parents that in the day they eat of that fruit they should die," the Serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die," probably accompanying the deceitful assertion by eating of the fruit himself, that she might see that it was fit for food.

Unhappily, most unhappily, the woman's faith gave way under the confident assertions and designing artifices of her murderous betrayer. She believed the lying serpent; she disbelieved the God of truth, of whose wisdom and goodness she had experienced so many affecting proofs. The "evil heart of unbelief" prevailed over her better principles; she departed from God, her only strength; and so fell an easy victim to the farther suggestions of the devil; who, knowing from his own experience the powerful effect of pride in producing disobedience, (x) thus continued his attack. "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."4 Had Eve been possessed of the anchor of faith, she would have answered, as our Lord did when similarly tempted, "Get thee behind me, Satan:" He in whom I live, and move, and have my being, hath forbid me to

eat thereof, and Him it is my duty and only safety to obey. But having already made shipwreck of faith, she was destitute of the only stay by which she could stem the torrent of temptation, and, accordingly, sunk beneath it. Impelled by ambitious pride, and aspiring to be wise like God, she deserted, as the devils had done before, the station. assigned her by Providence. "She took of the fruit and did eat, and gave also to her husband with her, and he did eat."

"No sooner had they transgressed, than they began to reflect upon the guilt, and feel the fatal consequences of so doing. The eyes of their understandings were indeed' opened;' not in the sense the tempter had promised," nor in the manner they would afterwards have been opened, had they come to eat of the same fruit with faith, and in obedience to the command of God; (1) "but in a manner that discovered to them their own folly, degeneracy, and shame." "They became sensible that they were divested of their inward purity, and therefore blushed at their bodily nakedness, of which before they were not ashamed." If they gained some knowledge respecting good, it served

6 Gen. iii. 6.

7 Pyle.

8 Patrick.

only to shew its irreconcilable opposition to evil, with which they had now become acquainted, and to convince them of their wretchedness and folly in having chosen the evil and lost the good. If they acquired, at the same time, some knowledge of human arts or their principles, (M) (as the additional defences now employed to keep the way of the tree of life seem to indicate they did,) it was not a knowledge that in any way elevated their nature, but merely such as to enable them to obey the restless craving of many real, as well as imaginary wants, which were inflicted as part of their punishment. For God said unto Adam, "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 of the herb of the field: In the sweat of thy face thou shalt 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."9

These concluding words explained to them the

9 Gen. iii. 17-19.

true import of the threatened punishment of death, as far as it affected the body: and it is evident, from the terror and dismay with which they were seized, that their consciences had already told them its meaning, as touching the soul; convincing them that creatures so vile and impure as they were now become, must be banished from the presence of that God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and in its converse and communion with whom consists the life and happiness of the soul.

From this most dreadful part of the sentence, however, God, of his infinite mercy, offered them an immediate, and from the whole, an eventual release, conferring upon them an invaluable opportunity of procuring his pardon, regaining his favour, and, by a patient continuance in well-doing, even still attaining to glory, honour, and immortality; though they must now inevitably pass to their immortal state through a vale of sorrow on earth, and through the awfully mysterious valley of the shadow of death. The absolute confirmation of the sentence went far enough to shew the inflexibility of God's justice, and his irreconcilable hatred of sin; while its conditional remission converted this new evil, which man's infidelity had enabled Satan to introduce, into a means of un

speakable good. For, in the midst of judgment, God thought upon mercy, and promised a Deliverer, even the "Seed of the woman," who should "bruise the Serpent's head," and through faith in whom, guilty man might obtain pardon and reconciliation with God, and work out for himself a far more exceeding weight of happiness and glory than that from which, or from the hopes of which, he had fallen.

From this cursory view of the contents of the three first chapters of the Bible, we perceive that the doctrine of salvation by faith is indeed as old as the Creation. In order to guard them from the dangerous influence of PRIDE, mankind have always, from the beginning, been subjected to the attacks of a spiritual enemy, far superior to themselves in power and intelligence; under whose degrading yoke they are then most certainly enslaved, when they exult the most in their own strength and importance; against whose unceasing attempts to corrupt and destroy them they are utterly unable to stand of themselves; but from whom they have never had any thing to fear, as long as (duly conscious of their own weakness) they placed their whole trust and confidence in the Almighty, and in the means appointed by God for their salvation.

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