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and pass away."

"Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing." 2

By this daring assertion, "Ye shall not surely die," in direct opposition to the threatening of God, the devil disarmed and persuaded her, as he still persuades too many to their ruin, that she had either misunderstood the Divine declaration, or, at least, that it would never be carried into effect. "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” 3 The devil well knew that to such beings as our first parents, nothing would appear more desirable than an increase of knowledge. He, therefore, affirmed that there was in the fruit of the tree some secret virtue, capable of wonderfully enlarging their understandings, and raising them to a higher degree of knowledge and power; even equal to that of God himself. "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Thus he flattered their pride and ambition, and inspired them with a love of independence and self-sufficiency; and at the same time did not hesitate to insinuate, that God, in withholding the fruit of this tree from them, had been actuated by nothing but envy and

1 Prov. iv. 14, 15, 22 Cor. vi. 17.

3 Gen. iii. 5.

jealousy, lest they should become as wise and happy as himself. Such was the temptation with which the deceiver and adversary of our race assaulted our first parent Eve, hoping, that if he could prevail with her, he might influence and overcome her husband also. The words of the text inform us of the melancholy result. "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat."

And now having both sinned, having in a fatal moment yielded to the seduction, they began to be sensible of its effects. Conscious innocence, hitherto their guard as well as happiness, forsook them: conscious guilt and shame, to which they had hitherto been entire strangers, took possession of their hearts. Their eyes were indeed opened; so far the promise Satan had made them was fulfilled; but, alas! in how different a sense from that which they had foolishly and wickedly imagined. They knew good and evil as they had never yet known them. They knew and felt with deep and bitter anguish, the good they had madly lost: they began to see the evil which must and would follow. Sin, while yet they were only solicited to commit it, appeared of small malignity; its present plea

sures seemed more than to overbalance all its threatened evils; the bait was gilded, and they greedily swallowed it; but when they felt its destructive nature, how did they reflect on themselves, and vainly wish that they had never viewed it with desire, or ventured on what they knew to be forbidden! They were now afraid to meet their God-that God in whose presence they had hitherto delighted. They sought to hide themselves from him. Oh! brethren, see what man is in a state of innocence; when, like the holy Angels, he delights in drawing nigh unto God, standing with gladness and confidence in his presence, and hearkening to the voice of his word: see what he is, when an inward consciousness of sin takes away that humble confidence, that filial affection; when, instead of seeking God's face, he is afraid, and trembles at the idea of his presence, and fain would banish Him from his thoughts! How deadly must be the nature of sin, which makes us thus fly from our greatest, our only good!

The remainder of this eventful history, as related in the rest of this chapter, I cannot, at present, dwell on :-the solemn and awful manner in which God calls them to account for their transgression; their vain attempt to hide themselves from his presence, and to extenuate their guilt

by casting the blame, Adam on his wife, and Eve on the serpent; the merciful promise of a Redeemer, fulfilled in Christ our righteousness and all-sufficient atonement, who was manifested to destroy the works of the devil; the sentence passed afresh on our first parents, and the curse denounced against that world which they and their posterity were henceforth to inhabit, instead of the Paradise prepared for them; and in which man has ever since been appointed, in the sweat of his face, to eat his bread, till his body return to the ground from whence it was taken.

Dismissing the consideration of all these for the present, let us see the dreadful effects of sin: let us see how it turned, as it were out of its course, all the stream of the Divine goodness, and altered the whole constitution of nature. Man was innocent, and he was happy. He fell into sin; and the same day which saw him fall, saw him guilty and wretched. All the avenues to happiness on this side the grave seemed closed for ever. Labour and sorrow, pain and death, now became his portion. And if he looked beyond, there was a second death infinitely more fearful and formidable,-the death and misery of the soul -exclusion from the presence of God. And such is the condition of Adam's posterity. We inherit his nature, and in that the consequences of his

sin. 66

'By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." All of us have become sinful by Adam's transgression: all of us have rendered ourselves still more guilty in the sight of God by actual sins, by many and repeated acts of disobedience; and if the God whom we have offended were to enter into judgment with us, who could be justified? But blessed be God, mercy has rejoiced against judgment. God did not leave his creatures to perish; but when they had destroyed themselves, He proved their help. In the eternal counsels of heaven, that all-astonishing plan of Redemption was formed, which, in the fulness of time, was made known by Christ's coming into the world; the seed of the woman here promised to bruise the serpent's head. He came to live and to die for our sakes, to make an all-sufficient atonement and sacrifice for sin; and, as the second Adam, to purchase for all his faithful followers a richer and more glorious Paradise than the first Adam lost. He came to deliver the prey out of the lion's mouth; that lion who goeth about "seeking whom he may devour." Oh! brethren, if we can estimate the misery from which we are thus saved, or the happiness now set before us in

1 Rom. v. 12.

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