which I have before alluded to, a bad sense is given to the fig-tree. However this may be, they clothed themselves with fig-tree leaves; and they thought that while they concealed himself and herself from herself and himself, they therefore concealed themselves from God, and satisfied the sense of loss they felt. But is this not a picture of all of us? We fancy that when we conceal ourselves from ourselves, we have concealed ourselves from God. There is not a bush, nor a tree, nor a hole, nor a hill, nor a valley, into which man will not run to conceal himself from God. And when at last he finds that the darkness hideth not from him, that the night becomes light to him, then he cries, not as the conclusion of his intellect, but as the aspiration of his heart, "No God!" Adam, by clothing himself and flying from God, tried to conceal himself from God, or at least to clothe himself with that which would put him right in his relationship to God. Perhaps it was his attempt to justify himself, to make a righteousness of his own, to repair to himself all the damage he had done, and present himself to God again in clothing in which God would receive him. All this is enacted still, man will have recourse to a thousand expedients in order to get a right to heaven, if he can only avoid that divine and simple expedient, coming with nothing, but just naked as he is, to receive from Christ a righteousness to which he has no title, but which is of grace, that God may have the glory, while we have all the benefit. When they were thus clothed, they heard the voice of God in the garden. Thus arrayed in apparel of their own selection, the best that they could find, and the best that they could think of, one would have thought they could have stayed to hear the voice of God in the garden. But, it is said, when they heard that voice, they fled, and they sought to hide themselves; they were afraid. Why was this? That voice came to them in music in their early and

better days; that footfall was the sweetest sound in all the sounds and harmonies of Eden; that bright Light—that Jesus manifest to them in some of those forms in which he ⚫ was manifest before his incarnation was to them the noblest image they could look on; his dear words, the most delightful they could hear. How had this harmony become discord? How had this footfall become the sign of approaching peril? God was not changed; his purposes had not been broken, his promises had not failed. It was not on Sinai and amid thunder, that he spoke; it was not in the blazing lightning or in the flashing fire that he came. Why then so appalled? Why afraid? It is sin within makes cowards of us all; and wherever there is a sense of guiltiness in man's heart, there there is the wish, either that there were no God, or that by some resource of his own he might escape from the cognizance and inspection of God.

But God did not allow Adam to escape from him, though Adam wished and tried to do so. We run from God, but he follows us; his right hand sustains us, and he saves us often from our greatest enemy, that is, ourselves. "Adam,” God called out, "where art thou?" What a startling question was that, "Where art thou!" How is the gold become dim! how is the fine gold changed! What a sad alteration! what a terrible catastrophe! "Poor Adam, what have you made yourself? Where art thou? What hast thou done?" And then Adam repeats the paltry and equivocal excuse, only in other words, which he had used before; and finally his day in Eden was closed, after, however, the proclamation of the gospel, by his being driven out of Paradise. But why driven out of it? Because he had lost his only title to it, and the only fitness that could qualify him for its enjoyment. Perfect righteousness was his title to Paradise; this title he had lost. Fitness of character was Adam's qualification for Paradise; that fitness of character he lost

as soon as sin cast its shadow into his heart. In judgment, as in mercy, he was driven out of Paradise. The air of Eden he could breathe no more; he was now a patient fit for an hospital, where he could be cured, not for Eden, where the healthy, the holy, and the happy only were. He was a sinner, fit only for a state where sin had done its work; not a saint, whose joy would grow by continuing in the immediate presence of God. "The lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life," had now entered the sanctuary of his heart. All was wrong within; he was only fit, therefore, for a world that was all wrong without. And so he left Paradise, looking behind upon the glory he had forfeited, and looking forward upon the barren earth which he was now doomed to till in the sweat of his brow. What a change must he have felt! Clouds, where all was sunshine a vitiated air, where all erst was balm thistles breaking forth in every acre, where he had only to look before, and responsive to his look the very earth burst into roses, and every thing rejoiced; and instead of the groups of animals that used to cluster around him, and own him as their lord, he now went out into a menagerie of wild beasts, which rose against man with one consent, because man had risen against God. All was materially changed without, because all was morally changed within.

We have in this history the most rational account of the introduction of sin into our world. We have, in the next place, the most rational record of the consequences that followed from that sin. Shame painted itself upon the cheek, where sin had raised its throne within the heart: they were ashamed to approach God. Fear instantly took possession of the heart, where transgression had previously erected its throne. From being a freeman, because the son of God, Adam felt himself now the bondslave of Satan, a law in his members warring against the law of his spirit,

and bringing him captive to sin and death. In one word, he became dead morally, dead spiritually. Mortality seized upon every fibre of his frame, and from that moment his life, protracted as it was for many hundred years, was a ceaseless descent from perfect health to the closing stroke of death, when to the dust he returned, out of which he was originally taken.

But we read in the next place, that God did not leave man to the effects of his transgression; for he said to the serpent, "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." Although Christ should bruise Satan's head, his heel should be bruised by the serpent's stratagems and wiles. So far he proclaimed the subtlety of the serpent; and, while he pronounced punishment upon the serpent as a reptile, he still more proclaimed punishment to Satan, who made use of the dumb animal in order to execute so great and grievous, and too successful, an assault upon mankind.

We cannot read the New Testament without tracing allusions to the serpent. "That serpent," "The dragon," "The serpent," "The old serpent." (Rev. xii. 9.) And the Apostle Paul speaks of the serpent beguiling them, evidently alluding to Satan as the tempter of mankind.

The woman's seed here spoken of, is, no doubt, the Saviour; and the prediction is, that from the very race that had become the subjects of Satan's victory should proceed One who should bruise Satan's head, reverse the havoc of the fall, restore all things, and replace man in his forfeited relationship to God. We have in these words the first evangelical sermon that was ever preached. We have here the glorious gospel sounding amid the wrecks of Paradise; a bright rainbow arching the earth, and indicating a pathway back to God; a voice sounding from between the

cherubim, and speaking of a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, who should destroy the works of the devil, bruise Satan under his feet, and proclaim to the whole universe mercy and truth that have met together, and righteousness and peace that have kissed each other, over his sacrifice, and in the forgiveness of them that have sinned against God.

The very first effect, then, of the proclamation of the gospel to Adam, was his own restoration. He laid aside the fig-tree leaves that he had selected himself, and he was clothed in an entirely different apparel. It is said, God clothed him with the skins of animals. The instant that he heard the gospel we find him laying aside the clothing of his own selection, and immediately being clothed with the skins of animals. Now no animals had probably died, on account of the shortness of the time that had elapsed since the fall; animals were not then slain for food; and the presumption therefore is, that these animals were slain for sacrifices; and especially does this become probable, when we find that the first sacrifice that Abel made was a slain lamb, which sacrifice God accepted, whilst he did not accept the bouquet of flowers which Cain offered on his altar. The presumption is, therefore, that these animals were slain for sacrifices. In their blood Adam saw the type of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, and in their skins substituted for his own preferred fig-tree leaves, he saw the type of that righteousness which was substituted for his own righteousness, and in which he could be arrayed as in raiment white and clean, which is the righteousness of saints. In the blood of the slain animals he saw the foreshadow of Christ's sacrifice by which God forgave his sins; in their skins, wherewith he was clothed, he saw Christ's righteousness imputed to him, in which alone he was justified. In Christ's work there