both were opened (ver. 7), but they saw nothing except their nakedness and misery. They did become as God (ver. 22); that is, Adam ceased to be the image and representative of God, and acquired a position of his own, or became his own God and Lord. Such a resemblance to God, however, did not render him blessed as God is, but poor and wretched in the highest degree. He did, indeed, now know good and evil, but only through his painful experience of his want of that which is good, and of the existence of evil and all its results. Still, craftiness is caught in its own snare; the tempter had mocked man, the image of God, with Satanic irony, and the Lord now has him in derision (Ps. 2:4), in so overruling all, that the Devil foretold his own judgment and ruin in those equivocal words. For they acquire, through the divine counsel of redemption a third sense, which did not occur to the tempter: the fall of man led to the Redemption, in which God became as man, in order that man might truly become as God, in the full sense of the term. (John 17:11, 21, 23; 2 Pet. 1:4; 1 John 3:2; 1 Cor. 15:49.)

2. Gen. 38, sqq.-The long-suffering of God, and the evil conscience of man are both manifested in the trial of the guilty. Adam imputes the fault to the woman whom God had given to be with him, and she transfers it to the serpent. The curse (ver. 14, 15) falls upon the serpent, as the organ of the temptation, and, through it, on the tempter: "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 (Isai. 65:25). 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."

OBS.-It cannot be reasonably doubted that the Scriptural account of the fall connects with the serpent the action of an evil being who is a spirit; the manner, on the other hand, in which the sacred writer conceived the demoniac will to have employed the agency of the serpent, is not explained. The account contains the recollections and views of the first human pair, preserved as sacred and venerable relics of the primitive age. The curse, which falls on the serpent, applies, in its external form, to the serpent alone. But the curse is pronounced for the sake of man, and not of the serpent; it is accord

ingly, adapted to the view which man then took, and which did not yet discriminate between the visible appearance and the spiritual principle of temptation. To man the tempter appeared as a serpent; in his view, accordingly, the curse which was directed against the serpent really appeared as a curse of the author of sin, and the defeat and destruction of the serpent, through the seed of the woman, was regarded as a deliverance from the power and influence of the author of sin. See 8 14.

3. According to the sentence of the Judge, the woman shall bring forth in sorrow, and the man shall eat bread in the sweat of his face (§ 14. OBS. 2).—In every direction man encountered sorrow, pain and labor, and, after enduring them, encounters death, by which the creature of the dust, which presumptuously desired to become its own God, returns to the dust. Nature itself shares, on man's account, in the curse of man's sin: thorns and thistles shall the ground bring forth; the fall of the Lord and Ruler of the animal world, doubtless, exercised on it, likewise, a disturbing influence, leading to the development of a savage nature. The Lord, besides, drove man out of the garden of Eden (ver. 24), and at its entrance placed the Cherubim and the flaming sword, which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life, "lest he put forth his hand-and eat thereof, and live forever." (§ 14. OBS. 2.)

OBS. 1.-The Cherubim or Cherubs are, as we here learn, not mere symbols or creatures of the imagination, but real and personal beings, and, doubtless, constitute a particular order of angels, They appear, elsewhere, as the bearers, attendants and representatives of the kingly and judicial presence of God in his creation (Ps. 18: 10; Exod. 25: 17-22; Ezek. 1: 5, sqq.; 10: 1, sqq.; Rev. 4: 6, sqq.); they may be regarded as forming the living and moving throne, on which the divine majesty is enthroned and conveyed. The representation of these beings, however, both in the tabernacle and in the visions of Ezekiel, according to which they appear in a terrestrial form, artistically constructed, is altogether symbolical. According to the description of Ezekiel, they resemble, in part, a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. He evidently intends to represent them as a combination of all the perfections which are singly found in the creatures that dwell on the earth-for it is suitable to the majesty of God that its bearers and representatives should combine in themselves the

perfections of all creatures. The flaming sword which turned every way is, like the corresponding appearances of fire in Gen. 15: 17; Exod. 3:2, 3; 13: 21, and Ezek. 1: 4, 13, 27, a symbol of the holiness of God, as well in its consuming as in its purifying aspect: in the present instance, it assumes in its expression of displeasure, judicially, a punitive and repellent character. See ? 14. OBS. 3.

OBS. 2.-"In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." Gen. 2:17. Man did eat, and death, the wages of sin (Rom. 6:23), entered into the world. Death is a separation of the constituents which form a union; the immediate consequence of sin was the separation of man from God, that is, spiritual death. Now, as the attainment of the great end of man depended essentially on union with God, this disunion necessarily disturbed every other relation, and, specially, introduced bodily death, with a countless host of diseases; for when the soul depended on its own resources alone, it no longer possessed ability to maintain its own connection with the body permanently. Sin was introduced into the nature of man, and corrupted his whole being; he became flesh. Now, as that which is born of the flesh can be nothing else but flesh again (John 3 : 6), inasmuch as generation is a communication of the same nature, Adam's sinfulness was communicated to all his descendants, and the curse which lay on sin, accompanied it - bodily and spiritual death. (See Gen. 8:21: Ps. 51:5; Eph. 2:3; Rom. 5: 12, 18.)

DIVISION B.

REDEMPTION AND SALVATION.

PART I.

THE PLAN OF SALVATION, IN ITS INTRODUCTORY

STAGES.

§ 13. Man's Capability of being Redeemed.

MAN did not, like Satan, engender sin in himself, independently of any foreign influence; it was, on the contrary, obtruded upon him externally, through temptation; he possessed, however, ability to resist it, in compliance with his duty. His whole being was penetrated with sin, and poisoned by it, but was not itself converted into sin. An element remained in him, as well as in his descendants, which does not allow of sin, or find pleasure in it (Rom. 7 : 15, 16), but, on the contrary, accuses him of sin, and reproves him. (Rom. 2: 14, 15.) A certain longing after God, deeply rooted even when it is unintelligible, dwells in the soul of fallen man, and his heart finds no peace till it reposes in God. Both his accusing conscience and his longing after communion with God, proceed from the divine image in him, which was, it is true, impaired, clouded and darkened by sin, but not entirely obliterated and destroyed (Gen. 9 : 6, and James 3 : 9), for man is, even after the fall, the "offspring" of God. (Acts 17: 28.) Hence, however deeply he is fallen, he is still capable of being redeemed.

OBS. That voice of longing, which bears witness alike of man's capability, and of his need, of redemption, and which may, in a certain sense, be regarded as a prediction of a future redemption, is also heard, like an echo of the longing and groaning of the human race, in the whole earthly creation which fell with and through

man. "For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope; because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth, and travaileth in pain together until now." (Rom. 8: 19-22.)

§ 14. The Divine Counsel of Redemption.

It was not at the Fall that God first purposed to redeem man, for "he hath chosen us in Christ, before the foundation of the world." (Eph. 1: 4.) The fall of man was eternally known to the omniscient God; nevertheless, he determined to create man, since he had also eternally purposed to redeem fallen man. Hence, the influence of this divine counsel appears in history immediately after the fall. The first manifestation of it occurs in the promise (лpwrεvayyέhov) that the seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent. (Gen. 3: 15.) In conformity to the divine equity, the deceiver is judged by the deceived (1 Cor. 6 : 3), the conqueror is overcome by the conquered. Although man had actually pronounced in favor of the will of Satan against the will of God, a different result is, nevertheless, to be yet produced by virtue of the divine counsel of redemption, and man's capability of being saved. Man is not made entirely subject to the will of Satan; while sin implanted in him a principle of opposition to God, he retained since his creation a principle of opposition to the tempter also. God assigns to the latter the victory over the former, so that the union with Satan, to which man had assented, does not permanently remain. Friendship and union between the two shall not exist, but rather enmity and a continued warfare, which shall ultimately terminate in the defeat of the tempter. That the human race, as a whole (the seed of the woman), shall maintain a contest with the author of sin, and destroy the kingdom which he has established, is the direct and primary sense of the divine promise. It was not yet expressed in this promise, but gradually became apparent in the progress of divine revelation, that one man, named, in a particular sense, the seed of the woman and the Son of Man, was appointed to bring victory as the leader in this