The biography of our first parents, as God made them, and described
them, before sin ruined them, is very brief and truly suggestive. It
is as follows:--
"And Jehovah God created the man in his image; in the image of God
created he him; a male and a female created he them. And God blessed
them; and God said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the
earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the
fowl of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the
earth. And God said, Behold, I have given to you every herb scattering
seed, which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree, in
which is the fruit of a tree scattering seed, to you it shall be
given."--Gen. i. 27-30.
"And Jehovah God formed the man of the dust of the ground, and he
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a
living soul. And Jehovah God planted a garden in Eden, on the east,
and there he put the man whom he formed, ... to till it and to keep
it. And God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden
thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil
thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou
shalt surely die. And God said, It is not good that the man should be
alone. I will make for him a helper, suited to him. And God caused a
deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; and he took one of his
ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. And of this rib which he
took from the man, Jehovah God formed a woman, and brought her to the
man. And the man said, This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my
flesh. This shall be called Woman, because from man was she taken.
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall
cleave to his wife; and they shall be one flesh. And they were both
naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed."--Gen, ii. 7, 8,
15-18, 21-25.
Brief as are these utterances, and familiar as is this language, it is
interesting to notice that God has crowded into them every essential
fact concerning the origin of woman, the purpose of her creation, and
the sphere marked out for her by the Creator's hand.
The simple outline of the story is given us, yet how wonderful is the
picture! In the first chapter the origin of man is proclaimed, and
his work, "to fill earth and subdue it," is placed before him. In the
second chapter, the relation of the sexes is given, and the nature of
marriage is explained. What arrests the attention most surely is the
resemblance that exists between the experience of our first parents
and of their descendants, or between Adam and Eve and ourselves. The
"It is not good for man to be alone," spoken by God in Eden, embodies
a truth which has lived with the ages, and sets forth an experience
felt by every son of Adam. The words "I will make for him a helper
suited to him," is man's authority for the faith, that somewhere on
the earth God has made a helper suited to him, whom he will recognize,
and who will return the recognition. For in all true marriages, now as
in Eden, the man and woman do not deliberately seek, but are brought
to one another. Happy those who afterwards can recognize that the hand
which led his Eve to Adam was that of an invisible God. Man knows that
it is not good for him to be alone. Separated from woman's influence,
man is narrow, churlish, brutal. Woman is a helper suited to him. With
her help he reaches a loftier stature; for love is the very heart of
life, the pivot upon which its whole machinery turns, without which no
human existence can be complete, and with which it becomes noble and
self-sacrificing.