the acute torments of parturition? Nature must have implanted in her a desire stronger than the vehemence of pain. It is this strange arrangement of nature which occupied the reflection of many ancient writers; and our text represents it as the consequence of disobedience, and as a punishment. Sensuality is the beginning of sin, and the increased violence of the passion is its chastisement. -Although, in general, childbirth is, in the East, and especially for women who work much in the open air, considerably easier than in more northern climes, it is frequently most painful, and not seldom fatal, so that a heart-rending cry of despair and anguish is, in Biblical language, compared with the cry of a woman in travail. The third punishment of woman is her subjection under the will of her husband, who shall be "her master," and who shall "rule over her." She had before been his equal, she was a part of him; but she became the cause of his fall; she was, therefore,doomed to obey him, since she had disobeyed God. That this dependence of the woman was, among the Hebrews, never of a degrading or rigorous character, we have attempted more fully to prove in another place (see note on Exod. pp. 279-281). But exactly the same notions are theoretically enjoined in the New Testament. The wives are emphatically commanded "to submit them. selves under their husbands, as to the Lord; for the husband is the head of the wife" (Ephes. v. 22, 23); the woman was created for the man (1 Corinth. xi. 9); she is commanded to be under obedience (1 Corinth. xiv. 34). The New Testament is, perhaps, even more rigorous than the Old; for whilst it commands the woman "to learn in silence with all subjection, but not to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in

silence" (1 Timoth. ii. 11, 12), she was, in the Old Testament, admitted to the highest office of teaching, that of prophets, as Miriam, Deborah, and Huldah. Our text is, therefore, far from making man the tyrant of his wife, but designs him as her protector and superior adviser.

17-19. Man was from the beginning intended to work; he was placed in Paradise to keep and to cultivate it: but the toil and exhaustion of labour were the baneful consequences of man's sin; he was doomed to eat its produce with pain; ordinary attention was now no more sufficient. The great physical difficulties diminished his spiritual dignity. His time and his strength were henceforth, in a great measure, absorbed by the material cares of a toilsome life. His mind was curbed under the weight of bodily fatigue. The serene calmness of his soul was clouded by slavish hardship. He had attained the Divine faculty, but the drudgery of his life prevented him either from enjoying or from developing it. This is the curse of labour. And it seems to be repeated with emphasis: "thou art dust," not a god as thou hadst vainly hoped to become (ver. 19); the body is dissolved, though the imperishable spirit soars up to Him who has given it. Thus, our narrative explains or accounts for the difficulties of agriculture, which make life a perpetual struggle with repugnant elements: "In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread," not" thy bread"; for, hitherto, man had, without care and without trouble, lived on the beautiful fruits of Eden. Frequently, all the laborious exertions of the husbandman are lost; his anxiety is repaid with disappointment; he hopes. that "his vineyard will bring forth grapes, and it produces wild grapes," and often even "briers and thorns" (Isai. v. 2, 6); his field bears "thistles instead of

wheat, and cockle instead of barley" (Job xxxii. 40);-in a word, the curse of God rests on the earth (comp. Sirach, vii. 16). Instead of eating the more nutritious produce of the corn-crops, he will often be compelled to be satisfied with "the herb of the field"; this alone will remain to him from the former blessing, as obtainable with less toil and exertion (i. 29); nor will he, expelled from the garden, find so many fruit-trees furnishing a delicious and abundant food. It was only by the proclamation of the fourth commandment that the panting exertion was partially relieved; it limited labour to six days of the week; the seventh day was restored to perfect rest; it recalls the pure happiness of Paradise; it does not share the curse of the working days; it is devoted to the mind and its elevation. The Decalogue is an emanation of love as well as of wisdom; it is a harbinger both of truth and of peace.The life of the man is one of "pain," like that of woman (ver. 16); their punishment is equal in intensity; but it is very widely different, in character, from that of the serpent. And this leads us to the principal idea of our section, which has now been developed in almost its whole extent. The serpent was degraded, the human pair was ennobled by the glory of intelligence; the former was pressed down nearer to the earth, it was condemned to go upon the belly; the latter rose heavenwards on the youthful wings of the mind; the one eats dust, the other became capable of imbibing the dew of eternal truth. Thus, man has made a gigantic step beyond the limited sphere of his primitive existence. But, although he has not actually lost his innocence, he has ventured upon a path where it is difficult and almost impossible not to risk it. He has gained the liberty of choice, but that choice may be fatal; he has become the

master of his destiny, but he may thereby become the author of his destruction. This is the danger and the curse. But even heathen authors had at least a dim notion of the dignity of labour; they understood, that work exercises the mind, and leads to inventions; that it engages the thoughts, and shields them against idle reveries; that it invigorates the heart, and keeps it aloof from corruption and effeminacy. Thus is just the punishment of sin, a weapon against it; labour was the consequence of past transgression, but it was destined to avert it for the future: wisdom had been acquired; and purity might be preserved by submitting to the price for which it was obtained. The wound had become necessary by man's disobedience; but it is a wound which restores better health. These are, with a beautiful expression of Gregory the Great, "the bitter arrows from the gentle hand of God."— But our passage teaches us further, that man, though destined to rule over nature, must yet humble himself before God; that he at once commands and obeys; and that in the feeling of the governor he must not forget the submissiveness of the child. This is another side of his twofold character.

20. The very curse which God had pronounced against the woman reminded Adam that she was dear to him in more than one respect. She was not only his companion, the partner of his life, but she was destined to become the mother of his children, in whom he would feel his own existence renewed, who would bear his likeness, and be the links which were to connect him with the remotest posterity. She was to him, at first, only "a woman" or part of man; now he was induced to change this general appellative designation for the significant and more specific name, "the mother of all living." Thus,

a double bond of affection tied him to his wife; she was the solace of the present, and the pledge of the future. The fall had not weakened but strengthened their conjugal love. The wife was, indeed, the only treasure which Adam took with him from Paradise into the desert of life, to remind him of a more than earthly happiness. Although she had just been the cause of death, he called her the "lifegiving;" for through her the generations of man are eternal, although the individuals pass away. He had given her a name; and thus claimed and manifested his superiority over her.

21. Since garments had now become necessary by the aroused feeling of shame, God Himself prepared them, and clothed the first parents. Although He was forced to punish them, His love had not ceased. His paternal care accompanied them to the tumultuous arena of worldly strife. Scarcely any primitive nation has failed to use the skins of animals for the earliest clothing, and none was long deficient in the art of preparing them skilfully for convenience and neatness; the Phoenicians ascribed this invention to Usous, and the Samojedes, Esquimaux, and North American Indians are at present famous for their skill in preparing furs.— If any proof were necessary, that animals were believed to have, in Paradise also, been subject to death, those "skins" would be sufficient. Many and laborious have been the arguments to show that death came into the world only after the fall; this doctrine has been considered one of the strongest pillars of religion, and the necessary basis of every true science. If such an opinion were enforced by the Bible, a new breach between faith and science would be caused, as great and insuperable as any other hitherto discussed. For, the

innumerable petrifactions in the interior of the earth preach with a thousand tongues that organic life was, by myriads of myriads, destroyed during immeasurable ages before the existence of man; and we know that the eating even of vegetable food is inseparable from a vast destruction of small living beings. But this difficulty does not exist. The Bible nowhere asserts, that the sin of Adam brought death upon the animals, but only upon the human race. The strictest comparison of all analogous passages renders this indisputable. The animals were, according to the Bible also, never exempt from death. It nowhere teaches clearly that the organiza. tion of the animals, like that of man, has been altered and depraved by the fall; though we must admit that it sometimes acknowledges a parallel or corresponding change in men and beasts (see vi. 12, 13); but we need certainly not to have recourse to the monstrous conjectures that the petrified animals in the earth never enjoyed real life; that their existence was only an appearance or a dream; and that they passed through a merely somnolent state! So far may piety stray from common sense, if it defies science; if it allows no scope to the intellect; if it thinks to feed one human faculty on the destruction of all the rest (see note on ix. 1—4).

22-24. By a guilty act had man attained the godlike knowledge of good and evil; he had thereby forfeited the privilege of eternal life originally designed for him. But Paradise, the abode of perfect bliss, could not resound with the agony of death. It was, therefore, necessary, that man should be expelled from thence for ever. If he remained in Eden, he might eat of the fruit of life, and thus remove the mortal condition which was now his fate. As he was created immortal, the partici

pation of the tree of life before the fall had no material influence; it gave only that with which he was already furnished. But when his sin had brought mortality upon him, it was important, that he should be exiled from the vicinity of that tree; for its fruit would have been effective in imparting to him that which he no longer possessed. Man had purchased knowledge at the expense of his eternity; both are united in God alone. But his expulsion was ne cessary for another reason also. The earth was cursed on account of man; thorns and thistles were to spring up in the places of his labour; the sphere of his activity must, therefore, be without the Paradise; this glorious abode could not be converted into fields disgraced by weeds and noxious herbs. Paradise, the easy existence of peace and delight, was for ever beyond the scope and grasp of man. By sin, man had been deprived of many of his former privileges; he had, above all, forfeited life; and even if he had already tasted of the tree of life, he would not have thereby conquered death; but, in order to make this impossible for the future, he was withdrawn from the sphere where it bloomed, and matured its tempting fruits (see on ii. 16, 17).-Man was not born without intelligence; even in his infancy he was infinitely superior to the rest of creation; he had the power of examining the individual character of all animals, and of fixing their names; he was even then the image of God; he was not without "knowledge," but he had not the "knowledge of good and evil"; he possessed the instinct of reason, but not the habit and energy of discernment; the germ had not yet emerged; the blade was yet unsheathed.

So entirely did God exclude the first

couple from the garden of Eden, that He placed the cherubim in the east of it to guard its entrance; a flaming sword shines in their hands. The tree of life is the object of their care. Wonderful as the treasure, are the beings that watch over it. They are symbols of the presence of God. They were, in the Tabernacle, represented on the mercy-seat, and God throned between them. Here the blood of atonement was sprinkled, and here God communed with the priests, the instruments of His revelation. They witnessed the expiation of sin, and looked down upon the ark, which contained the tablets of the covenant between God and mankind. Mysterious, as in the Holy of Holies, is their presence before the garden of Eden. They guard, in both cases, an inestimable boon; they are types of the providence and proximity of God; and they are necessary, on account of the sin of man. But the Cherubim of the Paradise are the effects of the alienation of men from God; those on the mercyseat symbolise their conciliation; the former guard a treasure which is for ever denied to man, the latter one which was proclaimed to all nations as their common inheritance; the former are, therefore, armed with a fearful weapon, resembling the terrific flashes of lightning, the others look lovingly down upon the ark, overshadowing it with their protecting wings; the one typify a covenant destroyed, the others a covenant concluded; and instead of the tree of life, of which the one deprives the human families, the others point to a treasure which is also "a tree of life to those who cling to it"; and instead of the life on earth, which was lost, a spiritual life, beautifying the heart and gladdening the soul, is promised and granted.