Chapter 2
Ver. 1. 'Thus (or and) the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.'
GOD now proclaims the completion of His creation-work. It was no mere sketch or outline: it was no half-finished plan: it was a 'finished' work. A goodly and glorious work! Not merely on account of what we see and touch in it, but on account of what we cannot see or touch. For creation is full of secrets. Science, in these last days, has extracted not a few, but how many remain secrets still! What a multitude of hidden wonders does each part of creation contain! Outwardly, how marvellous for the order, beauty, utility of all its parts; inwardly, how much more marvellous for the secret springs of life, motion, order, health, fruitfulness, and power! Each part, how wondrous in itself, as perfect in its kind; yet no less wondrous, as wrapping up within itself the seeds of ten thousand other creations, as perfect, hereafter to spring from them! God proclaims the perfection of His works, not as man does, in vainglory, but that He may fix our eye on their excellency, and let us know that He, the Former of them, is fully satisfied, and that His work is now ready for its various functions and uses. The great machine is completed, and now about to begin its operations.
Vers. 2, 3. 'And on the seventh day God ended (had finished, completed) His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. 3. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made.'
By the close of the sixth day God had finished His work, so that, as that day's sun set, announcing the seventh day begun, all was completed. God stands here on the line that separates these two days; He looks back on the past, and forward to the future. He sees
and surveys a finished work, and He 'returns to His place'—He 'rests.' His rest is soon disturbed, as we shall see, by man's sin, so that He is compelled to begin anew His work (the far more laborious work of renewing a world); but meanwhile He 'rests;' and His purpose is to make all creatures partakers of this rest. He rests, not because weary, but because His work is done; and yet, no doubt, that word 'rest' was intended to declare to us the profounder tranquillity that there is, even to the Creator, in rest than in labour.
The day of this completion and this rest must be made memorable for ever. From that moment, each seventh day must be marked off as a day of remembrance, a day to be kept differently from other days, even had man never fallen. For as man, being a dweller on earth, has many common duties to perform, which are no less needful than those which are directly spiritual, so God has appointed six days during which these common duties are to be sanctified, and one day during which they are to be wholly set aside. They that confound these two things, and profess to make every day a Sabbath, are making void the original purpose of God. God's purpose never was to make every day a Sabbath, and it is mock-sanctity to say so. They who would raise every day to the level of a Sabbath are quite as far from the aim of the divine institution as they who drag down the Sabbath to the level of a common day. During the six days man was to show how he could serve and glorify God in the common duties of life; on the Sabbath, he was to show how God was to be served and glorified by acts of direct and unmingled worship. This is the principle of the great Sabbath-institute,—a principle which runs through all ages, more so than ever in these last days, when men are either denying religion altogether, or endeavouring to eject it from everyday life, and confine it to a peculiar region of its own.
This seventh day God 'blest.' He uttered His mind concerning it, calling it a day of blessing; and in so doing, communicated to it (as it were) the power to impart blessing—that is, He made it the day in which He would specially give blessing. This is then the primary meaning and object of the Sabbath. It is the day on which God
specially blesses man. But more than this. It is added, He 'sanctified it.' He marked it off from all other days, as the tabernacle was marked off from all the tents of Israel. He drew a fence around it, which was, not to be broken through. He set it apart for Himself, just as He set the six days apart for man. It was to be His day, not man's; just as the altar was His altar, the laver His laver, not man's. And when, or where, or how has God's claim to a Sabbath been renounced? When has His setting apart been done away? Men speak and act as if this 'blessing,' this 'sanctification' of the day were a yoke not to be borne; as if the Sabbath were a curse, not a blessing; as if the gospel had at length broken fetters forged in Eden by God for man! But, no. The Sabbath was set up by God, and by Him only can be taken down. It was set up (1) as a memorial of past labour; (2) as a pillar of testimony to God as Creator; (3) as a proclamation of rest; (4) as a type and earnest of coming rest. These four points in particular contain God's reasons for the institution of this day. All these are still in force; nor has the gospel blunted the edge of any of them, least of all the last. Till the antitype come, the type must remain. Till that glorious rest arrive,—better than creation-rest, better than Canaan-rest (Heb. 4),—its type must remain. Nor is it easy to understand the reason why some, calling themselves expectants of this coming rest, should be so anxious to set aside the type of it. It is strange also that now, when the resurrection of Christ has added another to the many reasons for observing a day like this, we should be asked to abolish it.
Vers. 4, 5. 'These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 5. And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.'
This fourth verse should commence a new chapter, and is connected with what follows. The first three verses should be thrown back into the previous chapter. A new section of creation-history now begins,
and the fourth verse is the title or heading: 'The following are the details of what took place when God created heaven and earth.' The fifth is intended to state that all that was done was entirely God's doing, without the help of second causes, without the refreshment of rain, without the aid of man. There had been no power in action hitherto but God's alone. His hand, directly and alone, had done all that was done, in making plants and herbs to grow. The soil was not of itself productive; no previous seed existed; there was no former growth to spring up again. All was the finger of God. He is the sole Creator. Second causes, as they are called, are His creations: they owe their being, their influence, to Him. The operations of nature, as men speak, are but the actings of the invisible God. God is in everything. Not as the Pantheist would have it, a part of everything, so that nature is God; but a personal Being, in everything, yet distinct from everything; filling, quickening, guiding creation in all its parts, yet no more the same with it than the pilot is with the vessel he steers, or the painter with the canvas on which he flings all the hues of earth and heaven. Let us beware of this subtle delusion of the evil one, the confounding of the creature with the Creator; of God, 'the King eternal, immortal, and invisible,' with the hills, and plains, and forests, and flowers which He has made. To deify nature seems one of the special errors of the last days. And no wonder; for if nature be deified, then man is deified too. Man becomes God, and nature is the throne on which he sits. Let us not lose sight of God in nature. Let not that which is the manifestation of His glory be turned by us into an obscuration of Himself. Let us look straight to the living God. Not nature, but God; not providence, but God; not the law, but the Lawgiver; not the voice, but the Speaker; not the instrument and its wide melodies, but the Master who formed the lyre, and whose hands are drawing the music out of its wondrous chords!
Ver. 6. 'But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.'
To supply the want of rain, God called up a mist which watered the ground, so that herb and plant were now refreshed. Ere He brings
man into the midst of His works, He burnishes them, and makes them resplendent with freshest green. It is of this 'mist' that Job speaks (36:27): 'He maketh small the drops of water; they pour down rain according to the vapour thereof;' Jeremiah also: 'He causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth' (10:13); thus directly ascribing to Jehovah as much the continuance as the creation of this watering mist. He makes it! He who built the hills, and lighted up the stars,—He is the Creator of the thin airy vapour which disappears in a moment. And in all these parts of His infinitely varied handiwork He has taught us to read solemn lessons. In the ocean, the breadth of eternity; in the mountains, the stability of the covenant; in the vapour, the shortness of our mortal life (Jas. 4:14). All nature teems with truth, concerning the past, the present, and the future. And this God, who created the vapour, and made that vapour a figure of man's life, is the God who careth for us, the God who wants to give us the life that is no vapour,—the heritage that cannot pass away! And the mist that waters and revives the summer flower is not more free than the eternal life which He gives us in His Son.
Ver. 7. 'And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.'
In the fifth verse we were specially reminded that 'there was not a man to till the ground;' now this want is to be removed; and from this way of noticing man's creation we are taught that, just as the ground was made for man, so man was made for the ground. He has a claim on it, and it has a claim on him. Accordingly it is to the peculiar link between him and the ground that our attention is now turned. He is closely connected with the ground, for out of it he was made. Hitherto we have been merely told of man being created by God; but not a word has been said of how, or out of what, he was formed. Now we are told, it was of 'the dust of the ground;' of the finer and more elemental parts of this material earth. He was formed 'dust of the ground,' for so the words run literally. This refers, of course, to his body, teaching us that it was made first; and then, after
that, God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (or lives), and he became a living soul. As we know that the stoppage of the breath causes the cessation of life, so the impartation of the breath was the production of life, as if the breath were the link between the soul and body, so that, in breaking it, the soul and body fall asunder. Here is the potter and the clay! Man bears no part in his own creation. His flesh is taken out of the dust beneath him; his soul comes down straight from God above, made out of we know not what; called, perhaps, directly out of nothing. That which is material may come out of a mass of previously existing matter; but who will say that the immaterial is brought out of a mass of previously existing spirit? No. The soul comes at once from Him of whom it is said, 'In Him was life, and the life was the light of men' (John 1:4). It is the Son, the second person of the Godhead, that is 'the Life'—the living and lifegiving One. It was He who with one hand, as it were, taking up a body out of the dust, and with the other creating a soul by the word of His power, brought them together, and then cemented them together with the 'breath of lives,' which He breathed into the nostrils. Thus the threefold cord which is not quickly broken (the corporeal life, the animal life, and the intellectual life) was thrown around this new piece of creation, and the soul and body married together in a union which only sin could dissolve.
Such are the two extremes of man's nature, body and soul. Such are the sources of both; the one low, the other lofty. And possessed of this twofold being,—thus strangely compounded of the low and the high, of the material and the immaterial,—is he not taught on the one hand to be profoundly humble, and on the other to soar upwards to Jehovah with a noble ambition, resting satisfied nowhere but in the bosom of his God?
Of our original dust we are often reminded by God. He recurs frequently to the term, as a figure for such things as the following:— It is the emblem of frailty (Ps. 103:14); can we then be self-confident, or ever cherish 'the pride of life'? It is the emblem of nothingness (Gen. 18:27); and can we boast of our sufficiency, or deem ourselves
aught when compared with the All-sufficient One? It is the emblem of defilement (Isa. 52:2); and shall we vaunt of purity? It is the emblem of humiliation (Lam. 3:29; Job 42:6); and shall we be puffed up, we who are but dust and ashes? It is the emblem of mourning (Josh. 7:6); and shall we exult, as if no tribulation could reach us, or say with Babylon, 'I shall see no sorrow'? It is the emblem of mortality (Eccles. 3:20, 12:7); and shall we trust in our dying life, as if death could not invade us? O man, thou art dust! Canst thou be proud or high-minded? Canst thou put thy confidence in anything into which the element of dust enters?
Yet, let us remember, there is nothing sinful in this dust out of which we are framed. Ours is indeed a lowly origin, but not an unholy one. There is nothing sinful in the soil of earth. The curse is on it and in it, for man's sin. But the soil itself contains no defilement. Out of this very dust was fashioned the body of Him who took our flesh. The Son of the Highest has taken into His person this very dust of ours, thereby showing us that there is nothing in it really vile; nay, thereby putting wondrous honour upon it, and elevating it to a seat upon the very throne of God. Out of this dust our resurrection bodies are to be formed; so that when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, we shall not the less be possessors of a body derived from the 'dust of the ground.' This body of ours is yet to sit upon the throne of the universe. We have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
But we have souls as well as bodies; and these souls are specially God's handiwork. He made them what they are. We got them directly from Him at first, and 'in Him we live, and move, and have our being' (Job 12:10, 27:3, 3:4, 34:14; Eccles. 12:7). This is the highest and noblest kind of creation. Man cannot make, but he can unmake; he cannot create, but he can ruin; for he can introduce into the soul that which is its ruin,—SIN. God only can either make it out of nothing, or re-make after it is ruined. Both are the acts of Him who is 'the Life.' The first life came from Him, much more the new life; and His act when creating the first life corresponds strikingly to that of which it
is said, 'He breathed on them, and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.' The second life is indeed produced in the way of birth (a birth of God, a birth from above), so that the whole mature soul is not imparted at once, but still the source of the life is the same,—the lifegiving fountain is the same, only it communicates a higher kind of life (1 Cor. 15:45). 'The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.' It is more abundant life (John 10:10). 'I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.' Our whole new being is to be after a higher model, and cast in a far finer mould (1 Cor. 15:49). 'As we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.'
Ver. 8. 'And the Lord God planted a garden, eastward, in Eden (Heb. in Eden from the East), and there He put the man whom He had formed.'
We now learn in what region, and in what part of that region, man was placed. It was in the eastern extremity of a region named Eden; a region whose locality was, it would seem, well known in the days of Moses, but now only to be guessed at. When it took the name of 'Eden,' whether so named at first by God, or afterwards by Adam, or not till later ages, we know not. It signifies 'delight,' being so named from its surpassing beauty and fruitfulness. It was a land, the like of which has not since been seen on earth; fairer and richer than that which flowed with milk and honey; a land of broad rivers and streams; a land of sunshine and gladness; a land of flowers and gems; a land of the myrtle, and the olive, and the palm, and the vine; a land which was the glory of all lands; which has left its name behind it to all ages, as a name of fruitfulness, and fragrance, and beauty.
In the eastern corner of this 'delightsome land,' this more than Beulah, God planted a garden with His own hand, a garden which afterwards, from an Eastern term, took the name of Paradise, and is often alluded to in Scripture as the 'garden of the Lord,' the 'garden
of God' (Gen. 13:10; Isa. 51:3; Ezek. 28:13, 31:8, 9, 36:35; Joel 2:3). This peculiar spot of earth, this inner circle, was to be man's residence. There he was to dwell. There he was to meet with God, there to walk with God, there, as in creation's palace, to take up his abode as creation's king; and from his throne there to exercise his kingly dominion over an undefiled and happy earth.2
Ver. 9. 'And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow (or spring) every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also (Heb. and the tree of the life, or lives) in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.'
The garden was nobly stored. It was a princely orchard. Its fruitful soil gave growth to every various tree and shrub. Nothing was awanting to make it altogether suitable for its dwellers. Every tree which the eye loves to look upon, or which is good for food, was there. No sense remained ungratified. But two special trees were there, the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
1. The tree of life.—This was a real tree, as real as any of the rest, and evidently placed there for like purposes with the rest. The only difference was, that it had peculiar virtues which the others had not. It was a life-giving or life-sustaining tree,—a tree of which, so long as man should continue to eat, he should never die. Not that one eating of it could confer immortality; but the continuous use of it was intended for this. Not that man was made mortal as he now is; the use of means does not necessarily denote some such innate defect. Man had to eat of food even when unfallen, yet this did not prove him to have been originally a dying creature. Nay, Christ had to partake of food, but this did not argue any defect in Him. So did not the existence of the tree of life, and man's need to eat thereof, argue any original defect in man. The link between soul and body was to be maintained by this tree. So long as he partook of this, that tie could not be broken.
2. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.—Why may we not take this in the same literality of meaning as the former? Why may it not mean a tree, the fruit of which was fitted to nourish man's intellectual and moral nature? How it did this I do not attempt to say. But we know so little of the actings of the body or the soul, that we cannot affirm it impossible. Nay, we see so much of the effects of the body upon the soul, both in sharpening and blunting the edge alike of intellect and conscience, that we may pronounce it not at all unlikely. We are only beginning to be aware of the exceeding delicacy of our mental and moral mechanism, and how easily that mechanism is injured or improved by the things which affect the body. A healthy body tends greatly to produce not only a healthy intellect, but a healthy conscience. I know that only one thing can really pacify the conscience,—the all-cleansing blood; but this I also know, that a diseased or enfeebled body operates oftentimes so sadly on the conscience as to prevent the healthy realization by it of that wondrous blood, thereby beclouding the whole soul; and there is nothing which Satan seems so completely to get hold of, and by means of it to rule the inner man, as a nervously-diseased body. Cowper's expression, 'A mind well lodged, and masculine of course,' has in it more meaning than we have commonly attached to it.
Vers. 10–14. 'And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. 11. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12. And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx-stone. 13. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is that which compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia (Heb. Cush). 14. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth towards the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.'
For this fair region a river was provided,—a noble river,—fit counterpart of that 'river of bliss' which
'Thro' midst of heaven,
Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream.'
Where this mighty river rose is not said. It found its way into Eden from the lofty mountains which encircled that glorious region. Then passing through Eden, it glided onwards into Paradise, and there might be seen 'winding at its own sweet will,' till it reached the other extremity of the garden. There it was subdivided into four heads. These were: (1) Pison, compassing the land of Havilah, in which land there is the fine gold, with bdellium and the onyx stone, showing us what a land of wealth it must have been, its soil fruitful, and its very rocks veined with gems and gold. To that land Job refers when he says, 'The stones of it are the place of sapphires; and it hath dust of gold' (Job 28:6). To it also Ezekiel points when, speaking to the Prince of Tyre, he says, 'Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold.' (2) Gihon. It flowed round Ethiopia or Cush, and signifies a breaking forth of waters. More than this we cannot say of it. (3) Hiddekel. It is said to go to the east of Assyria, and is certainly the Tigris. (4) The Euphrates. This was too well known to require minute description. It is spoken of elsewhere as 'the river' (1 Kings 4:21; Ps. 72:8), the 'great river' (Deut. 1:7), the 'flood' (Josh. 24:2). It was the Euphrates that was to form one of the boundaries of Abraham's land: 'Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt (Nile) to the great river, the river Euphrates' (Gen. 15:18). It was towards this river that Israel was commanded to turn their steps (Deut. 1:7). It was on the banks of this river that Israel sat down and wept, remembering Zion (Ps. 137:1). It was in a hole of one of the rocks that skirt Euphrates that Jeremiah was to hide his girdle (Jer. 13:4). It was into Euphrates that Jeremiah was to cast the book containing Babylon's burden, with the stone bound to it, as the type of Babylon's more terrible plunge (Jer. 51:63). It was in the Euphrates that the Apocalyptic angels were bound, and on it that the sixth angel poured out his vial, drying up its waters, and preparing the way for the kings of the East (Rev. 9:16, 16:12). Babylon stood upon Euphrates,—Babylon, the great enemy of
Jehovah and His people, as well as the representative of their great enemy through all ages. Hard by Paradise, it may be on the very spot, was Satan permitted to rear his mighty citadel. He had driven man from that happy seat; he had blighted its beauty, and now, as if in defiance of God and man, he rears his city upon the faded flowers of Eden. One has asked,—
'Having waste ground enough,
Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary,
And pitch our evils there?'
So was it with Satan, whether we regard Babylon as actually reared on the site of Paradise, or merely in some corner of the wider circle of Eden. God's garden and Satan's city, close by each other, as if the latter were triumphing over the former! The emblem of the heavenly paradise and the symbol of the great city, 'Mother of harlots,' city of Antichrist, side by side with each other! The earthly pattern of heavenly things passing away, and replaced by the abode of darkness, the cage of unclean beasts, the counterpart of Satan's own dark dwelling below!
But what care and love God has shown towards man! What pains and cost to make him happy and comfortable! It is a father providing for his child, his first-born. God's desire was to bless. And that desire remains unchanged and undiminished. Our sin might have been expected to quench this desire, and to turn the blessing into a curse, the love into hate. It did so in the case of angels. It has not done so to us. He loves us still. He blesses, and curses not. Paradise with all its beauty and abundance was but a faint expression of God's love when compared with His unspeakable gift, or with the more glorious paradise yet in reserve. The earthly tree of life is as nothing compared with the heavenly original which shall ere long be ours, when, as the 'overcoming' ones, we shall eat of the 'tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God' (Rev. 2:7, 22:2, 14).
Ver. 15. 'And the Lord God took the man, and put him into (Heb. placed, or set him in) the garden of Eden, to dress it (Heb. to till it), and to keep it.'
Having prepared the garden, the Lord God took the man and placed him in it, that he might till it and keep it. It was made for him, and he for it, as the body is made for the soul, and the soul for the body. It was fruitful beyond anything we now know of, yet it was not so fruitful as to make any kind of care or cultivation needless. It was so fruitful as to occasion no toil nor weariness to the cultivator, yet not so fruitful as not to afford occasion to man's skill and watchfulness. No amount of skill or toil now can call up beauty, or verdure, or fruit, beyond a certain narrow limit; for man has to do with a rugged soil. But in Adam's case the ground easily and gladly yielded its substance without limit to the most gentle toil. Nay, it was not toil; it was simple, pleasant occupation. No doubt the amount and kind of its actual fruit-bearing was to depend upon himself; he was to regulate this according to his wants and tastes; but still the fruit-bearing source was in the soil, imparted directly by the hand of God,—that all-quickening, all-fertilizing Spirit that brooded over the face of the deep. Afterwards that Spirit was grieved away from the soil by man's sin; but at first His power was most signally manifested in its fruitful richness. Man was lord of the soil, and of all that trod it or grew on it, and his daily employments were to manifest his dominion,—not dominion over a rebellious earth, needing to be curbed or scourged into obedience, but a dominion over a willing world, that stood eagerly awaiting his commands. All creation was, like a well-tuned instrument, ready made to his hand; and all that was needed on his part was simply the amount of happy effort needful to set its strings in motion, and bring out of them all the rich compass of their music. And if such was creation under the first Adam, what will it be under the second? Then truly shall the wilderness and the solitary place be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.
Vers. 16, 17. 'And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest (or shalt) freely eat (Heb.
eating thou shalt eat, that is, thou shalt go on eating unhindered); 17. But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die (Heb. dying thou shalt die, that is, thou shall begin to die, and go on dying).'
We now come to the constitution under which God placed man. It was given in the form of a commandment,—'thou shalt,' and 'thou shalt not,'—an injunction, and a prohibition. 'The Lord God COMMANDED the man.' There was, as it were, a moral necessity laid upon him to obey. This utterance of God's will imposed this necessity. It was not the mere declaration of certain consequences to arise from obedience or disobedience. It was such a declaration of will on the part of Jehovah as hedged him in on every side with the most overwhelming of all moral necessities. It was not indeed a necessity that left him without a free choice, but it was a necessity which gave a most preponderating bias to that free choice in the direction of obedience, even apart from consequences. Under a similar necessity has God in His announcement of grace placed fallen man. He has not simply left to us a choice of the evil or the good. He has given utterance to His will. 'This is His COMMANDMENT, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ.' A necessity is laid upon us. It is not a mere question as to our own woe or weal; it is a question of obedience or disobedience. Hence the inquiry so often made by those who have begun to learn what it is to be lost, but who as yet only dimly see how they may be saved,—'Am I at liberty to believe and to come to Christ as I am?' is one of the strangest that could be made. What should we have thought of Adam, had he asked, 'Am I at liberty to obey God's commands?' What are we to think of the sinner who asks, 'Am I at liberty to come to Christ?' At liberty to come! You dare not do otherwise, except you are prepared to defy God and disobey His commandment. At liberty to come! You are not at liberty to refuse. A necessity lies on you to come,—even that most solemn of all necessities, which springs from the declaration of the will of God. You can only be lost by acting all your life long in
deliberate disobedience to the plainest of all commandments that ever came from the lips of God.
But let us consider the two points of this law given to Adam,—'Thou shalt,' and 'Thou shalt not.'
1. The injunction.—'Of every tree of the garden, eating thou shalt eat.' It is not 'mayest eat,' as our translation has it, but 'shalt eat.' As a sovereign's wishes are commands, so is it here. It is not a mere permission or invitation, but a command. And it is a peculiar form of speech,—the positive injunction that most truly comports with the authoritative dignity of a sovereign Jehovah, as well as suits best the condition of the responsible creature, by leaving no room for any doubt on his part as to what is the sovereign will of Him to whom all obedience is due.
2. The prohibition.—One tree is forbidden, only one,—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; and this with the added threatening of death for any breach of this solemn prohibition. What might be God's ultimate purpose regarding this tree, we cannot say. Nor can we fully comprehend the reasons for setting it in Paradise, within sight and reach of man. It was both in appearance and in its properties the most attractive of all the trees (Gen. 3:6), the one which appealed most directly to man's intelligent nature. And had the prohibition been permanent and irreversible, had God meant that a tree possessing such qualities should never, throughout man's whole future existence, be partaken of by him, it is not easy to see the reason either of the planting or the prohibiting of the tree. But take the prohibition as a temporary one, intended to prove man; suppose that after a certain time of obedience free access to the tree was to be allowed, then the difficulty lessens, if it does not wholly disappear. Man was, ultimately, to eat freely of it, and to obtain all its singular benefits. By means of it he would rise in the scale of being, and obtain, in so far as a finite nature can, a participation of the divine knowledge of good and evil, without having to pass through that sore and long experience through which alone we now reach it. The eating
of that tree would have done for him, through physical means, in some measure at least, what our participation, of Christ, our eating of His body, does for us now, and will do yet more abundantly hereafter. Had man waited God's time,—had he exercised faith,—he would have gotten all that the tree could give him ere long, and that in the way of obedience. 'Believing' in God, he would not have 'made haste.' But he believed not; and made haste, as if resolved to have, whether through obedience or disobedience, all that the tree could yield him. It was to be proved whether he could trust God, and whether he loved God's will better than his own. Concerning this prohibition, we may note, (1) It was a needful prohibition. Man must be kept in remembrance that he is not an absolute sovereign,—that he is but a vicegerent. He must be made to feel that there is another will in the universe besides his own, greater than his own, independent of his own, an absolutely sovereign will. (2) It was but one prohibition. There was but one point in which his will and God's could come into collision. In great loving-kindness God had made it so. Man was not burdened, or fretted, or perplexed with many points of this kind. Only one! How gracious! How considerate, as if God sought to make man's trial the least possible, so as to leave him without excuse if he should disobey. (3) It was a simple prohibition. It had nothing intricate or dark about it. There was nothing mysterious about it, nothing in which man could mistake, nothing which could leave room for the question, Am I obeying or not? It was distinct beyond the possibility of mistake. (4) It was a visible prohibition. It was connected with something both visible and tangible. It was not inward, but outward. It was not a thing of faith, but of sight. Everything about it was palpable and open—the tree, the fruit, the place, the threat, the consequences. (5) It was an easy prohibition. Man could not say it was hard to keep. He was only to refrain from eating one fruit. Being a negative, not a positive requirement, it reduced obedience to its lowest form and easiest terms. Hence man's sin was the greater. He was wholly inexcusable. (6) It was enforced by a most solemn penalty. It began with a declaration of God's will, and it ended with the proclamation of the penalty,—death. How much this expression includes has been often
disputed. There is no need of this. In the day that man ate of the tree he came under condemnation; he became a death-doomed man; the sentence went forth against him. Grace came in afterwards, and suspended the full execution of the sentence; but still the sentence went out—'dying thou shalt die.' That temporal death, as it is called, —the dissolution of soul and body,—was the first thing contained in this sentence, there can be little doubt. Not as if the sentence rested there. Temporal death was but the entrance into that gloomy region of condemnation within which all things terrible await the sinner. Temporal death was to be, not then only, but ever after, the visible pledge or mark of the sentence. Hence it is that we read, 'It is appointed unto men once to die;' in which words the apostle refers to the primeval sentence,—man's once dying,—and shows how this sentence was fulfilled in the once dying of the Substitute (Heb. 9:28). This death brought with it all manner of infinite ills and woes. It brought with it, or included in it, condemnation, wrath, misery, separation from God; all endless; all immediate; all irreversible, had not free love come in; had 'grace not reigned through righteousness, unto eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.' The sentence was, 'The soul that sinneth, it shall die.' But 'where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.'
Ver. 18. 'And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.'
The previous verses have described the preparation of man's dwelling; the eighteenth and those that follow contain a minute detail of the formation of his help meet. In the case of the animal creation, male and female were created together. Not so with man. There must be an interval between his creation and that of the woman, just as there was to be an interval between the incarnation and the ingathering of the Church. In all things pertaining to man there must be something more special than in other beings. The work must be done more deliberately, step by step, that each thing done may be seen in itself before it is seen in its connection with other parts of creation. Man is created alone at first, that he may stand
forth as the great model of God's workmanship, and that our eye may be fixed on him as the representative of our nature. He is the great head of humanity; its root; its fountain. In him, thus placed before us alone, we have the intimation of God's purpose regarding man's nature, and man's rule over the earth. Besides, he is thus made to feel his loneliness, his need of another like himself. He feels as if one half of his nature were awanting. He stood, indeed, amid a glorious world,—a world bursting with fresh, glad beauty on every side, and teeming with boundless life; but he stood alone! There was no one like himself—no soul to meet his soul, in all its buoyant outgoings. He stood
'An exile amid splendid desolation,
A prisoner with infinity surrounded.'
He had, it is true, God for his companion; but this was not all that was needed, as God Himself here testifies. There must be one like himself, in whom there will be more of equality and sympathy and nearness; one neither too high nor too low for him. 'I will make' (says God) 'an help meet for him.' God only understands his case, and can satisfy the cravings of his spirit for the intercourse of a spirit like his own. I will make for him an helper, corresponding to him; another self; his counterpart; the very being to fill up the void within him.
Vers. 19, 20. 'And (or now) out of the ground the Lord God formed (or had formed) every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air (Heb. heaven), and brought them unto Adam (or to the man), to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam (or the man) called every living creature, that was the name thereof. 20. And Adam gave names to all (the) cattle, and to the fowls of the air (the heaven), and to every beast of the field.'
God now proceeds to show man the exact point where the void lay. Adam had been made to feel that void, but God's object is to place
him in circumstances such as shall lead him step by step to the seat of the unsatisfied longing within. Accordingly, God brings before him all the creatures which He had made, that Adam, in his choice, may have the whole range of creation. Adam surveys them all. He sees by instinctive wisdom the nature and properties of each, so that he can affix names to all in turn. His knowledge is large and full; it has come direct from God, just as his own being had come. It is not discovery, it is not learning, it is not experience, it is not memory, it is intuition. By intuition he knew what the wisest king in after ages only knew by searching. Solomon, we read, 'spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes' (1 Kings 4:33). But Adam's knowledge went far beyond this. In the case both of Adam and of Solomon, we see what man shall yet attain to; what widespread knowledge shall be theirs who are one with that second Adam, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. From these instances we see, not merely the folly, but the sin of those who depreciate science, as if it were the handmaid of ungodliness, and the result of the fall. Sorely misused has science been; sadly has it oftentimes risen up between the soul and God; between sinful man and the incarnate Son; between the intellect of the learned and the gospel of the grace of God. Fearfully has it wrought, as a deadly poison to the human spirit, through the workings of pride and self-sufficiency, and idolatry of the reason. But notwithstanding all these results, let us hold fast the truth which Adam's wondrous attainments teach us, that such knowledge is, in itself, most truly and surely good;—not evil.
Ver. 20. 'But for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.'
No counterpart,—no being to fill up the void within him, was to be found in all these. There was no response from any one of them to the deep feelings of his breast. They were too far asunder from him; their nature was not in harmony or sympathy with his. The two extremities of being had thus been presented to Adam,—God Himself
on the one hand, and the animal creation on the other. In neither of these can a help meet be found. The one is too far above him, the other too much beneath him. A being must be found liker and nearer himself. The whole creation, perfect as it was, yet contained nothing for true and loving companionship. Men may speak of fellowship with nature, in its various forms and orders of life,—of finding sympathies in the breeze, the cloud, the wave, the rock, the flower; but all this is but the exaggeration of sentiment or poetry. In all creation, animate or inanimate, there is no fellow, no companion for man.
Vers. 21–24. 'And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. 22. Ana the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man. 23. Ana Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man. 24. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be one flesh.'
God now proceeds to supply the void, but in such a way as shall make man feel God's design and meaning. The peculiar process adopted by the Creator in forming the help meet was to intimate to man the nature of the companion presented to him, and the closeness of the tie between them. Adam was thrown into a deep sleep, which made him insensible to pain, though, perhaps, not unconscious of what was passing. When in this state, God took one of his ribs, and fashioned out of it a woman, healing the wound at once. Then God brought her to Adam, revealing at the same time to him the history of her formation. Adam recognises Jehovah's gracious purpose in this; he feels the void supplied; he acknowledges the oneness between himself and her; he gives her a name expressive of this. Her name is to be woman, Isha, derived from his own, Ish, man. Then follows the historian's statement regarding the oneness of the two, and man's duty to make this tie paramount. The conjugal
relationship is closer than the filial. All other bonds must yield to this, however sacred and tender they may be. The words of the twenty-fourth verse are evidently not the words of Adam himself, but the comment of Moses upon the words of Adam. And a greater than Moses has enlarged this comment:—'From the beginning of the creation God made them a male and a female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh; so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder' (Mark 10:6).
With one or two further remarks, we leave this passage.
1. As to Adam's sleep.—It was a heavy, or deep sleep. It was a sleep sent directly from God. It was a sleep for a special end. In the case of Abraham and Daniel we see the same thing (Gen. 15:12; Dan. 8:18, 10:9). A deep sleep from God fell on both these, when God designed to communicate visions to them. In their case, God caused them to sleep that He might show them what was to be done; in the case of Adam, that He might actually do the thing. In both instances the individuals were rendered unconscious to outward things by that which we call sleep, and in that state God took possession of them; in Abraham's and Daniel's case, of the soul; in Adam's, of the body. It would seem to be intimated, that not until Adam had been brought into that state which approaches nearest to death could God accomplish his design. There must be sleep in the first Adam ere God can take out of him the ordained spouse; and there must be death in the second Adam ere God can take out of Him the chosen Bride. In this way there might be something prefigurative in Adam's sleep.
2. As to the taking of woman out of man.—As it was God that caused Adam to sleep, so it was God Himself that took the rib out of him. Thus God shows Himself to us as at once the great Purposer and the great Doer of all things. 'Second causes,' as we speak, are but the mysterious tools or instruments which He makes use of in carrying out His designs. He lays us to sleep each night, and He awakens us
each morning with His own loving hand. He is the God of our nights and of our days. It was from Adam that God took the substance which He meant to fashion into woman, indicating that, as man was formed first, and as woman sprang from man, so man is to be her head. He from the dust, she from him. He directly from the Former's hand, she indirectly, and through him. 'Adam,' says the apostle, 'was first formed, then Eve' (1 Tim. 2:13); therefore, says he, she is 'not to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.' Thus, again, he states the gradation: (1) the head of the woman is the man, (2) the head of the man is Christ, (3) the head of Christ is God (1 Cor. 11:3). Further, he adds that 'the woman is the glory (or ornament) of the man;' for, says he, 'the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man; neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man' (1 Cor. 11:8, 9). Such is God's order of things; such His assignment of place and rank to the creatures which He has made. We may be sure that there is a reason for this gradation, not merely a typical, but a natural one, whether we fully understand it or not. We cannot alter this law, and be blameless. We cannot reverse it, and not suffer loss. The construction of our world's fabric is far too delicate and complex for man to attempt the slightest change without dislocating the whole. One star displaced, one planet thrown off its orbit, will confound the harmonies of space, and strew the firmament with the wrecks of the universe; so one law lost sight of or set at nought, will mar the happy order of God's living world below. In one age or nation man treads down woman as a slave; in another he idolizes her, and sings of her as of a goddess; in both cases inflicting a social wrong upon the race; in the latter case as truly as in the former; and who can say how deep an injury, both spiritual and social, has been wrought, and how fatal an influence has been sent forth, by that fond sentimentalism which, impregnating our poetry, and, coursing like fever through the veins of youth, not only 'costs the fresh blood dear,' but saps the whole social system, nay, propagates a principle of subtle ungodliness and creature-worship, in its praise of woman's beauty, and idolatry of woman's love.
3. As to the taking of woman from the side of man.—From neither extremity of Adam's body did God take the woman, signifying that she was neither to be man's lord, nor man's drudge, but his fellow, only with this inferiority, that she was taken out of him, and therefore he was to be her head. From that part which lies nearest his heart did woman come. She was not so much to partake of man's intellectual as of his loving nature. It was not from man's thinking forehead or sinewy arm that she sprang, but from those parts where it may be said there is the least of man to be found. From the region where the warm blood flows, and the heart throbs, and the pulses take their rise, and the fountain of life wells up, did woman come. From that quarter of man's being where, in all ages, affection has been conceived to make its home, where joy and sorrow have their flowings and reflowings, where fear and hope are each hour sinking and swelling, did woman come. The fragrant plumage of the turtle tells us out of what spice-grove she has come. So does woman's tender nature of itself declare that it is from the region of the kindly and the gentle that she has been brought forth. As it was out of the bosom of the Father that the Eternal Son came down to us laden with the Father's love; as it was out of the bosom of the Son that the Church came forth, at once the object and the reflection of His mighty love; so it was out of man's side,—man's bosom,—that she came forth who was to be at once the embodiment of his gentler affections, and the being round whom these affections were to cling. And as it was on the high priest's breast,—his place of love,—that the names of Israel rested, in jewelled splendour, so is it on man's breast that woman is to rest;—ay, and so is it hereafter, on the breast of the eternal Bridegroom that the Church is to repose, in more than earthly glory, in that day when His 'left hand shall be under her head, and His right hand shall embrace' her; when she shall be 'set as a seal upon His heart, as a seal upon His arm' for ever.
4. As to the making of woman from a rib of man.—One of those protecting circles which prevents the sinking in of the flesh upon the heart, and which gives the heart full room to play, was to be taken out entire, that out of it woman might be formed. The bone and the
flesh were both taken,—the softer and more solid parts of man's body,—that it might be seen how truly she was of man's very nature, though in some respects differing. Not a separate being formed out of the dust, in which man could not recognise a part of himself, but a being thoroughly identified with him; not merely like him, but one with him, so that her absence would be the absence of a part of himself,—a blank, a void, without whom he would be incomplete. This taking out a rib in order to form the woman, suggests very much the idea that would have been called up had a cedar plank, or a piece of gold, been taken out of the 'holiest of all' in the temple, to fashion into one of the vessels of the sanctuary. A vessel formed in such a way would be very different in the eyes of Israel from one formed of cedar direct from Lebanon, or gold direct from Ophir. It could not fail to remind them of the sacred place from which its materials were taken, and it would be for ever associated in their minds with all that 'the holy of holies' suggested to an Israelite. Thus woman, taken from the very shrine of man's corporeal sanctuary (for the apostle teaches us to call our bodies temples, 1 Cor. 6:19), is linked with all the sacred or tender associations that are called up by that well-known but mysterious word,—the heart!
5. As to the making of the woman.—The expression is a very peculiar one. It is neither of the two former that have been already employed, —'created' or 'made'. It is, literally, 'builded.' The word is a very common one, occurring about four hundred times, but here only in so peculiar a sense. It is the word used in reference to the building of a city, a house, a family, a temple, a throne, an altar, and such like. And there is surely some signification in applying such a word to the formation of woman. Of man it is said he was made, of woman she was builded. Now man was the type of Christ; and of the latter, in reference to His human nature, it might be said simply He was 'made,'—formed at once. But the woman signifies the Church, taken out of the wounded side of her dying Lord. And of the Church it is often said she is 'builded;' 'in whom,' says the apostle, 'all the building, fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God,
through the Spirit' (Eph. 2:21, 22); and again, 'for the edifying'— literally, the building—'of the body of Christ' (Eph. 4:12). By the term 'building,' applied to the formation of Eve, God has thought fit to shadow forth to us the process by which, age after age, the Church (which is the second Eve) was to be fashioned into a help meet or counterpart for Christ, the second Adam; yet as the second Adam was far more glorious than the first, so does the second Eve, taken out of His pierced breast, far transcend the first, God in all respects bestowing more cost and pains upon the new creation than upon the old. For redemption has brought in, not simply a new order of things, but one far higher than that which it is designed to replace: the one being earthly, the other heavenly; the one fleshly, the other spiritual; the one human, the other divine. And thus the Church, Christ's chosen Bride, springing from his smitten side, is 'builded;'—builded by the same Almighty hands that built the wondrous heavens; builded, as was the temple of old, without sound of axe or hammer; builded, at once as the City of the Lamb's special habitation, and the Companion for His dearest fellowship, without whom this goodly universe would have been incomplete to Him; for even in it, though renewed and glorified, it would have been found that it was 'not good for Him to be alone.' For Him no help meet could have been found, had not the Father provided this 'glorious Church,' and had not He Himself, in the greatness of His longing for that help meet, consented to sleep the deep sleep of death upon the cross, that thus she might be taken out of Him, whose beauty, as seen pictured in the Father's purpose, had already 'ravished His heart' (Song 4:9); whose presence could alone make even the better paradise complete; and union to whom, throughout eternity, was what His heart desired (John 15:9, 17:23–26).
6. As to the closing up of the flesh instead of what was taken out.— Adam was not to be the loser in any way or sense, but the gainer. All deficiency was replaced, all loss supplied. God would teach him the nature of woman and the object of her creation (wrapping up in this also a type of things to come), but He would teach it in a way that would not leave man the sufferer. Jacob's lesson was to be learned by
'halting on his thigh' all his life after; but Adam's was to be learned by looking at his help meet, and then while remembering how she had been 'builded,' to feel that she had cost him nothing beyond the sleep into which he had been so mysteriously thrown. A sleep, but nothing more,—this was all the price for a boon so precious! No abiding pain, or loss, or weakness. He was still the same Adam as when he came from the hands of his Maker. Neither has the second Adam suffered loss for us. It did indeed cost him much to redeem us. It cost Him a darker, sadder, and more troubled sleep than Adam's. But it is all over now! He retains nothing of the weakness, or sorrow, or darkness of His low estate. He is not less the King of glory because He was once the humbled Jesus. He does indeed appear in heaven a Lamb 'as it had been slain;' He may, perhaps, retain the wounds of the cross; but more than this He does not. All other traces of His humiliation are erased. He has lost nothing by the Bride that He has gained. Nay, He has won much; for His weakness, sorrow, shame, when here, have bought for Him new strength, and gladness, and glory. Hence the song of angels, 'Worthy is THE LAMB THAT WAS SLAIN to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing' (Rev. 5:12).
7. As to the woman's introduction to the man.—'He brought her unto the man.' God Himself, as if standing in a father's room, and acting the father's part, brings the bride to the bridegroom. As a beloved daughter He presents her to her future husband. He joined their hands and pronounced over them the marriage-blessing (chap. 1:28), 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.' A stranger, and yet no stranger,—a part of himself, the filling up of his being, she was brought before him, and knit to him in inseparable bonds. And it is thus that the true Eve speaks of herself in the Song, 'The King hath brought me into His chambers' (chap. 1:4); and again, 'He brought me to the banqueting-house' (chap. 2:4). Of her also it is written, 'She shall be brought unto the King in raiment of needlework' (Ps. 45:14), and again, that she is 'prepared as a bride adorned for her husband' (Rev. 21:2). One of her special characteristics is, that she is 'given' of the Father to the Son; and in that day when He comes in
His glory she shall be caught up to meet Him in the air, and be brought into His presence by the Father, there to have the marriage service celebrated, and as a 'chaste virgin' (2 Cor. 11:2), to be presented to Him to whom she has been so long betrothed. Then shall that song be sung to which all the new creation shall echo, 'Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to Him; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready; and to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints' (Rev. 19:7, 8).
8. As to Adam's recognition of her.—Whether by revelation or consciousness we know not; but Adam knows the woman thus brought to him, and calls her woman, as being a part of man. This is his response to God's introduction of her. He acknowledges the oneness, and receives her as himself. We have God's consent in bringing, the woman's consent in coming, and now we have Adam's consent in receiving. Thus is the marriage completed by the full concurrence of all. And so is it with the second Adam too. He receives and owns His Bride. He welcomes her as indeed part of Himself, one with Himself. 'Both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one, for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren' (Heb. 2:11). And again it is written, 'We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones' (Eph. 5:30). And thus recognising the mysterious oneness between Himself and His Bride, He expresses His admiration of her beauty, as the 'fairest among women' (Song 1:8), 'all glorious within' (Ps. 45:13); whilst she with joy responds and speaks of Him as 'fairer than the children of men' (Ps. 45:2). 'Behold, thou art fair, my love; thou art all fair; there is no spot in thee' (Song 4:7), is the utterance of His admiring love of her; while she replies, 'My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand. His head is as the most fine gold; His locks are bushy, and black as a raven: His countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars: His mouth is most sweet; yea, He is altogether lovely' (Song 5:16). And in the happy consciousness of possessing Him and His love, she gives vent to the deep feeling of her satisfied soul, 'My
beloved is mine, and I am His; He feedeth among the lilies until the day break and the shadows flee away' (Song 2:16).
All this transaction took place in silence; without noise and without violence. In the silence of deep sleep (it might be midnight too) the Lord wrought His work. It might seem a deed of pain and violence to man. But no. There was the unconscious opening of the side, the gentle abstraction of the needed part, the tender and unfelt healing of the wound! How strange the work, yet how silent the doing! And how like the noiseless building of the temple on Moriah, on which no sound of axes or hammers was ever heard. How like the process that is now going on in this world for the building of the 'living Temple! The work advances in silence. No uproar, no shouting, no Babelclamour of discordant tongues. From day to day it moves on noiselessly. Stone after stone is cut from the rude rock, hewn and polished, ready to be fitted into the glorious fabric. Member after member is gathered in, and added to the mystic body,—the Bride, the Lamb's wife! All by an invisible hand, and by a process of which the world knows nothing! And when this midnight is over, and the world's great Sabbath dawns, then in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, shall this prepared Bride, in full maturity of being, and bloom of resurrection beauty, stand forth to view, when the Bridegroom's voice shall be heard, 'Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away; for lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land' (Song 2:10).
Ver. 25. 'And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.'
There they stood, just as they came from the hands of God. They did not need to blush; they felt no shame. It is sin that has connected nakedness and shame together. No sin, no shame. There is no blush upon an angel's brow. Unfallen man had the unashamed nakedness of innocence; but with the fall this has passed away, not to be returned to, even under redemption, but to be replaced by something
higher, the glorious raiment of a righteousness that is unfading and divine. Unfallen man needed no covering, and asked for none; but fallen man, under the bitter consciousness of the unworthy and unseemly condition to which sin has reduced him, as unfit for God, or angels, or man to look upon, cries out for covering,—covering such as will hide his shame even from the eye of God. Hence He who undertook to provide this covering, must bear the shame. And He has borne it,—all the shame of hanging naked on the cross; the shame of a sinner; the shame of being made the song of the drunkard; the shame of being despised and rejected of men; the shame of being treated as an outcast, one unfit for either God or man to look upon,—unfit not only to live, but even to die within the gates of the holy city (Heb. 13:11, 12). All that shame has He borne for us, that we might inherit His glory. He stooped to the place of shame below, that we might obtain the place of honour in the better paradise above.
Thus walked our first parents amid the groves of a paradise that had not then been lost. Thus dwelt they in its bowers as a home, and worshipped in it as a sanctuary. For with them the family mansion was the temple of their God. These were one, ere man had sinned. The entrance of sin divided these. Nor did grace, though coming in so largely and so swiftly, unite them again. From that day onward they have been separate. But the time is at hand when they shall be again united as in paradise; and in the new Jerusalem, the Church shall find at once her temple and her home. Even now we anticipate this blessed reunion; for faith brings us into the holy of holies, there to worship and to dwell. We pitch our tents beside the mercy-seat, and under the shadow of the glory. In the innermost shrine of the temple is the Church's proper home. And when we pass from the visions of faith into the realities of possession and enjoyment, we shall find the same happy union of the home and the temple. In the Jerusalem beneath, the separation may be still kept up, but in the Jerusalem above, the palace and the temple are one; for as it is the Lord God Almighty that is to be the temple there, so it is in the Lord
God Almighty and the Lamb that we are to abide, we in Him and He in us. It is the bosom of the Father that is to be our dwelling for ever.
That promised inheritance of the saints was prefigured by Adam's paradise, with this difference, that as the second Adam far transcends the first, so shall the paradise of the second Adam far excel and outshine the paradise of the first. The glory of the terrestrial is one, but the glory of the celestial is another. The glory of unfallen creation is one, but the glory of restored creation is another. The glory of earth standing alone in its beauty is one; but the glory of earth and heaven united,—of earth and heaven reflecting and augmenting each other's splendour,—is another. Yet still the earthly and the heavenly have their common features, by which the one is known to be a copy of the other, just as the tabernacle was a copy of heavenly things shown to Moses on the mount. In the Apocalyptic picture of the 'inheritance of the saints in light,' we can trace the likeness between the two in the main aspect of the outline, though the filling up may somewhat differ. This unlikeness certainly we notice, that in the one there was no building whatsoever, in the other there is a magnificent city. Yet this city is embosomed in a gorgeous paradise; and it is built of the various gems for which the ancient paradise was noted; as if God had for these many ages hedged in and veiled the sacred spot, that He might enlarge and beautify it after a fashion which eye had not seen; nay, that He might rear within its bowers and out of its rich mines a city worthy of Himself and of that Son who was to be its Lord, and of that company, redeemed by blood, who were to inhabit it; so that when at last the fence is taken down, and the covering removed, there stands forth to view, not the ancient paradise, for the dwelling of 'the man and his wife,' but the 'many mansions' (John 14:2), the 'prepared city' (Heb. 11:16); the city of gems and gold, for the habitation of the nobler heirs, the great multitude that no man can number.
In the midst of the street of this city there reappears the tree of life; just as the former tree of life had been 'in the midst of the garden,' and just as the pot of manna (sole memorial for ages of the tree of
life) was in the midst of the ark (Heb. 9:4). Of the tree of knowledge no trace is to be found, as if no memorial of man's sin were to remain; or as if, the interdict being removed, there was no longer any need to specify it; or as if it had been entirely superseded by Him in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge; or as if knowledge and life, once separated, had now become so entirely one, that the tree of life might represent both; for 'this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.' Adam in paradise had the tree of life; Israel in the wilderness had the manna (angels' food, Ps. 78:25, as temporary supply till the true bread should come down); but the Church, in the New Jerusalem, is to have the more glorious tree, of which the former was but a terrestrial shadow. Beyond 'the mountain of myrrh,' and the 'hill of frankincense,' when the day has broken and the shadows fled; beyond Lebanon, and Amana, and Shenir, and Hermon; beyond 'the lions' dens' and the 'mountains of the leopards' (Song 4:6, 8), she shall sit down in the garden of her God, under the fair branches of the 'Plant of renown,' partaking of Him who is her life, in a way such as she has never done on earth, and feeling that thus she has a life which Adam had not, which angels have not,—a life that flows out of the deepest well of life, the bosom of Him who is in the bosom of the Father.