FROM THE FALL TO THE DELUGE; OR, THE CATASTROPHE OF SIN.

"It repented the LORD that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart."-Genesis, vi. 6.

FIRST REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH IN HISTORY-SIN AND GRACE THE FALL OF MAN-THE CURSE AND PROMISE-CONFLICT OF GOOD AND EVIL-CAIN AND ABEL-THE CAINITE AND SETHITE RACESENERGY AND LAWLESSNESS OF THE CAINITES-LAMECH'S POLYGAMY AND MURDER-RELIGION OF THE SETHITES-INTERMARRIAGE OF THE RACES, AND CONSEQUENT CORRUPTION OF MANMORAL AND MATERIAL CONDITION OF THE ANTEDILUVIANS THE DELUGE-DIFFICULTIES IN THE NARRATIVE-DESTRUCTION AND RESTORATION OF THE WORLD-GOD'S COVENANT OF FORBEARANCE MADE WITH NOAH-TRADITIONS OF THE FLOOD-ANTEDILUVIAN LONGEVITY.

HISTORY, we have said, is divided by revolutionary epochs. The first of these was the entrance of sin, as St. Paul emphatically calls it, thereby marking it as an intrusive element; while, in the same breath, he explains the mystery of its permission, to make way for the principle of grace. A recent historian of the French Revolution has not shrunk from proclaiming the antagonism between the "rights of man" and the doctrine that we receive all good from the grace of God. But the Scripture teaches that God will permit no such antagonism, and that the fall of man has left with God alone all the glory of his restoration. Holding out to man every inducement to obedience, and warning him of the fatal results of disobedience, God left him free to choose between them, and even provided a test by which he was to stand or fall. That test was suited to the possibilities of evil, which all subsequent experience has proved to exist in the human breast. The form which the trial assumed need not surprise us, if we only bear in mind how large a part of the Divine teaching is by actions. The presence in Eden of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the appearance and address of the serpent to the woman's senses, and the eating of the forbidden fruit, instead of needing any mythical or allegorical interpretation, show us the reality of the whole transaction. Then, as now, the impulse of sin was perfected in an overt act. But the scene, though real, was symbolical. The neglect of the tree of life, and the wilful plucking of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, is the same choice which man is ever making between the true source of

happiness-spiritual life-and the pride of doubting God, the lust of knowing and enjoying evil as well as good. The fascinations of the forbidden tree, which tempted the woman, are the same three sources of evil which have misled all her children"the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life." The readiness of Adam to share his wife's transgression is the type of that companionship in evil which gives sin its chief hold upon

our race.

Another power was concerned in the catastrophe; forming, indeed, its immediate cause. Already placed in direct communion with God, man was now solicited, on the other hand, by a spiritual being, who had fallen from happiness by that sin to which it became his malignant pleasure to tempt man. To omit the distinct recognition of Satanic agency from our narrative would be to deny one of the mainsprings of the world's history. This is not the place to dwell on the theological aspect of the question; but the teaching of Scripture is too well confirmed by our own experience of the malignant envy against goodness, the mischievous ingenuity in destroying it, and the eagerness to taunt and torment their fallen victims, which mark those whom the Divine word therefore calls the children of the devil. Whatever licence Milton may have given his imagination, his general conception of Satan's relations to our first parents is true; and the traditions of many nations, identifying the serpent with the principle of evil, bear witness to the form of the temptation.

The first human pair had thus chosen, and all their progeny have by their own personal fall confirmed the choice, between life in the light of God's favour, and independence of Him at the price of death. But the sentence was mitigated in itself, and a glorious promise was given of its ultimate reversal. While the fallen beings were already cowering beneath that sense of shame which is the first symptom and penalty of conscious sin, and afraid to meet the God whom they had till now loved, He called them, with the serpent, to receive their sentence. The grovelling form and habits assigned to the serpent were the type of the ultimate conquest of the evil spirit by the very offspring of the woman, who should not, however, achieve the victory without a deadly wound from his antagonist ;-a clear promise of the Redeemer's destruction of sin by His own death. As for the human pair, the chief objects of their present life were still to be accomplished before they returned to the earth from which they had been taken, but to be accomplished amidst sharp suffering and

MAN'S EXPULSION FROM PARADISE.

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wearing toil. Still, in this curse there were the seeds of a blessing. The woman's pangs were to be consoled by the hope of the great Deliverer who was to be her seed: the man's toils were to be rewarded by the fruits which the earth would henceforth yield, though only to hard labour. The joys of Paradise must be renounced; but the whole earth was to be replenished and subdued. Access to the tree of life was cut off; but immortality in the fallen state would have been misery, and a far better immortality remained to be revealed. The best evidence that Adam understood the promise is seen in the new name he gave his wife, EVE (the living), as the mother of a truly living race, and chiefly of Him who was to be their life.

That the rite of sacrifice was now instituted by God himself, in confirmation of His promise, and as a type of the satisfaction for sin by the death of a substitute for the sinner, is inferred with the highest probability from the narrative. In no other way can we reasonably explain the death of the animals with whose skins God clothed Adam and Eve; and the story of Cain and Abel shows us the institution already established.

Adam and Eve went forth into the wide world, carrying with them the fallen nature and corrupt tendencies which were the present fruit of their sin, but with faith in the promise of redemption. Of this faith as well as of their shortsighted expectation of its fulfilment, Eve gave a proof at the birth of her eldest son, by exclaiming, "I have gotten a man, Jehovah." The whole subsequent history of their race exhibits the conflict of these two principles; and its first period, down to the Deluge, was a scene of steady decline, till redemption seemed hardly possible. The conflict appeared in the first generation of their children. Cain, the husbandman, and Abel, the shepherd, are representatives of the two great divisions of the human race, not so much in their occupations as in their characters. The command of God to offer sacrifice, not only in acknowledgment of His goodness, but as a confession of sin, formed a new test of obedience. We are assured by Paul that Abel brought his offering in faith; while the selfish pride of Cain's is proved by his resentment, his murderous revenge, and his sullen despair. While he went forth from his father's home and his father's God into the land of Nod (that is, exile), to seek a new abode on the earth, which had been cursed anew for him, and with his life only protected by the mark of God's displeasure, another son-Seth-was given to Eve in place of Abel; and these two became the heads of races morally and