when the Lord God made unto him and unto his wife coats of skins, and clothed them. For this, in the opinion of many, as animals were not yet slain for food, was the first institution of sacrifice: and "if," says one of the ablest defenders of the doctrine of the atonement, "we admit that when God had ordained the deliverance of man, he had ordained the means: if we admit that Christ was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; what memorial could be devised more apposite than that of animal sacrifice, exemplifying by the slaying of the victim the death which had been denounced against man's disobedience? Thus exhibiting the awful lesson of that death which was the wages of sin, and at the same time representing that death which was actually to be undergone by the Redeemer of mankind; and hereby connecting in one view the two great cardinal events in the history of man-the fall and the recovery-the death denounced against sin, and the death appointed for that Holy One, who was to lay down his life to deliver man from the consequences of sin; and the adoption of this rite, with sincere and pious feelings, would at the same time imply a humble sense of the unworthiness of the offerer, a confession that the death inflicted on the victim was the desert of those sins which had arisen from man's transgression, and a full reliance upon the promises of deliverance, joined to an acquiescence in the means appointed for its accomplishment." Life was in store for man, but hereafter he was to pass through death unto it : the mode at first instituted for preserving his existence, the tree of life, was no longer to be left within his reach. Endued therefore, as to his mind, with that knowledge of good and evil which would be needful in a world where the two are so intimately * Archbishop Magee. Sermon II. mingled, and, as to his body, clothed with garments calculated to protect him against the inelemency of the changing seasons, and the rough nature of his future labour among the thorns and briers which the earth now brought forth abundantly, according to the terms of its curse, he was driven out from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken: his return thither being prevented by certain angelic appearances called cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life. The earthly garden has long since disappeared, and the place thereof knoweth it no more; but we, Christians, have a most sure promise of the immortality which it afforded, through Jesus Christ our Lord, with whose words of comfort I will conclude this portion of my subject: "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God."* CHAP. IV. THE ANTEDILUVIAN PATRIARCHS. UPON the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, we may suppose that the former was driven by the need of subsistence to undergo immediately that portion of the divine sentence which consisted in laborious tilling of the ground; and we are assured that it was not long before the latter underwent her portion of it also, which consisted in the sorrows of childbirth. It seems, however, to have been with her as, according to the observation of our Lord, it has * Rev. ii. 7. 66 been with the generality of her daughters, as soon as she was delivered of the child, she remembered no more the anguish, for joy that a man was born into the world."* She considered her infant first-born, as what she named him, Cain, an acquisition or possession; and she acknowledged the giver of this, as of all other blessings, in her grateful exclamation, "I have gotten a man from the Lord."+ Perhaps also she might fancy, that in this boy the divine promise was to be fulfilled, and that she clasped in her arms the seed of the woman, who was to bruise the serpent's head; ignorant how much of Satan's nature would hereafter show itself in this very child, how terrible an exhibition of the effects of prevalent sin would be presented in his actions. She bare afterwards another son, called Abel, and the brothers grew up together to youth and manhood. They were unlike, however, both in their dispositions and their pursuits. Cain was a tiller of the ground; Abel was a keeper of sheep: the works of Cain were evil, and those of his brother were righteous. And therefore Cain hated Abel, and sought to be rid of him; he could not bear to have an example constantly before his eyes, showing him what he ought to be; he grudged him the very excellence that he would not strive to emulate. The malice and envy thus engendered in his disposition were at last let loose into decisive action, by the very different treatment which he and his brother experienced, upon a certain solemn occasion, when they both presented their offerings to the Lord. Cain brought his, of the fruit of the ground;" Abel his, "of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof; and the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering," (perhaps by consuming it with fire from heaven,) "but unto Cain and his offering he had not respect."§ Three reasons John xvi. 21. # 1 John iii. 12. + Gen. iv. 1. 66 D |