originally created them; and shame, the certain attendant on guilt, and the future indweller and companion of man, suggested the necessity and propriety of sewing together the fig-leaves, whereof to make them aprons to conceal their nakedness. For as to that state of original righteousness and purity in which they stood before their Creator when first formed, and which induced him to say that all was superlatively good, these properties-innocence and immortality, which were held conditionallywere lost for ever, and could only be regained (for us) by the Divine Word becoming flesh, or his being God and man in one Christ.

The omniscient Creator, who is omnipresent in a peculiar and an especial manner with his own divine and spiritual likeness, the soul of man, determined at once to execute judgment and justice on our sinful and greatly fallen progenitors, who had heard the voice of the Lord God in the garden, and hid themselves (as they weakly imagined) from his presence among the trees of the garden; the Lord God then called unto Adam, and, speaking after the manner of a man, said unto him, "Where art thou?"

"And he said, I heard thy voice in the gar

den, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself."

The Creator inquired' "Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?"

These queries were a virtual accusation of Adam, who, perplexed and awed by the extremity in which, for the first time, he now stood in the presence of his Creator, gave an evasive answer to the questions put to him— first, by imputing the cause of his sin to the woman, and then, by implication, charging the Lord God himself as accessary to his fall, in his character of Creator of the woman.

"And the man said, The woman that thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat."

The Lord God, on being thus referred to the woman, said, "What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

"And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

"And 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.

"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

"And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

"Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field.

"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken, and unto dust shalt thou return."

Adam, who, in the first instance, had declared that his wife should be called woman, because she had been taken out of man, now bestowed on her the name of Eve, because she should be

the mother of all living; and thus, perspectively, of that Seed which should bruise the head of the serpent. The Mosaic account then adds

"Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins,* and clothed them.

"And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil : and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever :

"Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

"So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."

Such is the inspired revelation of the fall and expulsion of man from the garden of Eden,

* Commentators have generally thought, that the animals from which the skins were taken to make coats for Adam and his wife Eve, were sacrificed; and as the food now appointed for man did not include flesh, this consideration seems strongly to favour, though not absolutely to confirm, that opinion.

when the first created of our race stept into what is so rightly and emphatically styled the valley of the shadow of death; of the figurative or symbolical language respecting the cherubims guarding the tree of life, I do not think that I am justified in advancing anything in the shape of conjecture; it therefore, only now remains to speak shortly respecting the seed of the woman that should bruise the head of the serpent, and then to establish, by the truth of the written word of God, the evident, and positive import of the word "image," used in the Mosaic account of the creation of man.

In attempting to speak of the seed of the woman that should bruise the head of the serpent, it may not be out of place shortly to examine the circumstances connected with the birth of Cain and Abel, and the first institution of public worship by the Word, the Son of God; so much, therefore, of the fourth chapter of Genesis as has immediate relation to my subject, I will now insert, and also connect requisite observations with the different parts cited as I proceed in the detail.

"And Adam knew his wife, and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten the man from the Lord."