CHAPTER II.

WHEN SIN ENTERED THE WORLD.

Genesis 2 and 3.

Let us open our Bibles at the second chapter of Genesis, and the fourth verse. Our theme is "When Sin Entered the World," and in the working out of it there will be four or five stages of development. We begin with

verses 4 to 7:

I.

THE CREATION OF MAN,

"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. * * * And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

The phrase "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth" refers to that which follows it rather than that which goes before. And the most important thing which follows is the record of the creation of man, where it is written that the Lord God formed him of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, so that he became a living soul.

We thus perceive, as was intimated a week ago, that man is as to his nature a kind of trinity; he has a body, a soul, and a spirit, and the soul seems to be the meeting-place of the body and the spirit.

The New Testament emphasizes the same truth, where Paul, in his prayer for the young Christians at Thessalonica, expresses the desire that their spirit, and soul and body may be preserved entire and without blame at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thessalonians 5:23). The early church expected His near return just as we should be expecting it, and it was Paul's wish that they might be on the earth when He came, entire as to their body, soul, and spirit, and thus be caught up to meet Him in the air.

To the same purport, the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of the Word of God as quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit. (4:12).

THE SOUL AND THE BODY.

There is, therefore, a distinction between the soul and the spirit of man, just as there is between his soul and body. What the distinction is, it is difficult to say, but psychologists speak of the body as the seat of our sense-consciousness, the soul as the seat of our self-consciousness, and the spirit as the seat of our God-consciousness. With our body in other words, we know things that are round about us, with our soul we know ourselves and with our spirit we know God. It is significant in this connection that God speaks of the regenerated man as one in whom He will

"create a clean heart" and "renew a right spirit," a spirit that can know Him, and hence hold fellowship with Him, as we have seen, in love, and service, and perfection.

Have you been born again, and do you thus know God? This is the first of questions. God help you to settle it now, and to settle it right.

Let us now pass to

verses 8 to 15:

II.

THE LOCATION OF MAN,

"And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it."

There are those who hold that the garden of Eden is simply a fancy and not a fact, and that the incident here recorded is not historical, but a myth or allegory.

It seems to me, in reply, that the Holy Spirit would hardly take the pains He evidently does to describe this locality, if that were true. Nor would He so trifle with the intelligence and credulity of His creatures. To my mind, no further answer is required to prove the historicity of Eden.

Just notice the particularity referred to. He speaks first of Eden, then of a location eastward in Eden, and then of a garden in that location, as though one alluded to the United States, then to the state of Illinois, and finally to the city of Chicago.

Notice the topographical data. Particular attention is directed to a river that went out of Eden to water the garden. And it must have been a great river, since it subsequently became divided into four, indicating the location to have been in the uplands in order to give rise to it.

WHERE WAS EDEN?

Even the names of the rivers flowing from the original are given. The last two are identified by everyone, and it is thought by many that the first two are the Kur and the Araxes, which flow into the Caspian Sea; and if this be so, then they compassed the land we know now as Armenia.

In further corroboration of this, I may say that modern science substantiates it in at least two ways:

first, by affirming that the human race came from a common center; and second, that that center must have been in the tableland of central Asia.

I should like to repeat here what I said in the previous lecture, that while the Bible does not profess to teach science, or to give a history of the world, or even of the human race, yet modern research has not been able in any way to contradict any scientific or historical fact which the Bible has recorded.

THE MEANING OF THE TREES.

When God refers to "the tree of life," some suppose it means that the tree possessed the gift of physical immortality; that its "leaves were for the healing of the nations," to heal wounds, to counteract sickness, to repair daily waste and keep the springs of activity and enjoyment preserved in abounding fulness.

If this be so, then observe again God's kindness in excluding man, after the fall, from the garden. There was judgment in that act, but mercy too; for since man had come to possess the knowledge of evil, without the power of resisting it, had he still been at liberty to lay hold of and eat of the tree of life, might it not have meant a physical perpetuation in this condition of moral deformity forever?

When God speaks of "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," it is supposed to be meant that by disobedience in the eating of it, man came to have a value of goodness and a sense of evilness which otherwise he had not, and could not have obtained. The