guilt, became from henceforth their portion. For the first time since their creation, they saw that they were naked; and they hastened to remove what a feeling of false delicacy pronounced to be a misfortune, by such means as lay within their reach. For this purpose, it is related in our English version, that "they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons"-an expression which, like several others in the sacred volume, has supplied the scoffer with food for indecent mirth: but here, as elsewhere, the scholar is at no loss to discern, that for merriment there is no scope. The relation of Moses amounts simply to this, that Adam and Eve platted or entwined together, not only the leaves, but the branches of the fig-tree, so as to form a sort of girdle round their waists, similar to the Roman crown; and surely there is nothing either ludicrous or improbable in the idea, that persons situated as they were would adopt such an expedient.

But shame, and a knowledge that they had done evil, were not the only consequents upon the primeval transgression. A new feeling, that of fear, was stirred up in the bosoms of the guilty pair; and they who had hitherto been accustomed, when they heard "the voice of the Lord" coming towards them, to welcome with joy his gracious visits, thought of these visits now with dismay. Their consciences set their sin before them in its blackest aspect; and as they had then no hope of a future Mediator, so there remained for them nothing but "a certain fearful looking for of judgment, and fiery indignation ready to devour them." The consequence was, that they no sooner heard the sound of God's majestic presence drawing nearer and nearer to the spot where they stood, than they fled into the thickest and most tangled place of the garden; under the vain and unworthy hope of obtaining concealment from that eye to which "all places and things are continually open."

Out of their dark retreat, God immediately called them; and a scene ensued in perfect accordance with what daily meets our eyes when criminals are detected in the commission of a crime. Not daring to deny their guilt, the fallen pair proceeded to cast the blame, the man upon the woman, the woman upon the serpent; whilst their Judge, in language at once solemn and impressive, passed upon all three the sentence which they deserved. The Devil having made the serpent the instrument of his deception, God first of all pronounced upon it a decree, which doomed it henceforth to

become the most loathsome and degraded of terrestrial animals. But it was not upon the instrument only that God passed sentence. In the memorable declaration, that there should be enmity between the seed of the serpent and that of the woman, that the latter should crush the head of the former, as the former should bruise the heel of the latter, is implied the gracious promise of a Redeemer; who, descended from the woman, should by his own personal sufferings destroy the power of Satan, and restore to mankind all that they had lost by the transgression of their first parents. This, which we cannot doubt was, in due time, made intelligible to the culprits themselves, could not fail of proving in the highest degree consolatory to Adam and Eve, on whom the Creator next proceeded to pronounce judgment. Unto the woman he said, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." And unto Adam he said, "Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou· shalt not eat of it; cursed is the ground for thy sake: in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

Such is the account given by Moses of the fall of our first parents, and of the tremendous consequences to which it gave rise. Instead of pure and spotless beings basking as it were in the smiles of a beneficent Creator, they were become miserable culprits, trembling under the frowns of their Judge, whilst the immortality which had once been placed within their reach, and conditionally assured to them, was withdrawn. Death, in the most absolute sense of the term, was now their portion, though whether to be inflicted immediately, or suspended for a season, they possessed no means of ascertaining. But it was not of immortality alone that the great primeval transgression deprived mankind. The direct and continued tuition by God's Holy Spirit, which had hitherto guided them, and which to creatures cir

*"Dust shalt thou eat," is merely a figurative expression for grovelling. See Micah vii. 7. Psalm lxxii.

cumstanced as they were, seems to have been absolutely indispensable, ceased to be afforded, and their moral no less than their physical nature suffered a grievous deterioration. They were left, to a certain extent at least, to the direction of that imperfect reason which they had already preferred to the instructions of the Most High; and the seeds of vice and error were in consequence not slow in growing up into plants, and bringing forth ample fruit.

We are not unaware that this simple narrative of events has been frequently so interpreted, as to encumber it with difficulties and contradictions to which it is not in itself liable. Though it falls not in with the plan of our present work to enter much at length into the discussion of abstract points of doctrine; still, as the right understanding of the whole Christian scheme depends entirely upon the opinions entertained touching the transactions just related, we consider it necessary, before proceeding further with our history, to offer a few remarks with the view of placing this subject in its true light.

It appears to us, that one of the chief obstacles to a right understanding of the sentence passed upon our guilty first parents by their Maker, consists in the erroneous opinions which are generally held respecting the nature of the human soul. Because this viewless essence is immaterial, and therefore uncompounded, it has not unfrequently been held, that it is naturally immortal; in other words, that an exertion of power equal to that which was required to call the human soul into being, would be necessary in order to cause its annihilation. But they who argue thus forget that the soul, or living principle, in every animated creature is, equally with the soul or living principle in man, immaterial. If, therefore, immortality be a necessary accompaniment of immateriality, then are the souls of the brute creation immortal as our own-a supposition for which no professed Christian is likely to contend, and which the very Deist would reject with disdain.

The truth, however, is-and both reason and revelation bear us out in the assertion-that immortality, simple and essential immortality, belongs to one Being only, namely, to God. "He alone," says St. Paul, "hath," that is, hath inherent in himself, "immortality;" and though other beings shall also endure for ever, and the human soul shall, we are assured, be of the number, both it and they must ever owe their continued existence to his supporting hand.

An act of volition on the part of the Most High, first called them into being; a continued act of volition on his part supports them there, and it requires but a cessation of that act, if we may so express ourselves, in order to return them all to the nothingness from which they originally came. It is therefore a grevious error to perplex ourselves as to the probable state of the human soul, had God's sentence been carried fully into execution, without the intervention of any propitiatory Mediator. In this case, when the whole machine, the soul and the body of each man, had served its destined purpose, the latter would have been resolved into its elements or constituent parts, whilst the former, separated from the organs or implements by which it works, would have ceased to exist. But it suited not the goodness of the Creator to deal thus with his creature, whom he had once blessed with a vision of immortality. The same address which condemned Adam to return into dust, gave assurance that a Deliverer would arise to restore to him, and to all his descendants, the free gift just forfeited: and as with God "one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day," the effects of the great sacrifice on the cross were instantly felt..

With respect again to the moral consequences of the first transgression, both upon the culprits themselves, and upon their descendants, they were neither less serious nor less certain than its physical consequences. The innocence which had hitherto covered them as with a robe of light, was no more, and inflamed passions, with reasoning powers weakened and deformed, rendered both them and their children prone to evil. Whether this arose from some poisonous ingredient in the fruit itself, or was the mere offspring of that great law of mental association to which all living things are more or less obedient, the results were precisely the same. Man ceased, from that hour, to be the upright and innocent creature which he once was; and his offspring, to the latest posterity, are very far gone from original righteousness.

It is much to be regretted, that with a view of the case so intelligible as this, the metaphysical subtleties of the schoolmen should have mixed up questions which have with revealed truth no connection. Among the number of these, we have no hesitation in classing one which has produced many controversies in the Church of Christ-we mean the inquiry, how far we partake in the guilt of our first parents: -in other words, how far it is or is not possible that guilt,

and a proneness to guilt, should descend by inheritance. No sane person will now, it is presumed, contend that we are any where in Scripture called upon to repent of the sin of Adam, or that, in the proper sense of the term guilt, we are at all chargeable with it; but that we reap the fruits of the first act of rebellion, both in our physical and moral natures, is undeniable. To the commission of that crime may be traced back, as to the fountain-head, the diseases, the misery, and the temporal death to which we are liable; whilst of his own innate tendency to indulge his passions, at the expense of probity and right reason, there is no man whose personal experience fails to convince him. No doubt, the death of the Redeemer has more than counterbalanced these evils. The free gift of immortality, as regained by him, is now ensured to the whole human race beyond the possibility of forfeiture, whilst the means of attaining to an immortality of happiness lie equally within the reach of all. But that the original taint, as it has somewhat unfortunately been termed, still remains, no man who examines the workings of his own heart will deny, and we are without ground for imagining that it will cease to operate till the consummation of all things. We cannot close this chapter without a few remarks in reply to certain popular objections which have been occasionally brought against the entire history. Without pausing to partícularize these, it may suffice to state, that they resolve themselves into a decision, that the transactions recorded in the second chapter of Genesis, are to be taken not as realities, but as an allegory. Thus the man is to be regarded as emblematical of reason, the woman of sense, and the talking serpent of concupiscence; and hence the whole history denotes nothing more than the defection of the soul from God. We need scarcely observe, that whoever believes this to be the case, can have no steady or fixed belief in any part of Scripture, which throughout treats this narrative as a detail of facts; and least of all can the doctrine of the atonement be admitted by the advocates of so strange a theory. If the fall be merely an allegorical fall, the recovery must be allegorical also, and the whole gospel resolves itself into a tedious and even mischievous allegory.

The

Philosophers have, we believe, been led into these ab surdities by the notion, that the narrative of Moses records events equally unworthy both of God and man. temptation of an apple in particular, has been held up to unrestrained ridicule, as well as the account of the serpent's VOL. I.-F