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 universal 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
promise――“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 transgression.
Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in child-bearing,” 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
might involve. Surely it is not too much to say that they might make
this means of moral culture a priceless blessing to their souls. How
could paradise meet the greatest of all their wants――the want of their
new-born souls――without this one provision for proving and invigorating
their loving obedience to their God?
Need we then raise the question――_What was God’s purpose in this
prohibition?_ The answer is at hand――To accomplish precisely this
result; to give the first human pair a test of obedience which should
be naturally a means of moral culture and of growth in holiness.――――The
horrible thought――that God meant and sought to make them sin――how
can we say less of it than that it is born of Satan! For it assumes,
as Satan did in the garden, that God sought, not their good, but
their hurt; is not benevolent but malevolent! Our souls recoil from
this assumption. Doth not the Scriptures say truly (Jas. 1: 13),
“Neither tempteth he any man”? Never, for the purpose of drawing him
into sin!――――Is it replied:――God certainly knew they would eat that
forbidden fruit; the answer is, Undoubtedly he did; but this proves
nothing as to his purpose and aim in placing them under this moral
trial. If it be yet said――He might have made the trial so much less
that they would have borne it successfully: the proper answer is,
Who knows that? Who is wiser or more loving in such an emergency than
God?――――Consider also that while God knew they would fall, he also
knew that he could redeem the race through his Son, gloriously; and
so could make the wrath of both wicked men and devils subserve his
praise. We may account this to be his reason for subjecting the first
pair to a form of trial (every way good and wise in itself and well
designed)――although he foresaw they would fall before it. It was still
(as he saw the case through to its remotest end) better than any other
form of trial; better than no trial at all, supposing such a thing in
their case possible.
Thus may we vindicate God’s ways in this transaction. It was kind in
him to grant for their free use every other fruit in the garden――all
they could need. It was right that he should impose some test of their
obedience and love. Indeed it was a natural necessity of their moral
nature that this question of obeying God, always and every-where,
should come to issue. As surely as they were moral beings, capable of
knowing duty and of doing it, born into being with susceptibilities
to happiness which sometimes must be virtuously denied at the demand
of God and of the greater good, so surely they must meet this trial
sooner or later, in one form or another, until they become so strong
in their holy purpose, so fixed in the spirit of love and obedience
to God that temptation to sin is of course spurned away and duty is
done for evermore without a question. Moral trial, therefore, if not in
this precise form, yet in some analogous form, is the necessary means
of developing moral strength and confirmed holiness; is therefore the
natural pathway to the blessedness of heaven. Thus, with no wavering of
doubt, we may vindicate God’s ways toward man in this first great moral
trial brought on our race.
In what sense was this called, “The tree of the knowledge of good and
evil”? (Gen. 2: 9, 17 and 3: 5)――――It brought the knowledge of evil by
fearful experience; the knowledge of good to a certain extent by the
freshened sense of contrast with the experience of evil. Sin gives to
moral beings _such_ knowledge of good and of evil――knowledge it were
better far for them they should never have!
_Was the fruit of this tree a natural poison?_ We do not know. God
has not told us. It may have been or it may not. God does not base his
prohibition on this ground. There are other grounds, all-sufficient,
without this. It might perhaps be urged with some plausibility that the
analogy of this earthly life favors the affirmative inasmuch as for the
most part, God’s prohibitions of food and indeed of animal indulgence
in general, are based on this principle――Abstain from poison; do
thyself no harm. God is not wont to prohibit aught that is good for
food or pleasurable to any sense, except because it is pernicious,
poisonous.
What was this threatened penalty? _Death, in what sense?_
In the same sense in which it actually falls upon all who reject
Christ and fail of his salvation. Upon such the curse of the law falls
without abatement or modification. Their doom must surely be taken
as the exponent and measure of the meaning of this threatened death.
Of course it includes the loss of God’s favor; the incurring of his
frown.――――That eternal death did not begin instantly was due to arrest
of judgment for a new probation under the scheme of redemption; and to
nothing else.
_Was natural death a part of this penalty?_――――Plainly natural death
became the doom of the race, equally of the redeemed and of the
unredeemed, under the scheme of redemption――a scheme which carried with
it more or less of earthly life before the death of the body. But this
proves nothing as to the breadth of the original threatening――“Thou
shalt surely die.” What would have been in respect to natural death
if no scheme of redemption had intervened and the original threatening
had been executed at once, we have no means of knowing. Mortality as at
present resting on the race and terminating in natural death is one of
the incidents of the new probation under mercy, and gives us no light
on the other question, viz. What if no mercy had come in? In general,
it is of small account for us to ask, What would have been if something
else had happened otherwise than it did? _e. g._ What would have taken
place if the first pair had endured all temptation? How long would the
trial have continued? Would it have terminated by removing the tree,
or by taking off the prohibition, or only by such complete victory
over temptation that its presence could have been only a joy and a
triumph?――――What part would have been borne by “the tree of life”? And
after their sin, what if they had put forth their hand to take and eat
of this life-tree?――――Speculations of this sort never make men wiser.
III. _The Temptation._
On this point the history is remarkably full and distinct. To those who
have given attention to what may be called _the law of temptation_――the
way it works and gains its object――little explanation of the narrative
is needed.――――We may note that Satan took care not to be recognized as
an enemy; that he made his first approaches with subtlest caution and
skill, bringing up the case of the prohibited fruit as a question――Is
it _indeed so_ that God hath said, Ye shall not eat of every tree? As
if he would say――What do you think about this prohibition? Is it quite
pleasant to be put under such restraint?――――When Eve recited the words
of God’s prohibition and added something more――viz. “neither shall
ye touch it,” it is at least supposable that Satan had already sprung
in her mind the feeling that the injunction was indeed very stringent,
perhaps unreasonably and unkindly so. It is plain that Satan is
emboldened and now ventures to strike out squarely against God. Putting
his word unqualifiedly against God’s word, “ye shall _not_ surely die,”
he became “the father of lies,” “a liar from the beginning,” and threw
all the weight of his influence into the scale to break down Eve’s
confidence in God’s veracity as well as in his real kindness. Then with
Satanic cunning he took advantage of the name given to this forbidden
tree to make Eve think that knowledge, great and enviable like that of
the gods, would come from eating this fruit. Artfully he charges that
God knew this, and sought by the prohibition to debar them from this
boon of knowledge so desirable. The gilded bait was swallowed but too
soon and too thoughtlessly! Eve had listened; she had more than half
believed these lies; she still dallied with the temptation; she looked
again at the tree and its fruit; she saw it beautiful and seemingly
good for food; and, far beyond this, it appealed to her imagination
as giving her that unknown wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods――so she
took of it and _ate_!――――Then she brought of it to her husband. Her
words to him are not on record. We are left to imagine how her example
may have wrought upon him, and sympathy also with her doom if Adam
thought of that; how the feeling――I must stand or fall, live or die,
with this only human friend I have on earth――may have overcome every
scruple. So far as appears he yielded without a word of question, much
less of reproof. He yielded――and the awful deed was done!
IV. _The Fall and its Immediate Effects._
The first human pair are in sin; they have risen against God their
Maker in rebellion. Instantly “their eyes are opened.” They realize how
strangely different are the sensations that come _after_ sin from those
that are before. The false hopes, the fascinations, the bewildering,
bewitching charms of temptation’s hour give place to the awful sense of
folly and of wrong――a sense of passing suddenly into a world of solemn
and dread realities pertaining to God, duty, and doom. “They knew
that they were naked”; an awful sense of being unfit to be seen; a
consciousness of being ugly, loathsome, as if the inner guilt of their
souls stood out visibly over their whole bodies――this seems to have
been their first sensation, and they set themselves to sewing fig-leaf
coverings. As evening drew on they heard the voice of the Lord God
walking in the garden. That voice which up to this day had been their
sweetest music now fills their very souls with shame and terror.――――It
is remarkable that Adam’s words and his acts also make so much account
of his nakedness, apparently of person. Was it that his convictions
of sin and guilt were yet superficial, so that his sense of shame for
his sin turned his thought first to his personal nakedness? Had he yet
to learn that “God looketh on the heart”? If so the Lord’s searching
question must have met his case――“Who told thee that thou wast naked”?
How camest thou by this sense of shame, this dread of the eye of thy
divine Father? “Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee
that thou shouldest not eat”?――――Adam could not do otherwise than
confess his sin, yet with an apology which almost or quite reflected
upon God; “The woman whom _thou gavest_ to be with me, she gave me, and
I did eat.” The woman too sought to screen herself somewhat under the
apology of a subtle temptation. “The serpent beguiled me and I did eat.”
The secondary results of the fall appear in the curse severally
pronounced of God upon the serpent, upon the woman, and upon the
ground for his sake.――――As to the serpent, since he stands before us
in this entire transaction as a double character, so the curse upon
him comes in a sort of double meaning. The most obvious sense of the
passage assigns a measure of this curse to the literal serpent――the
animal under the guise of whom Satan beguiled his victim. But the
responsibility and guilt being upon the very Satan, this curse falls
chiefly on him. He is degraded, doomed to eternal shame; and in his
great conflict against God and goodness, to disgrace, defeat and
damning ruin. Words of telling significance were these;――“I will put
enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed;
it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel.” The serpent
guilefully assumed to be your friend. I tear off his mask and expose
him in his true nature; I ordain eternal enmity between serpent and
woman, and pre-eminently between the serpent’s seed――the children
of the devil――and the great, distinguished Personage known as “the
seed of the woman.” This enmity underlies the mighty conflict of
the ages――Christ and Satan each leading on his host to battle and no
peace or even truce arresting hostilities till the victory of the
King of Kings shall be complete and ineffably glorious. Thus the first
relation between serpent and woman――that of assumed but treacherous
friendship――develops into everlasting enmity――God, her real friend,
becoming in the person of his incarnate Son, born of woman――her
champion and the mighty antagonist of Satan and all his offspring.
Here and thus mercy breaks in upon this scene of sin and ruin, and God
begins the wonderful process of making the wrath of Satan the occasion
of his own infinite glory.――――The words which put so tersely the result
of this great conflict take their shape and borrow their drapery from
the guise under which Satan here appears――that of the crawling serpent.
He shall wound the heel of his opponent――the natural place for the
serpent’s bite; but his own head bruised and crushed, shall end the
fight.――――This first promise of God to our fallen race sweeps the eye
over the whole vast field of moral conflict between Christ and Satan,
and testifies of glorious victory over Satan as the sublime result. It
was inexpressibly kind in the Lord to bring in these gleams of light
and hope upon the trembling souls of the first sinning pair before
he proceeded to speak of the specific forms of suffering that must
righteously come upon them and their offspring as the testimony of
God’s displeasure against sin. Having said this, he proceeds to the
curse upon woman――sorrow in the birth of offspring; and the curse upon
man――toil and struggle for subsistence on a soil prolific in noxious
growths and demanding labor as a condition of fruitfulness.
Yet let the minor points of this scene sink into the shade in the
presence of the sublime glory of the great first promise. In the light
of this we see that though Satan plotted the ruin of the race, yet
God counter-plotted the ruin of Satan and the salvation of the masses
of mankind. When it might have seemed that all was lost, it proved
that this extremity was God’s great opportunity, for his strong arm
was made bare for help and real victory. This is the birth-hour of
most momentous issues. Sin came in upon Eden and upon earth; and many
a bitter sorrow, many a cup of suffering and woe, must needs follow
in its train; but _Redemption comes in also_; it enters upon its
co-ordinate work to save the soul from sin and from eternal death and
to bring in everlasting righteousness. The history of our world in its
most vital aspects is foreshadowed here in this first short meeting of
their Maker with this sinning pair. The spoken recorded words were few,
but their significance was momentous; the sweep of their bearing, the
issues of the divine policy here indicated, were destined to fill up
the ages of time with stirring and strange conflict, and to send their
influence down through the endless ages of man’s being and of God’s
kingdom.