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death;" to fulfil the requirements of the Divine law; and "through the Eternal Spirit to offer himself without spot to God," as an atonement for the sins of the world.

Q. What benefits were to accrue from this sacrifice? A. God promised to grant repentance and remission of sins through faith in Jesus; to restore every believer to the moral image of his Maker; and by the Holy Ghost, to make him "meet for the inheritance of the saints in light."

2. Was our world the first production of the Creator?

A. No: angels had a prior existence.†

Q. In what condition were they placed?
A. In a state of probation.

Q. Did they all maintain their purity?

A. No; some of them "left their own habitation;" for which they are "reserved in everlasting chains under darkness to the judgment of the great day."‡

Q. How are good angels employed?

A. In executing the Divine commands, examining the mystery of godliness, and in ministering to the heirs of salvation. §

* Psalm viii. 5. "Thou hast made him a little lower than the Elohim," says the Hebrew Bible: and St. Paul, in applying these words to Christ, gives the reason of this humiliation : "for the suffering of death," Heb. ii. 9. because as God he could neither suffer nor die.

+ Job. xxxviii. 7.

2 Pet. ii. 4. Jude 6.

Psalm ciii. 20. 1 Peter i. 12. Heb. i. 14. The testaments abound with instances of the ministry of angels.

Q. How are the evil angels employed?

A. In seducing men to sin, and in harassing the children of God.*

Q. In what state was the world when first called into being?

A. It was dark and void.†

Q. Did the creation of the world produce any sensation among superior beings?

A. Yes, "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."

Q. How long a period did the work of creation employ?
A. Six days.

Q. Relate its progress ?

A. On the first day light was created; on the second day the firmament, or expanse; on the third day the waters were gathered into one place,‡ and the vegetable kingdom called into existence; on the fourth day the sun and moon were appointed to rule the day and night;

1 Pet. v. 8. Ephes. vi. 11, 12, &c.

+ The Tohu and Bohu of Mosaic History, are usually identified with the Chaos of pagan writers. From the LXX. how. ever, it is very evident that the Jews understood these terms to signify "invisible and unfurnished, or empty." Mr. PENN in his Comparative Estimate of the Mineral und Mosaic Geologies, contends for this translation, which is perfectly agreeable to scripture. The earth was "invisible" because covered with water, Psalm civ. 6.; and "empty," because the Almighty's fiat had not spoken into being the vegetable and animal creations.

Job xxxviii. 8-11. 27-29.

Psalm civ. 6–9. Prov. viii.

on the fifth day, fishes and birds; and on the sixth, animals, insects, and MAN.*

Q. What names were given to light and darkness?

A. The light was called day; and the darkness Ereb, or twilight.

2. Of what was man made?

A. Of the dust of the ground.‡

Q. What special honour was conferred upon him? A. He was created in the image of God, and constituted lord of the world.

Q. Of what did the image of God in man consist? A. In an intellectual, moral, and immortal nature. Q. In what does the moral image of God consist? A. In righteousness and true holiness.§

Q. Of what was the woman made ?

A. Of a rib from Adam's side.

"The last animal structure of this creation was that which God assigned to MAN, and into which He breathed a LIVING SOUL: thus uniting in his being, a nature which bore analogy to His own Divine nature, and a frame analogous, in its general laws, to the animal natures of the earth, though furnished with many excellencies above them. Thus man, by his animal nature, was linked to the system of this globe, but by his moral nature, and by the imperishing essence of that nature, he demonstrated a disparity to that system, and a relation to a different and a far more exalted one.-PENN's Geology.

This is the fabled Erebus of the poets.

The worship of the earth as the universal Mother, the fable of Prometheus's making men of clay, and of the animals produced from the mud of the Nile, seem to have originated in the knowledge of this fact.

§ Ephes. iv. 24.

Q. What did the Lord God call the man and the

woman?.

A. He called their name Adam.*

Q. What did Adam call his wife?

A. He called her Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

Q. Where were Adam and Eve placed?

A. In the garden of Eden,† tɔ keep and to dress it. Q. What did this garden produce?

A. "Every tree pleasant to the sight and good for food and the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil."‡

Q. For what purpose were these trees?

A. The tree of life possessed the power to render man immortal; and the tree of knowledge was the test of his obedience.

Q. In what relation did Adam stand to his posterity? A. As their representative and federal head.

Q. How was the completion of the creation commemorated?

A. God beheld his work, and pronounced it very

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* From Adamah, the ground, to remind us that our habitation is in the dust;" or from Damah, he was like; indicating the dignity of man when bearing his Maker's image.

+ The garden of pleasure, the same as Paradise, and a type of heaven, Luke xxiii. 43. 2 Cor. xii. 4. Rev. ii. 7. The remembrance of it among the heathen was probably preserved in the Elysian Fields, and Gardens of Adonis.

The Rabbins believe this to have been the vine.

good, and he rested on the seventh day and sanctified it.*

Q. Did our first parents preserve their innocence ?

A. No: they were seduced, by the serpent,† to eat the forbidden fruit, expecting thereby to become wise like God.+

Q. Did they receive any accession of wisdom?

A. No: "their foolish heart was darkened," and they endeavoured soon after to hide themselves from the presence of the Lord.

Q. What was the consequence of their disobedience? A. The serpent was cursed, as was the earth itself, for Adam's sake ;§ Eve was made subject to her

"While God provided in the heavens, on the fourth day, a perpetual natural calendar of time divided into large measures, which attracted the attention of the mind to natural and material objects; He provided, by the sanctification of the seventh day, an entirely distinct, moral calendar, subdividing those large measures into smaller and more convenient measures, and directing the attention perpetually, and immediately to Himself."-PENN's Geology. The very general use of the seven days' cycle proves that the sabbath was not unknown to the ancient world. A very curious account of the creation and sabbath is given in the laws of Menu.-See Asiat. Res. vol. v.

+ See Appendix A.

‡“God” and “gods,” Gen. iii. 5. are both expressed in the original by Elohim.

§ In prescribing a moral rule to man, "to whom he had granted the dominion over his earthly system, in subordination only to His own supremacy," the Creator "reserved and prohibited one, and only one object, out of the universal grant; the reservation and prohibition of which, though trivial in itself, was

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