and gave it the whole weight of his sanction for all future time; and in these several ways: (a.) By re-endorsing the entire decalogue-"I am not come to destroy the law but to fulfill" (Mat. 5: 17). The scope of the sermon on the mount-(of which these words are a part) proves that his eye was on the great moral law of ten commandments. Plainly he could not have spoken of the Mosaic ceremonial law, and therefore must have spoken of that special code of precepts of which the Sabbath was the fourth.(b.) He endorsed the Sabbath as perpetual and universal by solemnly declaring "The Sabbath was made for man” (Mk. 2: 27)-(c.) Also by affirming it to be his own prerogative to enforce the Sabbath and to set forth its spirit and expound its obligations. "Therefore," because the Sabbath was made for man, for all men of all time, "therefore, the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath' (Mk. 2: 28). It was in order to relieve the law of the Sabbath (as then currently expounded) from burdensome, excessive and injurious constructions which human nature could not bear and which were alien from its true spirit, that our Lord confronted the traditions of the Scribes and Pharisees and sought to place this great institution upon its true and eternal basis. (d.) Finally as showing historically that our Lord had never a thought of terminating the obligation of the Sabbath at his death but designed its obligation to be perpetual, we have this very incidental word-" Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day" (Mat. 24: 20). When the Roman armies should bring down the judgments of the Almighty upon the doomed city of the murderers of Jesus, his followers must flee to the mountains across the Jordan; yet let it be their prayer that they might not be compelled to flee either in the severity of winter's cold, nor on the holy Sabbath. Flight for life might be morally admissible even on this sacred day; yet it would be most appropriate to pray that God would spare them this moral trial and not subject them to the necessity of labor on this holy day. In these various ways our Lord most fully and undeniably re-endorsed the Sabbath as for all time.

CHAPTER VI.

THE EVENTS OF EDEN.

THE first human pair have their first earthly want met by their Maker in a home-a quiet, beautiful spot (precisely where we know not, but near the source of the great Euphrates) in which trees of beauty for the eye and of nutritious fruitage for subsistence supplied some pleasing occupation for the mind and wholesome labor for the hand; where, happy in each other's love and blessed with the freest communion with their Maker, not a thing was lacking to fill their cup of joy. If it might only last-and for this, nothing more was needful save that their moral nature should be cultured, their faith and love and obedience strengthened up to the point of being thoroughly, fully confirmed: then their lot would have been most blessed. As a requisite means for such culture, God subjected their faith and obedience to one gentle test-to one point of moral trial. To have endured this successfully would have made them morally stronger and have drawn them yet nearer in love and trust to their Great Father; but to fall before it-Ah! this is the experience of human life, but too well known in its fruits of sin and woe!

The history of these scenes is before us in this third chapter of Genesis. Our leading inquiries may fitly

take the following order:

I. Is this description symbolic or historic; i. e. symbolic of all human sinning; or historic as to this first sin, its antecedents and immediate consequents?

II. The moral trial

III. The temptation;
IV. The fall;

V. The first promise;

VI. The curse, being the first installment of the great penalty upon transgression.

I. The preliminary question as to the character of this record demands a brief notice. In my view it is not to be taken as a symbolic representation of the uni

versal fact that the race yield to temptation and fall before it, but as a historical account of the first human sin-including the person of the tempter and his methods; the working of his temptations upon Eve and then upon Adam; and the first group of immediate results.

-Under this construction of the narrative, I find here a real serpent, and a real, not a merely symbolical, Satan-the serpent supplying the external guise, the sense-medium; but Satan, the intelligent mind, the malign purpose. The narrative seems to indicate that Satan chose the serpent for his service because of his well known subtlety. It is of small account to push our conjectures on this point beyond what is written (here and elsewhere); but it is supposable that the serpent was Satan's fittest instrument as being less likely to excite surprise by his uttered words.

That this record speaks of a real serpent and of a personal devil I am constrained to believe, because,

1. This is the obvious sense of the narrative-is the construction which the mass of readers most naturally put upon it, supposing them to be unsophisticated, holding their minds in harmony with the simplicity of the Scripture narrative and so in a mood to take most readily its obvious sense.

2. This construction is implied and thereby endorsed in subsequent scriptures: e. g. Isaiah (65: 25) having said—“The wolf and the lamb shall feed together" peace and love supplanting violence and cruelty-adds, "And dust shall be the serpent's meat"-with manifest reference to this primal curse on Satan's special agent. See also a similar reference in Solomon's Messianic Psalm (72: 9): "His enemies shall lick the dust.' Also Micah 7: 17.- These allusions presuppose a real serpent in the scenes of Eden.

That the real personal devil was there, the responsible agent, is surely implied by our Lord (Jno. 8: 44): "Ye are of your father the devil; he was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him." So also John (1 Jno. 3: 8): "He that committeth sin is of the devil, for the devil sinneth from the beginning," i. e. ever since that first great sin in tempting our common mother. "For this purpose was the Son of God manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil"-according to that first prom

ise-"I will put enmity between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." Paul incidentally gives his construction of this narrative: "The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly" (Rom. 16: 20); and our Lord also in Luke (10: 18, 19): "I beheld Satan fall as lightning from heaven; and I will give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy." In 2 Cor. 11: 3, Paul gives us a plain, historic version of this narrative "But I fear lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." But Satan is perhaps most sharply identified in the descriptive points made by John (Rev. 12: 9 and 20: 2): "And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil and Satan, who deceiveth the whole world." . . . . . "And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent who is the devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years." Our Lord, as also Paul and John, saw in this narrative a real Satan and also the veritable serpent, made his instrument.

3. That Satan should use such an instrument is manifestly within and not beyond his power. It has in certain points its analogy in the demoniacal possessions recorded by the Evangelists. As to power he is spoken of as the god and prince of this world, "the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience."

The Scriptures attribute to holy angels great power over material agencies; and with scarcely less fullness to Satan and his legions also. In the case of demoniacal possessions, nothing can be more obvious than the manifestations of Satanic mind, mind speaking through human lips indeed, yet giving utterance to Satanic thought. "We know thee who Thou art." "What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? Art thou come to torment us before the time"? (Mat. 8:29 and Mk. 5:7 and Luke 8: 28. See also Acts 19: 15.)

4. Other points in this narrative are recognized in the Scriptures as historic and not merely symbolic. Paul wrote to Timothy (1 Tim. 2: 13-15): "For Adam was first formed, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived; but the woman being deceived, was in the transgres

sion. Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in childbearing," etc.-all referring very definitely to this narrative as fact and not merely drapery illustrating some universal truth. To the same purport is Paul in Rom. 5: 12, 19: "As by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin." "As by one man's disobedience many were made sinners," etc. So also 1 Cor. 15: 21, 22.

5. The sin of the first pair stands in its appropriate historic place here (not a merely symbolic place), being immediately connected with the curse upon the serpent (and under him upon the devil); upon the woman also, and the man and the ground; also with the expulsion from Eden and man's changed life, from the ease and the delights of Eden to sweating labor upon a stubborn. soil, in perpetual conflict with noxious growths. These considerations suffice in my view to prove that this narrative must be taken as simple history, and not as symbolic drapery employed to set forth, not these specific events, but only the general truth of human depravity.

II. The Moral Trial.

Provision was made for this trial by one simple prohibition, forbidding to them the fruit of one tree in the midst of the garden. Of all else they might eat as they pleased. All they could need for subsistence or enjoyment was freely permitted them; but the fruit of this one tree they might not eat on pain of death. This was the test of their obedience. This was to discipline their faith and their love toward their divine Father. There the tree stood before their eyes in the midst of the garden-every sight of it suggesting their Great Father's word-not to be eaten at all on penalty of death. Will they cheerfully and even joyfully deny themselves so much for the love they bear their Father? So long it shall be well with them. Every time they put down the temptation to eat of it they will become stronger in their spirit of obedience and more happy in God. It was a means of continual culture in holiness, ever leading onward and upward into deeper communion with God and more assured and joyous submission to his will, more strength of purpose in obedience, more delight in whatever self-denial obedience.