ator; it was man alone "by whose sin Death entered the world"; it was his disobedience which destroyed the beautiful harmony that originally pervaded the creation. But God is loving even while He chastises. Man lost a great boon by his levity, but God granted him a greater gift in its stead; He bestowed upon him that intelligence which raises him to the dignity of the self-conscious master of the earth. Man forfeited the easy material existence of Paradise; but he attained in its place a spiritual life which breaks through all earthly limits; which conquers time, and reaches with its thoughts and its deeds to the gates of eternity.-It has frequently been asserted, that the Pentateuch never alludes to the question of immortality. It treats it, in its innermost bearings, at the very beginning of Genesis.

18-20. The writer's end is the history of man's fall; the serpent occasions, the wife shares it; it is, therefore, necessary to introduce the creation of the animals, and of woman. This is done in a manner which touches a deep chord in the nature of man, his sociable disposition; he feels the necessity of bestowing and receiving affection; his heart requires feeling beings to respond to his emotions, and his intellect demands minds by the contact with which the spark of thought may be kindled: "it is not good that man should be alone." God determined, therefore, to furnish him "a help at his side." He, accordingly, created first the animals, all the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air. They were, indeed, “a help” to man. They enlivened his solitude; they increased his happiness by showing their susceptibility to the bounties of nature spread around them; and as no enmity existed yet among their tribes; as

they did not yet prey upon each other, and the herb of the field sufficed for their food: they did not disturb the universal peace which pervaded the creation, nor did they force man to a sanguinary selfdefence. The general clemency, we may say sympathy, with which the animals are provided for in the Pentateuch, removes every surprise at the close relation which they are here made to occupy with regard to man; and this will appear the more appropriate, if we consider that the man of Paradise, with his intellect yet unawakened, and uncontrolled instinct as his safe but only guide, stood, indeed, much nearer to the general animal kingdom; the creation of man and of the beasts is narrated in exactly the same terms; both are "formed out of earth" (ver. 7, and ver. 19); and both have "the breath of life" (vi. 7; vii. 22): though bearing the seal and image of God, man was unconscious of his superiority.

But a greater proximity between man and animals must not be sought; we must not find here a perfect equality of both; the tenour of our text is far from coinciding with the belief of the Mohammedans, that all creatures have immortal souls, and participate in the resurrection; or with that of the Hindoos, that all souls come from Brahman; or of the Buddhists, that every breath of life is indestructible; or of the Egyptians, that the soul of no animal is lost, but enters the body of another creature; or of the North American Indians, that in the other world all souls will meet, but with the same distinctions under which they existed on earth. All this is against the spirit of the Old Testament; such notions are the result of morbid speculations; and they are in the Book of Ecclesiastes passingly

alluded to, only in order to be distinctly and emphatically denied (iii. 20, 21; xii. 8). Man was certainly the superior master of nature. This is evident from the next feature which our text mentions. God brought the animals which He had created to man, to "see what he would call them"; and the names chosen by man were to remain to them for ever. This is the first act by which man exercised his sovereignty; and although his intellect was not yet roused, he was sufficiently endowed for that task; for he had been capable of understanding the Divine command and of representing to himself death. In the first cosmogony, God Himself fixed the names of the objects which He had called into existence; He determined the appellations of Day and Night, of Heaven, and Sea, and Dry Land. Here He cedes this right to man, whom He has ordained "to have dominion over all the earth." The name was, according to Hebrew and Eastern writers in general, an integral part of the object itself; it was not deemed indifferent; it was no conventional sign; it was an essential attribute. When God revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush, the latter hastened to enquire under what name He wished to be announced to the Israelites. When a crisis in the life of an individual was imminent, or had been successfully overcome, his name was changed into another one expressive of that event. Kings, at their elevation to the throne, assumed another name. "know the name of God" was identical with knowing His internal nature, and even with piously walking in His precepts. The right, therefore, of determining the names includes authority and dominion; but man did not perform this act of his own accord; he did not yet feel his exalted rank;

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God, by inviting him to perform it, made him govern over the works of His hands, and placed all under his feet (Ps. viii. 7). It has been frequently observed, that our text explains the origin of language, and attributes its invention solely to man. Language is, indeed, a spontaneous emanation of the human mind; it is implanted in its nature; in furnishing man, besides his external organisation, with reason and imagination, God bestowed upon him the principal elements for communication by speech; it is as natural a function of his intellect as reflection; intelligent speech is one of the chief characteristics of man; hence the ancient Greek poets call men simply the "speech-gifted"; the germ was bestowed by God; man had to do no more than to cultivate it. But our author does not enter upon this abstruse question at all; it is of no practical importance for religious truth; it must have appeared superfluous to one who knows God as the Creator and Framer of all, as the Bestower of every gift, as Him who "hath made man's mouth, and who maketh dumb" (Exod. iv. 11).—Pythagoras, and other ancient philosophers, justly considered the invention of names for objects an act of the highest human wisdom; and the Chinese ascribed it to their first and most honoured sovereign Fo-hi, who performed this task so well, that "by naming the things their very nature was made known."

21-24. As the names are not given at random, but are chosen with careful regard to the nature of the objects, Adam was led to examine the animals congregated around him; he felt them, indeed, in some respects kindred to himself, as "living creatures" (ver. 19); they were, in certain regards, a help to him,

but not such a help as is meet for man (ver. 20), for a human soul—a help which satisfies the longing heart and calms the craving mind. And God created woman. We have above pointed out the extreme beauty of the following narrative, and have alluded to the sublime truths which it implies regarding the dignity of woman and the sacredness of matrimony. Strong and mighty indeed must that tie be, for whose sake man resigns all the fond associations of childhood; fervent must that love be which gains the ascendancy over the affection for father and mother. If the parents consider the son as the gift of God (Ps. cxxvii. 3), the son receives his wife as a special Divine gift (ver. 22). Many parents love their children more than all the world; the youth lavishes the whole wealth of his affections on her who sways his heart. The highest ideas of love, which are generally represented as the exclusive result of modern civilisation, are plainly expressed in the affecting narration of these two verses; they are not obscurely or vaguely hinted at; the Hebrew writer unfolds them with an emphasis which shows his earnestness, his decision. Greek and Roman philosophers have invented many a myth, to explain the origin of conjugal life. But woman occupies in those tales generally either an invidious or a despicable position (see p. 65). There is one, however, which assigns to her a less inferior rank, but which is, on the other hand, so grotesque and extravagant, that it embodies no useful lesson, and is, practically, of very subordinate value. Aristophanes says, in the Banquet of Plato, that there existed originally a class of human beings, the offspring of the moon, who were at the same time male and female. These 66 men-women " had four hands and legs, and two faces upon a circular neck. But

they were terrible in strength, and made an attempt against the gods. To weaken and to punish them, Jupiter divided them into two human beings, walking upon two legs, with the menace, that if they would still behave licentiously, he would again divide them," so that they should go upon one leg, hopping," and "with their noses split down." Since this time, each half seeks with desire the other part of itself, and both long to grow again together; and if they see each other, they are struck with a wondrous kind of friendship, and are unwilling ever to be separated. And the cause is not sensual pleasure; "but the soul of each is evidently desirous of something else, which it is unable to tell." -We have omitted many frivolous features interspersed in this theory of Aristophanes; and its only point of contact with the Biblical narrative is the longing "to become one flesh."

25. One bold stroke is sufficient for a master-hand to stamp a character upon a picture. The state of childlike, unconscious innocence was to be described. It is a wide and great subject. The artistic genius of our author fully fixes it by the one remark," that man and his wife were naked, and were not ashamed." They were still true children of nature. Sin was unknown to them; therefore they required no precaution to keep it afar. Passion did not attack their hearts; they needed, therefore, no arms to oppose and to crush it. Good and evil were notions not yet clearly defined; the strife of conflicting emotions and thoughts had not yet commenced; they inhabited the Paradise,"clothed in their innocence alone." Instinct followed its own concordant laws; and shame, the daughter of nicely-discriminating conscience, slumbered in the vacant mind. Diodorus Sicilus and Plato also mention nakedness as a feature of

admit the antagonism between God and nature, must almost unavoidably regard the same animals now as objects of horror, and now of veneration. From all these aberrations, Mosaism was preserved by its fundamental principle of the one and indivisible God, in whose hands is nature with all its hosts, and to whose wise and good purposes all creatures are subservient.

Now in the heathen religions, the demon, represented by the serpent, was universally considered to possess power independent of, and inimical to, the might of the highest god; temples were erected, and sacrifices offered, in his honour. But, in the Biblical narrative, the serpent is no embodiment of an evil genius; it is no more than a noxious reptile which is the curse of man, and upon which the execration of God seems to rest. To explain the deadly enmity between man and serpent, and to account for the wretched existence of the venomous reptile, this is an accessory end of this episode. The burning colours of the serpent; the cloven, vibrating tongue; the poison-swollen teeth; the horrid hissing; the stealthy and tortuous, but dart-like motions; the irascible temper; the contemptible craft; and frequently the bewitching power of the everwatchful eyes, make this animal an object of horror and disgust. It was deemed necessary to show that God did not originally produce such a monstrous creature; He could not have pronounced a world perfect which was infested by such a hideous object; nor could He have appointed man the ruler of the earth, if it bred, in secret ambushes, beasts, which it was difficult for him to avoid, and almost impossible to subdue. But that tendency is clearly subordinate to the far more momentous

change in the nature of man; the serpent seems, in fact, only introduced to correct the then too prevalent superstition of "an evil spirit"; the narrative teaches that the serpent, whatever might be its pretensions, stands in the power of God, and resistlessly obeys His will; it avails itself of the very prejudice in order to eradicate it. The serpent speaks, because Ahriman, appearing under its form, has the power of language; but yet this serpent is not Ahriman; it is the voice of seduction in the heart of man; it has the malignant propensity of Ahriman, but not his power; the human heart combats against its own happiness, but opposes God only in so far as it destroys the felicity for which He designed man; it acts against God by forgetfulness or by self-illusion, but it does not defy Him; it does not aspire to dispute with Him the supreme government; it considers evil deeds not as triumphs, but as a degradation full of shame and disgrace.

The serpent has thus, indeed, a double purport in our context: it appears first as the tempter, because he was generally supposed to assume that shape; but it is, in reality, only a miserable animal which God has cursed with the hatred of man. In the first characteristic, our narrative leans to the general Oriental tradition; in the second, it is the original conception of the Hebrew writer; and the point where both diverge is the absolute sovereignty with which God pronounces the malediction on the serpent (ver. 14). This animal may entertain an external enmity towards man (ver. 15); but it has no power over his heart, because it is nothing but the most abject of all the animals of the desert. It might venture upon war with the