worship thou Him."* These words have far greater force if we remember that those who are saved by Christ but do not belong to the Church of the firstborn will probably inhabit the earth from which they sprang, and not be called away from their ancient dwelling into the heavenly places.

We may thus see how evidently the history of Adam and Eve foreshadows wondrous things to come, and sets forth the mystery of marriage in its reference to Christ and His Church.

* Psalm xlv. 10, 11.

THE FALL OF MAN.

mined the fall to remove

man, that he might be

an immortal purity and a more excellent power and glory.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FALL OF MAN.

THUS the man and the woman were created on the The mercy of God same day; so that Adam could only seems to have predeter- have been in existence a few hours pride from the heart of before his wife. Nothing was wanting afterwards restored to to complete their joy save the certainty that it would be lasting; and on this point they probably felt no fear. For what suspicion had they of the power of evil: how could they read in all that surrounded them the destruction of mightier creations? They knew not the secrets of the ground on which they trod: they rejoiced in the flowery verdure, and saw not the ruins of world beneath world reaching far into the bowels of the earth. They dreamt not that the blue sea was rippling over a vast prison-house of sin; that the very atmosphere above them was swarming with fallen angels and the disembodied spirits of those who had rebelled against the Most High.

And they, too, were destined to be overcome of evil : they were soon to experience the meaning of that awful word, death, which the lips of their Creator had uttered; to feel the terrors of His wrath, the desolation of ruin, the horrors of corruption. For the all-wise

God well knew the great obstacle to perfection in the creature, and that, until it could be removed, He was unable to show forth His love and pour out His bounty to the full. He could not endow men with great power and wisdom; He could not make them excellent in majesty and glorious in might, swift as the winds or the lightning to do His will, until they had passed the danger of abusing His gifts, and so falling as the sinful angels had done before them.

Therefore they should not be perfect from the day of their creation; but, by a painful yet most salutary experience, should learn their own creature weakness: they should be imprisoned in bodies of humiliation: * they should be left to try what their own strength could do, to endeavour to save themselves by their own arm amid the hostile powers of darkness, which should not, therefore, be at once consigned to the doom of the obstinately rebellious: they should fall, but by the merciful pre-arrangement of God not an eternally fatal, not a hopeless fall: they should know what it is to abide in sin, and so to be consumed by His anger, to be troubled by His wrath, to be subjected to vanity, wasting, and decay: with shuddering awe they should enter into the thickening darkness which enshrouds the dread portals of death: all their beauty should turn to corruption, their bodies, however majestic or fair, become repulsive and loathsome.

And through and out of all this they should be saved by a power not their own: benighted, helpless, distraught, not knowing whither to turn, they should be led by the hand of Another their sin, which they would be utterly unable to expiate, should be punished Phil. iii. 21.