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Genesis Chapter
Two
Genesis 2
Chapter Contents
The first sabbath. (1-3) Particulars about the creation.
(4-7) The planting of the garden of Eden. (8-14) Man is placed in it. (15)
God's command. (16,17) The animals named, The making of woman, The Divine
institution of marriage. (18-25)
Commentary on Genesis 2:1-3
After six days, God ceased from all works of creation. In
miracles, he has overruled nature, but never changed its settled course, or
added to it. God did not rest as one weary, but as one well pleased. Notice the
beginning of the kingdom of grace, in the sanctification, or keeping holy, of
the sabbath day. The solemn observing of one day in seven as a day of holy rest
and holy work, to God's honour, is the duty of all to whom God has made known
his holy sabbaths. At this time none of the human race were in being but our
first parents. For them the sabbath was appointed; and clearly for all succeeding
generations also. The Christian sabbath, which we observe, is a seventh day,
and in it we celebrate the rest of God the Son, and the finishing the work of
our redemption.
Commentary on Genesis 2:4-7
Here is a name given to the Creator, "Jehovah."
Where the word "LORD" is printed in capital letters in our English
Bibles, in the original it is "Jehovah." Jehovah is that name of God,
which denotes that he alone has his being of himself, and that he gives being
to all creatures and things. Further notice is taken of plants and herbs,
because they were made and appointed to be food for man. The earth did not
bring forth its fruits of itself: this was done by Almighty power. Thus grace
in the soul grows not of itself in nature's soil, but is the work of God. Rain
also is the gift of God; it came not till the Lord God caused it. Though God
works by means, yet when he pleases he can do his own work without them; and
though we must not tempt God in the neglect of means, we must trust God, both
in the use and in the want of means. Some way or other, God will water the
plants of his own planting. Divine grace comes down like the dew, and waters
the church without noise. Man was made of the small dust, such as is on the
surface of the earth. The soul was not made of the earth, as the body: pity
then that it should cleave to the earth, and mind earthly things. To God we
must shortly give an account, how we have employed these souls; and if it be
found that we have lost them, though it were to gain the world, we are undone
for ever! Fools despise their own souls, by caring for their bodies before
their souls.
Commentary on Genesis 2:8-14
The place fixed upon for Adam to dwell in, was not a
palace, but a garden. The better we take up with plain things, and the less we
seek things to gratify pride and luxury, the nearer we approach to innocency.
Nature is content with a little, and that which is most natural; grace with
less; but lust craves every thing, and is content with nothing. No delights can
be satisfying to the soul, but those which God himself has provided and
appointed for it. Eden signifies delight and pleasure. Wherever it was, it had
all desirable conveniences, without any inconvenience, though no other house or
garden on earth ever was so. It was adorned with every tree pleasant to the
sight, and enriched with every tree that yielded fruit grateful to the taste
and good for food. God, as a tender Father, desired not only Adam's profit, but
his pleasure; for there is pleasure with innocency, nay there is true pleasure
only in innocency. When Providence puts us in a place of plenty and pleasure,
we ought to serve God with gladness of heart in the good things he gives us.
Eden had two trees peculiar to itself. 1. There was the tree of life in the
midst of the garden. Of this man might eat and live. Christ is now to us the
Tree of life, Revelation 2:7; 22:2; and the Bread of life, John 6:48,51. 2. There was the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, so called because there was a positive revelation
of the will of God about this tree, so that by it man might know moral good and
evil. What is good? It is good not to eat of this tree. What is evil? It is
evil to eat of this tree. In these two trees God set before Adam good and evil,
the blessing and the curse.
Commentary on Genesis 2:15
After God had formed Adam, he put him in the garden. All
boasting was thereby shut out. Only he that made us can make us happy; he that
is the Former of our bodies, and the Father of our spirits, and none but he,
can fully provide for the happiness of both. Even in paradise itself man had to
work. None of us were sent into the world to be idle. He that made our souls
and bodies, has given us something to work with; and he that gave us this earth
for our habitation, has made us something to work upon. The sons and heirs of
heaven, while in this world, have something to do about this earth, which must
have its share of their time and thoughts; and if they do it with an eye to
God, they as truly serve him in it, as when they are upon their knees. Observe
that the husbandman's calling is an ancient and honourable calling; it was
needful even in paradise. Also, there is true pleasure in the business God
calls us to, and employs us in. Adam could not have been happy if he had been
idle: it is still God's law, He that will not work has no right to eat, 2 Thessalonians 3:10.
Commentary on Genesis 2:16,17
Let us never set up our own will against the holy will of
God. There was not only liberty allowed to man, in taking the fruits of
paradise, but everlasting life made sure to him upon his obedience. There was a
trial appointed of his obedience. By transgression he would forfeit his Maker's
favour, and deserve his displeasure, with all its awful effects; so that he
would become liable to pain, disease, and death. Worse than that, he would lose
the holy image of God, and all the comfort of his favour; and feel the torment
of sinful passions, and the terror of his Maker's vengeance, which must endure
for ever with his never dying soul. The forbidding to eat of the fruit of a particular
tree was wisely suited to the state of our first parents. In their state of
innocence, and separated from any others, what opportunity or what temptation
had they to break any of the ten commandments? The event proves that the whole
human race were concerned in the trial and fall of our first parents. To argue
against these things is to strive against stubborn facts, as well as Divine
revelation; for man is sinful, and shows by his first actions, and his conduct
ever afterwards, that he is ready to do evil. He is under the Divine
displeasure, exposed to sufferings and death. The Scriptures always speak of
man as of this sinful character, and in this miserable state; and these things
are true of men in all ages, and of all nations.
Commentary on Genesis 2:18-25
Power over the creatures was given to man, and as a proof
of this he named them all. It also shows his insight into the works of God. But
though he was lord of the creatures, yet nothing in this world was a help meet
for man. From God are all our helpers. If we rest in God, he will work all for
good. God caused deep sleep to fall on Adam; while he knows no sin, God will
take care that he shall feel no pain. God, as her Father, brought the woman to
the man, as his second self, and a help meet for him. That wife, who is of
God's making by special grace, and of God's bringing by special providence, is
likely to prove a help meet for a man. See what need there is, both of prudence
and prayer in the choice of this relation, which is so near and so lasting.
That had need to be well done, which is to be done for life. Our first parents
needed no clothes for covering against cold or heat, for neither could hurt
them: they needed none for ornament. Thus easy, thus happy, was man in his
state of innocency. How good was God to him! How many favours did he load him
with! How easy were the laws given to him! Yet man, being in honour, understood
not his own interest, but soon became as the beasts that perish.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Genesis》
Genesis 2
Verses 1-3
[1] Thus
the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. [2] And
on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the
seventh day from all his work which he had made. [3] And
God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had
rested from all his work which God created and made.
We have here, (1.) The settlement of the
kingdom of nature, in God's resting from the work of creation, Genesis 2:1,2. Where observe, 1. That the
creatures made both in heaven and earth, are the hosts or armies of them, which
speaks them numerous, but marshalled, disciplined, and under command. God useth
them as his hosts for the defence of his people, and the destruction of his
enemies. 2. That the heavens and the earth are finished pieces, and so are all
the creatures in them. So perfect is God's work that nothing can be added to it
or taken from it, Ecclesiastes 3:14. 3. That after the end of the
first six days, God ceased from all work of creation. He hath so ended his
work, as that though in his providence he worketh hitherto, John 5:17. preserving and governing all the
creatures, yet he doth not make any new species of creatures. 4. That the
eternal God, tho' infinitely happy in himself, yet took a satisfaction in the
work of his own hands. He did not rest as one weary, but as one well-pleased
with the instances of his own goodness. (2.) The commencement of the kingdom of
grace, in the sanctification of the sabbath day, Genesis 2:3. He rested on that day, and took a
complacency in his creatures, and then sanctified it, and appointed us on that
day to rest and take a complacency in the Creator; and his rest is in the
fourth commandment made a reason for ours after six days labour. Observe, 1.
That the solemn observation of one day in seven as a day of holy rest, and holy
work, is the indispensible duty of all those to whom God has revealed his holy
sabbaths. 2. That sabbaths are as ancient as the world. 3. That the sabbath of
the Lord is truly honourable, and we have reason to honour it; honour it for
the sake of its antiquity, its great author, and the sanctification of the
first sabbath by the holy God himself, and in obedience to him, by our first
parents in innocency.
Verses 4-7
[4] 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, [5] And
every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the
field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the
earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. [6] But
there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. [7] 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.
In these verses, 1. Here is a name given to
the Creator, which we have not yet met with, Jehovah. The LORD in capital
letters, is constantly used in our English translation, for Jehovah. This is
that great and incommunicable name of God, which speaks his having his being of
himself, and his giving being to all things. It properly means, He that was,
and that is, and that is to come. 2. Further notice taken of the production of plants
and herbs, because they were made to be food for man. 3. A more particular
account of the creation of man, Genesis 2:7. Man is a little world, consisting
of heaven and earth, soul and body. Here we have all account of the original of
both, and the putting of both together: The Lord God, the great fountain of
being and power, formed man. Of the other creatures it is said, they were
created and made; but of man, that he was formed, which notes a gradual process
in the work with great accuracy and exactness. To express the creation of this
new thing, he takes a new word: a word (some think) borrowed from the potter's
forming his vessel upon the wheel. The body of man is curiously wrought. And
the soul takes its rise from the breath of heaven. It came immediately from
God; he gave it to be put into the body, Ecclesiastes 12:7 as afterwards he gave the
tables of stone of his own writing to be put into the ark. 'Tis by it that man
is a living soul, that is, a living man. The body would be a worthless, useless
carcase, if the soul did not animate it.
Verses 8-15
[8] And
the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom
he had formed. [9] 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. [10] And
a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted,
and became into four heads. [11] The name of the first is Pison: that is it
which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; [12] And
the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. [13] And
the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole
land of Ethiopia. [14] 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. [15] And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to
dress it and to keep it.
Man consisting of body and soul, a body made
out of the earth, and a rational immortal soul, we have in these verses the
provision that was made for the happiness of both. That part of man, which is
allied to the world of sense, was made happy, for he was put in the paradise of
God; that part which is allied to the world of spirits was well provided for,
for he was taken into covenant with God. Here we have, 1. A description of the
garden of Eden, which was intended for the palace of this prince. The inspired
penman in this history writing for the Jews first, and calculating his
narratives from the infant state of the church, describes things by their
outward sensible appearances, and leaves us, by farther discoveries of the
divine light, to be led into the understanding of the mysteries couched under
them. Therefore he doth not so much insist upon the happiness of Adam's mind,
as upon that of his outward estate. The Mosaic history, as well as the Mosaic
law, has rather the patterns of heavenly things, than the heavenly things
themselves, Hebrews 9:23. Observe, (1.) The place appointed
for Adam's residence was a garden; not an ivory house. As clothes came in with
sin, so did houses. The heaven was the roof of Adam's house, and never was any
roof so curiously cieled and painted: the earth was his floor, and never was
any floor so richly inlaid: the shadow of the trees was his retirement, and
never were any rooms so finely hung: Solomon's in all their glory were not
arrayed like them. (2.) The contrivance and furniture of this garden was the
immediate work of God's wisdom and power. The Lord God planted this garden,
that is, he had planted it, upon the third day when the fruits of the earth
were made. We may well suppose it to be the most accomplished place that ever
the sun saw, when the All - sufficient God himself designed it to be the
present happiness of his beloved creature. (3.) The situation of this garden
was extremely sweet; it was in Eden, which signifies delight and pleasure. The
place is here particularly pointed out by such marks and bounds as were sufficient
when Moses wrote, to specify the place to those who knew that country; but now
it seems the curious cannot satisfy themselves concerning it. Let it be our
care to make sure a place in the heavenly paradise, and then we need not
perplex ourselves with a search after the place of the earthly paradise. (4.)
The trees wherewith this garden was planted. [1.] It had all the best and
choicest trees in common with the rest of the ground. It was beautified with
every tree that was pleasant to the sight - It was enriched with every tree
that yielded fruit grateful to the taste, and useful to the body. But, [2.] It
had two extraordinary trees peculiar to itself, on earth there were not their
like. 1. There was the tree of life in the midst of the garden - Which was not
so much a natural means to preserve or prolong life; but was chiefly intended
to be a sign to Adam, assuring him of the continuance of life and happiness
upon condition of his perseverance in innocency and obedience. 2. There was the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil - So called, not because it had any
virtue to beget useful knowledge, but because there was an express revelation
of the will of God concerning this tree, so that by it he might know good and
evil. What is good? It is good not to eat of this tree: what is evil? To eat of
this tree. The distinction between all other moral good and evil was written in
the heart of man; but this, which resulted from a positive law, was written
upon this tree. And in the event it proved to give Adam an experimental
knowledge of good by the loss of it, and of evil by the sense of it. (5.) The
rivers wherewith this garden was watered, Genesis 2:10-14. These four rivers, (or one
river branched into four streams) contributed much both to the pleasantness and
the fruitfulness of this garden. Hiddekel and Euphrates are rivers of Babylon.
Havilah had gold and spices and precious stones; but Eden had that which was
infinitely better, the tree of life, and communion with God. 2. The command
which God gave to man in innocency, and the covenant he than took him into.
Hither we have seen God; man's powerful Creator, and his bountiful benefactor;
now he appears as his ruler and lawgiver.
Verses 16-17
[16] And
the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest
freely eat: [17] But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of
it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Thou shall die —
That is, thou shalt lose all the happiness thou hast either in possession or
prospect; and thou shalt become liable to death, and all the miseries that
preface and attend it. This was threatened as the immediate consequence of sin.
In the day thou eatest, thou shalt die — Not only thou shalt become mortal, but spiritual death and the
forerunners of temporal death shall immediately seize thee.
Verses 18-20
[18] And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will
make him an help meet for him. [19] And out of the ground the LORD God formed
every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam
to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living
creature, that was the name thereof. [20] And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to
the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was
not found an help meet for him.
It is not good that man — This man, should be alone - Though there was an upper world of angels,
and a lower world of brutes, yet there being none of the same rank of beings
with himself, he might be truly said to be alone. And every beast of the field,
and every fowl of the air God brought to Adam-Either by the ministry of angels,
or by a special instinct that he might name them, and so might give a proof of
his knowledge, the names he gave them being expressive of their inmost natures.
Verses 21-22
[21] And
the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took
one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; [22] And
the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought
her unto the man.
This was done upon the sixth day, as was also
the placing of Adam in paradise, though it be here mentioned after an account
of the seventh day's rest: but what was said in general, Genesis 1:27, that God made man male and female
is more distinctly related here, God caused the sleep to fall on Adam, and made
it a deep sleep, that so the opening of his side might be no grievance to him:
while he knows no sin, God will take care he shall feel no pain.
Verse 23
[23] And
Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be
called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones — Probably it was revealed to Adam in a vision, when he was asleep, that
this lovely creature, now presented to him, was a piece of himself and was to
be his companion, and the wife of his covenant - In token of his acceptance of
her, he gave her a name, not peculiar to her, but common to her sex; she shall
be called woman, Isha, a She-man, differing from man in sex only, not in
nature; made of man, and joined to man.
Verse 24
[24]
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto
his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
The sabbath and marriage were two ordinances
instituted in innocency, the former for the preservation of the church, the
latter for the preservation of mankind. It appears by Matthew 19:4,5, that it was God himself who said
here, a man must leave all his relations to cleave to his wife; but whether he
spake it by Moses or by Adam who spake, Genesis 2:23 is uncertain: It should seem they
are the words of Adam in God's name, laying down this law to all his posterity.
The virtue of a divine ordinance, and the bonds of it, are stronger even than
those of nature. See how necessary it is that children should take their
parents consent with them in their marriage; and how unjust they are to their
parents, as well as undutiful, if they marry without it; for they rob them of
their right to them, and interest in them, and alienate it to another
fraudulently and unnaturally.
Verse 25
[25] And
they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
They were both naked, they needed no cloaths
for defence against cold or heat, for neither could be injurious to them: they
needed none for ornament. Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
these. Nay, they needed none for decency, they were naked, and had no reason to
be ashamed. They knew not what shame was, so the Chaldee reads it. Blushing is
now the colour of virtue, but it was not the colour of innocency.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on
Genesis》
02 Chapter 2
Verse 1
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of
them
The completed creation
I.
THE
CREATION WAS A GRADUAL PROCESS. The reasons might be--
II. THE CREATIVE
PROCESS AT LAST CAME TO A POINT IN MAN. (G. Gilfillan.)
Lessons from the Mosaic account of creation
1. That the universe as it
exists now is different from the universe as it existed once.
2. That the creation of the world was not the work of many gods, but
of One.
3. That it was a Person that effected this vast work, and not some
law of the universe gradually educing all things from a power that was inherent
in matter.
4. Respecting the character of the Creator, the Israelite was taught
that He had formed all things good.
5. The Israelite was taught also the divinity of order: that it is
the law of man’s existence; that the unregulated or unruly heart is like the
ship with an insubordinate crew which is wrecked on the ocean; that order is to
pervade the church, to rule the state, to regulate the family, to influence man’s
personal happiness, his affections, his desires.
6. The Israelite was taught also this: that it was gradation that
regulated God’s creation, to be traced not only in this that the more perfect
forms of life were created last, but also in the fact that more work was done
at the close than at the beginning of the creative period. And this is true of
every work which will stand the test of time. It must not be hastily done, but
thoughtfully planned and carried out with steady and increasing energy. God who
works for eternity lays His foundations deep, He does not extemporize. It
matters not whether it be in things great or small: quick, mere outside work is
done for time; meant for show, it falls speedily to nothing, there is in it
nothing belonging to eternity. If then a man would follow God, he must be
content to toil and toil to the last.
7. Once more, the principle of the providence of the Almighty
emerges from the history of the creation. We read of man’s creation and the
creation of the beasts. The vegetables He did not create till the earth was
dry; the animals not till the vegetables were prepared for their sustenance;
and man not till the kingdom was put in order which man should rule. Now this
is what we call providence in God, foresight or prudence in man. Thus we see
how a mere earthly virtue may in another sense be a spiritual excellence, and
it is the duty of man to rise into this higher view. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
The second account of creation
This is, observe, a second account, not a continuation of the
first. Yet let us not suppose for one moment that these are two separate
accounts thrown together with no object. They are manifestly linked together,
each is supplemental to the other. In the first, we have these spiritual
truths--the unity of God, His personality, His order: in the second, His
dealings with nature and with the mind of man. God gives man law, and annexes
to his obedience and disobedience reward and punishment. We make three remarks
on this second account.
1. The first is with reference to the reason given for man’s
creation, that there was a man wanted to till the ground. We should not have
said that of man. We should have held another view, and looked upon ourselves
as the rulers of this world for whom all things were created, were it not for
this verse which teaches us the truth. In the order of creation man is the
highest; but the object for which man is created is that he should, like all
the rest, minister to the advance of all things. That is our position here; we
are here to do the world’s work.
2. The next thing we have to observe is the unity of the human race.
All that we are told in the first account is that God, in the beginning,
created them male and female. All that we are told in the second is that He
placed Adam and Eve in paradise. Theologically, the unity of the human race is
of great importance. Between the highest and the lowest animals there is an
everlasting difference, but none between the highest and lowest men; and it is
only as this is realized that we can ever feel the existence of our common
humanity in Jesus Christ.
3. The next thing to observe is this, that we have here a hint
respecting immortality. It must have struck every attentive reader of the
Scriptures, that in the Old Testament there is so little allusion to futurity.
We are told, in a phrase that declares the dignity of man’s nature, that God
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And when the mind of the
Israelite began to brood on this he would remember that there was also a sad,
dark intimation, “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return,” apparently a
denial of immortality. But then there were aspirations in the soul that never
could be quenched; and this yearning aspiration would bring him back again to
ask: “Dust is not all; the breath of God, what has become of that?” (F. W.
Robertson, M. A.)
Creation
First, God says, I made all these earthly treasures which you see;
value them for My sake, and do not misuse them. A child on its birthday finds a
present on its plate at breakfast time. Who could have put it there? Presently,
the father says, “I put it there, my child: it is my gift to you.” Has not that
gift, however small it be, a value over and above its intrinsic worth as bought
in a shop? And still more, if the father says, “I did not buy it, I made it for
you myself.” Let us all so regard God’s gifts to us! Secondly, God says, I made
you: I made that wonderful body of yours out of the material elements, the
“dust of the ground,” and I breathed into it that “living soul” which makes the
body alive. So says Genesis 2:7. But look also at Genesis 1:26. There God seems to say, I
did more than this: I made you in My image, like Myself; are you like Me? No,
indeed, we are not; but then comes in the new creation in Christ Jesus. Christ
is “the image of the invisible God,” and He took our human nature. If we yield
ourselves to Him, He will make us “partakers of the Divine nature” 2 Peter 1:4), and hereafter “we
shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” (E. Stock.)
The theology of creation
I. THAT CREATION
IS AN EXPRESSION OF GOD’S MIND. It is the embodiment of an idea; the form of a
thought. Theology says that creation had a beginning, and that it began at the
bidding of God.
II. THAT CREATION,
BEING AN EXPRESSION OF GOD’S MIND, MAY FORM THE BASIS FOR THE CONSIDERATION OF
GOD’S PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER. If we see something of the artist in his work,
we may see something of the Creator in creation.
1. The works of God proclaim His eternal and incommunicable
sovereignty. Man cannot approach the dignity of having himself created
anything. He is an inquirer, a speculator, a calculator, a talker--but not a
creator. He can reckon the velocity of light, and the speed of a few stars. He
can go out for a day to geologize and botanize; but all the while a secret has mocked
him, and an inscrutable power has defied the strength of his arm. The
theologian says, that secret is God--that power is Omnipotence.
2. There is more than sovereignty, there is beneficence. “Thou
openest Thine hand; they are filled with good.” “He giveth to the beast his
food, and to the young ravens which cry.” This is a step downwards, yet a step
upwards. Over all is the dread sovereignty of God--that sovereignty stoops to
us in love to save our life, to spread our table and to dry our tears; it comes
down, yet in the very condescension of its majesty it adds a new ray to its
lustre. The theologian says, This is God’s care; this is the love of the
Father; this bounty is an expression of the heart of God. It is not a freak of
what is called nature; it is not a sunny chance; it is a purpose, a sign of
love, a direct gift from God’s own heart.
III. THAT GOD’S
WORD IS ITS OWN SECURITY FOR FULFILMENT. God said, Let there be--and there was.
“He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.” “By the word of
the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His
mouth.” This is the word which alone can ultimately prevail. This is of
infinite importance--
IV. THAT THE WORD
WHICH ACCOUNTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF NATURE ACCOUNTS ALSO FOR THE EXISTENCE OF
MAN. “Know ye not that the Lord He is God? It is He that made us, and not we
ourselves.” “O Lord, Thou art our Father; we are the clay, and Thou our potter;
and we are the work of Thy hand.” “Have we not all one Father? hath not one God
created us?” “We are the offspring of God”: “In Him we live, and move, and have
our being.” See what a great system of unity is hereby established. He who made
the sun made me!
V. ALL THINGS
CONTROLLED BY THE CREATOR.
VI. ALL THINGS
JUDGED BY THE CREATOR. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The work of creation
I. We are to
consider WHAT THINGS GOD DID CREATE IN THE PERIOD OF SIX DAYS.
II. THAT THOSE
THINGS, WHICH WERE CREATED AT THAT ONE PERIOD OF TIME, COMPRISED, OR INCLUDED
ALL THINGS THAT EVER WERE CREATED.
1. There is reason to think that when God began to create, He would
not rest, until He had completely finished His whole work of creation. This
Moses represents Him to have done in the text.
2. All the works of God must compose but one whole, or perfect system.
This we may safely conclude from the perfect wisdom of God. He could not
consistently begin, or continue to operate, before He had formed a wise and
benevolent design to be answered by creation.
3. Those things which we know God did create in six days, compose a
whole, or form a complete system. The lower heaven is intimately connected with
the earth. The sun, the moon, the stars, the firmament, the atmosphere, the
heat, the cold, the clouds and the rain, were all made for the service and
benefit of mankind; and are so necessary, that they could not subsist without
the kindly influence of these things, which belong to the lower heaven. And it
is no less evident that there is a constituted connection between the
inhabitants of the upper heaven and the inhabitants of this lower world.
4. Those things which were created in six days, not only form a
whole, or system, but the most perfect system conceivable. All the parts, taken
together, appear to be completely suited to answer the highest and best possible
end that God could propose to answer by creation.
5. It appears from the process of the great day, that angels and men
are the only rational creatures who will then be called to give an account of
their conduct.
Improvement:
1. It appears from what has been said, that the enemies of Divine
revelation have no just ground to object against the Bible because it does not
give a true and full account of the work of creation.
2. If angels and men are all the intelligent beings that God created
in six days, then there is no reason to think that this world, after the day of
judgment, will be a place of residence for either the happy or miserable part
of mankind.
3. If God acted systematically in the work of creation, and formed
every individual in connection with and in relation to the whole, then we may
justly conclude that He always acts systematically in governing the world.
4. If God created all things at once, and as one whole connected
system, then He can remove all the darkness which now rests, or ever has
rested, on His providence. It is only to bring all His intelligent creatures
together, and show them their relations to and connection with each other; and
that will discover the various reasons of His conduct towards every individual,
and convince them all that He has been holy, wise, and just, in all the
dispensations of His providence and grace. When they see the same reasons that
He saw for His conduct, it will carry irresistible evidence to every created
being, that He has treated him perfectly right.
5. If God created all things at once, to answer a certain great and
good purpose, then that day will be a glorious day, when this purpose shall be
completely accomplished. And it will be completely accomplished at the end of
the world. So that the end of the world will be a far more glorious day than
the day of creation.
6. If the end of the world will exhibit such a blaze of perfect
light, then we may be sure that it will fix all intelligent creatures in their
final and unalterable state. Those who are happy in the light of the last day,
must necessarily be happy forever; and those who are unhappy in Chat light,
must be unhappy and completely miserable forever. (N. Emmons, D. D.)
The form of the record of creation
The first narrative commences, “In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth”: and then follows the detail of God’s work through the
six days of creation, concluding with His rest on the Sabbath of the seventh.
This carries us to the third verse of the second chapter. But with the fourth
verse we make a new commencement. “These are the generations of the heavens and
of the earth when they were created”: words which appear to refer solely to
what follows them, and to contain no recognition of the narrative which has
just preceded. This second account traverses a new and more deeply interesting
field, as far as the end of the fourth chapter. But with the fifth chapter
again we seem to encounter a third commencement: “This is the book of the
generations of Adam”; a clause which is followed up, after a very brief summary
of creation containing no direct allusion to the fall, by the genealogy of the
earliest line of Patriarchs.
1. The first chapter, as contrasted with the others, relates
especially to the physical aspect of creation. It deals more with powers than
with persons: more with the establishment of law, than with the gift of will.
2. But the second narrative at once enters on the moral record. Man
is now charged with personal duties, and holds individual relations to the
Personal Jehovah. There is a moral law, a moral probation, a punishment which
it would need a moral principle to understand. While man’s dominion is defined
and explained, as the beasts are summoned to their master to receive their
names, yet he is taught that he must obey as well as rule: that if he is higher
than the brute creation, there is a law, again, which is higher than himself;
which he cannot break without descending from his sovereignty, and submitting
to the forfeiture of death. And then follows the minute history of his fatal
trial, fall, expulsion from Eden. To this division belongs the whole fourth
chapter, which does but lead us from that point of expulsion, through the
original quarrel between Abel and Cain, up to the actual establishment of a Church,
and the consequent establishment, by exclusion, of an ungodly world, when men
began to call upon the name of Jehovah, and so again to recognize a personal
God.
3. Then this scene also closes. It had unveiled relations which
exist upon this world no longer. It had spoken of higher communion, and of
purer glory, than the fallen mind can maintain, or than the eyes of the fallen
can behold. Adam now stands only as the highest term in these our mortal
genealogies. There is no further notice of the innocence which he had lost; of
that open intercourse with God which he had forfeited; of the mode in which sin
had found an entrance into this world; of the establishment of a Church, as
defining and completing the separation, between those who were satisfied with their
evil, and those who were struggling to recover their good. And this is the
account of creation, which especially connects it with our present history.
Observations
I. IT MUST BE OUR
CARE TO OBSERVE, NOT ONLY WHAT GOD WORKS, BUT WITHAL HOW HE DISPOSETH, AND
ORDERETH THAT WHICH HE HATH WROUGHT.
1. Because the excellency and perfection of every work is in the end
whereunto it is directed and applied.
2. Because the wisdom of God is most discovered in the ordering and
disposing of His works, as His power is most seen in creating of them: as
usually the workman’s skill is more commended in the use of an instrument than
in the making and framing of it.
II. THE CREATURES
THAT GOD HATH MADE ARE TO BE LOOKED ON AS AN ARMY ARRAYED IN AN EXCELLENT AND
WELL COMPOSED ORDER.
1. Let all men carefully search into the order, mutual
correspondence, and scope, whereunto all the ways of God, in the administration
of the creatures, tend.
2. Tremble before that God, and trust in Him that hath power in His
hand to command all the creatures in heaven and earth, and to arm them at His
pleasure for the defence of those that fear Him, and against such as hate Him.
III. GOD PERFECTETH
AND FULLY FINISHETH EVERY WORK THAT HE TAKES IN HAND.
1. In their measure, which is proportioned to the end, whereunto
they were appointed.
2. And in their time, for they are brought to perfection by degrees,
as David professeth of the framing of His own body (Psalms 139:16).
(a) Of sanctification. God, according to His promises, will not leave
purging us till He have made us without spot or wrinkle (Ephesians 5:17-20).
(b) Of our salvation (Philippians 1:6). He that suffered for
us, till all was finished (Job 19:30), will not leave till He have
brought us into thefull possession of the glory which He hath purchased for us.
(J. White, M. A.)
The completed creation
God now proclaims the completion of His creation work. It was no
mere sketch or outline: it was no half-finished plan: it was a “finished” work.
A goodly and glorious work! Not merely on account of what we see and touch in
it, but on account of what we cannot see or touch. For creation is full of
secrets. Science, in these last days, has extracted not a few, but how many
remain secrets still! What a multitude of hidden wonders does each part of
creation contain! Outwardly, how marvellous for the order, beauty, utility of
all its parts; inwardly, how much more marvellous for the secret springs of
life, motion, order, health, fruitfulness, and power! Each part, how wondrous
in itself, as perfect in its kind; yet no less wondrous, as wrapping up within
itself the seeds of ten thousand other creations, as perfect, hereafter to
spring from them! God proclaims the perfection of His works, not as man does,
in vainglory, but that He may fix our eye on their excellency, and let us know
that He, the Former of them, is fully satisfied, and that His work is now ready
for its various functions and uses. The great machine is completed, and now
about to begin its operations. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
He rested on the seventh day
The Divine Sabbath:
I.
THE
DIVINE COMPLETION OF HIS CREATIVE WORK. No further creations.
II. THE DIVINE
CONTEMPLATION OF HIS CREATIVE WORK. Everything complete. Everything in
subordination. Everything ready for the higher and more glorious exercise of
the Divine activity in providence and grace. All prepared for the kingdom of
probation, by which the last created of the world was to be tried, disciplined,
and perfected. We may learn here--
1. Evil has no natural place in the universe.
2. Matter is not necessarily hostile to God. The Bible, in this
picture of Divine contemplation, cuts away the ground from certain forms of
false religion and philosophy. Divine life is not the destruction of matter,
nor the rising out of the region of the sensuous; but so restoring the harmony,
that God may again look upon the world, and say it is “very good.”
3. The present condition of things, so changed from that which God
first looked upon, must be the result of some catastrophe.
III. THE DIVINE
REST AFTER HIS CREATIVE WORK. The rest began when the work was done. The
contemplation was a part of the Sabbatic blessedness. The Sabbath:
1. It was a season of rest. It does not imply that there was
weariness, but cessation from creative activity.
2. The rest was blessed by God. As He saw His work good, so He saw
His rest good.
3. There was an appointment of a similar blessed rest for His
creatures. “He sanctified the seventh day.” It is not for us to discuss the
relations of God to labour and repose. The fact may be beyond our
comprehension. It has lessons for us:
1. There is a place and time for rest.
2. The condition on which rest may be claimed is that men work.
3. This rest should be happy. Much of the modern idea of a Sabbath
is not that which God would say was blessed. The Sabbath is not a time of
gloom.
4. This rest should be religious.
5. This rest is unlimited to any particular portion of the race. (Homilist.)
Sabbath rest
An allegory lies in this history. Every week has its Sabbath, and
every Sabbath is to be a parenthesis between two weeks’ work. From the
beginning of the world, a seventh of time was set apart for rest. The rest of
the Sabbath must be
It must be refreshment to body, mind, and soul; and it must not
infringe upon the rest of others. The rest of a holy peace must be combined
with the loving energies of an active body and an earnest mind. (J. Vaughan,
M. A.)
The original Sabbath
I. THAT THE WORK
OF CREATION WAS COMPLETED ON THE SIXTH DAY. God could have done His creative
work in a moment. Why, then, did He take six days?
II. THAT THE
SEVENTH DAY WAS THE FIRST SABBATH.
The Sabbath
1. A memorial of past labour.
2. A pillar of testimony to God as Creator.
3. A proclamation of rest.
4. A type of coming rest. (H. Bonar.)
The Sabbath sanctified
I. THE FACT
STATED. God blessed, etc.
II. THE REASON
ASSIGNED. He rested, etc.
III. THE END IN
VIEW. (W. Burrows, M. A.)
The Christian Sabbath
Paradise, with its calm, its purity, and its beauty, is gone; but
the Sabbath has not with Paradise passed away. It has accompanied man in his
sorrows, as it accompanied him in his joys.
I. THE
CONSECRATION OF THE SABBATH. Fenced off by God as His own peculiar property.
“Holiness to the Lord” is written upon it by the finger of our Creator. And the
consecration of the Sabbath must be for such purposes as these.
1. Primarily and preeminently, for the consideration of the wondrous
work of creation; that man, the intelligent creature, may behold, in the
glorious workmanship of God, traces of the Divine power, and wisdom, and love,
and that he may render to his Creator the homage that is due to Him.
2. It was further consecrated for services fitted to increase the
holiness of man while he remained in innocency, and to restore fallen man to
the holiness which he had lost. It was intended, therefore, for man not less
than for God.
II. THE PERPETUITY
OF THE SABBATH. Instituted long before Judaism, long before Abraham’s time
even; therefore, of perpetual obligation. God has appointed a holy rest for His
people in every age, and though the day may be changed, yet the institution
remains the same.
III. THE BLESSINGS
OF THE SABBATH.
1. God designed it as a blessing to man.
2. God annexed a special blessing to the day. (H. Stowell, M. A.)
The Sabbath
That the Sabbath was originally a Divine institution, nobody can
doubt. It originated with God: and now God has either abrogated the Sabbath, or
He has not. If God has not abrogated the Sabbath, the matter is quite clear: it
comes commended to us with all that Divine authority itself can rest upon. But
if God has abrogated the Sabbath, I ask, who is the man that would dare to reinstitute
it?
I. THE OBLIGATION
OF THE SABBATH. First, I say that the fourth commandment is absolutely
obligatory on Christian men. If not, one or other of these alternatives must be
adopted: either the whole of the ten commandments are abrogated and abolished,
or the fourth is an exception out of the ten. There is no escape from one or
other of these alternatives. But now suppose for a moment, for argument’s sake,
you were to allow that the fourth commandment, as far as it is found in the
Mosaic economy, is abrogated. What then? Is the law of the Sabbath destroyed?
Now, here is the proper argument for the Sabbath. “Thus the heavens and the
earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended
His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work
which He had made.” What has that to do with the Mosaic economy?
Why, here is the institution of the Sabbath more than two thousand
years before the Mosaic economy is introduced! Suppose you allow all the Mosaic
law to be abrogated, here stands the original institution. And if any man says,
“But that refers to Eden,” I grant it, Was it abolished when our first parents
were cast out of Eden? Then I will give you a proof for once to the contrary,
in the sixteenth chapter of Exodus, the twenty-third and twenty-ninth verses.
Listen to these words. “And he said unto them, This is that which the Lord hath
said, Tomorrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord; bake that which
ye will bake,” and so forth. Again, in the twenty-ninth verse: “See, for that
the Lord hath given you the Sabbath.” This is the sixteenth chapter of Exodus.
How did they come to have the Sabbath day here? You know the law was not given
till some considerable time after this: yet here you have the observance of the
Sabbath, not based on the tea commandments at all--it is before they are
uttered: here you have God recognizing the same thing. But now notice another
remarkable fact. Why does the fourth commandment begin with the word,
“Remember”? There is not another of the commandments that begins with the word
“Remember.” They are all positive institutions at that very time. But here is
the fourth commandment notably commencing with the word “Remember.” Why?
Because it was an original institution, and the word points back to that.
Another very remarkable fact in regard to the institution of the Sabbath, so
far as it is connected With the Mosaic economy, is, that God institutes it in
connection with the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt. In the fifth
chapter of Deuteronomy, at the fourteenth verse, it is said--“The seventh day
is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God,” and so on. Now observe. “Remember that
thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought
thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore”--I
beseech you to notice this--“therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep
the Sabbath day.” You observe, that the reason why God commanded Israel to keep
the Sabbath there is because they were brought out of the land of Egypt; but
when God gave the fourth commandment in connection with the ten from Sinai,
evidently intending it to have a general application, He makes no mention of
this particular deliverance, but merely states the reason we find in the second
chapter of Genesis--because God had rested Himself on the seventh day. So that
if we admit, as I will do, that there was a peculiarity in the reason for the
institution of the Sabbath in connection with the Israelites, yet God marks a
distinction between that peculiarity and the general application in the
passages I have referred to: giving as the peculiarity in their case the
deliverance from Egypt, but in the other case giving as a reason that He
Himself rested from His work, that the institution might be known to be
applicable to all men. One further proof let us for a moment notice. The object
of the Sabbath--let us see what that involves. There is a two-fold object
alluded to in my text--with reference to God, and with reference to man. First,
with reference to God. God rested on the seventh day, in commemoration of the
finishing of His work. Now, whatever that may involve, I suppose it will be
admitted that it is applicable to all men, and that it does not apply to the
Jews or to one age only. If God thought fit to commemorate the fact of His
resting from His labours by setting apart one day in seven, you and I are as
much concerned in it as the Israelite was. But this will be still further
enforced, when we come to consider the reason for which the Sabbath was
instituted with reference to man. This was a two-fold reason. It was in order
to his physical rest, and in order to his spiritual profit; the one subservient
to the other. His physical rest: is not that equally necessary at all times?
What gave rise to this reason for the institution of the Sabbath? On what
ground was it necessary that there should be one day in seven set apart? I tell
you: the law of rest was based on the law of labour. That was true in Eden. In
Eden man was to till the ground; and even in Eden, in his unfallen state, there
was a day of rest appointed. If that was true in man’s perfect state, before
his physical ability became deteriorated and broken down through sin, as it has
been, how much more is it necessary in his fallen state! Again, let me ask
this: If it was needful to Israel that they should have a day of rest, on the
ground of the physical system being liable to exhaustion, and on the ground of
the law of labour not being remitted, will any man pretend to argue that the
law of rest shall be abolished and abrogated while the law of labour still
remains? Or again: look at the spiritual purpose of the Sabbath. It is
instituted in order to give man an opportunity--by resting from labour and the
ordinary transactions of secular concerns, to have an opportunity of
cultivating a holy and heavenly taste, and becoming fit for heaven. Now, I ask
this question: Do your secular avocations, the cares and anxieties with which
you are conversant every day, produce the same general results that they did in
Israel’s days, or do they not? Do you find, or do you not find, when you go
about your ordinary business six days in the week, that you have immense
difficulty to keep your hearts and affections separated from these things, and
give them to God? Do you find that you could afford to be without one day in
the week, on which to meet in God’s house, and have an opportunity of reading
your Bible and meditating at home, feeling it to be so easy in your worldly
vocation to separate your hearts for communion with Him? It is monstrous to
suppose such a thing. But again. That the Sabbath is an eternal Sabbath is
clear from this: that in the Hebrews the apostle says, “There remaineth a
rest.” I need not tell you that the word there translated “rest” is
“Sabbath”--“There remaineth a rest,” a Sabbath “for the people of God.” “A
Sabbath!” What is the present Sabbath? What was the original Sabbath? Without
controversy, a type of the coming Sabbath. “There remaineth a Sabbath.” And yet
God gave a Sabbath from the beginning! The Sabbath God gave was of course a
type of the eternal Sabbath. Now, do you conceive that Israel should enjoy the
type of the heavenly Sabbath, and yet that you and I, who live so much nearer
to the time of the end, and are supposed to be, by virtue of the pouring out of
the Holy Ghost and a knowledge of Christ, so much more holy in heart, are not
to enjoy that type? But a type is in force till it is fulfilled. When will that
type be done away? Never, unquestionably, till it resolves itself into the
eternal Sabbath.
II. THE MODE OF
OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH. If God has given us the Sabbath, and we are to keep
it on the Lord’s day, every right-minded man will ask, How are we to keep it?
Now, it is very remarkable and important, that in the passages where God
teaches us how the Sabbath day is to be kept, He deals with the subject as a
general subject. It is not spoken of in the passages I will refer to in
reference to any peculiarities connected with Judaism; but there are such
declarations and instructions as would be applicable to all men, and all
Christian men, to the end of time. There is the fourth commandment and the
fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah. The fourth commandment we know. Here is the
passage I quote from the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah: at the thirteenth
verse--“If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on
My holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable;
and shalt honour Him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure,
nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord.” If
you take the fourth commandment in connection with that verse, you will find
that you have instruction as to the spiritual and physical obligation of the
Lord’s day. The fourth commandment instructs us in regard to our rest from all
labour; this passage instructs us in regard to the object for which that
physical rest is to be enjoyed, as subservient to our spiritual advantage. (C.
Molyneux, M. A.)
The blessed day
I. THE OBLIGATION
OF THE SABBATH.
1. The Sabbath was made for man in Paradise.
2. The Sabbath was revived in the wilderness.
3. The Sabbath was established by an express commandment.
4. The Sabbath was confirmed by the practice of our Lord Jesus
Christ and His apostles. The change of day, from the seventh to the first of
the week, makes no alteration in the proportion of our time which God has
“sanctified” and “blessed.”
5. The Sabbath has been observed by the Church of Christ in general.
II. THE ADVANTAGES
OF THE SABBATH. A “blessed” day.
1. Its temporal advantages.
2. Its spiritual advantages.
Institution and end of the Sabbath
I. WHO WAS IT
INSTITUTED THE SABBATH? God. It sets forth the Divine complacency--how He
looked back on the work He had finished, and how He was refreshed with the
contemplation of it. And this gives us the true idea of the first Sabbath, when
the Lord rested from His work; He set it apart, that His creatures might rest
also, that they might be taken from the work to the worker, from the gift to
the Giver, from the creation to the Creator.
II. THE
CONTINUATION OF THE INSTITUTION (Exodus 20:1-26). Though the
appointing one day out of seven was a moral command, yet it was also positive:
it was arranged in the garden of Eden before Satan tempted man to fall.
Therefore it had its truth, not in Mount Sinai, not because Moses gave it, but
from the living God Himself. And there it stands at an amazing distance from
all ceremonies and all shadows. It sets forth a great truth, I allow--our rest
in Jesus: but the setting apart a day of rest was no shadow; it was God’s claim
on His people. “Your bodies are Mine, your souls are Mine, and you shall give
what you owe to Me.”
III. THE GREAT END
AND OBJECT OF THE SABBATH (Hebrews 4:11). Just as the Creator did
rest from His work, and did command His creatures to rest as He rested, giving
themselves up to the contemplation of Himself: so in the Christian Sabbath we
are led by Eternal Spirit to seek our rest, and to find our rest, in the Lord
Jesus Christ.
IV. WHAT IS THE
NATURE OF THAT OBEDIENCE WHICH OUGHT TO BE GIVEN TO IT BY CHRISTIANS? Let him
beware of Jewish legality, of the spirit of bondage--of that principle which,
while it seemeth as if it honoured God in strictness, strains at a gnat and
swallows a camel. You and I, to obey one single principle aright, must have a
right principle. It is in vain the command comes to us: it can work on us by
authority and by terror: but we must have a higher principle to influence the
inner man. The nature of the obedience is at once unfolded in the nature of the
institution. Whatever has a tendency to promote my entering into that rest, to
promote my spiritual acquaintance with that rest, enters of necessity into the
consideration of the Christian Sabbath. Whatever has a tendency to hinder it,
whatever has a tendency to prevent it, whatever has a tendency to chain me down
to this earth, is to be avoided by a Christian man. (J. H.Evans, M. A.)
Genesis of the Sabbath
I. EXPLANATION OF
THE PASSAGE.
1. Cessation of the creative process.
2. The Creator’s resting.
3. Sanctification of the Sabbath day.
II. CHRIST’S
DOCTRINE OF THE SABBATH.
1. Man himself is the basis of the Sabbath.
A day of conscious, formal, stately acknowledgment of the Divine
supremacy. A day on which to dismiss worldly cares, and look through
unobstructed vistas into the opening heavens. An English gentleman was once
inspecting a house in Newcastle, with a view of buying it. The landlord, after
having shown him the premises, took him to an upper window, and remarked: “You
can see Durham Cathedral from this window on Sundays.” “How is this?” asked the
visitor. “Because on Sundays there is no smoke from the factory chimneys.” Ah,
man must have a day in which he can retire to some solitude, where his spirit--
“With
her best nurse, Contemplation,
May
plume her feathers, and let grow her wings,
That
in the various bustle of resort
Were
all too ruffled, and sometimes impaired.”
2. Man greater than the Sabbath. Man, as God’s son and image and
representative, is the end, and the Sabbath, like every other “ordinance,” is a
means. An immortal being, outliving institutions, economies, aeons--capable of
carrying a heaven within him--God’s own image and son: man is more sacred than
ordinances. Jesus Christ did not die for ordinances: Jesus Christ died for man.
The Sabbath is sacred, not in itself, but because man is sacred. Hence the
Sabbath is his servant--not his master. He is the Lord of the Sabbath. And in
accordance with this principle Jesus Christ Himself ever acted.
3. The true method of keeping the Sabbath. Being made for man, the
Sabbath must be used religiously: for the capacity for religion is man’s chief
definition. The Sabbath must be kept in homage of God, in the study of His Word
and character and will, in the spirit of worship, private and public. But full
unfolding of man’s spiritual nature is possible only in the sphere of
edification, or society building. The Sabbath summons man to conjugate life in
a new mood and tense; but still in the active voice. And here the Son of Man is
our Teacher and blessed Model. How many of His healings and works of mercy were
wrought on the Sabbath day! And what is man’s office in this fallen, sorrowful
world, but a ministry of healing? And healing, or edification, is the highest
form of worship. Nothing can take the place of it.
4. Objections.
III. THE CHANCE
FROM SATURDAY TO SUNDAY. Here is a venerable, sacred institution--hallowed by
the Creator’s own example in Eden, solemnly enjoined amid the thunders of
Sinai, distinctly set apart as one of the chief signs that Israel was God’s
chosen, covenanted people, majestically buttressed by loftiest promises in case
of observance, and by direst threats in case of non-observance, freighted with
the solemn weight of fifteen centuries of sacred associations and scrupulous
observance--suddenly falling into disuse, and presently supplanted by another
day, which to this year of grace has held its own amid the throes of eighteen
centuries. How, then, will you account for this stupendous revolution? It is a
fair question for the philosophical historian to ask. And the philosophical
historian knows the answer. Jesus the Nazarene had been crucified. All through
the seventh day or Hebrew Sabbath He had lain in Joseph’s tomb. In that tomb,
amid solitude and darkness and grave-clothes, He had grappled in mortal duel
with the king of death, and had thrown him, and shivered his sceptre. At the
close of that awful Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the
week (Matthew 28:1), He had risen triumphant
from the dead. And by and in the very fact of that triumphant rising, He had
henceforth and for evermore emblazoned the first day of the week as His own
royal, supernal day, even time’s first, true Sabbath.
IV. JESUS CHRIST
HIMSELF IS OUR SABBATH, alike its origin, its meaning, and its end. In fact the
final cause of the Sabbath is to sabbatize each day and make all life
sacramental. And Jesus Christ being our true Sabbath, Jesus Christ is also our
true rest--even the spirit’s everlasting Eden. (G. D.Boardman.)
Need of the Sabbath
Man needs the Sabbath--i.e., one day of rest after six days
of toil--for his secular nature, alike bodily and mental. The testimony of
physicians, physiologists, political economists, managers of industrial establishments,
etc., is emphatic on this point. Let me cite some instances. Dr. John William
Draper, the eminent physicist and author, writes as follows: “Out of the
numberless blessings conferred on our race by the Church, the physiologist may
be permitted to select one for remark, which, in an eminent manner, has
conduced to our physical and moral well-being. It is the institution of the
Sabbath. No man can for any length of time pursue one avocation or one train of
thought without mental, and therefore bodily, injury--nay, without insanity.
The constitution of the brain is such that it must have its time of repose.
Periodicity is stamped upon it. Nor is it enough that it is awake and in action
by day, and in the silence of night obtains rest and repair; that same
periodicity, which belongs to it as a whole, belongs to all its constituent
parts. One portion of it cannot be called into incessant activity without the
risk of injury. Its different regions, devoted to different functions, must
have their separate times of rest. The excitement of one part must be
coincident with a pause in the action of another. It is not possible for mental
equilibrium to be maintained with one idea, or one monotonous mode of life . .
. Thus a kind providence so overrules events that it matters not in what
station we may be, wealthy or poor, intellectual or lowly, a refuge is always
at hand; and the mind, worn out with one thing, turns to another, and its
physical excitement is followed by physical repose. Lord Macaulay, in his speech
before the House of Commons on the Ten Hours’ Bill, spoke thus: “The natural
difference between Campania and Spitzbergen is trifling when compared with the
difference between a country inhabited by men full of mental and bodily vigour,
and a country inhabited by men sunk in bodily and mental decrepitude. Therefore
it is we are not poorer, but richer, because we have, through many ages, rested
from our labours one day in seven. That day is not lost. While industry is
suspended, while the plough lies in the furrow, while the Exchange is silent,
while no smoke ascends from the factory, a process is going on quite as
important to the wealth of nations as any process which is performed on more
busy days. Man, the machine of machines the machine compared with which all the
contrivances of the Watts and the Arkwrights are worthless--is repairing and
winding up, so that he returns to his labours on the Monday with clearer
intellect, with livelier spirits, with renewed corporeal vigour.” (G. D.
Boardman.)
The Sabbath
I. THE PRIMAL
SABBATH. God’s Sabbath. The end of the mysterious periods of God’s creative
operations, is the beginning of a new age in which all creation is intended to
glorify God and be happy.
II. THE PERIODICAL
SABBATH. Made for man. A sign of God’s care for man; and a memorial of the holy
rest which man should seek to obtain.
III. THE PERFECT
SABBATH. The future rest in heaven. Unending joy and refreshment. Perfectly
holy, perfectly happy; all things “very good.” (W. S. Smith, B. D.)
The Sabbath is for rest
A week filled up with selfishness, and the Sabbath stuffed full of
religious exercises, will make a good Pharisee but a poor Christian. There are
many persons who think Sunday is a sponge with which to wipe out the sins of
the week. Now, God’s altar stands from Sunday to Sunday, and the seventh day is
no more for religion than any other. It is for rest. The whole seven are for
religion, and one of them for rest. (H. W. Beecher.)
The excellency of the Sabbath
What the fire is amongst the elements, the eagle among the fowls,
the whale among the fishes, the lion amongst the beasts, gold among the metals,
and wheat amongst other grain, the same is the Lord’s day above other days of
the week, differing as much from the rest as doth that wax to which a king’s
great seal is put from ordinary wax, or that silver upon which the king’s arms
and image are stamped from silver unrefined, or in bullion; it is a day, the
most holy festival in relation to the initiation of the world and man’s
regeneration, the queen and princess of days, a royal day, a day that shines
amongst other days as doth the dominical letter, clad in scarlet, among the
other letters in the calendar; or, as the sun imparts light to all the other
stars, so doth this day, bearing the name of Sunday, afford both light and life
to all the other days of the week. (J. Spencer.)
The first Sabbath
I. SABBATH REST.
Sabbath rest is not merely a rest from sin, though it includes that: we are not
merely required to lay aside things that are sinful to keep this Sabbath, for
God rested, and He could do only good. It is not only a rest from labour,
though it includes it: for God rested, and He knew no labour--commanding, and
it was done. It is a rest from work. God rested from all His work. Even then
those things which are lawful and pleasant work on weekdays, causing no labour
and involving no sin, are to be put aside on the Sabbath, that we may rest unto
God. This rest is a rest from care. You well know, that with all your desire to
let the morrow take thought for the things of itself, the necessity of
providing for the creature’s wants will give a care and anxiety to your mind.
Well, on the Sabbath you are privileged to put this all away, and to let
everything remain in abeyance, leaving all in Christ’s hands, while you enjoy
present rest in Him. This rest is, or ought to be, a rest of body and mind, as
well as of soul. Lastly, above all, this rest is a rest in the Lord. It is an
everlasting satisfaction in what He has done for you; and what He means to do
with you. It is to go in with David to sit before the Lord; it is to lie down
in green pastures, by the waters of comfort; it is to hide in the secret places
of the stairs; it is to enter that chariot whose pillars are of silver, and
whose bottom is of gold, and whose curtains are of purple, and which is paved
with love for the daughters of Jerusalem; it is to drink that new wine which
goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.
II. SABBATH
OCCUPATION. It may seem a strange transition to pass from the thought of
Sabbath rest to that of Sabbath occupation; but the rest of saints is not an
idle rest, it is not a rest which excludes the idea of employment or of
service. Even in the description of the eternal and heavenly Jerusalem we have
the words, “His servants shall serve Him,” as well as, “They shall see His
face”; and how much more then shall the Sabbath of earth be spent in doing the
will of God! Sabbath rest is found in beholding the face of God. Sabbath
occupation is found in serving Him. All Sabbath occupation is lawful which does
not break in upon and disturb Sabbath rest. If the employment in which we
engage does not hinder, but rather promotes our enjoyment of that spirit rest
which I have already spoken of, then may we be sure we are right in pursuing
it.
1. First, then, as a lawful Sabbath occupation I would put
self-study, for there is something in the quiet and leisure of the day of rest
which seems peculiarly to favour it. God hath said, “Commune with your own
heart, and in your chamber, and be still”; and he who is in the Spirit on the
Lord’s day will find it good and right so to do.
2. Next in order as a Sabbath occupation I would mention Bible
study. I do not by that expression mean Bible reading, but that earnest, patient
investigation of the Divine Word which requires time, and thought, and prayer.
3. As another Sabbath occupation I would name creation study. God
has in so wonderful a manner linked together the visible and the invisible, the
tangible with the things that cannot be touched, that we cannot go forth in our
glorious world without seeing traced on almost every object the hieroglyphics
which tell of the higher mysteries of an inner life. Those who are instructed
in the emblematic glory of the things which are can walk with Christ amidst
creation’s beauties, and understand His parables. To them He speaketh still of
the sower and the seed; the tares and the wheat; the lilies of the field, in
their more than royal glory: and many a precious lesson is taught them, as they
study the manner in which God is daily bringing about those results which
preserve the frame of nature in its order and beauty.
4. I would next suggest as a fitting occupation for the Lord’s day
the ministration of good.
5. As another Sabbath occupation, I would mention, writing on sacred
subjects: it may be original composition or otherwise.
6. Another precious Sabbath occupation will be found in Christian
converse.
7. Christian correspondence.
8. Sacred music. Blessed, beautiful gift! which God has preserved to
this disordered and disruptured world--the harmony of sound. David, in
Scripture times, and Luther in more modern days, are instances of those who
have appreciated its powers. There is something peculiarly soothing and healing
(if I may use the latter word) in the effect of the higher cast of music upon
the mind; it will sometimes bring tears to eyes whose fount has long been
dried. And on the Sabbath day I know no more blessed relief to the mind, when
it has been kept in a high state of tension for, many hours engaged in earnest
thought and study, than that which is afforded by, the strains of sacred song.
III. SABBATH
WORSHIP. In spirit and in truth we must worship that God, who is a Spirit, with
our whole understanding, and soul, and strength; with our lamps burning and our
armour bright, as a peculiar people, a chosen generation, a royal priesthood we
must do Him service. (The Protoplast.)
A world without a Sabbath
A world without a Sabbath would be like a man without a smile,
like a summer without flowers, and like a homestead without a garden. It is the
joyous day of the whole week. (H. W. Beecher.)
The Sabbath not to be effaced
The original distinction, made by God Himself, and founded both
upon His nature and ours, between working and resting, must be kept in mind;
and we must not attempt to confound these, or suppose that, provided we try to
glorify God in everything, it matters little whether we set the two different
things distinctly before us; viz., the glory which we are to give Him in
working and the glory which we are to give Him in resting. In trying to make
every day a Sabbath we are doing what we can to efface this Divine distinction.
And can it be effaced without sin, without injury to the soul, without harm
both to the Church and to the world, both to Jew and Gentile? It cannot; for
thus God does not get the glory which He desires. He does not get the separate
glories of which we have been speaking, but a mere human compound of
both--vague, indefinite, diluted--something that neither glorifies Him nor
benefits His saints, nor bears witness to the world. Those who deny the
authority of the Sabbath now must undertake to prove the following things:--
1. That the Decalogue or Law is no longer binding; or at least that
one out of the ten commandments is no longer binding.
2. That Christ came to diminish our store of blessings during the
present dispensation; that He has narrowed instead of enlarged our privileges.
3. If they shrink from this, then they must maintain that the Sabbath
is not a blessing; that it is an unwholesome, unnatural, intolerable restraint;
a weariness, a bondage, a curse.
4. That the Sabbath was a Jewish institution exclusively, and
therefore fell when Judaism fell. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
The Divine rest
There are some who can see in this description nothing higher than
the ignoble image of a weary Creator reposing after His fatigues; as if the God
of this chapter were like the Olympian deities, or the Baal whose slumbers
provoked the mockery of the Tishbite. Nor is the “rest” of God intended to
suggest that the Creator has ceased to create; that He has constructed the
world as a self-acting machine, and now commits it to its course. A far nobler
thought, a religious and not a scientific conception underlies the image.
1. It marks a stage in the process of creation. The earth is
rendered habitable. Every portion of the creation has been pronounced good in
itself; now the whole is regarded by God with satisfaction. “God saw everything
that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.” God “rested from all His work
which He had made.”
2. The image of God’s rest emphasizes the relation of man to the
terrestrial creation. We rest when our purpose is complete. The plan of God was
wrought out when man was formed.
3. There is a rest for the affections as well as for the purposes; a
repose of the heart as well as of the planning intellect and the active will. A
father who expects his children home, and prepares for their reception, does
not rest until he sees them; in his welcome of them there is repose. It is not
that he wilt have nothing more to do, that he abates his labour for them or
relaxes his care. His heart is full of tranquillity; the excitement of
preparation has given way to peace.
4. And yet once more--consider to what a history this creation
legend is the introduction. The narrative only pauses a moment; and then begins
a story of sin and chastisement, of strife and shame and struggle. It is the
prologue of a long drama of passion, weariness, and woe. (A. Mackennal, D.
D.)
Institution of Sabbath
I. THE DIRECT
REASONS why we believe the Sabbath to have been instituted at the time when the
sacred narrative begins. The transactions of the seventh day immediately follow
those of the sixth, precisely as those of the sixth follow the fifth--the
history is chronological, unbroken, complete. This is the reason each day’s
work comes in order. These were the transactions of the seventh day, which come
as directly in succession after the preceding as any of the other days. The
plain literal common sense interpretation of the history of the Scripture is
indispensable to faith. But in the present case we have yet further reasons.
The distribution of the work of creation into its parts would be deprived of
its object and end, if the institution of the Sabbath were expunged. For why
this distribution but to mark to man the proportion of time allotted him for
his usual labour, and the proportion to be assigned to religious exercises?
Again, where is the example in Scripture of any instituted commemoration not
beginning from the time of its appointment? One is ashamed to urge more
arguments in such a case--but what meaning, I ask, had Moses in his reference
to six days’ labour and a seventh day’s Sabbath, as matters familiarly known,
at the time of the miraculous fall of manna before the giving of the law, if
there had not been a preceding institution? Or what is intended by the citation
of the very language of my text in the fourth commandment, if the reason there
assigned had not really reposed on facts--“For in six days the Lord made heaven
and earth.”
II. THE JUST
INFERENCES to be drawn from them as to the glory and dignity of the Sabbath.
1. We learn from them, first, its essential necessity to man as man.
2. Consider, further, that it was the first command given by God to
Adam, as soon as ever the work of creation was finished. Man never was without
a Sabbath.
3. Observe, further, that this command was not merely made known to
man, in some of those ways in which his Maker afterwards communicated His will,
but it was placed, as it were, on the footing of creation itself. By the
Almighty Hand all nature might have been called into being in an instant. The
distribution of the work over six days, followed by the repose on the seventh,
was to infix this grand principle in the mind of every human being, that after
six days’ labour one day of religious rest should follow.
4. We learn also from this order of creation that man was made, not
for constant and unrelieved employment or for earthly pursuits chiefly, but for
labour with intervals of repose, and in subordination to the glory of his God;
man was formed not for seven days’ toil, but for six--man was formed not for
secular and terrestrial pursuits merely, but for the high purpose of honouring
God, meditating on His works, and preparing for the enjoyment of Him forever.
III. Let us next
show that THERE ARE TRACES OF THE OBSERVATION OF A WEEKLY REST DURING THE
PATRIARCHAL AGES. The very first act of Divine worship after the Fall affords
indications of a day of religion. Cain and Abel brought their offerings “in
process of time,” as the common reading has it, but literally, and as it is in
the margin, “at the end of the days.” Thus we have in the sacred narrative, the
priest, altar, matter of sacrifice, motive, atonement made and accented, and
appointed time--indications these entirely consistent with the supposition of a
previous sabbatical institution, and indeed proceeding upon it--for that is the
meaning of the expression, “at the end of the days.” But one division of days
had been yet mentioned, and that was of the days of the week, the Sabbath being
the last or seventh day--we may, therefore, reasonably suppose that holy season
to be here termed “the end of the days.” Again, we read that “men,” in the days
of Seth (two hundred years, perhaps, after Abel’s sacrifice), “began to call
upon the name of the Lord,” or, “to call themselves by the name of the Lord”;
and four hundred years later, that “Enoch walked with God,”--terms of large
import, and which, when illustrated by the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews,
where the faith of the patriarchs in the Divine order of creation is so
extolled, are, to say the least, entirely consistent with the observation of a
day of religious worship. We come to the flood. Sixteen centuries have elapsed
since the institution of the weekly rest. And now we find the reckoning by
weeks familiarly referred to as the ordinary division of time. The Lord said
unto Noah, “Yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth.” And
again, “It came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the food were upon
the earth.” These passages occur in the seventh chapter. Nothing can be more
certain than that the return of seven days brought something peculiar with it;
and we judge it probable, from the institution of the Sabbath, that that
peculiarity was the day of sacred rest. Accordingly after the flood, the
tradition of that division of time spread over all the eastern
world--Assyrians, Egyptians, Indians, Arabians, Persians, unite with the
Israelites in retaining vestiges of it. In the earliest remains of the heathen
writers, Hesiod, Homer, Callimachus--the sanctity of the seventh day is
referred to as a matter of notoriety. Philo, the Jew, declares that there was
no nation under heaven where the opinion had not reached. But we come to the
history of Abraham. Here it is deserving notice, as we pass, that the rite of
circumcision was to be performed after the lapse of seven days from the birth;
but the commendation of Abraham’s example, “That he commanded his children and
his household after him, to keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and
judgment,” implies that there was a way prescribed by the Almighty, and certain
observances in which consisted justice and judgment, amongst which the Sabbath
was probably the chief. But in the more fall declaration afterwards made
concerning him to Isaac; “That Abraham obeyed His voice, and kept His charge,
His commandments, His statutes, and His laws”; the terms employed are so
various as to be by no means naturally interpreted of the ordinances of
circumcision and sacrifice only, but to include, as much as if it were named,
the charge and law of the Sabbath. We come to Jacob; and few, I think, can
doubt that when he uttered the devout exclamation, “This is none other than the
house of God, this is the gate of heaven”; and then vowed that the “stone
should be God’s house”--he alluded to what was customary with the pious
patriarchs, the worship of God in a stated place, and on a stated time--the
Sabbath; without which a house of God would be a term of little meaning; but
with which it would indeed be the pledge and anticipation of heaven. Even Laban
seems to have had the notion of a weekly division of time, “Fulfil her week,
and we will give thee this also.” But I will not dwell on more particulars. The
numerous, the almost perpetual notices of places, of altars, of sacrifices, of
the worship of God, of solemn titles given to particular spots, all confirm the
supposition, which is the only reasonable one, that the sabbatical institution
was not unknown to the patriarchs. We may notice the case of holy Job, as
confirming this, who, remote as was the place of his abode, more than once
reminds us of “a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the
Lord.”
IV. THE MANNER IN
WHICH THE SABBATH WAS REVIVED AND RE-ESTABLISHED BEFORE THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE
MOSAICAL ECONOMY, proves that it was a previous institution, which had never
been entirely lost; and therefore confirms all we stated of its origin in
Paradise and its continuance during the patriarchal ages.
1. Let us, then, first, in applying this part of our subject,
observe, the extreme violence which is done to the Christian faith, when any
important fact in the Scriptures, such as the institution of the Sabbath in
Paradise, is attempted to be explained away by the fancy of man.
2. Yes, come with me before we close this discourse and let us adore
and praise the Almighty Father of all for the distinct glories shed upon the
day of religious repose. Come and praise Him for condescending to imprint its
first enactment, and the reasons on which it is grounded, on the six days’
creative wonders. Come, glorify your God and Father. He bids you rest, but it
is after His own example. He bids you labour, but it is after His pattern.
Imitate the Supreme Architect. Work in the order in which He worked, cease when
He was pleased to cease. Let the day of religion, after each six days’ toil, be
to you a blessed and a sanctified season. Plead the promise attached to the
Sabbath: it is blessed of God, it is sanctified of God, it is hallowed of God.
Implore forgiveness of your past neglect. Let no Sabbath henceforth leave you
without having sought the blessing promised and performed the duties to which
it is dedicated. Let your devout meditation on the glories of creation swell
the choir of your Maker’s praise. Join “the sons of God” in their joys and
songs at the birth of the universe. (D. Wilson, M. A.)
The Lord’s day, or Christian Sabbath
1. Delight in the Lord’s day
as a high privilege bestowed upon you: make it the matter of your holy joy.
2. Dispose of your earthly affairs wisely in the foregoing week, so
that if possible you may not have the Lord’s day, which is a day of rest and
worship, invaded and intrenched upon by the cares and business of this world.
3. Think of the promises which are made to these who with a
religious care serve and worship God upon His appointed day.
4. Whatsoever spiritual advantages or improvements you obtain on
God’s own day, take care that you do not lose them again amidst the labours or
the pleasures of the following week.
5. Take notice what relish and satisfaction you find in the duties
or services of the Lord’s day, and let that be a test whereby you may judge of
the sanctification of your souls and your preparation for heaven.
6. Let every Lord’s day, every Christian Sabbath, lead your
meditations, your faith, and hope onward to the eternal rest in heaven. (Isaac
Watts, D. D.)
The Sabbath
I. ITS ORIGIN.
Days and nights, lunar months, and solar years, are natural divisions of time;
and may be easily supposed or accounted for, by the diurnal revolution of the
earth, the appearance of the moon, and the annual course of the sun; but weeks
of seven days cannot have the shadow of a reason assigned for their observance,
except on the ground of the primeval institution of the Sabbath on the seventh
day of the creation, and banded down by tradition to all parts of the world.
II. ITS
PERPETUITY.
1. It was enjoined upon Adam, as the federal head and common parent
of all mankind, and not given to Abraham, as the father of the Jewish nation.
2. It was introduced and enforced in the decalogue as a moral
precept, and not a mere ceremonial institution.
3. The same, and even stronger reasons, may be assigned for the
perpetuity of the Sabbath, than those expressed as the design of its original
appointment. There is the same God to adore; there are the same works to
contemplate; and we are the same dependent creatures as were our first parents,
with this great disadvantage on our parts, that we are ever prone to forget the
Almighty, and require more means to keep us in remembrance of the Lord than
ever Adam needed in primeval innocence.
4. When the Gentiles were brought into the Church of Christ by the
preaching of the gospel, their observance of the Sabbath is mentioned by the
prophet Isaiah, as positive proof of their conversion to God (chap. 56:6, 8).
By this they testified their faith, affection, and obedience, in the great
cause which they had espoused; they thus observed the command, exalted the
goodness, and magnified the grace of that Supreme Being, whose name they were
destined to profess and to honour in the world.
5. The last book of the inspired volume emphatically terms it, “the
Lord’s day.”
III. ITS SCRIPTURAL
OBSERVANCE.
1. A complete cessation of our secular employments.
2. Holy meditation of the Divine Being and works.
3. Fervent prayer.
4. A close attention to the Word of God.
5. Public worship.
CONCLUSION:
1. Regard the Sabbath as a merciful appointment.
2. Lament the abuse of the Sabbath amongst us.
3. Observe the day thus blessed and sanctified. (Thomas Wood.)
The Sabbath
I. THE WORSHIP OF
GOD OUGHT TO BE MEN’S FIRST AND CHIEF CARE.
II. GOD MAKES
GREAT ACCOUNT OF THE SANCTIFYING OF HIS SABBATHS.
1. As serving for a public and notorious badge of our profession Ezekiel 20:12).
2. An especial means of preserving and increasing of religion,
being, as it were, the mart day for the soul, wherein we have commerce in a
sort wholly with God in spiritual things, tendering unto Him, and pouring out
before Him the affections of our souls in prayers and praises; and God pouring out
grace and comfort upon our spirits in the use of His holy ordinances.
III. THE SABBATH
DAY SANCTIFIED AS IT OUGHT IS A DAY OF BLESSINGS.
IV. THE SABBATH IS
A DAY OF REST CONSECRATED BY GOD HIMSELF, AND SET APART FROM A COMMON TO A HOLY
USE.
V. THE LAW GIVEN
BY GOD FOR THE OBSERVATION OF THE SABBATH DAY IS A LAW UNIVERSAL AND PERPETUAL.
VI. MEDITATION ON
GOD’S WORKS, THAT OUR HEARTS MAY BE RAISED UP TO A HOLY REJOICING IN HIM, IS,
AND OUGHT TO BE, A CHRISTIAN’S CHIEF EXERCISE FOR THE RIGHT SANCTIFYING OF THE
SABBATH DAY. (J. White, M. A.)
Intellectual gain of Sunday rest
Wilberforce accounts, in part at least, for the suicide of
Castlereagh, Romilly, and Whitbread, by the absence of the Sabbath rest. Lord
Hatherley, who rose to be Lord High Chancellor of England, testified, at a
public meeting in Westminster, that many lawyers who were in the habit of
Sunday study or practice of law have failed in mind and body--not a few of them
becoming inmates of lunatic asylums; and that, within his experience, the
successful and long-living lawyers are those who, like himself and Lords Cairns
and Selborne, have always remembered the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. If you
wish to get the full good of your mind, you will give it the rest which its
Creator indicates; you will give it sleep; you will give it the Sabbath. The
mind is not an artesian well, but a land spring. The supply is limited. If you
pump continually, the water will grow turbid; and if, after it grows turbid,
you continue still to work it, you will not increase the quantity, and you will
spoil the pump. There is a difference of intellectual activity, but the most
powerful mind is a land spring after all; and those who wish to preserve their
thoughts fresh, pure, and pellucid, will put on the Sabbath padlock. In the
subsequent clearness of their views, in the calmness of their judgment, and in
the free and copious flow of ideas, they, find their speedy recompense.
The Sabbath--the weekly summer
It is the chief time for gathering knowledge to last you through
the following week, just as summer is the chief season for gathering food to
last you through the following twelvemonth. (A. W. Hare.)
Never-ending Sabbaths
Yes, it was the beautiful remark of an aged Christian, a poor widow,
when asked by her minister, as she stood lingering in the porch of the church,
“What have you been thinking of so deeply?”--“I have been thinking, sir, oh!
that my Sabbaths would never end.” Happy state of mind! How natural the
transition from the Sabbath that ends, to the Sabbath that never ends; from the
Sabbath whose sun so soon sets, to the Sabbath of that city which “hath no Heed
of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God doth
lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof,” and which hath “no temple, for
the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.” There will be no more
temple there, for it will be all one temple--a temple where they rest not day
nor night, crying, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts.” God has annexed this
blessing to His day, that in proportion as we love to enter into its blessed
services, breathe its holy atmosphere, do we feel assured that heaven is ours,
and that we are heaven’s, and that our Sabbaths are as blessed steps by which
we rise higher and higher till we reach a Sabbath whose sun shall never set. (H.
Stowell, M. A.)
Sabbath the perfection of creation
In “Bereshith Rabbah,” a Rabbinical commentary of the second
century, it is beautifully said, “What is the institution of the Sabbath like?
A king erected a marriage canopy, which he ornamented and beautified. When it
was completed there was but one thing wanting, and that was the bride. Thus
likewise, the creation of the world completed, its perfection required nothing
but the Sabbath.”
Verse 4
These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth
The primeval condition of the earth, and of man as a sentient,
spiritual, and social being
I.
The
economy of the kingdom of Inanimate nature, or of the vegetable world, was
fitted at once to maintain the sovereignty of God, and to provide for the
welfare of man; viewing mall as a compound being, having both body and soul (Genesis 2:5-7). Three things, it is here
implied, are ordinarily necessary to the growth of plants and herbs--soil,
climate, and culture. The vital energy of the earth itself, in which all
various seeds are lodged, is the first element (Genesis 2:5). The influence of rain and
dew from heaven comes next (Genesis 2:6). And lastly, there must be
superadded the labour of the hand of man (Genesis 2:7 compared with Genesis 2:5). This is the law of nature,
or rather of nature’s God.
II. The moral
world also--the spiritual kingdom was rightly adjusted.
1. Man, as a sentient being, was placed in an earthly paradise (Genesis 2:8-15).
2. As a rational and religions being, he was subjected to a Divine
law (Genesis 2:16-17).
3. As a social or companionable being, he was furnished with human
fellowship (Genesis 2:18-25). (R. S. Candlish, D.
D.)
Observations
I. HE THAT GIVES
THINGS THEIR BEING MAY DISPOSE AND ORDER THEM AS HE WILL
II. WHENSOEVER WE
MENTION AND REMEMBER THE BEING OF THE CREATURES, WE OUGHT WITHAL TO SET BEFORE
US AND REMEMBER HIM THAT MADE THEM. (J. White, M. A.)
A new section of creation history
A new section of creation history now begins, and the fourth verse
is the title or heading: “The following are the details of what took place when
God created heaven and earth.” The fifth is intended to state that all that was
done was entirely God’s doing, without the help of second causes, without the
refreshment of rain, without the aid of man, There had been no power in action
hitherto but God’s alone. His hand, directly and alone, had done all that was
done, in making plants and herbs to grow. The soil was not of itself
productive; no previous seed existed; there was no former growth to spring up
again. All was the finger of God. He is the sole Creator. Second causes, as
they are called, are His creations: they owe their being, their influence to
Him. The operations of nature, as men speak, are but the actings of the
invisible God. God is in everything. Not as the Pantheist would have it, a part
of everything, so that nature is God; but a personal Being, in everything, yet
distinct from everything; filling, quickening, guiding creation in all its
parts, yet no more the same with it than the pilot is with the vessel he
steers, or the painter with the canvas on which he flings all the hues of earth
and heaven. Let us beware of this subtle delusion of the evil one, the
confounding of the creature with the Creator; of God, “the King eternal,
immortal, and invisible,” with the hills, and plains, and forests, and flowers
which He has made. To deify nature seems one of the special errors of the last
days. And no wonder; for if nature be deified, then man is deified too. Man
becomes God, and nature is the throne on which he sits. Let us not lose sight
of God in nature. Let not that which is the manifestation of His glory be
turned by us into an obscuration of Himself. Let us look straight to the living
God. Not nature, but God; not providence, but God; not the law, but the
Lawgiver; not the voice, but the Speaker; not the instrument and its wide
melodies, but the Master who formed the lyre, and whose hands are drawing the
music out of its wondrous chords! (H. Bonar, D. D.)
In Eden and out
The heading of this passage might not be inappropriate as the
title of all the rest of the Bible. We have had the origin in the first
chapter, and all the rest of the Bible gives the development--the development
of the heavens and the earth, until at last, after all the changes of time are
over, we shall witness the inauguration of “the new heavens and the new earth,
wherein dwelleth righteousness.” In the meantime we shall limit our view to the
little book of Generations, with its sad record of fall and failure, gilded,
however, with a gleam of hope at the close.
I. First, then,
there is a different name for God introduced here. All through the Genesis it
has been, “God said,” “God made,” “God created.” Now it is invariably, “Jehovah
God” (Lord God in our version). And this is the only continuous passage in the
Bible where the combination is used. How is this explained? Very easily. In the
apocalypse of the Genesis, God makes Himself known simply as Creator. Sin has
not yet entered, and so the idea of salvation has no place. In this passage sin
is coming in, and along with it the promise of salvation. Now the name Jehovah
is always connected with the idea of salvation. It is the covenant name. It is
the name which indicates God’s special relation to His people, as their Saviour
and Redeemer. But lest anyone should suppose from the change of name that there
is any change in the person; lest anyone suppose that He who is to redeem us
from sin and death, is a different being from Him who created the heavens and
the earth, the two names are now combined--Jehovah God. The combination is retained
throughout the entire narrative of the Fall to make the identification sure.
Thereafter either name is used by itself without danger of error.
II. Look next at
the way in which Nature is spoken of here. When you look at it aright, you find
there is no repetition. Nature in the Genesis is universal nature. God created
all things. But here, nature comes in, as it has to do immediately with Adam.
Now see the effect of this. It at once removes difficulties, which many speak
of as of great magnitude. In the first place it is not the whole earth that is
now spoken of, but a very limited district. Our attention is narrowed down to
Eden, and the environs of Eden, a limited district in a particular part of the
earth. Hence the difficulty about there not being rain in the district
(“earth”) disappears. Again, it is not the vegetable kingdom as a whole that is
referred to in the fifth verse, but only the agricultural and horticultural
products. The words “plant,” “field,” and “grew” (verse 5) are new words, not found
in the creation record. In Genesis 1:1-31. the vegetable kingdom as
a whole was spoken of. Now, it is simply the cereals and garden herbs, and
things of that sort; and here, instead of coming into collision with the
previous narrative, we have something that corresponds with what botanists tell
us, that field and garden products are sharply distinguished in the history of
nature, from the old flora of the geological epochs. In the same way it is not
the whole animal kingdom that is referred to in verse nineteen, but only the
domestic animals, those with which man was to be especially associated, and to
which he was very much more intimately related than to the wild beasts of the field.
It may be easy to make this narrative look ridiculous, by bringing the wild
beasts in array before Adam, as if any companionship with them were
conceivable. But when we bear in mind that reference is made here to the
domestic animals, there is nothing at all inappropriate in noticing, that while
there is a certain degree of companionship possible between man and some of
those animals, as the horse and dog, yet none of these was the companion he
needed.
III. Passing now
from nature to man, we find again a marked difference. In Genesis 1:1-31 we are told, “God created
man in His own image; in the image of God created He him.” And here: “The Lord
God formed man of the dust of the ground” (Genesis 2:7). Some people tell us there
is a contradiction here. Is there any contradiction? Are not both of them true?
Is there not something that tells you that there is more than dust in your
composition? When you hear the statement that “God made man in His own image,”
is there not a response awakened in you--something in you that rises up and
says, It is true? On the other hand, we know that man’s body is formed of the
dust of the earth. We find it to be true in a more literal sense than was
formerly supposed, now that chemistry discloses the fact that the same elements
enter into the composition of man’s body, as are found by analysis in the “dust
of the ground.” And not only are both these statements true, but each is
appropriate in its place. In the first account, when man’s place in universal
nature was to be set forth--man as he issued from his Maker’s hand--was it not
appropriate that his higher nature should occupy the foreground? His lower
relations are not entirely out of sight even there, for he is introduced along
with a whole group of animals created on the sixth day. But while his
connection with them is suggested, that to which emphasis is given in the
Genesis is his relation to his Maker. But now that we are going to hear about
his fall, about his shame and degradation, is it not appropriate that the lower
rather than the higher part of his nature should be brought into the
foreground, inasmuch as it is there that the danger lies? It was to that part
of his nature that the temptation was addressed; and so we read here, “God
formed man of the dust of the ground.” Yet here too there is a hint of his
higher nature, for it is added, “He breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life,” or as we have it in another passage, “The inspiration of the Almighty
gave him understanding.” In this connection it is worth while to notice the use
of the words “created” and “formed.” “God created man in His own image.” So far
as man’s spiritual and immortal nature was concerned it was a new creation. On
the other hand, “God formed man out of the dust of die ground.” We are not told
He created man’s body out of nothing. We are told, and the sciences of today
confirm it, that it was formed out of existing materials. Then, in relation to
woman, there is the same appropriateness in the two narratives. In the former
her relations to God are prominent: “God created man in His own image. In the
image of God created He him; male and female created He them”--man in His
image; woman in His image. In the latter, it is not the relation of woman to
her Maker that is brought forward, but the relation of woman to her husband.
Hence the specific reference to her organic connection with her husband. And now,
is there anything irrational in the idea that woman should be formed out of
man? Is there anything more mysterious or inconceivable in the formation of
woman out of man, than in the original formation of man out of dust? Let us
conceive of our origin in any way we choose, it is full of mystery, Though
there may be mystery connected with what is said in the Bible, there will be
just as much mystery connected with any other account you try to give of it. (J.
M. Gibson, D. D.)
Verse 5
Every plant of the field
The leaf
One of the most beautiful scientific generalizations was the
result, not of the patient, persevering researches of the naturalist, but of
the dreamy reverie of a peer.
On the meditative mind of Goethe on one occasion dawned the bright idea, that
the flower of a plant is not, as is commonly supposed, an added or separate
organ, but only the highest development, or rather transformation of its
leaves--that all the parts of a plant, from the seed to the blossom, are mere
modifications of a leaf. This one idea has done more to lift the veil of
mystery from nature, and to interpret the plans and purposes of the Creator,
than all the previous labours of botanists. It shows us order in the midst of
confusion; simplicity in the midst of apparently inextricable complexity; unity
of plan amid endless diversity of form. Thoreau, watching the leafy expansions
of frost vegetation on the window pane and on the blades of grass, declared
that “the Maker of this earth but patented a leaf.” He traced the leaf pattern
throughout all the kingdoms of Nature. He saw it in the brilliant feathers of
birds; in the lustrous wings of insects; in the pearly scales of fishes; in the
blue-veined palm of the human hand; and in the ivory shell of the human ear.
The earth itself, according to him, is but a vast leaf veined with silver
rivers and streams, with irregularities of surface formed by mountains and
valleys, and varied tints of green in forest and field, and great bright spaces
of sea and lake. This, however, is a mere transcendental idea when thus applied
to all the departments of nature; it is scientific truth only when confined to
the vegetable kingdom. But the unity of which it speaks may be traced
everywhere. All the recent discoveries of science, both as regards the forms
and the forces of matter, have an obvious tendency to simplify greatly the
scheme of nature, and reduce its phenomena to the operation of a few simple
laws; and in this respect they have a profound theological significance. Amid
these brilliant generalizations, we cannot stop short until we have reached the
highest and sublimest generalization, and nature has led us by such great altar
steps up to nature’s God. The theory of the leaf, as lying at the basis of the
vegetable kingdom, requires more particular explanation. All plants are
produced from seeds or buds; the one free, the other attached; the one
spreading the plant geographically, the other increasing its individual size.
Carefully examined, the seed, or starting point in the life of a plant, is
composed of a leaf rolled tight, and altered in tissue and contents, so as to
suit its new requirements. The real character of a seed may be seen in the
germination of a bean, when the two leaves of which it is composed appear in
the fleshy lobes or cotyledons which first rise above ground, and afford
nourishment to the embryo. The bud, or epitome of the plant, which is
physiologically co-ordinate with the seed, is also found to consist of leaves
folded in a peculiar manner, and covered with tough leathery scales to protect
them from the winter’s cold; and in spring it evolves the stem, leaves, and
fruit--in short, every structure which comes of the seed. Further, all the appendages
borne on the stem--such as scales, leaves, bracts, flowers, and fruit--are
modifications of this one common type. Flowers, the glory of the vegetable
world, are merely leaves, arranged so as to protect the vital organs within
them, and coloured so as to attract insects to scatter the fertilizing pollen,
and to reflect or absorb the light and heat of the sun for ripening the seed.
Stamens and pistils may be converted by the skill of the gardener into petals,
and the blossoms so produced are called double, and are, therefore, necessarily
barren. The wild rose, for example, has only a single corolla; but when
cultivated in rich soil, its numerous yellow stamens are changed into the red
leaves of the full-blown cabbage rose. That all the parts of the flower, the
calyx, corolla, stamens, and pistils, are modified leaves, is proved by the
fact that it is by no means uncommon for a plant to produce leaves instead of
them. We come next to the fruit, which, in all its astonishing varieties of
texture, colour, and shape, is also a modified leaf; and it is one of the most
interesting studies in natural history, to trace the correspondence between the
different parts of structures so greatly altered and the original type. In the
peach, for instance, the stone is the upper skin of a leaf hardened so as to
protect the kernel or seed; the pulp is the cellular tissue of a leaf expanded
and endowed with nutritive properties for the sustenance of the embryo plant;
and the beautiful downy skin on the outside is the lower cuticle of the leaf
with a sun bloom upon it, the hollow line on one side of the fruit marking the
union between the two edges of the leaf. So also in the apple; the
parchment-like core is the upper surface of the leaf, and the flesh is the
cellular tissue greatly swollen; in the orange, the juicy lips enclosing the
seeds are the different sections of the leaf developed in an extraordinary
manner; while through the transparent skin of the ripe gooseberry, we see the
ramifications of the leaf veins, conclusively proving its origin. In all the
parts and organs of the plant then, from the seed to the fruit, we have found
that the leaf is the type or pattern after which they have been constructed;
and those modifications of structure, colour, and composition, which they
exhibit, are for special purposes in the economy of the plant in the first
place, and ultimately for necessary services to the animal creation, and even
to man himself, to whom the sweetness of the fruit and the beauty of the flower
must have had reference in the gracious intentions of Him who created them
both. On the leaf itself may be read, as unmistakeably as on a printed page,
its morphological significance. As the architect draws on a chart the plan of a
building, so the Divine Artist has engraved on the leaf the plan of the
organism, of which it is the only essential typical appendage. Each leaf in
shape and formation may be regarded as a miniature picture, a model of the
whole plant on which it grows. The outline of a tree in full summer foliage may
be seen represented in the outline of any one of its leaves; the uniform
cellular tissue which composes the flat surface of the leaf being equivalent to
the round irregular mass of the foliage. In fact, the green cells which clothe
the veins of the leaf, and fill up all its interspaces, may be regarded as the
analogues of the green leaves which clothe the branches of the tree: and
although the leaf be in one plane, there are many trees, such as the beach,
whose foliage, when looked at from a certain point of view, is also seen to be
in one plane. Tall pyramidal trees have narrow leaves, as we see in the needles
of the pine; while wide-spreading trees, on the other hand, have broad leaves,
as may be observed in those of the elm or sycamore. In every case the
correspondence between the shape of the individual leaf and the whole mass of
the foliage is remarkably exact, even in the minutest particulars, and cannot
fail to strike with wonder everyone who notices it for the first time.
Examining the leaf more carefully, we find that the fibrous veins which ramify
over its surface bear a close resemblance to the ramification of the trunk and
branches of the parent tree; they are both given off at the same angles, and
are so precisely alike in their complexity or simplicity, that from a single
leaf we can predicate with the utmost certainty the appearance of the whole
tree from which it fell, just as the skilful anatomist can construct in
imagination, from a single bone or tooth, the whole animal organism of which it
formed a part. In connection with this general typical character of the leaf
may be viewed its particular typical significance, as representing the three
great classes into which the vegetable kingdom has been divided. That it is
possible to determine from the leaf alone, or even from the smallest fragment
of it, what position to assign to any given plant in our systems of
classification, is surely owing to the fact that the plan of the leaf is the
basis upon which all vegetation, as a distinct kind of life, has been
constructed. There is no end to the diversity of shape which leaves display;
almost every species of plant having a different kind of leaf. But it almost
never occurs to us to ask ourselves the object of this variation of shape. We
regard it as a thing of course, or refer it to that boundless variety which
characterises all the works of nature, in accommodation, we proudly but
foolishly suppose, to man’s hatred of uniformity. But observation and
reflection will convince us that there is a special reason for it; that the
shapes of leaves are not capricious or accidental, but formed according, to an
invariable law, the council of His will with “whom there is no variableness or
shadow of turning.” In the first place there is a morphological reason for it.
The shape of leaves depends upon the distribution of the veins, and the
distribution of the veins upon the mode of branching in the plant, and the mode
of branching in the plant to its typical character as an exogens or endogens,
and its typical character brings us back again to the leaf. When the leaf is
simple, the branching of the stem and the blossoms is simple; and when the leaf
is compound, all the parts of the plant are also compound. But besides this
morphological reason for the immense variety of leaf shapes, there are also
teleological and geographical reasons. Leaves are adapted not only to the
typical character of the whole plant, but also to the character of the
situation in which it grows. They are, moreover, exactly constructed to shade
and shelter, or freely expose to the light and air, the plants on which they
are found, and to transmit the dews and rains which fall upon them to the young
absorbing roots. He who studies attentively and reverently the numerous
wonderful modifications in shape and structure which the typical leaf
undergoes, to suit the varied circumstances of plants, will be brought by this
study, more closely than by anything out of the Bible, into the personal
presence of Him who said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” I have
often had a train of reflections of the most profitable kind awakened in my
mind by simply looking at the common water ranunculus, whose white flowers
cover the surface of many of our quiet rivulets in June, and observing that the
leaves floating or the top of the water were round and broad, whereas the lower
ones, immersed in the stream, were divided into a vast number of linear
segments, so as not to impede the current or be torn by its force. Even in
gazing on the common gorse or whin of our hillsides--a plant, apart from the
golden glory with which the summer halos it, not very attractive to the lover
of beauty--I have been often struck with the same adaptation to the tempestuous
currents of the air, in its sharp needle-like leaves and stems--a proof of
God’s care over the homeliest thing, giving more honour to that which lacked
it. But feelings of greater interest still will be excited by the more
wonderful adaptations which we see in the tropical plants growing in our
conservatories. The mimosa, peculiarly exposed to injury, sensitively drooping
its leaves at the slightest touch; the pitcher plant, holding up its leaf
goblets filled with water to refresh it in the thirsty desert; the leaf of the
Venus’ flytrap of North America, closing together on its prey by turning on its
mid-rib as on a hinge; the leaf of the cactus growing on the dry plateaus of
Mexico, fleshy and juicy, and having no evaporating pores in its skin, so that
the moisture imbibed by the root is retained; the gigantic leaf of the royal
water lily of South America, furnished on the underside with outstanding veins
of great depth, acting as so many supporting ribs: these and a thousand other
instances almost equally remarkable, that might be alluded to, attract the most
careless eye, and in their strange variations from the typical form, disclose
abundant proof of beneficent design. The colours as well as the shapes of
leaves are wonderfully diversified, though green is the prevailing hue, and
every varied shade of that colour, from the darkest to the lightest tint, is
exhibited--and very beautifully, for instance, in the verdure of spring; yet
the whole chromatic scale may be seen illustrated in the foliage of plants.
Indeed, where it is possible to see specimens of the whole vegetable kingdom
growing together, an autumnal forest would not exhibit greater varieties of
coloured foliage. In some plants the leaves are as beautiful as the flowers of
other plants: and these are now cultivated and grouped with great effect in our
conservatories. A greenhouse full of beautifully foliaged plants, is as
attractive as one stocked with gay blossoms. It is a remarkable circumstance,
that when the leaves are dressed in bright crimson, or golden, or silvery
splendours, the flowers are almost invariably sombre in hue, and insignificant
in form and size. What purposes such beautiful leaves may serve in the economy
of vegetation, we cannot in every case find out satisfactorily. It may be to
absorb or reflect the light and heat of the sun in a peculiar way, or to guard
the vital organs from injury by diverting attention from them. In orchids and
other plants, the blossoms are gorgeously coloured and peculiarly shaped, in
order to attract insects, without whose agency the species could not be fertilized
or propagated. But in plants where the foliage is large and beautiful, and the
flower minute and sombre, it seems as if Nature wished to conceal her vital
processes, lest they should be frustrated or injured by animals. Probably,
also, the same law of compensation may be illustrated in the case of coloured
leaves, as in the irregular corolla of flowers, where the odd petal has a
different and much brighter colour, as in the common pansy. Do not these
curious plants, that among their leaves of light have no need of flowers,
resemble those lure human plants, that develope all the beauties of mind and
character at an exceptionally early age, and rapidly ripen for the tomb? They
do not live to bring forth the flowers and the fruit of life’s vigorous prime;
and therefore God converts their foliage into flowers, crowns the initial stage
with the glories of the final, and makes their very leaves beautiful. By the
transfiguration of His grace, by the light that never was on sea or land, He
adorns even their tender years with all the loveliness which in other cases
comes only with full maturity. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)
There was not a man to
till the ground
The earth without a man
I. THE WORLD’S
INDEPENDENCY OF MAN. The terraqueous globe, embosomed in those wonderful
heavens, and filled with every species of vegetable and animal life, existed
before man appeared.
1. The world can do without him. The heavens would be as bright, the
earth as beautiful, the waves of the ocean as sublime, the song of the bird is as
sweet; were man no more.
2. He cannot do without the world. He needs its bright skies, and
flowing rivers, and productive soil, etc. He is the most dependent of all
creatures.
II. THE WORLD’S
INCOMPLETENESS WITHOUT MAN. Without man the world would be a school without a
pupil, a theatre without a spectator, a mansion without a resident, a temple
without a worshipper. Learn from this subject--
1. The lesson of adoring gratitude to the Creator. Adore Him for the
fact, the capabilities, and the sphere of your existence.
2. The lesson of profound humility. The world can do without thee,
my brother; has done without thee; and will do without thee.
III. THE WORLD’S
CLAIM UPON MAN. “The earth He hath given to the children of men.” The nature of
this gift proclaims the obligation of the receiver.
1. The world is filled with material treasures; develop and use
them.
2. The world is fertile with moral lessons; interpret and apply
them.
3. The world is filled with the presence of God; walk reverently. (Homilist.)
Observations
I. EVERY HERB AND
PLANT UPON THE EARTH IS GOD’S CREATURE.
II. NOT ONLY THE
MERCIES OF GOD IS GENERAL, BUT EVERY PARTICULAR BLESSING MUST BE TAKEN NOTICE
OF AS COMING FROM GOD.
III. THAT WHICH IS
BROUGHT TO PASS WITHOUT ORDINARY MEANS, MUST NEEDS BE WROUGHT BY THE HAND AND
POWER OF GOD HIMSELF.
IV. THERE CAN BE
NO RAIN ON THE EARTH UNLESS GOD SEND IT.
V. IT IS BY RAIN
FROM HEAVEN THAT ALL THE HERBS AND PLANTS ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH DO GROW AND
ARE NOURISHED.
VI. THOUGH GOD BE
PLEASED TO MAKE USE OF MAN’S LABOUR IN PRODUCING AND CHERISHING THE FRUITS OF
THE EARTH, YET HE CAN INCREASE AND PRESERVE THEM WITHOUT IT.
VII. THOUGH THE
FRUITFULNESS OF THE EARTH COME ONLY BY GOD’S BLESSING, YET THE LABOUR OF MAN IS
REQUIRED AS THE ORDINARY MEANS TO FURTHER IT. (J. White.)
Observations
I. GOD WANTS NO
VARIETY OF MEANS TO EFFECT WHATSOEVER HE WILL.
II. GOD CAN, AND
MANY TIMES DOTH, BRING THINGS TO PASS WITHOUT ANY MEANS AT ALL.
III. GOD’S POWER IN
EFFECTING ALL THINGS IS NEVER CLEARLY DISCOVERED UNTIL ALL MEANS BE REMOVED.
IV. EVERY CREATURE
OUGHT IN AN ESPECIAL MANNER TO BE USEFUL UNTO THAT FROM WHENCE IT IS PRODUCED.
(J. White.)
A gardener wanted
Here begins that great system of Divine and human cooperation
which is still in progress. There were trees, plants, herbs, and flowers, but a
gardener was wanted to get out of the earth everything that the earth could
yield. By planting, and transplanting, and replanting, you may turn a coarse
tree into a rare botanical specimen,--you may refine it by development. So man
got something for his own pains, and became a sort of secondary creator! This
was also too much for him. He began to think that he had done nearly everything
himself, quite forgetting who gave him the germs, the tools, the skill, and the
time. It is so easy for you junior partners in old city firms to think that the
“house” would have been nowhere if you had not gone into partnership! But
really and truly, odd as it may seem, there was a “house” before you took it up
and glorified it. What a chance had man in beginning life as a gardener!
Beginning life in the open sunny air, without even a hothouse to try his
temper! Surely he ought to have done something better than he did. The air was
pure, the climate was bright, the soil was kindly: you had but to “tickle it
with a spade and it laughed in flowers.” And a river in the grounds! Woe to
those who have their water far to fetch! But here in the garden is the stream,
so broad that at the moment it is liberated from the sacred place it divides
itself into four evangelists, carrying everywhere the odours of Eden and the
offer of kindly help. Surely, then, man was well housed to begin with. He did
not begin life as a beggar. He farmed his own God-given land, without disease,
or disability, or taxation to fret him; yet what did he make of the fruitful
inheritance? Did the roots turn to poison in his mouth, and the flowers hang
their heads in shame when his shadow fell on them? We shall see. (J. Parker,
D. D.)
Verse 7
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground
The humility and dignity of man
“The Lord God formed man,” etc.
I. THEN MAN OUGHT
NOT TO INDULGE A SPIRIT OF PRIDE.
II. THEN MAN OUGHT
NOT TO INDULGE A SPIRIT OF HOSTILITY TO GOD. Shall we contend with our Maker,
the finite with the infinite?
III. THEN MAN
SHOULD REMEMBER HIS MORTALITY. “Unto dust shalt thou return.” (J. S. Exell,
M. A.)
The dust
1. The emblem of frailty (Psalms 109:14).
2. The emblem of nothingness (Genesis 18:27).
3. The emblem of defilement (Isaiah 52:2).
4. The emblem of humiliation (Lamentations 3:29; Job
42:6).
5. The emblem of mourning (Joshua 7:6).
6. The emblem of mortality (Ecclesiastes 3:20; Ecclesiastes 12:7). (H. Bonar.)
Man’s body formed of dust
Man hath received from God not only an excellent fabric and
composure of body, but, if you consider it, the very matter of which the body
is composed is far more excellent than dust or earth. Take a piece of earth, a
handful of dust, and compare them with the flesh of man; that flesh is earth
indeed, but that flesh is far better than mere earth. This shows the power of
the Creator infinitely exceeding the power of a creature. A goldsmith can make
you a goodly jewel, but you must give him gold and precious stones of which to
make it; he can put the matter into a better form, but he cannot make the
matter better. The engraver can make a curious statue, exactly limbed and
proportioned to the life, out of a rough piece, but the matter must be the same
as put into his hands: if you give him marble, it will be a marble statue; he
cannot mend the matter. Man’s work often exceeds his matter; but man’s work
cannot make the matter exceed itself. If the body, then, be but clay and hath a
foundation of dust, do not bestow too much cost upon the clay and the dust. In
an over-cared body there ever dwells a neglected soul. We usually laugh at
children, when they are making houses of clay. They whose care is overactive
for the body are but children of a greater stature, and show they have as much
more folly in their hearts than they. There is no child like to the old child.
(J. Caryl.)
Organization of the body
God made the human body, and it is by far the most exquisite and
wonderful organization which has come to us from the Divine hand. It is a study
for one’s whole life. If an undevout astronomer is mad, an undevout
physiologist is still madder. The stomach that prepares the body’s support; the
vessels that distribute the supply; the arteries that take up the food and send
it round; the lungs that aerate the all-nourishing blood; that muscle engine
which, without fireman or engineer, stands night and day pumping and driving a
wholesome stream with vital irrigation through all the system, that unites and
harmonises the whole band of organs; the brain, that dwells in the dome high
above, like a true royalty; these, with their various and wonderful functions
are not to be lightly spoken of, or irreverently held. (H. W. Beecher.)
Observations
I. THE SUBSTANCE
OF MAN’S BODY IS EXCEEDING BASE AND VILE.
II. HOW BASE
SOEVER THE MATTER OF MAN’S BODY IS, YET GOD HATH FRAMED IT INTO A CURIOUS AND
EXCELLENT PIECE OF WORK.
III. THE SOUL OF
MAN BY WHICH HE LIVES, COMES IMMEDIATELY FROM GOD HIMSELF.
1. Let our souls seek unto Him, who gave them, and serve Him, as we
are directed (1 Corinthians 6:20).
2. Lay hold on this as a ground of special comfort; that which God
hath given more immediately, He will certainly most carefully preserve and
provide for, as it appears He hath done, by redeeming the soul from hell, and
purging it from sin by the blood of His own Son, and adorning it with the
graces of His Spirit, and reserving it hereafter to enjoy His presence, and
there to be satisfied with His image.
IV. THE LIFE OF
MAN CONSISTING IN THE UNION OF THE SOUL WITH THE BODY, HATH BUT A VERY WEAK
FOUNDATION.
V. THE LIFE OF
MAN IS ONLY BY HIS SOUL.
VI. THERE IS NONE
WORTHY OF THE NAME OF A LIVING SOUL, BUT HE ONLY THAT LIVES BY A REASONABLE
SOUL. (J. White.)
Humbling origin of body
This is most humbling. It was not formed of heavenly matter, as
the radiant sun, or the sparkling stars, nor the most precious jewels. Gold and
silver were not melted down, nor were sparkling diamonds made use of, but God
formed it of the vile dust which is trodden under foot. (J. Flavel.)
Constituents of the human body
Out of the ordinary elements of the material world is that body
made, and into those elements it is resolved again. With all its beauties of
form and expression, with all its marvels of structure and of function, there
is nothing whatever in it except some few of the elementary substances which
are common in the atmosphere and the soil. The three commonest gases, oxygen,
hydrogen, and nitrogen, with carbon, and with sulphur, are the foundation
stones. In slightly different proportions, these elements constitute the
primordial combination of matter which is the abode of life. In the finished
structure there appear, besides, lime, potash, and a little iron, sodium, and
phosphorus. These are the constituents of the human body--of these in different
combinations--and, so far as we know, nothing else. (Duke of Argyll’s
“Unity of Nature. ”)
It is because of the composition of our body that the animals and
plants around us are capable of ministering to our support, that the common air
is to us the very breath of life, and that herbs and minerals in abundance have
either poisoning properties or healing virtue. (Duke of Argyll’s “Unity
of Nature.”)
The breath of life
Respiration
Breathing, according to the physiologists, is a genuine burning,
and consumes organic substance in us, as fire does in our stoves. It takes the
same oxygen from the air, combines it with the same elements, with the same
evolution of heat, and gives off the same products in our breath as in smoke.
Respiration is a real fire. Still, may we not find under this destructive
process some beneficent spiritual law? We ought to, for it is also a most vital
process. “Breath of life,” the Bible calls it, in a phrase I take for text; and
life seems more closely connected with breath than with anything else,
beginning on earth with it, ever depending on it, ever advancing with its
increase. So the lesson of respiration seems to be that destruction does not
destroy, that consuming does not kill, that even burning brings life. This is
the lesson I wish to illustrate. But respiration is not limited to animals. It
begins in a much lower and rises into a much higher field.
I. We notice it
in the VEGETABLE world. For even plants, besides that taking of food for
growth, take true breath to burn out their growth. We are wont to speak of
Moses’ burning bush as a miracle unique in nature. But botanists say that every
bush on earth is burning. Through its every living cell that fiery oxygen works
all summer. In autumn, too, the colours come from oxidation of the chlorophyll,
so that Whittier put good science in his poem when he called “yon maple wood
the burning bush.” And in certain processes the breath and fire become active
enough to show their heat. Such is the ease in sprouting seeds. Such is the
ease in flowers. In the sight of chemistry, flowers are all fires; and one
great genus is well named phlox--flame. There was fact enough in Hafiz’s fancy
that roses were the flames of a burning bush; and botany adds that every
blooming plant is another, whether blazing in the cardinal flower or only
smoking in the gray grass blossoms. And, just as in that bush of old story, this
burning does not harm. Rather, it is so helpful that the plant dies without it
as surely as a man without air, and quickly, too. And not only does it not
consume the life, but with still greater miracle creates new. Out of that
burning seed it brings a new plant. It brings new energies, too. In each cell
the fire creates force, just as in the boiler of a boat; and, as a result, the
celiac of some algae lash the water like oars, the diatom moves across the
field of the microscope like a propeller across the lake, and the beautiful
volvox goes rolling through the water like the wheel of a steamer. And out of
that warmer fire in the flower how many new creations come! One is beauty. The
leaves are refined to softer petals and grow radiant with gold and purple, and
proclaim to us that spiritual law that the highest beauty is reached only
through the burning out of our substance. The same process brings sweetness,
too--oxidizes starch to sugar, and loads the flower with honey and perfume. It
even brings something like love; and the corolla becomes a real marriage bower,
and stamen and pistil join in the genuine wedding, and give themselves for each
other and their offspring. And so the flower is consumed only to rise again
from its ashes, and extend its life to distant lands and ages.
II. But we see
this law clearer in its revelation in the ANIMAL world. Here breath is more
active, and grows evermore so through the rising animal scale. And this deeper
breathing always means faster burning. Analysis shows, for instance, that the
breath of an average healthy man consumes carbon at the rate of one hundred and
seventy pounds a year--literally burns up within him every month the substance
of over a bushel of charcoal. With this increasing fire comes increasing warmth.
And here, too, the fire does not consume. It does, indeed, waste our substance,
so that the animal, unlike the tree, soon gets his growth. Some poor-lunged
creatures are said to lengthen as long as they live, like an elm; but better
breathers burn up their accumulations, and men and birds keep but little body.
Nor do they keep even that; but it is continually consumed--several times
during our lives, the doctor says: muscles, nerves, lungs, heart, brain, bones,
and all. But this consumption is always restored, and does not harm us in the
least. Rather, it is just the thing that keeps us alive. If we were not thus
perpetually destroyed we should get sick, and die; and the only way we can keep
alive and well is by being annihilated every few years. And the curious thing
to notice is that this destructive process is just the one which cannot be
suspended at all. Other functions may be stopped for a season, even the
nutritive ones. The really important thing is burning up. When the fire goes
out, we die; but so long as it is consuming us we thrive. Such is the paradox
and first principle of this mysterious thing called life. Burning saves and
increases it. Increases all its energies, too. The faster this breath burns,
the greater the activity. Such a breath of life is this fire in the animal
world.
III. But this
breath rises to a third stage in HUMAN ARTS. For man breathes more largely than
with lungs; and, learning how to burn that carbon anywhere, he adds to nature’s
slow fire within him a much faster one without. So he heats his hut and home;
and, instead of having to migrate like an animal, he brings Florida to his own
fireside, and makes the tropics anywhere to order. And, learning how to make
this artificial breathing faster and fire fiercer, he gains new forces that far
outdo those of animals. Instead of crawling through the country, like that
quadruped, he makes this fire carry him and all his family and furniture
further and faster. Instead of flying fifty miles for his breakfast, like a
bird, he sits still like a lord and orders it, beefsteak from Texas, rolls from
Dakota, an orange from Italy, and coffee from Asia. And, by this breath under a
boiler, he gets them brought so easily that Mr. Atkinson says a good mechanic
in Massachusetts can get his whole year’s meat and flour fetched from beyond
the Mississippi for one day’s work; and Sir Lyon Playfair said this summer that
a ton of freight can be carried on land a mile by two ounces of carbon, and on
water two miles by a little cube of coal that would pass through a ring the
size of a shilling. Nor does man stop with moving nature’s products, but works
better by this same principle. In his manufactures and his varied arts, he
learns to consume not merely a little in the form of food, like an animal, but
enormously in other forms--not only acorns, but oaks; not only fruits, but
whole forests; not only a few acres, but long ages of them condensed in coal;
and not only coal and other organic products, but ores and rocks and the
original elements themselves. Human art becomes a boundless burning, destroying
about everything on earth. Yet this burning, too, only helps. It turns the
forests into force, and the whole carboniferous era into energy--turns ores and
everything into something better. It consumes only to create. Indeed, strictly
speaking, it does not consume at all. Not an atom of carbon or anything else
has ever been destroyed. Burning only sets it free from old forms to enter into
life again: and nature is always waiting to start it into life, and is all the
summer turning our smoke and ashes back into new trees and corn.
IV. But above
these material fields we trace the same principle through a fourth phase, in
SPIRITUAL LIFE. Thought is a breathing, ever inhaling fresh truth, which
consumes old ideas in society, just as oxygen does old cells in the body.
Indeed, those arts we have just noticed have all come from this mental
breathing. How many established opinions had to be consumed to bring that ease
of travel! Once, even science argued that no steamer could ever cross the
Atlantic; and there was a time when everybody knew that steam could not carry
anything on land, either. The first modern who suggested such a thing is said
to have been shut up in the Bicetre for it as a lunatic. Afterward, the Englishman
who first advocated passenger railways was called by the Quarterly Review, “beneath
our contempt,” while the wise old Edinburgh Review said, “Put him in a
straitjacket.” So many and so firmly established ideas have been consumed this
century in this mere matter of travel. And this is only an illustration of the
consumption of old theories that has been going on through the arts and
sciences and philosophies and all fields. Yet here, too, it has consumed only
to create, and been in still higher degree the “breath of life.” It has aided
all those arts and sciences. It has advanced society, too--just as breathing
has advanced the animal kingdom--and has brought to mankind a progress about as
great as from mollusks to mammals. It has burned out social wrongs only to
bring rights. What an advance history shows, from savages eating each other to
modern society feeding its hungry and founding hospitals and charities of a
hundred kinds! What an advance in morality, even since the praised days of our
pious ancestors last century, when Parton says the best Christian in New
England saw nothing wrong in buying negroes for rum and selling them for West
India molasses to make rum to buy more! What a moral progress from even the
boasted Bible days--when David could slay a man to steal his wife, and still be
revered asmost sacred Psalmist; and Solomon, with a whole regiment of wives,
could be sainted for wisdom and thought worthy to make the longest prayer in
the Bible--today, when such saints would be thought hardly so fit for writing
sacred poetry as for working in the penitentiary! For religion, too, has felt
the effects of this spiritual breathing, and been advancing by it. Here, too,
ancient ideas have been burning out to bring better; and Samuel’s Jehovah,
ordering innocent men to be slain like mice, gave way to Isaiah’s God of
justice and Jesus’ of love. Here, too, the burning has been a very “breath of
life”; and religion ought to have learned ere this to breathe fearlessly, and
let its old forms be consumed as fast as they will. All that is really alive
and worth living, in our beliefs and bodies alike, will not be harmed. Only the
effete and hurtful will be burned out, and will bring new warmth and life in
the process, and be replaced by better. Let religion, then, breathe away, and
continue to enlarge its lungs and elevate its life. But breath brings its best
lessons to private life. It rebukes our greed, and bids us burn out our gains
generously. Gain is good, but must be followed by giving, as eating by breathing,
if we would rise above vegetables. Indeed, our gains have to be given away, to
get the good of them. Miserliness is very near to misery, as even etymology
teaches. The wise preacher advocated foreign missionary contributions, since,
he said, if they were of no help to the heathen, they greatly helped the
Christian contributors at home; and giving does enrich the giver, whether it
does anyone else or not. Beneficence is the bank that pays the best interest on
deposits, and pays back in better coin than was put in; and our proverbs have
well declared that the best way to keep what we get is by giving it away to
some good cause. But this truth of external possessions is still truer of
ourselves. They, too, must be given away in order to be kept, or even to be found
at first. “The life of life is when for another we’re living,” says a poet; and
another tells of one to whom love was the first waking,--“The past was a sleep,
and her life began.” Love, whether of a person or a cause, is indeed the
highest form of the breath of life. It consumes as nothing else can, wastes
with self-sacrifice and sorrows, yet only to lift to larger life, to bless with
new powers and higher happiness. Selfishness is as fatal to the soul as holding
the breath to the body; and burning ourselves out in sacrifice for something is
the only way to keep the heart warm and the soul alive. (H. M. Simmons.)
The human spirit
Upon the bodily side man stands among the animals as the noblest
of them; but he has another side by which he holds communion with God and
invisible things. He has a spirit as well as a body--a spirit not like that
“spirit of the beast which goeth downward to the earth,” having but an
attraction to the things of sense, and that an unreflecting attraction; the
spirit of the sons of man is one “which is ascending” (Ecclesiastes 3:21). The spirit is in us
the element of self-consciousness and freedom. By it we see our true relation
to the things of sense, and are able to claim affinities above them. It is a
gift from God Ecclesiastes 12:7), and unless it be
unfairly tampered with, it must by its very constitution “ascend,” and aspire
after God and what is Godlike. In it is the seat of the higher, the only true,
free will, as opposed to the random animal impulses of the flesh. There lies
the power of conscience, by which we are able to judge our own actions,
comparing them with what we see to be the right standard, and condemning
ourselves when we have allowed the true will to be mastered by the inferior
appetite. Such a spirit is not, and cannot be (so far as we can understand), a
product of natural evolution, but comes direct from the hand of God. Man is
thus a dual being, living at one in two worlds, not two separate lives, but one
life in the two. The spirit lives in the body, and acts through it and makes it
its vehicle. The meeting point of spirit and body appears to lie in the soul. (Canon
Mason.)
Life--its nature, discipline, and results
There are two ways in which we are accustomed to estimate the
relative importance of events--one by considering what they are in themselves;
and the other by considering what they are in their consequences. Viewed in
either of these aspects, the event referred to in the text is by far the most
important that ever occurred in our world. The creation of the heavens and the
earth, with all their various appendages, is not to be compared with it. In the
one case only matter was created and arranged under fixed laws; in the other
mind was created, intelligent, immortal mind, made in the image of God, in
dignity a little lower than the angels, commencing its fight for eternity. And
then the consequences of that event, how surpassing all finite comprehension!
From that moment commenced the history of the human race; from that moment
began to flow the great stream of human life, which, now for six thousand
years, has been deepening and surging onward, pouring itself into the ocean of
eternity. That living soul, into which God first breathed the breath of life,
is still alive; and so are all the countless myriads of souls which in
successive generations He has brought into being; all are still alive and will
live forever. What, then, is life, that mysterious principle which was
enkindled within us by the Creator when we began to be, and which makes us
living souls? This question, viewed in its physiological aspect, I shall not
attempt to answer, as I find the ablest writers on the subject are entirely
undecided in respect to it, or rather they are decided that we cannot know what
life is in itself, or in its essence. We know some of the conditions on which
it depends; some of the laws which govern it, and the phenomena which it
exhibits; but what the vital principle, what life is, we seem not to have the
means of knowing. There are various kinds of life which belong to different
orders of being, and which are characterized by distinct qualities. There is
vegetable life, and a portion of this belongs to the human being in common with
plants and trees. There is animal life, and this we have in common with birds
and beasts that live and move around us. And there is intellectual or spiritual
life, and this we are wont to regard as belonging exclusively to the soul, and
which makes us, in the sense of our text, living immortal souls. It is of life
in this last sense that I am now to speak; not of life as simple animal
existence, nor of life as a mere period of continuance on earth; but of life in
the soul, viewed as the source of consciousness, thought, desires, purposes,
and acts, all tending to develope and form character, and fit the subject for
blessedness or woe in the future world. In this view we can know what life is,
what are the means of its development, and how it may be so nurtured and
trained on earth that it shall conduct us to everlasting life in heaven. I
remark, then--
I. Life is
INTERMINABLE it has no end. The principle on which it depends, whatever it be,
is beyond the reach of man or angel, or any other being, but God who made us
living souls. The life of the body can be destroyed, for it depends on a
material organization; and this may be so deranged and disturbed in its
functions, that the life which depends upon it shall cease to be. But the life
of the soul is independent of matter. It is not the result of any material
mechanism, or of any nice adjustment of particles of matter, as of nerves and
other finer portions of the body. It has its seat in the inner spirit; in that
thinking, intelligent, conscious principle, which we call the soul, and which
the Bible assures us, as does sound philosophy, survives the dissolution of the
body and is to live forever. The vital spark is kindled; it must burn on forever.
Have you ever asked what and where you shall be ten thousand years hence?
II. Life is
DISCIPLINARY. By which I mean that in the present world we are subjected to
various influences, adapted and designed to exercise the vital principle within
us; to elicit and draw forth its powers, and thus form and fix its character
for a future state of being. All the ills we endure and the blessings we enjoy;
the sicknesses, disappointments, sorrows, that come upon us, together with the
various blessings and privileges of our condition--all are to be regarded as
disciplinary. They are the means appointed byProvidence to wake up and call
into action the living principle within us; to make us, as it were, conscious
of life and ever solicitous to be found in an attitude to be rightly affected
by all the various influences that act upon us. Now, this view of life as
disciplinary, is of the greatest practical importance. It changes the whole
aspect and bearing of things around us. It sheds light upon a thousand facts
and occurrences which would otherwise be entirely mysterious. It gives a new
and significant view of the dealings of Providence with us in this world, and
attaches a meaning and an importance to the events of every day, which they
would not otherwise possess.
III. Life is
PROBATIONARY. By this is meant, we are now living and acting with reference to
a future state of retribution. We are not only subjected to discipline and
training in this world, but results are to follow in the world to come. The
life that now is, is preparatory to a life in the state beyond the grave; and
the life we are to live hereafter is to receive its character and destiny from
the life we are now living on the earth. Every word and every act is a seed for
eternity, and daily, as our time on earth is hastening to its close, we are
laying up treasures of immortal joy in heaven, or preparing for ourselves a cup
of woe in the world of despair. I may add, in this connection, that life passed
by us in this state of discipline and probation, acquires of necessity a fixed
and permanent character. Neutrality is here impossible. As no one can destroy
the vital principle which the Creator has implanted in his bosom, so no one can
stop its feeling, thinking, acting.
IV. It might
perhaps seem commonplace and trite to say THAT LIFE, VIEWED AS A PERIOD OF
CONTINUANCE ON EARTH, IS ENCOMPASSED WITH INNUMERABLE ILLS, AND IS EXCEEDINGLY
UNSATISFYING, AS WELL AS VERY SHORT AND UNCERTAIN. Yet these are facts which
lose none of their importance by their triteness, and they demand to be
seriously considered by us, if we would form a just estimate of life, and train
it, in a right manner, for a future state of being. Why is it, that life, in
the present state, is so unsatisfying, so subject to changes, disappointments,
and trials: One great reason is to make us realize that this is not our home,
not the place of our rest, but of our discipline and training, the place of our
tarrying for a night as strangers, and then pass on to our future abode.
1. How infinitely we are indebted to our Lord Jesus Christ for
marking out to us the way, and furnishing us with the means whereby our life
may be rendered immortally blessed.
2. Our subject teaches us how we may make a long life even of a
short one. Life, in its proper sense, is not mere existence. A stone has
existence. It is not mere animation; for a tree has animation, and so has an
oyster and an ox. But neither has life understanding by life, the vital
principle of a living intelligent soul. Nor has such a soul life, any further
than its living energies are brought out in action, and its existence is filled
up with thought, and feeling, and with deeds and fruits of useful living. Life,
says Fuller, is to be measured by action, not by time; a man may die old at
thirty, and young at eighty; the one lives after death, the other perished
before he died.
3. Our subject is fitted to show us how serious and how important to
us are the daily events of life--the influences which act upon us in the
various circles in which we are called to move. These are the instrumental
means employed by Providence for our discipline and training; the development
of our life, the formation of our character, the fixing of our state in
eternity.
4. Life in respect to each of us is every day becoming more and more
serious and impressive in its responsibilities and prospects. It is so, because
its powers are being more fully developed, and its character more and more
permanently fixed. It is so, because the period of discipline and probation is
fast drawing to a close, and results are thrown forward to greet us on our
entering into eternity with welcomes of joy or signals of woe. It is so, in
fine, because every day we live bears us nearer and still nearer to that awful
point in our history, a point unknown to us, when the great work of preparation
for eternity will be ended, and we shall each one take our place among the
redeemed in glory, heirs of immortal life, or with the lost in despair,
children of wrath. With what serious concern, then, does it become every one of
us to review our past course in life and inquire, whither it has been
conducting us; for what state we have been preparing, during the time we have
spent on earth. (J. Haines, D. D.)
The wondrous constitution of man
I. THAT THE
CREATION OF MAN PRESENTS US WITH THE MOST COMPLEX AND MYSTERIOUS NATURE IN THE
UNIVERSE OF GOD. Man is a link between the material and the spiritual--the
visible and the invisible--the temporal and the eternal. His is a compound
nature. And to obtain a sufficiently enlarged view of that nature, we must
reduce it to its primary elements. The creation of matter we resolve into the
will and power of God. That which was created could not be eternal. It is a
result--an effect. On the mode of this creation we touch not. How “things which
are seen were not made of things which do appear”--in other words, how
something was produced out of nothing, we can never hope to comprehend. But
matter once brought into existence, almost equally marvellous is its
organization into distinct living forms. Man was formed of the dust of the
ground. Through what process of refinement the different particles which
compose the human body passed previous to their combination and union we know
not. But this process perfected, each atom was so arranged and disposed, and
placed under such laws of affinity and mutual action, as to bring out that
great unity, to which we give the name of--body. Every part was contrived with
the most exquisite skill, and wrought into the most curious texture. Nothing can
be conceived which would surpass the workmanship and elegance of this fabric.
It sets forth preeminently the Divine art--the art of God in fitting up a
structure including within itself so many miracles. Of the nature of the soul
we are wholly ignorant. What was the emanation which came forth from the
creating Spirit, and which raised man from a mere material and sensitive
existence into a spiritual, intelligent, and immortal being, it is vain to
conjecture. We can speak only of the properties of mind. It is not material;
but something added to matter, and so essentially spiritual as to be distinct
from matter and separable. It is also essentially vital. The body lives, and so
long as the soul inhabits it, it will continue to live. But it does not so live
that it must always live, which is the case with mind; and of which we cannot
conceive but as of a vital, living thing. It has begun to exist, and it cannot
cease to exist. Yet it is not enough that man should become a living soul, and
that his life should run out into immortality. To subserve the great end of his
creation he must have intelligence. With the breath of life came the power of
thought. Nor is this all. A being endowed with mind, and to whose thoughts
there is no limit--who by a single effort can grasp the past, the present, and
the future--the whole universe--and if there be any limit to the universe, more
than the universe itself--could not be left without the freedom of choice. To
thought we must add volition. This freedom of will rendered him capable at once
of duty and of happiness. Without liberty to choose his course of action, he
would have been laid under no obligation; while the filling up of imposed
obligation was followed by corresponding joy and felicity. The power to choose
involved the power to act. Having made his election, nothing interfered to
prevent him carrying his purposes into execution. He who gave him a
self-determining power, gave him at the same time dominion over every inward
operation and every outward action. This vital, thinking, self-active, and
self-controlling spirit, admits of no decay. Whatever may be the changes
incident to matter, mind remains the same. The only method by which this vital
spirit could be reduced would be by an act of annihilation. Annihilation! It
enters not into the government of God. We believe in the immortality of the
soul. This is but the dawn of its existence. It will survive death, and hold on
its course when that of nature is ended. There is another and perhaps the most
striking peculiarity to notice in the creation of man. We refer to the
mysterious union of this living soul with the corporeal frame, so close and
intimate, that these two thus united are absolutely necessary to make up the
one compound being--Man. Neither would of itself be sufficient. The body might
be perfect in every part and property, but without the vital spirit it would be
an inert mass, or at the best a mere animal nature. The soul might be endowed
with every possible attribute and excellence, but denied “an earthly house” in
which to reside, it would rise to the rank and order of angelic existence. And
yet close as is the union between these two there is no confounding of their
nature. The body does not so absorb the spirit as by incorporation to make it
part of itself. Nor is the soul so linked to the body that it cannot exist and
act separately from it. Mysterious is the bond of union; but the two natures
are perfectly distinct.
II. THAT THE
NATURE WITH WHICH MAN WAS CREATED IS SUSCEPTIBLE OF THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE RELATIONS,
ACTIVITY, AND ENJOYMENT. This nature touches on the extremes of the
universe--matter and mind. We cannot go lower; and higher we cannot ascend. On
the one hand, we are allied to the dust of the ground; on the other, we are
united to the one uncreated and eternal Spirit When God breathed into man the
breath of life, and man became a living soul, He designed that this soul should
be held in contact with universal spirit. Its properties and powers eminently
qualify it for such association and union. And with spiritual existences it is
forever to live and act. Let us rise into those regions of light where are
countless thousands of the redeemed. In what close affinity are they with the
firstborn sons of God. They occupy no lower ground. They exhibit no inferior
nature. Angels in all their ascending orders acknowledge them as their
compeers--their equals. To them even the seraphim give place before the
throne.God takes them nearer to Himself. In His presence they dwell. Of His
glory they partake. With Him they commune. This perfects our idea of the soul’s
relation; and proclaims the original design of the Eternal in the creation of
man. In making him a living soul, He raised him to the highest possible
relation in the universe. In taking him into closer union with Himself, He gave
him the preeminence over every other species of created existence. This
relation involves corresponding service. Where there is life there is motion.
If the soul be essentially vital, it must be essentially active, and this activity
will be in the degree of the life. In assigning to man this high relation, and
endowing him with this unending activity, it is without controversy that the
Creator had in view the most benevolent design. Endowed with the faculty of
thought, here was a field over which he might travel with ever-rising interest,
and enlarged discovery. But man was alone. There was no one to share his
thoughts or partake his joys. The mighty God at once let Himself down to the
necessities of His creature. In the cool of each day He appeared in the garden
and communed with our first father. The thoughts and lessons which man had
gathered from contemplation, he was taught and encouraged to express to his
Creator, while his heart throbbed high with gratitude and love. Pure in the
last recesses of his mind, and filled with the sublimest conceptions of his
Maker and his God, his was no vulgar enjoyment. In the nearest attitude to the
great Spirit of life, he was invited to the most intimate and familiar
communion. It was no deputed representative of the Godhead with whom he enjoyed
fellowship. He walked with God. His desires ran out infinitely beyond all that
is created and finite. Unlimited in extent, and existing with the existence of
mind itself, they must terminate on infinite fulness.
III. THAT THE LAW
UNDER WHICH MAN WAS ORIGINALLY PLACED WAS ONE OF INFINITE RIGHTEOUSNESS AND
GOODNESS. A state of trial is one of the conditions of all created existence.
Give to the creature whatever freedom we may--let him be ever so conscious of
his own subjective independence as a free agent--it was not possible that he
should be ignorant of the fact that there is one Supreme Will, to which every
other will must be subordinate. The moment that he lost sight of this
primordial truth, he was in danger of entrenching on the Divine prerogative,
and of losing both his life and his happiness. While due regard was had to the
freedom of his will, yet everything within him and around him was calling up
the fact of his dependence. This dependence was the condition of his being; but
the law to which he was called to conform involved nothing above his capacity
or power of fulfilling. It made probation easy. He might have stood, and thus
maintained his original rectitude. Continual integrity was not more impossible
than moral failure. As the subject of inward righteousness, he was simply
called to conform to the law of his being. (R. Ferguson, LL. D.)
Man became a living soul
Man’s higher nature
I. THEN MAN IS
SOMETHING MORE THAN PHYSICAL ORGANIZATION. Man is not merely dust, nor merely
body; he is also a living soul. His bodily organization is not the seat of
thought, emotion, volition, and immortality; these are evoked by the
inspiration of the Almighty. From this text we learn that the soul of man was not
generated with, but that it was subsequently inbreathed by God into his body.
We cannot admit the teaching of some, that the soul of man is a part of God;
this is little better than blasphemy. It is only a Divine gift. The gift is
priceless. It is responsible.
II. THEN MAN
SHOULD CULTIVATE A MORAL CHARACTER, PURSUE EMPLOYMENTS, AND ANTICIPATE A
DESTINY COMMENSURATE WITH THIS DIVINE INSPIRATION. Men gifted with immortal
souls should endeavour to bring them into harmony with their Author and Giver,
to make them pure as He is pure, and benevolent as He is benevolent; they
should never be degraded by sin. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Life in man
Rowland Hill once conversed with a celebrated sculptor, who had
been hewing out a block of marble to represent that great patriot, Lord
Chatham. “There,” said the sculptor, “is not that a fine form?” “Now, sir,”
said Mr. Hill, “can you put life into it? else, with all its beauty, it is
still but a block of marble.” God put life into His creation, and man became a
living soul. Christ puts new life into dead men. (Bishop Harvey Goodwin.)
The soul and its capacities
I. First, among
the properties of the soul, consider ITS CAPACITY OF ENJOYMENT AND ITS CAPACITY
OF SUFFERING. I could appeal on this point to the experience of everyone who
has lived but a few years in this fallen world: few have done so who cannot
bear inward witness of what the soul is capable of suffering. How acute is the
sense of disappointed hope; how sad the anticipation of expected evil: how
bitter the feeling of desire, long indulged, and still deferred, making the
heart sick: how intense are the pangs of sorrow; how intolerable the agony of
remorse! I will only remind you that God, who in His justice remembers mercy,
seldom dispenses in this world unmixed suffering. To the wicked, even, there is
commonly some hope of relief, which mitigates the sense of suffering; to the
righteous there is always an alleviation. Think, then, what must be the weight
of unmitigated suffering, aggravated by the assurance that it must endure
forever. In proportion to the capacity of suffering in the soul is also its
capacity of enjoyment. We have some knowledge of this likewise. We can conceive
the joy by which the heart of Jacob was elated when his sons “told him all the
words of Joseph, which he had said unto them: and when he saw the waggons.” We
can conceive the feelings of David when he found himself seated upon the throne
of Israel, and the promise made unto his children after him, and the natural
satisfaction arising from greatness and prosperity was enhanced by the
spiritual gratification of the consciousness of Divine favour. How intense
again must have been the delight of the aged Simeon when the sight which he had
been so long expecting was granted to him, and it was revealed to him that the
child which his parents were now presenting in the temple was indeed the
promised Saviour. But as in this preparatory world, sorrow comes attended with
mitigation, so there is always some drawback to our joy. Even it the joy itself
were perfect, there is fear it would be short-lived; and He that gave may see
fit to take away. There will be no such diminution of the eternal enjoyment
prepared for the righteous in His heavenly kingdom: nothing to disturb the
happiness of those who have washed their robes, and made them white in the
blood of the Lamb.
II. Consider
another capacity of the soul--ITS CAPACITY OF GOODNESS AND OF WICKEDNESS. I
speak, you will observe, not of any goodness which it naturally has, but of
that of which it is capable. The natural imagination of man’s heart is evil,
and that continually, since he fell from the innocency in which he was created.
The soul, however, which was created in the image of God, and which has lost
that likeness, is capable of having that image restored. It is capable of much
which our reason tells us is good in itself, and which Scripture tells us is
pleasing in the sight of God. How beautiful is the conduct of Abraham, as
recorded in Genesis 13:1-18, when the land in which
they were dwelling grew too strait for himself and his nephew Lot, and it
became needful that they should separate. How admirable is the affection of
Moses towards the Israelites, and the disinterestedness with which he entreats
God to spare them. Look at the piety of Daniel, who, though he knew the writing
was issued which should condemn him before an earthly tribunal, yet, “his
window being opened in his chamber before Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three
times a day, and he prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did
aforetime.” Once more, admire the spirit of the martyr Stephen, who returned
blessing for cursing, and kneeled down and cried with a loud voice, “Lord, lay
not this sin to their charge.” The soul, then, is capable of goodness; the
fruits of the Spirit may grow upon it, which are love, joy, peace, long
suffering, gentleness, goodness. There is less need of proving that it is
capable of wickedness; for “from within, out of the heart, proceed evil
thoughts, adultery, murder, fornication, theft, false witness, blasphemy; and
these defile the soul”; they have defiled it ever since the time that Adam
transgressed the command of God, and brought sin into the world. What envy,
hatred, and malice were in the heart of Cain, when he rose up against his
brother Abel and slew him; or of Esau, who “hated Jacob, because of the
blessing wherewith his father had blessed him”: “And Esau said in his heart,
The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother
Jacob.” Look at the history of Pharaoh, one while entreating and repenting, and
promising obedience, and then repenting of his repentance, and defying the
power of God. Or take the case of Judas, daily hearing the word of righteousness--words
such as never man spake, doctrines at which the people were astonished--yet not
subdued, not converted, cherishing a secret sin, indulging covetousness, and
appropriating to his own use what was designed for the poor.
III. Let me now
proceed to remind you, in the third place, THAT BETWEEN THIS WICKEDNESS AND
MISERY, AS ALSO BETWEEN GOODNESS AND HAPPINESS, GOD HAS APPOINTED AN
INSEPARABLE CONNECTION. “The righteous shall go into life eternal; into that
world where is fulness of joy, and pleasures for evermore”; and where “there
shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any
more pain; for the former things are passed away; but the unbelieving, and the
abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and
all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and
brimstone, which is the second death.” We do not stop to enter into the
question of what is meant by this “second death”: whether it speaks of actual
material fire, or whether the fire be figurative, it expresses the greatest
imaginable misery. But this we know, that the unrestrained wickedness of the
unrenewed heart leads on to misery in the Way of natural consequence: it needs
not the idea of material fire to form an addition to bodily anguish. The souls
of the wicked, as well as of the good, are immortal; separated, indeed, into
their respective folds, as a shepherd separates his sheep from the goats, but
still continuing immortal. (Bishop Sumner.)
The soul of man
I. THE WORTH AND
EXCELLENCE OF THE SOUL. Taught by--
1. Our own experience. It combines, compares, and reasons on all
subjects (Psalms 104:1-35 and Job 38:1-41).
2. By observation.
3. By Scripture.
II. THE WISDOM OF
CARING FOR ITS SALVATION. (Alexander Shanks.)
Man's Soul
1. Its nature and property.
“Nephesh,” to breathe or respire. Not that the breath is the soul, but it
denotes the manner of its infusion, and the means of its continuation. It is
spiritual in essence. The Chaldee renders it a sparkling soul, Speech only
belongs to man.
2. Its descent and original. It is not a result from matter, but
from the inspiration of God (John 3:6). Man’s spirit comes from the
Father of spirits.
3. Its manner of infusion into the body. By the same breath which
gave it. Augustine says, “It is created in the infusion, and it is infused in
the creation.”
4. The bond that unites the soul with the body. The breath of his
nostrils. It is a mystery to see heaven and earth united in one person; dust
and immortal spirit clasping each other with tender love. What a noble guest to
take up residence within mean walls of flesh and blood! That union comes in
with the breath of the nostrils, and so soon as that breath departs, it departs
also. All the rich elixirs and condiments in the world will not avail to make
it stay one minute longer after the breath departs. One puff of breath will
carry away the wisest, holiest, and best soul that ever inhabited a human body
(Psalms 104:19; Job 17:1). (John Flavel.)
On the origin, nature, and dignity of man
It is said that above the door of the celebrated temple of Apollo
at Delphi there was a Greek inscription, the whole of which consisted in a
simple monosyllable of two letters signifying THOU ART, which is not only a
proper, but a peculiar title of God, because He alone is being, the
ever-existing One, and is derived from the Hebrew name Jehovah; but it had
nothing to do with the heathen god, for I am persuaded that the evil one was
there worshipped under the name of Apollo. His ambition was to be like the Most
High, and therefore he assumed God’s name; but he was a murderer from the
beginning, and also a thief and a robber. It is also said, that on the same
temple this often repeated admonition was written, “Know thyself,” which, being
connected with the preceding, reminded man of his frail and mortal nature. But
without Divine revelation man could never have been in possession of these
Divine truths. Hence we learn the wonderful condescension of God. After the
Lord for His own pleasure called man into existence, He revealed Himself to
him.
I. Concerning THE
ORIGIN OF MAN, various and absurd opinions have been put forth by men, who
presume to be wiser than the inspired writers. Some have asserted, but devoid
of all reason, that men have existed from eternity, or existed by an infinite
succession of beings; and others have as absurdly asserted, that the first man
and woman, or several pairs, sprang into being from some spontaneous action of
the earth, or chance combination of the natural elements, independent of any
adequate power or designing cause. But this is opposed to the clearest
deductions of reason, and involves impossibilities. Now, although men generally
admit the absurdity of the notion that man has existed from eternity, and that
he came into being by the spontaneous action of the earth or elements,
independent of a designing cause, yet many assert that God in the beginning
created a plurality of pairs, from whence arises the great difference in
complexion and form which distinguishes the several races of mankind. This idea
seems very plausible; but those who are most competent to pronounce an opinion
on comparative anatomy have declared that the whole race of mankind has sprung
from one original pair--one man and one woman, and on physiological grounds
agree with the Mosaic account.
II. HIS NATURE,
AND THE REASON OF HIS NAME. Formed of dust; therefore suitably called Adam or
earth.
III. We shall now
consider THE DIGNITY, MORAL EXCELLENCE, AND IMMORTALITY OF MAN, as be came out
of the hands of God.
1. In the creation of matter, and bringing it into a harmony of
spheres, the fiat of the Almighty was sufficient. He merely said, “Let there be
light,” and light was, as a necessary consequence; but in the creation of man
it was otherwise. The Holy Ones reasoned together, which indicates the dignity
and moral excellence of the being about to be called into existence. That Divine
consultation was significant of the God-like nature of man.
2. But one of the chief features in man, as he came out of his
Creator’s hand (if anything can be chief where all is perfect), was, that he
derived immediately from God the breath of life; for God “breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life,” and he became a living, or, as some of the Hebrew
paraphrasts have it, a rational, soul. His spirit partook of the immortality of
its Divine author, and was destined to live forever; and therefore the tree of
life was placed in the midst of the garden, the virtue of which was such, that
if he partook thereof, he would live forever. (A. Jones.)
The life of living soul
1. We are, as to the outward
man, mere dust of the ground. Is not this plain enough from experience? Does
not the food that maintains our bodies come directly from plants, or indirectly
from them, through the beasts that feed upon them? And do not those plants draw
all their support from the ground?
2. We have in this living body passions and affections common with
the brute creation. And too many act as if they had nothing more, as if they
had only to exercise their brutal appetites, eat and drink, and tyrannize over
the poor brute creation, as its merciless kings, and then like them to die. How
many have passed through this world from the womb to the grave, with no higher
exercise of their faculties, and with a much more brutal one of their
appetites, than a dog or an elephant?
3. But we are living souls. God has given unto us reason and not
instinct, free agency and not mere necessity. We are rational, and therefore
accountable beings. We are servants of a heavenly Master, sons of a heavenly
Father, to whom we have to render faithful service and affectionate obedience.
We have a reckoning to render of the manner in which we have employed our
bodies, our appetites, our faculties. (R. W.Evans, B. D.)
Excellency of She soul of man
When God Almighty bad in six days made that common dial of the
world, the light; that storehouse of His justice and His mercy, the firmament;
that ferry of the world, the sea; man’s work house, the earth; chariots of
light, the sun and moon; the airy choristers, the fowls; and man’s servants,
the beasts; yet had He one more excellent piece to be made, and that was man, a
microcosm, even an abstract of the whole, to whom, having fashioned a body,
proceeding by degrees of perfection, He lastly created a soul. And as the
family of Matri was singled out of the tribe of Benjamin, and Saul out of the
family of Matri, being higher than the rest by the shoulders upwards, so is the
soul singled out from the other creatures, far surpassing them all in
excellency, whether we consider the efficient cause of its creation, Elohim,
the blessed Trinity, being then in consultation; or the material cause, a quinta
essentia, noble and Divine substance, more excellent than the heavens; or
the cause formal, made after the image of God Himself; or, lastly, the cause
final, that it might be the temple of God and the habitation of His blessed Spirit.
(J. Spencer.)
A living soul in man
About forty-five years ago a funeral was passing through the
streets of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It was the burial procession of John Hall
Mason, the son of the eminent Dr. Mason, President of Dickinson College, one of
the most powerful and eloquent preachers in America. The son was distinguished
for his piety and talents, and his death had cast a gloom over many hearts.
Many gathered to the funeral, from far and near, and especially young men.
After the services at the house had been performed, and the pallbearers had
taken up the bier, a great concourse obstructed the entrance, and great
confusion and noise ensued. The bereaved doctor, observing the difficulty, and
following closely the pall bearers, exclaimed in solemn sepulchral tones:
“Tread lightly, young men! tread lightly! You bear the temple of the Holy
Ghost.” These sentiments, as though indited by the Holy Spirit, acted like an
electric shock; the crowd fell back and made the passage way clear. Through the
influence of these words a most powerful revival of religion sprung up, and
swept through the college, and extended over the town.
Men to set a high value upon their souls
When Praxiteles, a cunning painter, had promised unto Phryne one
of the choicest pieces in his shop, she, not knowing which was the best, began
to think upon some plot whereby to make him to discover his judgment which of
them was the piece indeed, and suborned one of his servants to tell his master
(being then in the market, selling his pictures) that his house was on fire and
a great part of it burnt down to the ground. Praxiteles, hearing this,
presently demanded of his servant if the “Satyr and Cupid” were safe, whereby
Phryne, standing by, discovered which was the best picture in the shop. And
shall a silly painter set so high an esteem upon a poor, base picture, the
slubbered (imperfect) work of his own hands, and shall not we much more value
the soul, that is of an immortal being, the most precious piece that ever God
made, the perfect pattern and image of Himself. Let riches, honour, and all go,
if nothing but this escape the fire, it is sufficient. (J. Spencer.)
Man has a soul
Some time ago the Rev. James Armstrong preached at Harmony, near
the Wabash, when a doctor of that place, a professed Deist, called on his
associates to accompany him while he attacked the Methodists, as he said. At
first he asked Mr. Armstrong if he followed preaching to save souls. He
answered in the affirmative. He then asked Mr. Armstrong if he ever saw a soul.
“No.” If he ever heard a soul. “No.” If he ever tasted a soul, “No.” If he ever
smelled a soul. “No.” If he ever felt a soul. “Yes, thank God!” said Mr.
Armstrong. “Well,” said the doctor, “there are four of the five senses against
one that there is a soul.” Mr. Armstrong then asked the gentleman if he was a
doctor of medicine; and he also answered in the affirmative° He then asked the
doctor if he ever saw a pain. “No.” If he ever heard a pain. “No.” If he ever
tasted a pain. “No.” If he ever smelled a pain. “No.” If he ever felt a pain.
“Yes.” Mr. Armstrong then said, “There are also four senses against one to
evidence that there is a pain; yet, sir, you know that there is a pain, and I
know there is a soul.” The doctor appeared confounded, and walked off. (Whitecross.)
Verses 8-14
The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden
The garden of Eden
I.
IN
THIS GARDEN PROVISION WAS MADE FOR THE HAPPINESS OF MAN.
1. The garden was beautiful.
2. The garden was fruitful.
3. The garden was well watered.
II. IN THIS GARDEN
PROVISION WAS MADE FOR THE DAILY OCCUPATION OF MAN.
1. Work is the law of man’s being.
2. Work is the benediction of man’s being. Work makes men happy.
Indolence is misery. Work is the truest blessing we have. It occupies our time.
It keeps from mischief. It supplies our temporal wants. It enriches society. It
wins the approval of God.
III. IN THIS GARDEN
PROVISION WAS MADE FOR THE SPIRITUAL OBEDIENCE OF MAN.
1. God gave man a command to obey.
2. God annexed a penalty in the ease of disobedience.
The two paradises
I. Compare the
PLACES. The second is superior to the first.
1. In respect to its elements. What was dust in the first paradise
was gold in the second.
2. Of its extent. The first paradise was the corner of a small
planet; the second is a universe of glory in which nations dwell, and whose
limits angels know not.
3. Of its beauty.
II. Compare the
INHABITANTS of the two paradises. The inhabitants of the second are superior to
those of the first.
1. In physical nature.
2. In employment. The employment of heaven will relate to beings
rather than to things. The sphere of activity will be more amongst souls than
flowers. Will call into exercise loftier faculties; will tend more to the glory
of God.
3. In rank.
4. In freedom.
5. In security. Adam was liable to temptation and evil. In the
second paradise is immunity from peril. 6, In vision of God. In the first
paradise God walked amid the trees of the garden. Adam realizes the
overshadowing Presence. The inhabitants of the second paradise shall enjoy that
Presence more perfectly.
Man’s life in Eden
I. Our first
parents are discovered in a state of innocence, beauty, and blessedness, which
is broken up utterly by the transgression of the Divine command.
II. This narrative
presents to us the Father seeking the sinful child with blended righteousness
and tenderness, assuring him of help to bear the burden which righteousness had
imposed on transgression, and of redemption out of the spiritual death, which
was the fruit of sin.
III. God not only,
father like, made wise disposition for the correction of His child, but He east
in with His child’s lot of toil and suffering His own sympathy and hope; He
made Himself a partaker in man’s new experience of pain, and, that He might
destroy sin, linked the sufferer by a great promise to Himself. (J. B.
Brown, B. A.)
The garden of Eden
I. A SCENE OF
BEAUTY.
II. A SPHERE OF
WORK.
III. AN ABODE OF
INNOCENCE.
IV. A HOME OF
HAPPINESS.
V. A PLACE OF
PROBATION.
1. Man in his original condition was immortal.
2. Man’s immortality was suspended on his personal obedience.
3. Adam acted in the garden as a public person, or as the
representative of the race. (Anon.)
Adam in Eden
The text teaches several things concerning God.
I. HIS POWER.
1. Physical. The might involved in the creation and maintenance of
the universe. As much power displayed in preservation of universe as in its
creation.
2. Intellectual. The thought and intelligence involved in the works
of nature; the unity of design, harmony of motion, and proportion of parts
visible everywhere, from the majesty of revolving worlds to the structure and
polish of an insect’s wing, all attest the work and power of a boundless
intelligence.
II. HIS WISDOM.
1. We see God’s wisdom here in the order of events.
2. In providing so bountifully for the wants of man, both present
and future.
III. HIS GOODNESS.
1. In providing a home for man.
2. God’s goodness is also seen in the size of Adam’s home. “A
garden.” Why not something larger? God’s idea of human vocation is not
distribution, but concentration. Not farming a township, but tilling a garden.
No man can be a gardener, a doctor, a lawyer, a banker, and a preacher, and
succeed in either.
3. In putting him in possession of his new home. “There He put the
man.” I am pleased to find this statement, especially as Adam got into trouble
so soon afterwards. If the Lord had only pointed out the garden, and left Adam
to find it, he might have doubted, after the Fall, whether he had not gotten
into the wrong place, and whether such a calamity could have befallen him in a
God-selected residence. Learn, here, that however clearly we may be able to
trace the Divine hand in bringing us into any position or calling, we may there
yield to the tempter, and fall. That God can build no Eden this side the gates
of glory which man cannot curse and wither, by listening to the suggestions of
the devil.
4. In providing a wife for Adam. “Brought her unto him.” The
composition of the first divinely ordained home was husband and wife. (T.
Kelly.)
Genesis of Eden
I. THE
TOPOGRAPHICAL PROBLEM. All that we can determine at present is this: Eden lay
to the east of the venerable witness of creation’s panorama, somewhere in the
neighbourhood of the Tigris and the Euphrates. And history strikingly confirms
the chronicle of the hoary witness. Those confessedly competent to discuss such
questions agree that the cradle of mankind is to be looked for somewhere in the
country of the Euphrates. Civilization has generally, with comparatively
unimportant exceptions, moved from east to west. Who knows but that we, the
latest born of the nations, with the Continental railways and Pacific
steamships in our grasp, are God’s chosen instruments in carrying the glad
tidings ever and ever westward, till, having crossed China, we reach again the
cradle of humanity, and reinaugurate the lost paradise on the very spot where
our inspired Seer caught glimpse of the tree of life? The truth, however, is,
the exact site of Eden will probably never be discovered--at least, till the
day when the voice of Him who was wont to walk in the garden in the evening
breeze (Genesis 3:8) is again heard on earth.
II. And now let us
attend to some of THE LESSONS OF THE STORY.
1. And, first, the birth of industry. Jehovah God took the man He
had formed, and put him in the Garden of Eden, to till it, and to keep it.
(a) the soul’s sake;
(b) his own sake;
(c) God’s sake.
2. The birth of language.
3. The birth of immortality. “The tree of life.”
4. The birth of probation.
5. The Eden of the soul.
6. The heavenly Eden. (G. D. Boardman.)
Paradise held; or, man’s innocency
I. ADAM’S HOME. A
pleasant, fruitful garden. Beautiful flowers; green meadows; rivers and brooks;
woods and coppices.
II. ADAM’S WORK.
Two fold; to till and to keep the garden--work and watchfulness. Something to
call out vigilance as well as diligence.
III. ADAM’S WIFE.
Loving companionship and mutual help. How glad Adam must have been! LESSONS:
The teacher can point out how this picture of the first man and woman reminds
us of--
.
. (W. S.
Smith, B. D.)
Love of flowers a relic of life in Eden
Waking up to conscious existence in the midst of a garden, it
would seem as if man had not entirely forgotten the wonderful vision on which
his eyes then opened. At least, there is no passion more general than the
admiration of beautiful flowers. They kindle the rapture of infancy, and it is
touching to see how over the first kingcups or daisies its tiny hand closes
more eagerly than hereafter it will grasp silver coins or golden. The solitary
blossom lights a lamp of quiet gladness in the poor man’s chamber, and in the
palace of the prince, the marble of Canova and the canvas of Raffaelle are
dimmed by the lordly exotic with its calyx of flame or its petals of snow. With
these companions of our departed innocence we plait the bridal wreath, and,
scattered on the coffin, or planted on the grave, there seems a hope of
resurrection in their smile, a sympathy in their gentle decay. And whilst to
the dullest gaze they speak a lively oracle, in their empyrean bloom and
unearthly fragrance the pensive fancy recognizes some mysterious memory, and
asks,--
“Have
we been all at fault? Are we the sons
Of
pilgrim sires who left their lovelier land?
And
do we call inhospitable climes
By
names they brought from home?”
(Dr.
J. Hamilton.)
The chains of a river
A river has special charms for me--always arriving, always
departing; softening the landscape, and completing the circle of the firmament;
rich with manifold reflections, and eloquent with the sad yet soothing minor in
which all Nature speaks in her gentlest moods. I love to tarry by the
riverside, to look, to listen, to wonder, and to feel the pleasant unrest of
constant expectation. Standing by a river, one seems to be on the edge of
another world--life, motion, music--signs that tell of speed, gliding and
darting, that look as if activity had solved the mystery of industrious repose;
breaking bubbles that hint at something of incompleteness and disappointment;
occasional floodings and rushings that tell of power under control,--all are
seen in that flowing world. (J. Parker, D.D.)
Man’s life in Paradise
I. THE FIRST
INSTITUTION FOR PARADISE AND FOR MAN IN PARADISE, WAS A SABBATH DAY. Man, not
yet fallen, needed the Sabbath to keep him to God--and all too little, as the
event showed. Better to wait in Paradise with God and the Sabbath, than go to
find a lower happiness elsewhere.
II. GOD, WHO TOLD
MAN HOW TO SPEND THE SEVENTH DAY, TOLD HIM HOW TO SPEND THE OTHER SIX ALSO. One
of the happinesses of paradise was employment--not idleness. And God Himself
chose for Adam his occupation. He has clone so also for each of us. In the
garden where God puts you He will find you work; some flowers to rear and
cultivate; some human minds to which you may do good; some plantations of
Divine grace which you may dress and water, and so be fellow worker with Him
who gives the increase.
III. GOD PLACED MAN
UNDER A LAW IN PARADISE. For our own sake, for our own true happiness, God
would have us keep Him in our thoughts. The yielding up our own will to His has
greater sweetness to the taste than pleasing ourselves ever had.
IV. GOD, THE
AUTHOR OF ALL OUR HAPPINESS, IS THE IMMEDIATE FOUNDER OF DOMESTIC LIFE. Observe
what exceeding honour He has put on the institution of marriage, making it one
of the two original appointments which came immediately from Himself when He
made our race. CONCLUSION: All these fair features are types or emblems of
heavenly things. The Sabbath is a type of the heavenly rest; the employments,
of the employments of heaven, and its peaceful industry; the law, of the law
which the angels keep, happy in that their every thought and act is according
to the motions of God’s good Spirit: and the marriage tie, of the spiritual
union betwixt Christ and His Church. The picture of Paradise shall be
reproduced in perfectness--in heaven. It should be seen, even here and now, in
Christian families. (C. P. Eden, M. A.)
Man’s residence
1. The Lord of it, God
Himself, who planted it with His own hand.
2. The nature or kind of it; it was a garden.
3. The situation of it; it lay eastward.
4. The furniture or store of the garden.
5. The commodious situation of the garden, both for fruitfulness and
delight, by the benefit of the liver that issued out of it.
6. The assigning over of the garden to the man.
The two paradises
We read of two paradises--one is described to us at the beginning
of the Bible, and the other at the end of it (Revelation 22:1-5). The descriptions
cannot be perused without leading the thoughts into a comparison and contrast
of the one paradise with the other.
I. THE RIVERS. A
river is a beautiful object. A river of clear water winding through a garden,
meandering among flowers and trees, presents to the eye a lovely scene. And
then, besides the beauty of a river or stream in itself, which may be called
its direct contribution of beauty--much of the remaining attractions of the
garden through which it passes is to be ascribed to it. The flowers and the
trees are quickened and refreshed by it. Through its aid the flowers assume
their fair and gorgeous array, and the trees spread out their noble arms, and
are covered with foliage and fruit.
There was a river in the paradise of Eden. The benignant Creator
did not leave the primeval home of man without the advantage and the ornament
of a river. In the future paradise there is also a river. It is not behind the
paradise of the past in this respect. Two things are to be noted concerning
this river--the water of it, and the source of it. The water is pronounced to
be “water of life, clear as crystal.” We cannot be at a loss, with the Bible in
our hands, for the interpretation of this. “There is a river, the streams
whereof shall make glad the city of God” (Psalms 46:4). What can that be but
Jehovah’s love and faithfulness, which are always the consolation of the Church
in times of trial and danger? “He leadeth me beside the still waters” (Psalms 23:2). “Thou shalt make them drink
of the rivers of Thy pleasures” (Psalms 36:8). “With joy shall ye draw
water out of the wells of salvation” (Isaiah 12:3). The water of life is no
other than the joys,and privileges, and blessings of that life eternal, which
is the appointed portion of the redeemed. It corresponds to the new wine which
Christ and His people drink together in the kingdom of God. And it is a river
of water of life, because, as the flow of a river goes on continually, so shall
there never be an end of the celestial happiness. The river, also, is pure, and
clear as crystal, because the future state will be a state of unmixed felicity,
and a state of glory without a cloud. The river proceeds “out of the throne of
God and of the Lamb.” In the throne of God and of the Lamb it has its source.
The throne of God and of the Lamb. A single throne is meant, which is occupied
by God and the Lamb. The lesson is, that the joys and blessings of the future
paradise are to be traced, in the first place, to the sovereign love of God;
and, in the second place, to the redeeming work of Christ. The river proceeds
out of the Father’s throne. The whole life, and grace, and glory, which the
Church ever arrives at, must be traced back through the far-reaching depths of
eternity, and are connected with, and spring out of, that which was done in the
beginning, when God, in the greatness, the freeness, and the sovereignty of His
love, pronounced the decree of salvation. The throne of the Lamb alone could
not have originated this river. The Lamb’s throne, by itself, originates
nothing. The spring and first fountain of all our blessings, and of that river
which shall gladden the paradise of God, is in the Father’s throne. But the
throne, whence it comes, is not to be viewed as the Father’s throne merely. It
is the throne of God and of the Lamb. Without that work of the Son, which the
name of the Lamb suggests, and on account of which the Lamb has a seat on the
Father’s throne--without what is done by Him as the second Man, the Servant of
the Father, and our covenant head, neither grace nor glory could be ours. His
death has made openings for its egress; and from His hands, and His feet, and
His side, come the joyful waters that flow in the river of paradise.
II. THE TREES. The
paradise of Eden was adorned and enriched with trees--“every tree,” we are
told, “that is pleasant to the sight, and good forfood.” The beautiful trees
and the noble stream together must have made an exquisite scene. And two trees
there were, that stood in the midst of the garden (Genesis 2:9; Genesis 3:3), and excelled all the rest.
They were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
These were sacramental trees, as their names denote. The tree of the knowledge
of good and evil was a sign and seal of the condition of God’s covenant, and
the tree of life was a sign and seal of its reward. The first paradise was
remarkable for its trees. It had wonderful trees. The new paradise is not
behind. It has many stately and fruitful trees. There are trees of
righteousness without number, the planting of the Lord, that He may be
glorified. And there is, besides, one matchless tree, that is in the midst of
that paradise of God (Revelation 2:7). There is the tree of
life, which bears twelve manner of fruits, and yields her fruit every month;
and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. With its river
of the water of life, and its tree of life, the paradise, on which the Church’s
hope is fixed, is, indeed, a paradise of life. We need not say that the tree of
life is Christ. He is the goodly tree in the midst of the garden. His Word, His
gospel, His ordinances, are the means which the Holy Spirit employs on earth
for quickening, regenerating, and sanctifying the people; and the enjoyment of
Him is the chief ingredient, and the very essence, of the heavenly felicity.
III. THE CURSE. Of
the second paradise, it is emphatically said, “There shall be no more curse.”
The words, no doubt, have reference, in the way of contrast, to the state of
things here and now, and are designed to intimate that the curse, which lies on
the present creation, shall not be prolonged and carried onward from thin state
to that. “There shall be no more curse.” The curse is here, but it shall not be
there. There was curse in the first paradise. There was curse in it the moment
its peaceful and happy bowers were invaded by the devil. The being on whom
God’s curse alights is himself, in a sense, a curse. For this reason, even
Christ, when He bore the curse as our substitute, is said to have been made a
curse. There was curse in the garden of Eden, for there was sin in it. Not, indeed,
at first. Man was blameless and holy for a season. But sin there was at last,
and probably soon. And sin came not alone. Sin, by necessary consequence,
brought the curse. There was curse in the garden of Eden; for there was shame,
and there was slavish fear. When the privileged pair fell, they must have fig
leaves to cover them; and they must hide among the trees from the presence of
the Lord. There was curse in the garden of Eden; for there was death in it. “In
the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” And die that day they did.
The life of God went out of them. And there was curse in the garden of Eden:
there was a curse which was spoken by the mouth of the Lord. The garden had
been the scene where words of blessing and grace were wont to be uttered by the
Creator, and where the holy affections of those whom He had made in His image
found vent in glad songs of adoration and praise, accompanied, it may be, by a
chorus of angels. But sin changed it all. It is gone--that paradise--gone
forever. Let us not, however, despair. There is another paradise. He who
planted the first has planted a second. He has planted a second, which is
better than the first; and concerning which He has declared, that “there shall
be no more curse.” “There shall be no more curse.” This implies that there
shall be no more devil--no more Satanic intrusions. “There shall be no more
curse.” The words imply that, in the second paradise, there shall be no more
sin. As the heirs of glory appear within its precincts, they are found, one and
all, to be perfectly sanctified. And they will never fall again. The crown of
righteousness will never drop from their heads. Never again will they break
God’s law, transgress His holy covenant, or be guilty of an act of distrust or
rebellion. “There shall be no more curse.” The declaration implies that God
shall no more pronounce any curse. It has been impossible for Him, hitherto, as
the moral ruler of a sinful world, to dispense with the use of the curse.
“There shall be no more curse”; and so there shall not be another expulsion
from paradise.
IV. THE GENERAL
STATE OF THE INHABITANTS.
1. The state of man was, in the old paradise, and will be in the
new, a state of honourable service.
2. The state of man, in the garden of Eden, was a state of enjoyment
and privilege. But the second paradise, also, will have enjoyment and
privilege. It will have such enjoyment and privilege as to afford no occasion
of regret for what has been lost. The old men, who had seen the temple of
Solomon, wept when they thought how inferior must be the temple that was to
succeed it. The contrast between the first and the second paradise will draw no
such tears from our original progenitors. They shall have the richest social
delights. They shall dwell together, the incorporated members of a family,
having God the Father as their Father, God the Son as their Brother, and the
Spirit of love resting on them all. They shall see God.
3. The pristine state of man was a state of power and glory. He was
a king. The earth was His kingdom; the fish of the sea, the fowls of the air,
and every living thing that moveth upon the earth, were His subjects. Believers
will be kings. They are kings already by right. They are kings, who are not yet
of age, and who must wait a little for the actual commencement of their reign.
A kingdom is prepared for them. They shall be greater kings than Adam was, and
have a wider and more illustrious dominion. Their kingdom shall be immoveable
and undecaying. They shall be enthroned with Christ. They shall be crowned with
righteousness and glory. And “they shall reign forever and ever.” (Andrew
Gray.)
The garden of Eden
When we think of paradise, we think of it as the seat of delight.
The name Eden authorizes us so to do. It signifies pleasure: and the idea of
pleasure is inseparable from that of a garden, where man still seeks after lost
happiness, and where, perhaps, a good man finds the nearest resemblance of it,
which this world affords. The culture of a garden, as it was the first
employment of man, so it is that to which the most eminent persons in different
ages have retired, from the camp and the cabinet, to pass the interval between
a life of action and a removal hence. When old Diocletian was invited from his
retreat, to resume the purple which he had laid down some years before--“Ah,”
said he, “could you but see those fruits and herbs of mine own raising at
Salona, you would never talk to me of empire!” An accomplished statesman of our
own country, who spent the latter part of his life in this manner, hath so well
described the advantages of it, that it would be injustice to communicate his
ideas in any other words but his own. “No other sort of abode,” says he, “seems
to contribute so much, both to the tranquillity of mind and indolence of body.
The sweetness of the air, the pleasantness of the smell, the verdure of the
plants, the cleanness and lightness of food, the exercise of working or
walking; but, above all, the exemption from care and solicitude, seem equally
to favour and improve both contemplation and health, the enjoyment of sense and
imagination, and thereby the quiet and ease both of body and mind. The garden
has been the inclination of kings, and the choice of philosophers; the common
favourite of public and private men; the pleasure of the greatest, and the care
of the meanest; an employment and a possession, for which no man is too high,
nor too low. If we believe the Scriptures,” concludes he, “we must allow that
God Almighty esteemed the life of man in a garden the happiest He could give
him, or else He would not have placed Adam in that of Eden. The garden of Eden
had, doubtless, all the perfection it could receive from the hands of Him who
ordained it to be the mansion of His favourite creature. We may reasonably
presume it to have been the earth in miniature, and to have contained specimens
of all natural productions, as they appeared, without blemish, in an unfallen
world; and these disposed in admirable order, for the purposes intended. And it
may be observed, that when, in after times, the penmen of the Scriptures have
occasion to describe any remarkable degree of fertility and beauty, of grandeur
and magnificence, they refer us to the garden of Eden (see Genesis 13:10; Joel 2:3; Ezekiel 31:3, etc.). Traditions
and traces of this original garden seem to have gone forth into all the earth,
though, as an elegant writer justly observes, “they must be expected to have
grown fainter and fainter in every transfusion from one people to another. The
Romans probably derived their notion of it, expressed in the gardens of Flora,
from the Greeks, among whom this idea seems to have been shadowed out under the
stories of the gardens of Alcinous. In Africa they had the gardens of the
Hesperides, and in the East those of Adonis. The term of Horti Adonides was
used by the ancients to signify gardens of pleasure, which answers strangely to
the very name of paradise, or the garden of Eden.” In the writings of the
poets, who have lavished all the powers of genius and the charms of verse upon
the subject, these and the like counterfeit or secondary paradises, the copies
of the true, will live and bloom, so long as the world itself shall endure. It
hath been already suggested, that a garden is calculated no less for the
improvement of the mind, than for the exercise of the body; and we cannot doubt
but that peculiar care would be taken of that most important end in the
disposition of the garden of Eden. Our first father differed from his
descendants in this particular, that he was not to attain the use of his
understanding by a gradual process from infancy, but came into being in full
stature and vigour, of mind as well as body. He found creation likewise in its
prime. It was morning with man and the world. As man was made for the
contemplation of God here, and for the enjoyment of him hereafter, we cannot
imagine that his knowledge would terminate on earth, though it took its rise
there. Like the patriarch’s ladder, its foot was on earth, but its top,
doubtless, reached to heaven. By it the mind ascended from the creatures to the
Creator, and descended from the Creator to the creatures. It was the golden
chain which connected matter and spirit, preserving a communication between the
two worlds. That God had revealed and made Himself known to Adam, appears from
the circumstances related, namely, that He took him, and put him into the
garden of Eden; that He conversed with him, and communicated a law, to be by
him observed; that He caused the creatures to come before him, and brought Eve
to him. If there was, at the beginning, this familiar intercourse between
Jehovah and Adam, and He vouchsafed to converse with him, as He afterward did
with Moses, “as a man converseth with his friend,” there can be no reasonable
doubt but that He instructed him, as far as was necessary, in the knowledge of
his Maker, of his own spiritual and immortal part, of the adversary he had to
encounter, of the consequences to which disobedience would subject him, and of
those invisible glories, a participation of which was to be the reward of his
obedience. Whenever the garden of Eden is mentioned in the Scriptures, it is
called “the garden of God,” or “the garden of the Lord”--expressions which
denote some peculiar designation of it to sacred purposes, some appropriation
to God and His service, as is confessedly the case with many similar phrases;
such as “house of God, altar of God, man of God,” and the like; all implying,
that the persons and things spoken of were consecrated to Him, and set apart
for a religious use. When it is said, “The Lord God took the man, and put him
into the garden of Eden, to dress it, and to keep it,” the words undoubtedly
direct us to conceive of it as a place for the exercise of the body. The powers
of the body and the faculties of the mind might be set to work at the same
time, by the same objects. And it is well known that the words here used do as
frequently denote mental as corporeal operations; and, under the idea of
dressing and keeping the sacred garden, may fairly imply the cultivation and
observation of such religious truths, as were pointed out by the external signs
and sacraments, which paradise contained. When the prophets have occasion to
foretell the great and marvellous change to be effected in the moral world,
under the evangelical dispensation, they frequently borrow their ideas and
expressions from the history of that garden, in which innocence and felicity
once dwelt together, and which they represent as again springing up and
blooming in the wilderness (see Isaiah 51:3; Isaiah 41:17; Isaiah 35:1). At the time appointed,
these predictions received their accomplishment. Men “saw the glory of the
Lord, and the excellency of our God.” By the death and resurrection of the
Redeemer, lost paradise was regained; and its inestimable blessings, wisdom,
righteousness, and holiness, are now to be found and enjoyed in the Christian
Church. But as men are still men, and not angels, those blessings are still
represented and conveyed by sacramental symbols, analogous to the original ones
in Eden. From the sacred font flows the water of life, to purify, to refresh,
to comfort; “a river goes out of Eden, to water the garden,” and to “baptize
all nations”; while the eucharist answers to the fruit of the tree of life: at
the holy table, we may now “put forth our hands, and take, and eat, and live
forever.” Let us go one step farther, and consider the state of things in the
heavenly kingdom of our Lord. There, it is true, all figures and shadows,
symbols and sacraments, shall be no more; because faith will there be lost in
vision, and we shall “know even as we are known.” (Bishop Horne.)
Legends of Paradise among ancient nations
Paradise is no exclusive feature of the earliest history of the
Hebrews; most of the ancient nations have similar narratives about a happy
abode, which care does not approach, and which reechoes with the sounds of the
purest bliss. The Greeks believed, that at an immense distance, beyond the
pillars of Hercules, on the borders of the earth, were the islands of the
blessed, the elysium, abounding in every charm of life, and the garden of the
Hesperides, with their golden apples, guarded by an ever-watchful serpent
(Laden). But still more analogous is the legend of the Hindoos, that in the
sacred mountain Meru, which is perpetually clothed in the golden rays of the
sun, and whose lofty summit reaches into heaven, no sinful man can exist; that
it is guarded by dreadful dragons; that it is adorned with many celestial
plants and trees, and is watered by four rivers, which thence separate, and
flow to the four chief directions. Equally striking is the resemblance to the belief
of the Persians, who suppose, that a region of bliss and delight, the town
Eriene Vedsho or Heden, more beautiful than the whole rest of the world,
traversed by a mighty river, was the original abode of the first men before
they were tempted by Ahriman, in the shape of a serpent, to partake of the
wonderful fruit of the forbidden tree Hem. And the books of the Chinese
describe a garden near the gate of heaven where a perpetual zephyr breathes; it
is irrigated by abundant springs, the noblest of which is the “fountain of
life”; and abounds in delightful trees, one of which bears fruits which have
the power of preserving and prolonging the existence of man. (M. M. Kalisch.)
The Eden of the soul
To every human being, not less than to Adam, God has given a garden
to till and to keep: it is the garden within him. Alas! this garden of the soul
is no longer an Eden. An enemy hath come and sown tares (Matthew 13:25). Instead of the fir tree
has come up the thorn, and instead of the myrtle tree has come up the brier (Isaiah 55:13). Nevertheless, the capacity
of paradise still lies latent within us all. Like seeds which have for ages
lain buried beneath the soil of our primeval forests, there lie deep down in
the subsoil of our moral natures the germs of giant spirit powers and
experiences. Fallen as we are, we are capable of being redeemed, reinstated in
the range of conscious sonship to the everlasting Father. In fact, this
capacity for redemption is, on its human side, the basis of the possibility of
Christ’s salvation. The Son of God came not to crush, but to save; not to
destroy, but to restore; not to annihilate, but to transfigure. And when we let
Him have His way in our hearts; when we let Him drive the ploughshare of His
Spirit’s conviction, uprooting tares and thorns and all baleful weeds; when we
let Him sow the good seed of the kingdom, which is the Word of God; when we let
Him quicken it with the warmth of His breath, and water it with the dews of His
grace, and hue it with the sunshine of His beauty: then does paradise lost
become paradise found; then is brought to pass--oh, how gloriously!--the saying
of the poet-prophet (Isaiah 35:1). (G. D. Boardman.)
The first garden
1. Situation of paradise that
man lost, unknown. Landmarks obliterated by the Deluge. It may be sought, and
found in every part of the world. “Thy presence makes my paradise,” etc.
2. God planted the first garden; our flowers are lineal descendants
of Eden’s bright blossoms, as we are of the “grand old gardener”--Adam. Let the
colours and perfumes of summer call that garden to mind.
3. Cultivate flowers of holiness, and fruits of godliness; possess
the Rose of Sharon and the true Vine, and paradise will be regained. (J. C.
Gray.)
Adam in Eden
I. THE FIRST MAN.
Adam. “Of the earth, earthy.” His happiness Genesis 1:28). His moral dignity,
likeness of God (Genesis 1:26; Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10). His mental greatness;
named the animals, etc. (Genesis 2:20). His regal position (Genesis 1:28). His relation to other
created intelligences (Hebrews 2:7-8). His great age; lived 930
years (Genesis 5:5). During 243 years a
contemporary of Methuselah, who for 600 years was contemporary of his grandson
Noah.
II. THE FIRST
STEWARDSHIP. To dress and keep a garden. Lowly, healthful; needing diligence,
forethought, etc. Mere office, however lofty, does not dignify; nor however
humble, degrade. The great ancestor of the race, a gardener.
III. THE FIRST
COMMAND. A command to remind man of his subordinate relation, his duty, etc.
Only one, very simple and easy. In common life the breach of one often makes
many injunctions needful. (J. C. Gray.)
Observations
I. THE
FRUITFULNESS OF ONE PART OF THE EARTH ABOVE ANOTHER IS FROM GOD ALONE, AND
MERELY AND ONLY BY HIS BLESSING.
II. THOUGH GOD
HAVE PREPARED THE EARTH FOR MAN, YET HE CAN HAVE NO TITLE TO ANY MORE OF IT
THAN GOD ALLOTS OUT OF IT FOR HIS HABITATION.
III. GOD IS PLEASED
TO BESTOW UPON MEN LIBERALLY HIS BEST AND CHIEFEST BLESSINGS. (J. White, M.
A.)
Work
Not only did Adam work before the Fall; but also nature and
nature’s God. From the particle of dust at our feet to man, the last stroke of
God’s handiwork, all bear the impress of the law of labour. ‘The earth, as has
been said, is one vast laboratory, where decomposition and reformation are
constantly going on. The blast of nature’s furnace never ceases, and its fires
never burn low. The lichen of the rock, and the oak of the forest, each works
out the problem of its own existence. The earth, the air, and the water teem
with busy life. The poet tells us that the joyous song of labour sounds out
from the million-voiced earth, and the rolling spheres join the universal
chorus! Therefore, labour is not, as Tapper expresses it, the curse on the sons
of men in all their ways. Observations:--
I. AS GOD GIVES
US ALL THINGS FREELY, SO WITHAL HE TAKES SPECIAL NOTICE OF ALL THAT HE BESTOWS
UPON US.
II. EVERY PLANT ON
THE FACE OF THE EARTH GROWS WHERE AND IN WHAT MANNER AND ORDER GOD APPOINTS IT.
III. GOD’S BOUNTY
ABOUNDS UNTO MEN NOT ONLY TO THE SUPPLYING OF THEIR NECESSITIES, BUT ALSO FOR
THEIR DELIGHT.
1. Let us then tender unto God, after the measure that we receive
from Him, the most acceptable presents of our cheerful services, which that
variety and abundance which we receive from His hand should provoke us Deuteronomy 28:47). Serving Him with
enlarged hearts, and delighting to run the way of His commandments with the
holy prophet Psalms 119:32).
2. It may warrant us the honest and moderate use of God’s blessings,
even for delight: so we use them--
IV. IT IS USUAL
WITH GOD TO MIX DELIGHT AND PLEASURE WITH USEFULNESS AND PROFIT IN ALL HIS
BLESSINGS.
V. THE BEST
AMONGST MEN AND MOST PERFECT HAVE NEED OF THE HELP OF OUTWARD MEANS TO QUICKEN
AND STRENGTHEN THEM AND PUT THEM IN MIND OF THEIR DUTIES. Let no man neglect
any outward means, public or private, as being--
Considering that the best of us know but in part (1 Corinthians 13:9), are subject to
so many temptations, laden with a body of sin (Romans 7:24). By which we are continually
assaulted, often foiled, and continually retarded in our coarse of obedience.
VI. SPIRITUAL AND
RELIGIOUS DUTIES OUGHT TO BE REMEMBERED IN THE MIDST OF THE USE OF OUR
EMPLOYMENTS ABOUT THE THINGS OF THIS LIFE.
VII. GOD’S COMMANDMENTS OUGHT TO BE STILL IN THE VIEW AND BEFORE
THE FACE OF HIS CHILDREN. VIII. IT IS USUAL WITH GOD TO TEACH HIS CHILDREN BY
THINGS OF ORDINARY AND COMMON USE. And this He cloth--
IX. GOD IS
CONTENTED NOT ONLY TO DO US GOOD, BUT BESIDES TO ENGAGE HIMSELF THEREUNTO BY
HIS WORD, RATIFIED BY HIS OWN SEAL.
X. BOTH THE
CONTINUANCE OF PRESENT, AND HOPE OF FUTURE LIFE, AS THEY ARE GOD’S GIFT, SO
THEY ARE ASSURED BY HIS PROMISE.
XI. ALL GOD’S
PROMISES MUST BE UNDERSTOOD AND EMBRACED UNDER THE CONDITION OF THE PERFORMANCE
OF OUR OBEDIENCE.
XII. GOOD AND EVIL
ARE BOUNDED AND LIMITED ONLY BY THE WILL OF GOD. (J. White, M. A.)
The promise of life in the first covenant
I. We behold here
the goodness and grace of God to man. Though the first covenant was a covenant
of works there was, not withstanding, much grace displayed in it. Could that
obedience of the first Adam which was perfect, have, strictly speaking, merited
nothing for him, at the hand of God? What ignorance, then, what folly, what
pride, does it argue in a sinner, to pretend that his performances,
notwithstanding their acknowledged imperfections, merit for him not something
merely, but eternal happiness!
2. If Adam in innocence was not to depend for happiness immediately
on the goodness of God’s nature but on the promise of His covenant, how
evidently does that sinner expose himself to woful disappointment who trusts to
general, to uncovenanted mercy! Finally, was the first Adam’s state of
innocence his state of trial? Then a state trial or probation is not, properly
speaking, the state of man since his fall. But now, since he has failed in his
obedience, and broken the covenant, his state of trial has issued in a state of
condemnation. (J. Colquhoun, D. D.)
The tree of knowledge of
good and evil
The two trees
I. THE TREE OF
LIFE. This was a real tree, as real as any of the rest, and evidently placed
there for like purposes with the rest. The only difference was, that it had
peculiar virtues which the others had not. It was a life-giving or life-sustaining
tree--a tree of which, so long as man should continue to eat, he should never
die. Not that one eating of it could confer immortality; but the continuous use
of it was intended for this. The link between soul and body was to be
maintained by this tree. So long as he partook of this, that tie could not be
broken.
II. THE TREE OF
THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. Why may we not take this in the same literality
of meaning as the former? Why may it not mean a tree, the fruit of which was
fitted to nourish man’s intellectual and moral nature? How it did this I do not
attempt to say. But we know so little of the actings of the body or the soul,
that we cannot affirm it impossible. Nay, we see so much of the effects of the
body upon the soul, both in sharpening and blunting the edge alike of intellect
and conscience, that we may pronounce it not at all unlikely. We are only
beginning to be aware of the exceeding delicacy of our mental and moral
mechanism, and how easily that mechanism is injured or improved by the things
which affect the body. A healthy body tends greatly to produce not only a
healthy intellect, but a healthy conscience. I know that only one thing can
really pacify the conscience--the all-cleansing Blood; but this I also know,
that a diseased or enfeebled body operates oftentimes so sadly on the
conscience as to prevent the healthy realization by it of that wondrous blood,
thereby beclouding the whole soul; and there is nothing which Satan seems so
completely to get hold of, and by means of it to rule the inner man, as a
nervously diseased body. Cowper’s expression, “A mind well lodged, and
masculine of course,” has in it more meaning than we have commonly attached to
it. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
Of the sacraments of the covenant of works
I. It hath
pleased the blessed and Almighty God, in every economy of His covenants, to
confirm, by some sacred symbols, the certainty of His promises, and, at the
same time, to remind man in covenant with Him of his duty: to these symbols
ecclesiastical practice has long since given the name of sacraments: this was
certainly appointed with an excellent design by the all-wise God. For--
1. What God has made known concerning His covenant, is, by this
means, proposed to man’s more accurate consideration; since he is not only once
and again instructed in the will of God by a heavenly oracle, but frequently
and almost daily beholds with his eyes those things which by heaven are granted
him as pleasures of the greatest blessings: what believers see with their eyes,
usually sink deeper into the soul, and leave deeper impressions of themselves,
than those only which they hear with their ears. Elegantly to this purpose says
Herodotus, “men usually give less credit to the ears than to the eyes.”
2. These symbols also tend to confirm our faith. For, though nothing
can be thought of that deserves more credit than the Word of God, yet, where
God adds signs and seals to His infallible promises, He gives a two-fold
foundation to our faith (Hebrews 6:17-18).
3. By means of this institution, a holy man does, by the sight,
touch, and taste of the sacred symbols, attain to some sense of eternal
blessings, and accustoms himself under the symbols, to a contemplation and
foretaste of these things, to the plenary and immediate fruition of which he
will, one time or other, be admitted without any outward signs.
4. The man has in these something continually to remind him of his
duty: and as, from time to time, they present to his thoughts, and give a
foretaste of his Creator, so at the same time they put him in mind of those
very strong obligations, by which he is bound to his Covenant-God. And thus,
they are both a bridle to restrain him from sin and a spur to quicken him
cheerfully to run that holy race which he has so happily entered upon. (H.
Witsius, D. D.)
The tree of the knowledge of evil
There was here a very plain memorial of duty. For this tree
taught--
1. That man was sincerely to contemplate and desire the chief good,
but not to endeavour after it, but only in the manner and way prescribed by
Heaven; nor here to give in to his own reasonings, how plausible soever they
might appear.
2. That man’s happiness was not to be placed in things pleasing to
the senses of the body. There is another and a quite different beatifying good
which satiates the soul and of itself suffices to the consummation of
happiness.
3. That God was the most absolute Lord of man, whose sole will,
expressed by His law, should be the supreme rule and directory of all the
appetites of the soul and of all the motions of the body.
4. That there is no attaining to a life of happiness but by perfect
obedience.
5. That even man in innocence was to behave with a certain religious
awe when conversing with his God, lest he should fall into sin. (H. Witsius,
D. D.)
The knowledge of right and wrong
I. We call the
Scriptures a revelation; in other words, an unveiling. The Bible records were
given to us to take away the veil which hung between heaven and earth, between
man and God. Their purpose is to reveal God. The actual revelation which has
been made to us is of God in His relation to the soul of man. We are not to
demand, we are not to expect, any further revelation. Of the secrets of God’s power
and origin we are told not a word. Such knowledge is not for us. The
self-declared object of the Scriptures is that men should know God and know
themselves.
II. But the
condition on which such an object may be accomplished is this: that the Book of
God should appeal to men in a form not dependent for its appreciation upon any
knowledge which they may have obtained--independent, that is, of the science of
any particular age or country.
III. Here, so early
in the sacred books, is revealed the fact of the two opposing forces of right
and wrong. Take away the reality of this distinction, and the Bible and all
religion falls forever. Make its reality and importance felt in the soul of
man, and you have at once whereon to build. Righteousness is the word of words
throughout all Scripture. The righteousness which the Scriptures reveal is the
knowledge of a communion with God. When our earth has played its part in the
economy of the universe, and is seen by the few spheres which are within its
ken to pass away as a wandering fire, right and wrong will not have lost their
primeval significance, and the souls which have yearned and laboured for rest
in the home of spirits will find that rest in Him who was and is and is to be.
(A. Ainger, D. D.)
The tree of knowledge
The trial of Adam, like that of every other man, was whether he
would so fat” believe in God as to look for happiness in obedience to the
Divine command; or would seek that happiness elsewhere, and apply for it to
some forbidden object, of which the tree must have been an emblematical
representation. You will ask what that object was? And what information, as to
the knowledge of good and evil, Adam could receive from the prohibition? By
answering the last question, a way may, in some measure, perhaps, be opened for
an answer to the first. A due contemplation of the prohibition might naturally
suggest to the mind of our first parent the following important truths;
especially if we consider (as we must and ought to consider) that to him, under
the tuition of his Maker, all things necessary were explained and made clear,
how obscure soever they may appear to us, forming a judgment of them from a
very concise narrative, couched in figurative language, at this distance of
time. Looking upon the tree of knowledge then, and recollecting the precept of
which it was the subject, Adam might learn, that God was the sovereign Lord of
all things: that the dominion vested in man over the creatures was by no means
a dominion absolute and independent: that without, and beside God, there was no
true and real good: that to desire anything without and beside Him was evil;
that no temporal worldly good, however fair and tempting its appearance, was to
be fixed upon by man as the source of his felicity: that the sole rule for shunning,
or desiring things sensible, should be the will and word of God; and that good
and evil should be judged of by that standard alone: that the obedience, which
God would accept, must be paid with all the powers and affections of the mind,
showing itself careful and prompt in even the least instance: that man was not
yet placed in a state of consummate and established bliss; but that such state
was by him to be earnestly expected, and incessantly desired: and that he must
take the way to it, marked and pointed out by God Himself. These particulars
seem to flow from the prohibition in an easy and natural train. And they lead
us to answer the other question; namely--What was the object represented by the
tree of knowledge? It was that object, on which man is prone to set his
affections, instead of placing them on a better; it was that object, which, in
every age, has been the great rival of the Almighty in the human heart; it was
that object, which, in one way or other, has always been “worshipped and served
rather than the Creator”; it was the creature, the world; and the grand trial
was, as it ever hath been, and ever will be, till the world shall cease to
exist, whether things visible, or things invisible, should obtain the
preference; whether man should walk “by sight, or by faith.” To know this, was
the knowledge of good and evil; and this knowledge came by the law of God,
which said, “Thou shalt not covet.” Man’s wisdom consisted in the observance of
that law; but an enemy persuaded him to seek wisdom by transgressing it. He did
so, and had nothing left but to repent of his folly; a case that happens, among
his descendants, every day, and every hour. Let us, therefore, consider the
tree of knowledge, in this light, with respect to its nature, situation,
design, qualities, effects, and the knowledge conferred by it. The fruit of
this tree was, to appearance, fair and pleasant; but, when tasted, it became,
by the Divine appointment, the cause of death. Now, what is it, which, in the
eyes of all mankind, seems equally pleasing and alluring, but the end thereof,
when coveted in opposition to the Divine command, proves to be death? It is the
world, with its pleasures and its glories, desired by its votaries, per fas
atque nefas, to the denial of God, and to their own destruction. The tree
of knowledge was situated in the midst of the garden, as was the tree of life.
They stood near together, but they stood in opposition. The Divine
dispensations are always best illustrated by each other. Under the gospel Jesus
Christ is the tree of life. What is it that opposes Him, and, notwithstanding
all that He has done, and suffered, and commanded, and promised, and
threatened, is continually, by its solicitations, being ever present and at
hand, seducing men into the path of death? Scripture and experience again join
in assuring us that it is the world. The tree of knowledge was designed to be
the test of Adam’s obedience, the subject matter of his trial. The world, with
its desirable objects, is the test of our obedience, the subject matter of our
trial, whether we will make it our chief good, or prefer the promise of God to
it. The apparent qualities of the forbidden tree are represented to have been
these. It seemed “good for food, and fair to the sight, and a tree to be desired
to make one wise.” It is remarkable that St. John, laying before us an
inventory of the world, and all that is in it, employs a division entirely
similar. “Love not the world,” says he, “neither the things that are in the
world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all
that is in the world, the desire of the flesh, and the desire of the eyes, and
the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world
passeth away, and the desire thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth
forever.” Here is a picture of the fatal tree, full blown, with all its
temptations about it, drawn, by the pencil of truth, in its original and proper
colours. The expressions tally, to the minutest degree of exactness The “desire
of the flesh” answers to “good for food”; the “desire of the eyes” is parallel
with “fair to the sight”; and the “pride of life” corresponds with “a tree to
be desired to make one wise.” The opposition between this tree and the other is
strongly marked. “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in
him.” And, we are informed, that one leads to death, the other to life. “The
world passeth away, and the desire thereof; but he that doeth the will of God
abideth forever.” Precisely conformable, in every circumstance, was the
threefold temptation of the second Adam. He was tempted to convert stones into
bread for food, to satisfy “the desire of the flesh.” Thus, whether we consider
the tree of knowledge as to its nature, its situation, its design, or its
qualities, it seems to have been a very apt and significant emblem of the
creature, or the world, with its delights and its glories, the objects opposed,
in every age, to God and His Word. To reject the allurements of the former, and
obey the dictates of the latter, is the knowledge of good and evil, and the
true wisdom of man. So that the forbidden tree in paradise, when the Divine
intentions concerning it are explained from other parts of Scripture, teaches
the important lesson more than once inculcated by Solomon, and which was
likewise the result of holy Job’s inquiries; “Behold, the fear of the Lord,
that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” (Bishop Horne.)
The tree of knowledge of good and evil
The tree of knowledge of good and evil was so called not merely as
a test for proving man, and showing whether he would choose the good or the
evil--nor, merely because by eating it he would come to know both good and
evil, and the evil so that he would know the good in the new light of contrast
with the evil. Both these were involved. But it was set also as a symbol of the
Divine knowledge to which man should not aspire, but to which he should submit
his own judgment and knowledge. The positive prohibition was to be a standing discipline
of the human reason, and a standing symbol of the limitation of religious
thought. Man was to have life, not by following out his own opinions and
counsels, but by faith and the unqualified submission of his intellect and will
to God, No reason is here given for this, except in the name of the tree, and
the nature of the penalty. God would not have him know evil. Sin was already an
invader of His universe in the fallen angels. Evil was, therefore, a reality.
Man was interdicted from that kind of knowledge which is evil, or, which
includes evil--because of itself in its own nature, it leads him to death. Thus
this is, therefore, not a mere arbitrary appointment. It has grounds in the
evident nature of things. Nor was the penalty denounced against the transgression
arbitrary. The disobedience was itself necessarily death. The curse could not
have been less than it was. The act itself was a disruption of the tie which
bound man to his Maker, and by which alone he could live. The knowledge of
evil, sadly enough, lay in the partaking of that tree. Man already had the
knowledge of good, and a moral sense of the eternal distinction between right
and wrong. But good and evil, in all their mutual bearings, he could not
presume to know by contact and experience as he aspired and claimed to know
them under the promise of Satan. We hear no more of this tree. It served its
purpose in the garden. We hear of the tree of life. The act of partaking was an
encroachment upon the Divine prerogative. This tree was set to be to man the
occasion of the highest Divine knowledge, in the training of his thoughts to
subjection, and in the contemplation of God’s prerogatives of knowledge. The
highest reason accords to God this claim--and renders the profoundest
submission of the human mind and will toGod--to His plan of Providence and
grace. So the renewed man cries out, “O the depth of the riches, both of the
wisdom and knowledge of God.” Christ crucified is the wisdom of God, and the
power of God, unto salvation. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Man was
prohibited from laying hold of this fruit that was held to be under the Divine
prerogative. And it is just at this point that Satan has always plied his most
artful and powerful temptation. And just here, in taking what is forbidden--and
in refusing all subjection and limitation of religious thought, man has always
fallen under the curse. “Professing themselves to be wise they became fools.”
This is the spirit of our fallen race, that in every age, keeps man out of
paradise. And this is the mark of Anti-Christ “sitting in the temple of God,
showing (exhibiting) himself that he is God,” (2 Thessalonians 2:4). Hence, also,
cherubim--the angels of knowledge--are set with the “flaming sword to keep
(guard) the way of the tree of life” (chap. 3:24). This tree was also, as
Luther says, a sign for man’s worship dud reverent obedience of God, and so it
would represent the homage due to God’s word, as the revelation of God’s
truth--of His mind and will to men. (M. W.Jacobus.)
Significance of trees
To the thoughtful observer, perhaps, there is no more profound
object in nature than a tree. Its graceful figure, its wavy outlines, its
emerald hue, its variety of branches and twigs and leaves--illustrating
diversity in unity--its tinted and fragrant blossoms, its luscious fruit, its
exhibition of many of the wonderful phenomena of human life, such as birth,
growth, respiration, absorption, circulation, sleep, sexuality, decay, death,
reproduction: these are some of the particulars which make a tree the living
parable of man and of society, and, as such, perhaps the most interesting
object in the natural world. No wonder, then, that among all nations and in all
ages trees have had a peculiar fascination, and even sacredness for the
devoutly inclined. Witness the groves of the Hebrews, the symbol tree of the
Assyrian sculptures, the Dryads of Greece, the Druids of Britain, the Igdrasil
of the Norsemen. We need not be surprised, then, that on going back to nature’s
Eden we learn that paradise, rich in every element of beauty, was especially
rich in trees. Jehovah God caused to spring up in the Garden of Eden every tree
that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. But amid all this variety of
trees two stood forth in memorable conspicuousness, their very names having
come down to us through the oblivion of millenniums: one was the tree of life
in the midst of the garden; the other the tree of knowledge of good and evil. (G.
D.Boardman.)
The gold of that land is
good
Good gold
I. If men so
willed, GOLD MIGHT BE WON AND NO SOUL LOST. And therefore we must take care to
distinguish between gold and the thirst for gold. Gold is like the rest of
God’s gifts, a good thing or a bad thing, according to the use made of it. And
so it is no wonder that Scripture has recorded that near to paradise was a land
of gold. The land of Havilah may exist still; the fine gold and the bdellium
and the onyx stone may now lie buried deep beneath its surface, or perhaps may
yet be lying disregarded, like the treasures of California or Australia not
many years ago.
II. Be this as it
may, THERE IS ANOTHER LAND WHOSE GOLD IS GOOD, a land farther off than the far
West and the islands of the sea, and yet ever close at hand, approachable by
all, attainable by all, where no rust corrupts and no thieves break through and
steal. The gold of that other land is good, simply because, though the words
sound like a contradiction, it is not gold. It has been changed. In the world
above, that which stands for gold is more precious than gold itself, for even
gold cannot purchase it, though gold may serve it.
III. THE TREASURE
OF HEAVEN IS LOVE. Love is the true gold. All else will tarnish and canker and
eat into the souls of them that covet it; but Love never. It is bright and
precious here in this world; fraud cannot despoil us of it; force cannot rob us
of it; it is our only safe happiness here, and it is the only possession we can
carry with us into the world beyond the grave. (F. E.Paget, M. A.)
Fine gold
Money and money making are the most frequent and familiar subjects
of talk and thought. I remember once seeing an old merchant, at whose house I
was visiting, sitting by himself against the wall. The room was filled with
guests; music and dancing and merry laughter were all around; but there sat the
old man, taking no heed, with his head against the wall. Fearing he was ill, I
asked his son about him, and he answered--“He is only thinking about money; he
is always like that.”
I. Now,
understand me at the beginning, there is no sin in having money, if it be
honestly come by and rightly used. What I want to do is to show you THE SIN AND
FOLLY OF THINKING TOO MUCH OF EARTHLY TREASURE, and too little of heavenly. An
emigrant ship was once wrecked on a desert island. The people were saved, but
they had few provisions, and it was necessary to make haste to clear and till
the ground and sow seed. Before this could be done they discovered gold on the
island, and everyone gave himself up to the search for wealth. Meantime, the
season slipped by, the fields were left untilled, and the people found
themselves starving in the midst of useless treasure. There are people now who
starve their soul and conscience that they may acquire a little more gold and
silver.
1. One reason why we are wrong in thinking too highly of earthly
wealth is, that the obtaining it is a very uncertain and difficult thing. Where
one man grows rich, hundreds are ruined.
2. Another reason for not thinking too highly of earthly wealth is,
that it is soon gone.
3. We should not overvalue earthly wealth, because it does not make
people happy. A golden crown will not cure the headache, or a velvet slipper
give ease from the gout. Sometimes, indeed, wealth has made people altogether
miserable. There was a miser, worth thousands of pounds annually, who firmly
believed that he must die in the workhouse, and actually worked daily in a
garden and made one of his own servants pay him wages.
4. Excessive love of money is to be avoided, because it often keeps
us back from God.
II. I pass on to
speak of BETTER RICHES THAN THIS WORLD CAN GIVE, riches which all may have if
they will, which will make the poorest wealthy. “The gold of that land is
good.” Earthly gold is often alloyed with base metal, but the gold of God is
pure. Earthly gold is only for the few; the gold of God is for all who desire
it. Earthly gold soon passes away; the gold of God lasts forever. Earthly gold
must be left at the grave; the gold of God becomes even more precious after
death than before. Earthly gold cannot satisfy; the gold of God brings perfect
peace and satisfaction.
1. Tim love of God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
2. The precious promises of the gospel.
The wonderful gold
Everyone knows what gold is. The land here spoken of was called
“the land of Havilah.” This was a country far away in Asia, near the garden of
Eden, in which God put our first parents when they were created. What a
blessed, happy place it must have been! Who would not like to have lived there?
And there was gold, too, in Eden; yes, and “the gold of that land was good.”
Now, we never can enter that garden. But there is a better one than that, which
we may enter. The garden in which Adam first lived, and which we call Eden, or
Paradise, was the figure or image of heaven. And many of the very same things
will be found in this heavenly paradise which were in the earthly paradise. The
gold of heaven means the grace of God. And, if anybody wants me to prove this,
it is easy enough to do so. Jesus Himself speaks of His grace as gold, when He
says, “I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be
rich” (Revelation 3:18). “Gold tried in the fire”
here means the grace of God. And so, if we take “the land of Havilah” spoken of
in our text as representing heaven, and if we take the gold of heaven as
representing the grace of God, then we may very well point up to heaven and
say, “The gold of that land is good.” There are three things about this gold
which show that it is wonderful. And these three things are all connected with
the word getting.
I. THE WAY OF
GETTING this gold is wonderful.
1. People sometimes have to go a great distance in order to get
earthly gold. When the gold mines in California were first discovered, there
was a great rush of people from all parts of this country, who wanted to go out
there and get gold. Some went by sea, all the way round Cape Horn. That was a
long, cold, stormy, disagreeable, and dangerous voyage to take. But they were
going for gold, and they cared nothing for the length of the journey they had
to take ill getting it. Other people went in waggers, or on foot, across the
country. Some had more than two thousand miles’ distance to go. What a long way
that is to travel! But they were going for gold, and that made them willing.
But the wonderful thing about the heavenly gold is, that no long journey is
necessary in order to get it. It is not stored up, like earthly gold, in mines
which can only be found in particular places. It is to be found in all
countries. It may be had in all places. The church is a good place in which to
seek it. So is the Sunday school. So is the room in which you sleep at night.
2. But, besides going a great distance, men often have to meet great
dangers before they can get the earthly gold they are seeking. Some of those
people who went round by sea to California to get gold met with terrible
storms. Some of them were shipwrecked, and lost their lives on the way. And
those who went by land met with great dangers too. Some of them lost their way
in the desert plains which they had to travel over. Some got out of provisions
and suffered dreadfully from hunger and thirst. Some were robbed by the
Indians. But there is no exposure to danger in seeking the heavenly gold. At
home, among those who love you best, you may seek it and find it. And no one
can hinder or hurt you in doing this.
3. In getting earthly gold men not only have to go a great distance,
and meet great dangers, but often they have to pay a great price to get it.
Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, lost his situation with that good master; he
lost his health too, and became a miserable leper all his days, whom no one
could cure, in order to get a little gold. That was a great price to pay for
it. Judas Iscariot sold his Master for a little money. Oh, what a tremendous
price that was to pay for it! Benedict Arnold sold his country for a poor,
paltry sum of gold. Some men are willing to pay any price for earthly gold.
Look at the whalers. They are willing to go from home for two or three years at
a time. They will sail up into the cold and stormy North Sea, or Frozen Ocean.
They will run the risk of being crushed to death between jarring icebergs; or
of being frozen up in the north all winter; they will meet with all sorts of
trials and hardships in order to get a little gold. This is the great price
they are willing to pay for it. But nothing of this kind is necessary in order
to get the heavenly gold. Jesus counsels us to buy this gold of Him. He is the
only one from whom it can be had. But the way in which Jesus sells this gold is
very wonderful. He tells us to “come, and buy wine and milk, without money and
without price” (Isaiah 55:1). The “wine and milk” spoken
of in one of these passages, and the “gold” spoken of in the other, all mean
the same thing. They refer to the grace of God. Jesus sells this “without money
and without price.” This means that He lets poor sinners, such as we are, have
it free.
II. The second
thing that is wonderful about it is THE DESIRE OF GETTING IT. The desire to get
earthly gold often has a wonderfully bad effect; but the desire to get the
heavenly gold has a wonderfully good effect. Let us see now what a bad effect
the desire to get earthly gold often has on people.
St. Paul calls this desire “the love of money”; and he says it is
“the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). The desire to get
this gold has led men to cheat, and to lie, and to steal, and to murder, and to
commit all kinds of wickedness. Some time ago, as many will remember, there was
a horrible murder committed just outside Philadelphia. A poor, wretched German,
whose name was Probst, enticed a whole family into the barn, and murdered them
one by one, even down to the innocent little babe in the cradle. He was not
angry with them. He had no quarrel with them. The only thing that led him on to
do that dreadful deed was the desire for gold--“the love of money.” And most of
the horrible murders committed inthe world are caused by this same desire. When
the Spaniards discovered the country of Mexico, in South America, they sent an
army, under a general, whose name was Cortez, to conquer the country. The
principal motive of those Spanish soldiers, in trying to conquer the country,
was a desire to get gold. They expected to find gold so plentiful in the city of
Mexico, that there would be more than they would want, or more than they could
carry away. The Mexicans defended their city as long as they could, like brave
men. When they found that it was impossible to defend it any longer, they took
the great treasures of gold that were in their city, and threw them into the
lake on which the city stood. They knew that gold was the chief thing the
Spaniards desired, and they wanted to leave as little for them to get as
possible. The Spaniards took the city, but were sorely disappointed to find so
little gold there. They knew that the Mexicans had put it away somewhere. They
tried to persuade them to tell where they had hid their treasures. But the
Mexicans would not toll. Then the Spaniards tortured them in order to make them
tell. The Emperor of Mexico then was a truly brave and noble man. The miserable
Cortez became very angry with him, because he would not tell where the treasure
was. So he ordered a huge gridiron to be made. He had this brave emperor
fastened to it with a chain. Then he had a fire kindled under it, and roasted
him alive in the most cruel and lingering manner. How horrible to think of!
There you see the bad effect of the desire of earthly gold. But very different
results follow from the desire to get the heavenly gold of which we are
speaking. Wonderful good results from this, as wonderful evil results from the
other. The love of earthly gold is the root of all evil. The love of heavenly
gold is the root of all good. It corrects everything that is wrong, and leads
to everything that is right. It makes the heart new, and the thoughts new, and
the feelings new, and the tempers new; and everything about it makes holy and
good.
III. The third
thing about this gold that is wonderful is THE RESULT OF GETTING IT. The result
of getting earthly gold is wonderfully bad; but the result of getting the
heavenly gold is wonderfully good. When St. Paul would show us the bad result
that often follows to people from getting earthly gold, he says, it “drowns men
in destruction and perdition” (1 Timothy 6:9). Some years ago there
was a person, in a village in England, who was a collector for a Bible Society.
He had a list of the names of a number of persons in the village who were
subscribers to the Bible cause, and once a year he used to go round and collect
their subscriptions. Among these names was that of a poor widow woman, who
supported herself by washing. She was about the poorest person whose name he
had on his list, and yet she was one of the most liberal, For a long time she
had been in the habit of giving a guinea a year to the Bible Society. But one
year a rich relation of this poor washer woman died, and left a large fortune
to her. She still lived in the same village; but her humble little cottage had
been exchanged for one of the largest and finest houses in the village. After a
while the time came for the Bible collector to go round and gather up his
subscriptions. He knew about the change which had taken place in the
circumstances of her whom he had long known as the poor washer woman. And as he
went to call on her at her new house he said to himself, “I shall get a fine
largo subscription from this good woman. For if, when she was a poor washer
woman, and had to work hard for her living, she could give a guinea a year, how
much more will she be sure to give now, when she lives in so large a house, and
is so well off?” So he rang the bell; and was ushered into the handsome
parlour, where he met his old friend and subscriber. He said he was glad to
hear of the pleasant change which had taken place in her circumstances, and
then stated that he came once more for her subscription to that best of all
books--the Bible. She opened her purse and handed him a shilling! He looked at
it with astonishment. Then he said, “My good friend, what does this mean? I
can’t understand it. When you were a poor woman and lived on your own labour,
you always gave a guinea a year to the Bible Society; and now, when you are so
well off, can it be possible that you intend to give only a shilling?” “Yes,”
she said, “that’s all I am willing to give now. I feel very differently about
these things from what I used to do. When I was really a poor woman I gladly
gave away whatever money I could spare, for I never felt afraid of being poorer
than I then was. But now the fear of being poor haunts me like a ghost, and
makes me all the time unwilling to spend any money, or give it away. The truth
is,” she continued, “when I only had the shilling means, I had the guinea
heart; but now, when I have the guinea means, I find that I only have the
shilling heart.” Here we see the evil that resulted to this person from getting
gold. It froze all her kind feelings, and shrunk up her large and liberal heart
into a tiny little selfish one. She was a rich woman when she was very poor,
but a poor woman when she became very rich. But the heavenly gold is very
different from this. It is wonderful gold, because of the good it always does
to those who get it. (R. Newton, D. D.)
Verse 15
To dress it and to keep it
Observations
I.
EVERY
SON OF ADAM IS BOUND TO SOME EMPLOYMENT OR OTHER IN A PARTICULAR CALLING. This
ordinance of God concerning man’s labour (as are all the rest of His laws) is
both equal and good.
1. That men might exercise their love to the creatures, wherein they
some ways resemble God Himself.
2. That they might have some title, in equity, to the use of the
creature, which they preserve by their labour.
3. That by busying themselves about the creatures, they might the
better observe God in His various works in and by them; that so they might
yield Him His due honour, and quicken their hearts to more cheerfulness in His
service, and settle them in a faithful dependence upon Him.
4. That their employments about the creatures might keep their
hearts both from vain and idle thoughts, and from swelling with the
apprehension of their lordship and sovereignty over them.
5. That the body of man being exercised as well as his mind, might
at present be the better preserved in health, and hereafter be partakers of
eternal glory, having been used as an instrument for God’s service.
II. MEN’S CALLINGS
AND EMPLOYMENTS ARE BY GOD’S OWN APPOINTMENT. Let every man then in his calling
so carry himself as God’s servant:
1. Undertaking it by His warrant, either by public or private
direction, or by bestowing on us abilities for the employment, or by presenting
opportunities outwardly, or moving us inwardly, by strong, constant, and
regular inclinations thereunto.
2. Walking in it with fear, fidelity, and cheerfulness (Ephesians 6:6-8).
3. Guiding himself by the rule of God’s Word directing him, either
by particular precepts or by general rules.
4. Aiming therein at the right end, seeking not so much our good as
the good of community.
5. And abiding therein till God Himself discharge him (2 Corinthians 7:20)--either
III. DUTY, AND NOT
GAIN TO OURSELVES, IS, OR SHOULD BE, THE GROUND AND SCOPE OF THE UNDERTAKING OF
ALL OUR PARTICULAR CALLINGS. This duty we owe--
1. To God, whose we are, and to whom we must be accountable for all
that we do; whence the apostle requires every man to continue in his place,
because he is called of God (1 Corinthians 7:20), as being
therein the servants of God or Christ (Ephesians 6:7).
2. To men, serving one another through love, labouring not so much
what is good to ourselves as what is good generally to others with ourselves Ephesians 4:28), not seeking our own, but
the profit of many (1 Corinthians 10:33).
IV. MAN’S LABOURS,
ALTHOUGH THEY BE A MEANS OF PRESERVING THE CREATURES, YET THE BENEFIT OF THEM
REDOUNDS AT LAST UNTO THEMSELVES. The plants and trees that are preserved and
propagated by our labours are either our food or medicine, or serviceable to us
for building; we clothe ourselves with the fleece of those flocks that we store
up provision for, have the benefit of the labour of those oxen that we feed and
cheer our hearts with the wine of those vines that we plant. God hath indeed
been pleased to order it--
1. Because He hath made the creatures for our service.
2. That He might the more encourage us unto those services, whereof
ourselves are to receive the fruit.
V. MAN’S
EMPLOYMENT OUGHT ESPECIALLY TO BE IN THOSE PLACES, AND LABOUR WHERE IT IS MOST
NEEDED, AND MAY BRING MOST BENEFIT.
VI. THE LABOUR OF
MAN MAKES NOTHING AT ALL, BUT ONLY BY HIS HUSBANDRY CHERISHETH AND ORDERETH
THAT WHICH IS ALREADY MADE.
1. God provides all the materials whereof we make use in our
employments, as the soil, the seed, the rain, and influence of the heavens that
cherish it; the timber, the stones, the metals, the wool, the flax, and the
like.
2. The abilities by which they have strength to produce those
effects are merely from God.
3. The understanding and wisdom by which men discern the natures and
abilities of the creatures and their uses, for which, by well ordering and
disposing of them, they may be made serviceable; that also is wholly from Isaiah 28:26).
4. The success and effect of the labour which we bestow is the fruit
of this blessing (Genesis 26:12; Psalms 65:10). So that it is God alone
that doth all in all; and man in effect doth nothing but make use of such means
as God both prepares to his hand and works by to produce the desired effect.
Let it then pluck down the pride of all our hearts, who are so apt to rejoice
in the works of our own hands, not as in the fruits of God’s blessing, but as
in the effects of our own endeavours; and let it check our vain and dangerous
confidence, which makes us trust in our own wisdom and power, and burn incense
to our own net and yarn, that we may ascribe the success of all our labours
about the things of this life unto God alone, who is indeed pleased to make use
of our heads and hands in the conservation of His creatures; but--
1. Rather to keep us doing than because He needs our help.
2. That finding by experience how little our labours work to the
producing of any effect, we might rejoice in Him who worketh all things by His
mighty power and not in ourselves.
3. And thereupon might be taught to depend upon Him and serve Him;
when we observe the success of our labours to be the effect of His power, and
not of any ability of ours.
4. To abase and humble us, in busying ourselves about the service
even of those creatures that He hath put under our feet; all which He hath
ordained only for a short time, whereas hereafter all men’s labours, as well as
all other means, shall cease with the use of those creatures which are
supported by them; and God shall be all in all. (J. White, M. A.)
Man’s work in the garden
Having prepared the garden, the Lord God took the man and placed
him in it, that he might till it and keep it. It was made for him, and he for
it, as the body is made for the soul, and the soul for the body. It was
fruitful beyond anything we now know of, yet it was not so fruitful as to make
any kind of care or cultivation needless. It was so fruitful as to occasion no
toil nor weariness to the cultivator, yet not so fruitful as not to afford
occasion to man’s skill and watchfulness. No amount of skill or toil now can
call up beauty, or verdure, or fruit, beyond a certain narrow limit; for man
has to do with a rugged soil. But in Adam’s case the ground easily and gladly
yielded its substance without limit to the most gentle toil. Nay, it was not
toil; it was simple, pleasant occupation. No doubt the amount and kind of its
actual fruit bearing was to depend upon himself; he was to regulate this
according to his wants and tastes; but still the fruit-bearing source was in
the soil, imparted directly by the hand of God--that all-quickening,
all-fertilizing Spirit that brooded over the face of the deep. Afterwards that
Spirit was grieved away from the soil by man’s sin; but at first His power was
most signally manifested in its fruitful richness. Man was lord of the soil,
and of all that trod it or grew on it, and his daily employments were to
manifest his dominion--not dominion over a rebellious earth, needing to be
curbed or scourged into obedience, but a dominion over a willing world, that
stood eagerly awaiting his commands. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
Exhortation to industry
If God have called you, as He called Adam, to till the ground, let
your weedless field give evidence that Industry has holden the plough and the
hoe in her hands. If He have called you to ply the instruments of the artizan,
let your shop be musical the livelong day with the clicking of your tools. If
He have called you to the pursuit of trade, let your well-arranged commodities
and punctual fulfillments testify that you are not slothful in business (Romans 12:11). If He have called you to
the quest of knowledge, let your well-thumbed books attest that Diligence has
reigned in your study. If He have called you to the wifely duties of the
matron, look well to the ways of thy household, and eat not the bread of
idleness (Proverbs 31:27). Take care lest thy
garden degenerate into the sluggard’s field, grown up with nettles, covered
with brambles, breached with broken walls, poverty prowling around thy
dwelling, thy wants leaping upon thee as armed men (Proverbs 24:30-34). In brief, whatever be
the occupation to which the Providence of God has called thee, pursue it with
enthusiasm, doing all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the
Father through Him (Colossians 3:17). (G. D.Boardman.)
Cyrus a gardener
When Lysander, the Lacedaemonian general, brought magnificent
presents to Cyrus, the younger son of Darius, who piqued himself more on his
integrity and politeness than on his rank and birth, the prince conducted his
illustrious guest through his gardens, and pointed out to him their varied
beauties. Lysander, struck with so fine a prospect, praised the manner in which
the grounds were laid out, the neatness of the walks, the abundance of fruits,
planted with an art which knew how to combine the useful with the agreeable,
the beauty of the parterres, and the glowing variety of flowers, exhaling
odours universally throughout the delightful scene. “Everything charms and
transports me in this place,” said Lysander to Cyrus; “but what strikes me most
is the exquisite taste and elegant industry of the person who drew the plan of
these gardens, and gave it the fine order, wonderful disposition, and happiness
of arrangement which I cannot sufficiently admire.” Cyrus replied, “it was I
that drew the plan and entirely marked it out; and many of the trees which you
see were planted by my own hands.” “What!” exclaimed Lysander, with surprise,
and viewing Cyrus from head to foot, “is it possible that, with those purple robes
and splendid vestments, those strings of jewels and bracelets of gold, those
buskins so richly embroidered; is it possible that you could play the gardener,
and employ your royal hands in planting trees?” “Does that surprise you?” said
Cyrus; “I assure you that, when my health permits, I never sit down to my table
without having fatigued myself, either in military exercise, rural labour, or
some other occupation.”
Verse 16-17
In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.
The fall of man
These words were fulfilled at the time they were spoken; they have
been fulfilled ceaselessly thereafter. We live in a universe of death. The
phenomenon is common to us, but no familiarity can rob it of its dreadfulness;
for the dead, who are the more in number, have kept their awful secret
unrevealed, and the child who died yesterday knows more than can be guessed at
by the thousand millions of living men. Yet this death is the least and the
least dreaded part of that other, that second, that spiritual death which God
meant in the warning of the text.
1. Notice first the certainty of that death. Let us learn to be
early undeceived about the tempter’s falsehood, “Ye shall not surely die.” If a
man will serve his sin, let him at least reckon upon this, that in one way or
other it will be ill with him; his sin will find him out: his path will be
hard; there will be to him no peace. The night of concealment may be long, but
dawn comes like the Erinnys to reveal and avenge its crimes.
2. Not only is this punishment inevitable, but it is natural; not
miraculous, but ordinary; not sudden, but gradual; not accidental, but
necessary; not exceptional, but invariable. Retribution is the impersonal
evolution of an established law.
3. Retribution takes the form which of all others the sinner would
passionately deprecate, for it is homogeneous with the sins on whose practice
it ensues. In lieu of death God offers us His gift of eternal life. While yet
we live, while yet we hear the words of invitation, the door is not shut, and
we may pass to it by the narrow way. To Eve was given the dim promise that her
seed should bruise the serpent’s head; for us Christ has trampled sin and Satan
under His feet. (Archdeacon Farrar.)
In what does man’s death as a sinner consist?
I. THE EMPHASIS
EXPRESSED IN THE TEXT. Literally, “Dying thou shalt die.” Intensity, rather
than certainty.
1. Death, as a dissolution, may be a natural event.
2. Sin gives this dissolution its terrible significance.
II. THE TIME
SPECIFIED IN THE TEXT. Adam did die on the day he sinned. Such a change took
place, not merely in his physical condition, but in his mind and heart--so much
remorse and foreboding, so many dark thoughts about his dissolution--that he
died: his innocency died, his hopes died, his peace died. Conclusion: This view
of the subject--
1. Serves to reconcile science and revelation.
2. Serves to explain many ambiguous passages. “The wages of sin is death.”
“To be carnally minded is death.” “Christ hath abolished death.”
3. Serves to show the value of the gospel. (Homilist.)
Will God punish sin?
I. Who can doubt
it, who listens to the voice of reason and of Scripture?
II. The political
history of the world bears equally positive testimony.
III. The history of
the Church itself furnishes a solemn and affecting answer to the question.
IV. The human
conscience bears no doubtful testimony on this subject.
V. The Holy
Scriptures answer our question with solemn and startling emphasis. They reveal
a holy God, hating all iniquity, and pledged by every attribute of His being,
and by every principle of His government, to oppose, subdue, punish, and hedge
up the way of sin. (J. M. Sherwood, D. D.)
The forbidden tree
I. THE LARGE AND
BOUNTIFUL PROVISION WHICH GOD MADE FOR THE HAPPINESS OF MAN. It is this which
leaves our first parents without excuse. There was but one forbidden tree.
II. THE TRIAL OF
MAN’S OBEDIENCE. The having some command which we can break is evidently
essential to our first notions of moral accountableness; but further than this
the restriction placed upon our first parents seems not intended to go. You
will observe, from its terms, that it interfered with no one form of rational
enjoyment; it left no one of man’s mental appetencies ungratified; it involved
neither pain, nor effort, nor self-denial, nor cost; it was just an
acknowledgment which God required from man of his submission; it was, in fact,
a mere nominal quit rent, which he had to pay to the great Landlord of the
universe, for having an estate worthy of an angel. With regard to the manner in
which all this mental and moral confusion could be connected with the mere
gratification of the bodily appetite, it is not wise to speculate. Analogies
are not wanting to show to us how the fruits of the earth may be converted into
a moral as well as a material poison. We have heard of those who are said to
“dig their graves with their teeth”; of those who for a mess of pottage would
sell the birthright of immortality; of those who put a thief into their heads,
to steal away reason, reflection, thought, ay, their very hopes of heaven; and
it may have been so with regard to “the tree of knowledge.”
III. THE THREATENED
PENALTIES OF DISOBEDIENCE. Where you may first notice the terms of the
sentence, in respect to time. “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt
surely die.” Some persons see a difficulty in this passage, because the
sentence of death was not executed upon the day of transgression; but this
arises from overlooking the exact import of the Hebrew words used, which would
fairly admit of being rendered as referring not to the actual infliction of
death, so much as subjecting man to the liability to die. It imports, that he
should from that moment become mortal, that there should be the beginnings and
seeds of dissolution incorporated with his very being, from the time he tasted
of that tree. This rendering will receive some elucidation, if you look at the
marginal rendering which is proposed. You will observe, it is there said,
“dying, thou shalt die.” Now, this is a common Hebraism for some continuous and
gradually accomplished act. And therefore the import of the words is, that from
the moment this tree was tasted, there should be the beginnings of a death
which should reach to all his posterity. The same continuousness of action
applies to a former part of the verse; for there too, you observe, the same
marginal reference is given. It is said, “eating, thou shalt eat,” just as here
it is said, “dying, thou shalt die”; and therefore the two expressions may be
interpreted alike--the one as saying, “Eating, thou shalt eat,” or, “This tree
shall be for thy perpetual life,” the other as saying, “Dying, thou shalt die,”
or, “The taste of this tree shall be for thy perpetual death.” Let us close
with two reflections.
1. The history we have been contemplating should impress us with a
sense of the transcendent evil of sin. The fruit, as it hung in all its
seductive and inviting clusters, was a type of all the evil that is to be found
in the world. It was pleasing to the eye, it was exciting to the appetite, it
was easy to grasp, and, if the eye of God would but slumber, it might be
partaken of unobserved. But what were its immediate effects? Disease,
mortality, loss of paradise, tormenting fears, the shunning of-the very
presence of God. And such is sin now, and such do they who have entered upon
its courses know to be its consequences.
2. Then, once more, this history should fill us with gratitude for
the greatness of our deliverance through Christ. If we would know the infinite
evil of sin, if we would be inspired with a holy aversion from its contact, if
we would be won to love and gratitude to the Father of our spirits, we must go
and gaze with the eye of faith on the wonders of the cross. (D. Moore, M. A.)
God’s command
This is a pregnant sentence. It involves the first principles of
our intellectual and moral philosophy.
I. THE COMMAND
HERE GIVEN IN WORDS BRINGS INTO ACTIVITY THE INTELLECTUAL NATURE OF MAN. First,
the power of understanding language is called forth. This is the passive lesson
of elocution; the practice, the active lesson will speedily follow. Not only
the secondary part, however, but at the same time the primary and fundamental
part of man’s intellectual nature is here developed. The understanding of the
sign necessarily implies the knowledge of the thing signified. The objective is
represented here by the “trees of the garden.” The subjective comes before his
mind in the pronoun “thou.” The physical constitution of man appears in the
process of “eating.” The moral part of his nature comes out in the significance
of the words “mayest” and “shalt not.” The distinction of merit in actions and
things is expressed in the epithets “good and evil.” The notion of reward is
conveyed in the terms “life” and “death.” And lastly, the presence and
authority of “the Lord God” is implied in the very nature of a command. Thus
the susceptible part of man’s intellect is evoked. The conceptive part will
speedily follow and display itself in the many inventions that will be sought
out and applied to the objects which are placed at his disposal.
II. THE MORAL PART
OF MAN’S NATURE IS HERE CALLED INTO PLAY.
1. Mark God’s mode of teaching. He issues a command. This is
required in order to bring forth into consciousness the hitherto latent
sensibility to moral obligation which was laid in the original constitution of
man’s being.
2. The special mandate here given is not arbitrary in its form, as
is sometimes hastily supposed, but absolutely essential to the legal adjustment
of things in this new stage of creation. Antecedent to the behest of the
Creator, the only indefeasible right to all the creatures lay in Himself. These
creatures may be related to one another. In the great system of things, through
the wonderful wisdom of the grand Designer, the use of some may be needful to
the well-being, the development, and perpetuation of others. Nevertheless no
one has a shadow of right in the original nature of things to the use of any
other. And when a moral agent comes upon the stage of being, in order to mark
out the sphere of his legitimate action, an explicit declaration of the rights
over other creatures granted and reserved must be made. The very issue of the
command proclaims man’s original right of property to be not inherent but
derived. As might be expected in these circumstances, the command has two
clauses, a permissive and a prohibitive.
3. The prohibitory part of this enactment is not a matter of
indifference, as is sometimes imagined, but indispensable to the nature of a
command, and, in particular, of a permissive act or declaration of granted
rights.
4. That which is here made the matter of reserve and so the test of
obedience, is so far from being trivial or out of place, as has been imagined,
that it is the proper and the only object immediately available for these
purposes. The immediate want of man is food. The kind of food primarily
designed for him is the fruit of trees.
5. We are now prepared to understand why this tree is called the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The prohibition of this tree brings man
to the knowledge of good and evil. The products of creative power were all very
Genesis 1:31). Even this tree itself is
good, and productive of unspeakable good in the first instance to man. The
discernment of merit comes up in his mind by this tree. Obedience to the
command of God not to partake of this tree is a moral good. Disobedience to God
by partaking of it is a moral evil.
6. In the day of thy eating thereof, die surely shalt thou. The
Divine command is accompanied with its awful sanction, death. The man could not
at this time have any practical knowledge of the physical dissolution called
death. We must, therefore, suppose either that God made him preternaturally
acquainted with it, or that He conveyed to him the knowledge of it simply as
the negation of life. Probably the latter.
III. MAN HAS HERE
EVIDENTLY BECOME ACQUAINTED WITH HIS MAKER. On the hearing and understanding of
this sentence at least, if not before, he has arrived at the knowledge of God,
as existing, thinking, speaking, permitting, commanding, and thereby exercising
all the prerogatives of that absolute authority over men and things which
creation alone can give. If we were to draw all this out into distinct
propositions, we should find that man was here furnished with a whole system of
theology, ethics, and metaphysics, in a brief sentence. (Prof. J. G. Murphy.)
The first covenant
I. When we use
the word covenant to describe a revelation, which sounds more like a bare
command, we mean to imply that this earliest transaction between God and man is
marked by the same characteristics which we can trace throughout God’s later
dispensations; that it does not rest the claim of obedience on the naked
prerogative of unquestionable power, but connects it with the offer of an
explicit alternative for the decision of freewill; accompanied by the promise
of a blessing for obedience, and by the threat of punishment for disobedience.
We thus bring it into direct comparison with the general tenor of God’s later
covenants: “Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse.” “See, I
have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil.” A covenant,
then, stands by its very nature between two other conceptions, each of which
falls short of the full import of God’s dealings with man. It is more than a
mere ordinance, or a mere command, such as might have been imposed without
reason, and enforced without reward. On the other hand, it is more than that
expression of God’s law which He wrote on man’s heart in his very creation, and
the traces of which we retain in the authority of conscience.
II. We have next
to ask the meaning of the precept which that covenant contained; a precept
which sometimes seems so strange and arbitrary: which some interpretations,
indeed, describe as really strange and arbitrary; namely, that while freely
indulged in every other earthly blessing, man was forbidden to eat of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil. What is the right interpretation of those
words? The following seems to be the meaning of Scripture in its disclosures on
this earliest covenant. When man had been created after the image of God, there
were two of the Divine attributes, his admission to which was limited by
positive laws. These higher endowments were Immortality and Knowledge. To these
the two trees which were planted in the midst of the garden bore a certain
correspondence; that of life he might use, that of knowledge be might not. To
have enjoyed free access to both from the beginning would have raised him above
the rank which was suited to a being who was as yet so utterly untried. Therefore
the one fruit was unconditionally forbidden, while the other fruit was
conditionally allowed. When man disobeyed, and tasted of the prohibited tree of
knowledge, the command was readjusted to meet the case of his sin. The tree of
knowledge had now been tasted: the tree of life was therefore withdrawn. (Archdeacon
Hannah.)
The knowledge of good and evil
“The knowledge of good and evil.” Now to understand this
expression thoroughly, we must distinguish it very clearly, in the first place,
from other kinds of knowledge which were not forbidden: and in the second
place, from such a knowledge, even of good and evil, as could manifestly be
possessed without sin.
1. As to the first of these points, we might at first be disposed to
wonder how knowledge could be, in any form, the one gift which God denied; how
the special test of man’s obedience could be placed in his abstinence from what
would bring him knowledge, and so open his eyes more fully, as it seemed, to
the true nature of the path that lay before him. To this difficulty the obvious
answer would be, that when man was forbidden to eat of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, the injunction certainly did not imply that every
kind of knowledge was withheld.
2. It is also clear that there is a knowledge of good and evil,
which can be possessed, if it cannot be directly sought for, without sin. From
these two considerations we establish, first, that the precept of this earliest
covenant would debar man from some kind of knowledge, without excluding him
from all knowledge; and secondly, that even when it withheld the knowledge of
good and evil, there was still some knowledge which might be described by those
same words, yet which could not have been forbidden by them, because its
presence was implied in the mere form of the command. The first of these
remarks suggests, that we may confine our present inquiry entirely to what is
specially called moral knowledge: i.e., the knowledge of moral acts or
habits, so far as they are permitted or condemned: knowledge of the right,
whether regarded as law, or precept, or command: in combination with knowledge
of that transgression of the right, which may be diversely regarded as crime,
or vice, or sin. Further, the second remark suggests, that this moral knowledge
was not so much forbidden in itself, which would have been impossible in the
ease of a being endowed with both a moral and an intellectual nature; but
forbidden under certain circumstances, and at a certain time.
By the help of these two positions we may gain, I think, a more
close and accurate conception of that acquirement which the fruit of the tree
of knowledge would convey.
1. First it would have been barren knowledge. It would have given
man a theory, when he needed a rule: it would have lighted up his mind to
debate about his duty, when at present his sole work was, to do his duty as the
will of God. Precisely so our moral sciences teaches, that in morality, bare
theory can never be safely carried far in advance of practice; and that the
safe road to moral wisdom lies, not through a familiarity with intellectual
systems, but through the ready obedience of the heart.
2. That this knowledge would have been barren, then, is enough to
establish the mercy and wisdom of God’s first injunction. But we can go
further: we can show that it would have been not less dangerous than useless.
Such a knowledge of good and evil would reveal to Adam the grounds of sin, the
sources of temptation, etc. Hence, shame was the immediate result of that
knowledge. The instant appearance of that feeling showed, that man now for the
first time knew his capacities, tendencies, and opportunities for sin. (Archdeacon
Hannah.)
Observations
I. THE MOST
RIGHTEOUS AMONGST THE SONS OF MEN, MUST AND NEEDS TO LIVE UNDER A LAW.
1. For direction, for man is unfit to chose his own way, being
through his ignorance so apt to mistake evil for good: neither is any able to
find out what is truly good but God alone, who is goodness itself; and His will
the rule of goodness which none can find out or reveal but Himself (1 Corinthians 2:11).
2. It is needful that by conforming to the law given us by God, we
may testify our obedience and subjection unto Him; withal acknowledging and
witnessing to the world, that we account His will in all things to be most
just, which we take unto ourselves as the rule of our actions.
II. THE WILL OF
GOD IS THAT ONLY, WHICH MAN IS TO LOOK UPON AND TAKE FOR HIS RULE TO GUIDE
HIMSELF BY IN ALL HIS WAYS.
1. That by that means we may acknowledge God’s absolute sovereignty
when all things are done upon no other ground but because God will have it so.
2. Because nothing is infallibly good or holy but His will, as
Himself is good and righteous, and there is no iniquity in Him (Deuteronomy 32:4), seeing nothing is fit
to be the rule of other things but that which is in itself certain and
unchangeable.
III. GOD IS PLEASED
NOT ONLY TO GIVE A LAW TO DIRECT US, BUT TO FURNISH US WITH ALL NEEDFUL MEANS
TO FURTHER US IN THE PERFORMANCE OF THE DUTIES REQUIRED THEREIN. And this He
doth, partly, to manifest the sincerity of His affection towards us, in
desiring our salvation; and partly, to justify Himself in the condemnation of
those that refuse so great salvation so many ways tendered unto them, and so
obstinately refused. Let us, then, make use of such helps and means as God is
pleased to offer unto us, as being assured that He really intends what He so
many ways labours to draw us to embrace; and, secondly, as having need of such
helps to support us; and, thirdly, being liable to the greater Condemnation, by
despising and rejecting them.
IV. THE MATTERS IN
WHICH GOD DELIGHTS TO TRY OUR OBEDIENCE ARE MANY TIMES IN THEMSELVES OF NO
GREAT IMPORTANCE.
1. To manifest our total subjection unto Him, when we are limited
even in the smallest things.
2. To show us that it is only obedience and conformity to His will
that God respects, and not She matter or substance of the thing itself in which
He requires it.
3. To make our yoke the more easy, that we might be the more
encouraged to obedience.
V. OUR ABUNDANCE,
AND DELIGHTS, AND PLEASURES MUST BE USED IN FEAR AND WITHIN THE LIMITS OF
OBEDIENCE.
VI. DISOBEDIENCE
IS A FEARFUL SIN IN GOD’S ACCOUNT. And that especially because it is directed
against the majesty of God Himself, whose authority is slighted and despised,
when His laws and commandments are disobeyed. And, secondly, it opens a gap to
all manner of looseness and disorder; nature knows no stay when it hath once
passed the bounds of obedience, no more than a violent stream doth, when it
hath once broken over those banks that before kept it in.
VII. THE TERRORS OF
THE LAW ARE USEFUL AND NEEDFUL, EVEN UNTO THE BEST AMONGST THE SONS OF MEN.
VIII. DEATH AND
DESTRUCTION ARE IN GOD’S HAND, TO INFLICT THEM WHERE HE PLEASETH. The
consideration hereof, cannot but revive the heart of God’s servants, hated and
persecuted by men of the world, when they know their life and breath is in
God’s hand, which therefore none can take away, but by His will and decree; and
therefore--
1. Not while God hath any use of their service here.
2. Not if they be of the number of Christ’s redeemed ones, for whom
He hath conquered death, and taken away the sting of it (1 Corinthians 15:55-57), and
delivered them from the power of it.
IX. ALL KINDS OF
EVILS AND MISERIES, PRESENT OR FUTURE, OUTWARD OR INWARD, ARE THE WAGES OF SIN.
X. GOD’S
JUDGMENTS ARE CERTAIN AND INFALLIBLE, AS WELL AS HIS PROMISES OF MERCY. Resting
upon the same grounds which are in themselves infallible.
1. The holiness of His nature, by which He is constantly moved to
take vengeance on sin, as well as to reward righteousness.
2. His unalterable truth, which is firmer than heaven or earth. (See
Numbers 14:23-35).
3. His unresistible power (Deuteronomy 32:39). Secondly, directed to
the same end which God aims at in all His ways and works, the filling of the
earth with His glory (Numbers 14:21), advanced in the acts of
His justice, as well as of His mercy.
XI. VENGEANCE AND
JUDGMENT FOLLOW SIN AT THE HEELS. (J. White, M. A.)
A view of the covenant of works
We have here an account of the original transaction between God
and our first father Adam in paradise, while yet in the state of primitive
integrity. In which the following things are to be remarked, being partly
expressed and partly implied.
1. The Lord’s making over to him a benefit by way of a conditional
promise, which made the benefit a debt upon the performing of the condition.
This promise is a promise of life, and is included in the threatening of death.
2. The condition required to entitle him to this benefit, namely,
obedience. It is expressed in a prohibition of one particular, “Of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it.”
3. The sanction, or penalty in case of the breach of the covenant,
“In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
4. Adam’s going into the proposal, and acceptance of those terms, is
sufficiently intimated to us by his objecting nothing against it. Door. There
was a covenant of works, a proper covenant, between God and Adam the father of
mankind.
I. I SHALL
CONFIRM THIS GREAT TRUTH, AND EVINCE THE BEING OF SUCH A COVENANT.
1. Here is a concurrence of all that is necessary to constitute a
true and proper covenant of works. The parties contracting, God and man; God
requiring obedience as the condition of life; a penalty fixed in case of breaking;
and man acquiescing in the proposal.
2. It is expressly called a covenant in Scripture: “For these are
the two covenants, the one from Mount Sinai,” etc. (Galatians 4:24). This covenant from Mount
Sinai was the covenant of works as being opposed to the covenant of grace,
namely, the law of the ten commandments, with promise and sanction, as before
expressed. At Sinai it was renewed indeed, but that was not its first appearance
in the world. For there being but two ways of life to be found in Scripture,
one by works, the other by grace, the latter hath no place but where the first
is rendered ineffectual; therefore the covenant of works was before the
covenant of grace in the world; yet the covenant of grace was promulgated
quickly after Adam’s fall; therefore the covenant of works behoved to have been
made with him before. And how can one imagine a covenant of works set before
poor impotent sinners, if there had not been such a covenant with man in his
state of integrity? “But as for them, like Adam, they have transgressed the
covenant” (Hosea 6:7).
3. We find a law of works opposed to the law of faith. “Where is
boasting, then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay; but by the law of
faith” Romans 3:27). This law of works is the
covenant of works, requiring works, or obedience, as the condition pleadable
for life; for otherwise the law as a rule of life requires works too. Again, it
is a law that does not exclude boasting, which is the very nature of the
covenant of works, that makes the reward to be of debt. And further, the law of
faith is the covenant of grace; therefore the law of works is the covenant of
works.
4. There were sacramental signs and seals of this transaction in
paradise. “And now lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of
life, and eat, and live forever” (Genesis 3:22); and the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, mentioned in the words of the text. When we find,
then, confirming seals of this transaction, we must own it to be a covenant.
5. Lastly: All mankind are by nature under the guilt of Adam’s first
sin Romans 5:12). And they are under the
curse of the law before they have committed actual sin: hence they are said to
be “by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3), which they must needs owe
to Adam’s sin, as imputed to them. This must be owing to a particular relation
betwixt them and him; which must either be, that he is their natural head
simply, from whence they derive their natural being--but then the sins of our
immediate parents, and all other mediate ones too, behoved to be imputed rather
than Adam’s, because oar relation to them is nearer--or because he is our
federal head also, representing us in the first covenant. And that is the
truth, and evidences the covenant of works made with Adam to have been a proper
covenant.
II. I shall
explain THE NATURE OF THE COVENANT OF WORKS. In order to do this, I shall
consider--First. The parties contracting in this covenant. These were two.
First. On the one hand, God Himself, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. “And the
Lord God commanded the man, saying,” etc. Genesis 2:16). God, as Creator and
Sovereign Lord of man, condescended to enter into a covenant with man, His own
creature and subject, whom He might have governed by a simple law, without
proposing to him the reward of life. Thus it was a covenant betwixt two very
unequal parties. And here God showed--
1. His supreme authority over the creature man, founded on man’s
natural dependence on Him as his Creator (Romans 11:36).
2. His abundant goodness, in annexing such a great reward to man’s
service, which it could never merit (Hebrews 11:6).
3. His admirable condescension, in stooping to make a covenant with
His own creature. Secondly. On the other hand was Adam, the father of all
mankind. He must be considered here under a two-fold notion.
1. As a righteous man, morally perfect, endued with sufficient power
and abilities to believe and do whatever God should reveal to or require of
him, fully able to keep the law. That Adam was thus furnished when the covenant
was made with him--
(a) His mind was endowed with knowledge; for that is a part of the
image of God in man (Colossians 3:10).
(b) His will was endowed with righteousness (Ephesians 4:24).
(c) His affections were holy (Ephesians 4:24).
(d) He had an executive power, whereby he was capable to do what he
knew to be his duty, and inclined to do. He was made very good Genesis 1:31); which implies not only a
power to do good, but a facility in doing it free from all clogs and
hindrances.
(e) If he had not been so, that covenant could not have been made
with him. It was inconsistent with the justice and goodness of God to have
required that of His creature which he had not ability to perform given him by
his Creator. Wherefore, before Adam could be obliged to perfect obedience, he
behoved to have ability competent for it; otherwise that saying of the wicked
and slothful servant had been true (Matthew 25:24).
Use 1. How low is man
now brought, how unlike to what he was at his creation! Alas! man is now
ruined, and sin is the cause of that fatal ruin.
2. What madness is it for men to look to that covenant for
salvation, when they are nowise fit for the way of it, having lost all the
furniture and ability proper for the observation thereof.
3. See how ye stand with respect to this covenant; whether ye are
discharged from it, and brought within the bond of the new covenant in Christ
or not. But I proceed. Adam, in the covenant of works, is to be considered as
the first man (1 Corinthians 15:47), in whom all
mankind was included. And he was--
1. The natural root of mankind, from which all the generations of
men on the face of the earth spring. This is evident from Acts 17:26.
2. The moral root, a public person, and representative of mankind.
And as such the covenant of works was made with him. As to this representation
by Adam, we may note--
1. That the man Christ was not included in it; Adam did not
represent Him, as he stood covenanting with God. This is manifest, in that
Christ is opposed to Adam, as the last and second Adam to the first Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), one
representative to another (verse 48).
2. Whether Eve was included in this representation is not so clear.
I find she is excepted by some. It is plain that Adam was the original whence
she came, as he and she together are of all their posterity. He was her head.
“For the husband is the head of the wife” (Ephesians 5:23). The thread of the
history (Genesis 2:1-25) gives us the making of
the covenant of works with Adam before the formation of Eve. The covenant
itself runs in terms as delivered to one person: “Thou mayest--Thou shalt”
(verses 16, 17). From whence it seems to me that she was included.
3. Without question, all his posterity by ordinary generation were
included in it. He stood for them all in that covenant, and was their federal
head, that covenant being made with him as a public person representing them
all. For--
1. God made the choice; He pitched on Adam as a fit person to
represent all mankind; and there is no mending of God’s work, which is perfect Ecclesiastes 3:14).
2. Adam was undoubtedly the most fit choice. He was the common
father of us all; so being our natural head, he was fittest to be our federal
head. He was in case for managing the bargain to the common advantage Ecclesiastes 7:29), being “made upright,”
and furnished with sufficient abilities. And his own interest was on the same
bottom with that of his posterity. Thus his abilities and natural affections
concurring with his own interest, spoke him to be a fit person for that office.
3. The choice was of a piece with the covenant. The covenant, in its
own nature most advantageous for man, though it could not be profitable to Job 35:7) was a free benefit and gift on
God’s part; forasmuch as man had not a claim to the life promised, but by the
covenant. So that as the covenant owed its being, not to nature, but a positive
constitution of God, so did the choice owe its being to the same. God joined
the covenant and representation together; and so the consent of Adam or his
posterity to the one was a consenting to the other.
III. I COME NOW TO
DISCOURSE OF THE PARTS OF THE COVENANT. Now, the parts of the covenant of works
agreed upon by God and man were three--the condition to he performed by man,
the promise to be accomplished to man upon his performance of the condition,
and the penalty in case of man’s breaking the covenant. The condition of the
covenant of works: First. The first part is the condition to be performed;
which was obedience to the law, fulfilling the commands God gave him, by doing
what they required (Romans 10:5), upon the doing of which he
might claim the promised life in virtue of the compact. So this was a covenant,
a covenant properly conditional. For understanding of this, we must consider--
1. What law he was by this covenant obliged to yield obedience to;
and--
2. What kind of obedience he was obliged to yield thereto.
First. Let us consider what law he was by this covenant obliged to
yield obedience to.
1. The natural law, the law of the ten commandments, as the New
Testament explains it (Galatians 3:10). If it be inquired, How
that law was given him? It was written on his mind and heart (Romans 2:15); and that in his creation (Ecclesiastes 7:29). Therefore it is
called the natural law.
2. Another law which Adam was obliged, by the covenant of works, to
yield obedience to, was the positive symbolical law, forbidding him to eat of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil recorded in the text. This law Adam
had not, nor could have, but by revelation; for it was no part of the law of
nature, being in its own nature indifferent, and altogether depending on the
will of the Lawgiver, who, in a consistency with His own and man’s nature too,
might have appointed otherwise concerning it. But this law being once given,
the natural law obliged him to the observation of it, inasmuch as it strictly
bound him to obey his God and Creator in all things, binding him to love the
Lord with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. Hence it follows--
1. Herein man’s obedience was to turn upon the precise point of
respect to the will of God, which was a trial of his obedience exactly suited
to the state he was then in, and by which the most glaring evidence of true
obedience would have been given.
2. Thus his obedience or disobedience behoved to be most clear,
conspicuous, and undeniable, not only to himself, but to other creatures
capable of observation; forasmuch as this law respected an external thing
obvious to sense, and the discerning of any, who yet could not judge of
internal acts of obedience or disobedience.
3. It was most proper for asserting God’s dominion over man, being a
visible badge of man’s subjection to God.
4. It was a most proper moral instrument, and suitable mean, to
retain man in his integrity, who, though a happy creature, was yet a changeable
one. Secondly. Let us consider what kind of obedience to the law Adam was, by
this covenant, obliged to yield, as the condition of it.
To this two-fold law he was to yield--
1. Perfect obedience.
2. Adam was obliged to perpetual obedience (Galatians 3:10). Not that he was forever
to have been upon his trial; for that would have rendered the promise of life
vain and fruitless, since he could never at that rate have attained the reward
of his obedience. But it behoved to be perpetual, as a condition of the
covenant, during the time set by God Himself for the trial; which time God has
not discovered in His Word.
3. Adam was obliged to personal obedience. Hence says the Lord, “Ye
shall keep My statutes and My judgments; which if a man do, he shall live in
them” (Leviticus 18:5), which words the Apostle
Paul quotes: “Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the
man which doth these things shall live by them” (Romans 10:5). The promise to be
accomplished to man upon his performance of the condition. That was a promise
of life (Romans 10:5), which was implied in the
threatening of death in case of sinning. We come now to consider THE PENALTY IN
CASE OF MAN’S BREAKING THE COVENANT, not fulfilling the condition. This was
death, death in its full latitude and extent, as opposed unto life and
prosperity. This death was two fold. First: Legal death, whereby man sinning
became dead in law, being a condemned man, laid under the curse, or sentence of
the law, binding him over to the wrath of God, and to revenging justice. “For
as many as are of the works of the law, are under the curse. For it is written,
Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the
book of the law to do them” Galatians 3:10). Thus was man to die the
day he should break the covenant; and thus he died that very moment he sinned,
because by his sin he broke the holy, just, and good law of God, set himself in
opposition to the holy nature of God, and cast off the yoke of submission to
his Creator. Secondly: Real death, which is the execution of the sentence Deuteronomy 29:19-20); the threatened
evils and punishments contained in the curse of the law coming upon him. And of
this there are several parts, all which man became liable to, or fell upon him,
when he sinned. We take them up in these three--spiritual, natural, and eternal
death.
1. Spiritual death, which is the death of the soul and spirit of man
Ephesians 2:1, where the apostle mentions
a being “dead in trespasses and sins”). This results from the separation of the
soul from God, by the breaking of the silver cord of this covenant, which knit
innocent man to God, causing him to live, and live prosperously, as long as it
was unbroken; but being broken, that union and communion was dissolved, and
they parted (Isaiah 59:2). Thus man was separated from
the fountain of life, upon which death necessarily ensued.
2. Natural death, which is the death of the body. This results from
the separation of the soul from the body. It is two fold--stinged and unstinged
death. Unstinged death parts the soul and body indeed, but not by virtue of the
curse for sin. This is the lot of the people of God (1 Corinthians 15:55), and is not the
penalty of the covenant of works; for that is death with the sting of the curse
(Galatians 3:10), which death Christ died,
which penalty He paid, and so freed believers from it Galatians 3:13). So that there is a
specified difference betwixt the death of believers and that death threatened
in the covenant of works; they are not of the same kind, no more than they die
the death that Christ died.
3. Eternal death, which issues from the eternal separation of both
soul and body from God in hell (Matthew 25:41). This is the full
accomplishment of the curse of the covenant of works; and presupposes the union
of the soul and body, in a dreadful resurrection to damnation; the criminal
soul and body being brought forth from their separate prisons and joined
together again, that death may exercise its full force upon them forever and
ever. I shall consider THE SEALS OF THE COVENANT OF WORKS, WHEREBY IT WAS
CONFIRMED TO ADAM.
It has pleased God to append seals to His covenants with men in
all ages, for the confirmation of their faith of the respective covenants; and
this covenant seems not to have wanted some seals appended thereto for the same
effect.
1. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17). Whatever it was, it was
not so called, as having a power really to make men wise. So the tempter
pretended (Genesis 3:5), but he was a liar from the
beginning (John 8:44). But it was a sign both of
good and evil; sealing to him all good while he should abstain from it, and
evil if he should eat of it; and so confirming his faith in both parts of the
persuasion of it. And eventually, by eating of it, he knew good by the loss of
it, and evil by the feeling of it. Though it was not to be touched, it might be
seen, even as the rainbow, the seal of the covenant with Noah.
2. The tree of life (Genesis 2:9). The which, though it might
be an excellent means of preserving the vigour of natural life, as other trees
of paradise also, yet it could not have a virtue in itself of making man every
way immortal. But it was a notable sacramental sign of life and eternal
happiness, according to the nature of that covenant.
Here, as in a glass, ye may see several things, concerning God,
concerning man in his best estate, concerning Christ, and concerning man in his
present fallen state.
1. Concerning God, look into this covenant, and behold--
2. Concerning man in his state of primitive integrity.
3. Concerning Christ the Saviour of sinners, behold here--
4. Concerning man in his fallen state.
Of the covenant of works
I. To show WHY
GOD ENTERED INTO THIS COVENANT WITH MAN.
1. For His own glory, which is the supreme end of all His actions.
More particularly--
2. God condescended to enter into covenant with man for man’s
greater good.
II. I come now TO
MAKE SOME PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT OF THIS SUBJECT.
1. See here the great and wonderful condescension of God, who was
pleased to stoop so low as to enter into a covenant with His own creature.
2. See what a glorious condition man was in when God entered into a
covenant with him.
3. See that God is very just in all that comes on man. He set him up
with a good stock, in a noble case, making him His covenant party. He gave him
the noblest undeserved encouragement to continue in his obedience, and told him
his hazard if he should disobey. So that falling he is left without excuse, his
misery being entirely owing to himself.
4. See the deplorable condition of all Adam’s posterity by reason of
the breach of this covenant. They are under the curse of the law, which is an
universal curse, and discharges its thunder against every person who is
naturally under that covenant, and has not changed his state.
5. This serves to humble all flesh, and beat down the pride of all
created glory, under the serious consideration of the great loss we have
sustained by Adam’s fall, and the sad effects thereof upon us. We Have lost all
that is good and valuable, the image and favour of God, and have incurred the
wrath and displeasure of a holy God.
6. See the unsearchable riches of Divine grace, in providing a
better covenant for the recovery and salvation of fallen man.
7. There is no wonder, that however little good is wrought in the
world, yet working to win heaven is so frequent. We have sufficient evidence of
the covenant of works being made with man as a public person, seeing it is yet
natural to us to do that we may live, and to think that God will accept us for
our works’ sake.
8. See your misery, all ye that are out of Christ. This covenant is
your way to heaven, which is now impossible. Tell not of your good meanings and
desires, your repentance, and your obedience, such as it is; and think not to
get life, salvation, and acceptance thereby. For the covenant ye are under
admits of no repentance, no will for the deed. It requires nothing less than
perfect obedience, which ye are incapable to give.
9. Therefore give over this way of seeking life by the broken
covenant of works, and come to the Lord Jesus Christ; lay hold on the better
covenant, and come up to Christ’s chariot (Song of Solomon 3:9-10), which will drive
you safely to eternal life and glory. That chariot which the first Adam drove,
went not far till it was all shattered, and made unfit to carry any to heaven.
It breaks with the weight of the least sin; and so you can never think it will
drive to heaven with you (Romans 8:1-39). But come into the
chariot of the covenant of grace, and ye will be safely carried in it to the
land of eternal rest and glory. (T. Boston, D. D.)
The law of paradise
A right understanding of this law of paradise is necessary, in
order to get a clear knowledge of the most essential and fundamental doctrines
of the gospel; and no less necessary in order to detect and refute many great and
dangerous errors which have prevailed, and which still prevail, in the
Christian world.
I. I am to show
that GOD HAS A RIGHT TO GIVE LAW to all His intelligent creatures. It is the
part of a superior to give law to an inferior. Every lawgiver must be supreme,
in respect to those to whom he gives law. God is by nature supreme in all His
natural and moral attributes. His power is superior to the united power of all
created beings. His wisdom is superior to their united wisdom. His goodness is
superior to their united goodness. He stands supreme among the whole
intelligent creation, in point of power, wisdom, and goodness, which are the
most amiable and essential qualifications of a lawgiver. This supremacy alone
is sufficient to give Him the throne of the universe, and clothe Him with the
highest possible authority, to give law to all His intelligent creatures in
every part of His vast dominions. But here the important point to be considered
is, how God enacts His will into a law or rule of duty to the subjects of His
moral government. This He does, by publishing His will to them in a certain
manner. By publishing His will, I say, because there is no necessity of His
publishing His design, intention or determination. This, as a lawgiver, He has
a right to keep a secret in His own breast. But He must publish His will, that
is, His pleasure, in order to make His will or pleasure a rule of duty of legal
obligation. And He must also make it known in a certain manner, to give it the
force and obligation of law; or in other words, He must publish His will in the
form of law.
1. In the first place, He must specify the persons or beings to whom
He speaks authoritatively.
2. Secondly, He must express His will in the form of a precept, or a
prohibition, in order to clothe it with Divine authority.
3. Besides, thirdly, He must threaten to punish those who disobey
His precepts or prohibitions, in order to give His will the form and force of
law. There can be no precept nor prohibition without a penalty expressed or implied.
The penalty is the sanction of a law, and expresses the whole authority of the
lawgiver.
II. It is now easy
to show that GOD DID GIVE A PROPER LAW TO ADAM respecting the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil. These words were addressed to Adam personally; they
contained a precise prohibition, which was sanctioned by a precise penalty.
Adam was the very person prohibited; the thing prohibited was his eating of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil; and the penalty annexed was death: “In
the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” This was a proper law
in distinction from any covenant, or constitution.
III. I am next to
show WHEREIN THIS LAW OF PARADISE WAS LIKE ALL OTHER DIVINE LAWS. Here it is
easy to mention several important points of resemblance.
1. It was like all other Divine laws in its nature. Every Divine law
which was given to Adam, and which has ever been given to his posterity, has
required the heart, or internal holiness.
2. The law respecting the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was
like all other Divine laws in its extent. It extended to all who were specified
in it, and to no others.
3. The law of paradise was like all other Divine laws in regard to
its condemning power. Every Divine law has a condemning power; that is, a power
to condemn those who are bound by it, and actually transgress it. And the law
given to Adam, respecting the tree of the knowledge of good and evil had the
same condemning power, and did actually condemn those who were guilty of eating
the forbidden fruit.
IV. Wherein the
law respecting the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was UNLIKE SOME LAWS
which God has given to mankind. And here I can think of but one point of
difference worthy to be mentioned; and that is, in respect to duration. This
law was given to our first parents, to try their love and obedience; and as
soon as it had answered this purpose, it ceased of course to have any legal
force or obligation.
V. WHAT
PUNISHMENT THE LAW THREATENED TO ADAM, IN CASE OF DISOBEDIENCE. The words of
the law are plain and explicit. “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou
shalt surely die.” (N. Emmons, D. D.)
The threatened death
Our business in now to consider the import and the extent of this
penalty. What are we to understand by this threatened death? What is the true
construction of the language: “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die”? Let us first inquire whether bodily death, the dissolution of the
physical organization, is embraced in the threatened penalty? Is there good
ground to believe, either from the teachings of Scripture, or from any other
source, that this is at least a part, if not the whole, of the punishment which
was denounced and executed on our first parents? We answer at once that we know
of no reason whatever for thus thinking. That corporal death does not include
the whole of what was threatened, we suppose that there is little occasion for
attempting to show to any here; and I hope to be able to convince the most of
you, in the course of my discussion, that there is no evidence that it
constitutes any part of the original threatening. I will not say that physical
pain and bodily dissolution are not and cannot be, in any case, the fruit of
sin and a part of its punishment; but there is force in the allegation, that as
sin is the transgression of a moral law, and a moral offence, its proper
punishment should first and chiefly be looked for in a disturbed state of the moral
feelings and the moral relations. Since the seat of sin is the mind, it is
mainly, no doubt, in the mind that its punishment should be sought. We cannot
argue from the words in the text--“Thou shalt surely die”--that bodily death
forms any part of the evil thus signified. This language may just as well be
interpreted of moral or spiritual death, as of corporeal. The terms “die” and
“death” are often used in the Bible to denote nothing beyond spiritual death,
or that state of mind, that feeling of guilt, condemnation, and misery, which
immediately succeeds the transgression of the Divine law. But is there not a
reason, in the language of the threatening itself, which unavoidably drives us
to the spiritual sense? The terms employed are: “IN THE DAY THAT THOU EATEST
THEREOF, thou shalt surely die.” Now if we suppose here any reference at all to
bodily death, if we consider this idea as in any manner included in the
expression, “Thou shalt surely die,” we at once involve ourselves in a great
and apparently inextricable difficulty. We compromise the veracity of God; we
make Him pronounce a sentence which He does not execute; for Adam and Eve did
not die corporeally, did not suffer the extinction of their natural earthly
life the very day in which they partook of the forbidden fruit, but lived,
according to the account which we have of them, hundreds of years after this
time. Is there, then, any way of avoiding the conclusion that bodily death is
no part of the threatening pronounced against them? I certainly know of none.
Let us see, however, what has been offered in order to meet this difficulty. It
has been maintained by some, and is perhaps the common view, that although Adam
and Eve did not actually suffer bodily death on that day, yet they then became
mortal; they underwent a sudden change in their physical organization, which
made them liable to death, and rendered it certain that their bodies would
ultimately decay and perish. Death, according to this view, then began to work
in them, inasmuch as they then became liable to bodily pains and diseases,
which, by the appointment of the Creator, end in corporeal death. Now,
satisfactory and consistent as this explanation may have been deemed by many, I
trust I shall disturb no one in saying, that it is wholly incapable of support.
It is, in fact, a mere supposition, invented, I believe, for the purpose of
escaping a difficulty; and a supposition in favour of which there is not a
particle of evidence. Especially we cannot accept it, when there are against it
these two objections; first, that it assigns to the word “die,” a meaning which
it never has elsewhere, that of becoming liable to die; and hence, secondly,
that it assumes that man was created physically immortal, endowed not only with
an immortal soul, but with an equally immortal body; since otherwise his sin
could not be spoken of as making him mortal. Let us then examine more
particularly this assumption, that man had at the beginning a naturally
imperishable body. The most that can be said of it is, that it is a mere human
opinion, devoid of any precise and express warrant from the Bible. We believe
that they received from their Maker a body which was subject to old age, decay,
and death; and that their sin produced in them no immediate change in this respect.
They were subject from the beginning to the great law of mortality, and had
they always maintained their integrity, would, at the proper time, have passed
out of their original corporeal life into some higher state of existence. The
mere statement of this view is already some evidence of its correctness; for it
corresponds in no way with our conceptions of the high dignity and destination
of these first sharers of our nature, to suppose them encumbered forever with
the shackles of a coarse material body, appointed always to dwell on the earth,
and denied any other knowledge and happiness, than what might come to them in
this region and under these physical conditions. The garden of Eden was, at
best, but the fit receptacle of their infancy; and after a suitable time passed
on earth, a period of existence in the body, it must have been the intention of
their Maker to take them up, by translation, if not by death, to a nobler
sphere. This view recommends itself to us as intrinsically reasonable. It
accords with all our best and most natural conceptions. But we have, in favour
of the view, something more than this strong internal recommendation, this
conformity with our natural ideas of the high destination of man. The
Scriptures themselves lend it their decisive confirmation. They teach us that
the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life; that He gave him for food every herb bearing seed,
and every tree yielding fruit; and that He commanded him to be fruitful and
multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it. This is an account of man, not
as affected by sin, but as he was from the beginning. It is the description of
his physical origin, of his sustenance, and of his appointment to exist in a
succession of generations, till the world should be filled and subdued by his
multiplied descendants. Now, can we fail to see, in all these carefully
enumerated circumstances, the sure marks and evidences of a law of individual
decay and dissolution? Is it not here clearly implied that our first parents
were not exempted from any of the physical wants and changes which belong to
men in general? Further evidence that man was created mortal is found in the
sentence pronounced on him at the time of his transgression. The substantial
import of the curse is: While thy life lasts, thou shalt toil for its support,
and have experience of sorrow. The words take for granted that the bodily life
was limited; but they do not at all intimate that it then became so; that the
sin, just committed and now punished, had limited this life. Far less do we
find in them any allusion to a suddenly produced change in the physical
constitution, by which this, created immortal, was now rendered mortal. On the
whole, these intimations in Genesis (and we know of no conflicting statements
in other parts of the Bible) lead us to conclude that the bodily constitution
of Adam and Eve was, from the beginning, in every respect essentially like our
own. They had just such skin and bones, just such muscles and nerves as we
have. They fed on similar food, and would just as surely have hungered and died
without it. They were placed in like relations to all natural agents and
natural laws. A further support to the view here urged is found in the fact
that Christ came on earth in a mortal body. As He was wholly free from sin, and
an example of the right condition of our nature morally, so we cannot help
viewing Him as exempted from any liability to physical sufferings, which were
not common also to our first parents before the Fall. If these were created
with a body incapable of pain, want, and death, then they were thus far
distinguished above Christ, the Lord from heaven. But this is a highly
improbable supposition. We add that it did not belong to the design of Christ
to save any from corporeal death. Still His salvation must be commensurate with
the evils caused by sin; and we hence infer that a liability to physical death
is not among these evils. Our Saviour nowhere teaches us to look upon the death
of the body as in itself an evil, and to see in it a proof of our guilt. There
is no difficulty in admitting that sin may render the prospect of dissolution
and of what lies beyond it sad and fearful, while yet it is true that men would
suffer dissolution if they had not sinned. Sin may not have brought in
corporeal death, any more than it brought in the destination to a continued and
endless life after this death; but yet it may have darkened the view and the
contemplation of both, and particularly of the latter. Returning, then, to the
question, In what consisted the penalty inflicted on our first parents for sin?
we have no hesitation in replying, that it consisted essentially in spiritual
death, or in a state of condemnation before God, with such superadded physical
sufferings, corporeal death excluded, as are traceable to sin. The penalty of
their transgression lay emphatically in that state of mind which is always the
appointed result of transgression. Adopting this view, we have no difficulty in
giving their full force to all the words in the text: “In the day that thou
cutest thereof thou shalt surely die.” The execution of the penalty thus
corresponds perfectly with the threatening. The very day of the commission of
the sin is the day of its righteous visitation. A spiritual punishment alights
on the offenders, and enters into their very souls. They fear the presence of
their Maker, and hide themselves from Him amidst the trees of the garden. This
view saves the Divine veracity. It recommends itself to our sense of what is
right and proper. It places the main punishment of the sin in the fit place, in
the mind and the conscience of the sinner. It maintains the supremacy of the
moral, instead of half sacrificing it to the material. Let us learn from what
has been said, to regard, not bodily death, but sin, as the great evil which we
have to fear. The death of the body, when not caused, and not hastened by sin,
is never in itself an evil; but an uncorrected sinful character is always a
fearful evil. The state of an unholy soul is as wrong now as it would be seen
to be, if suddenly unclothed, and summoned into the world of spirits. It could
carry thither nothing but its character, nothing but itself, as its own life
education had made it. Let us then all seek to give a wise direction to our
thoughts. Let us recall them from the material to the moral, from the
perishable to the imperishable, from the accidental to the essential. (D. N.
Sheldon, D. D.)
The prohibition
1. It was a needful
prohibition. To remind man that he is not absolute sovereign, only vicegerent.
2. It was but one prohibition, Man was not burdened, or fretted, or
perplexed with many points of this kind. Only one! How gracious! How
considerate, as if God sought to make man’s trial the least possible, so as to
leave him without excuse if he should disobey.
3. It was a simple prohibition. It had nothing intricate or dark
about it. There was nothing mysterious about it, nothing in which man could
mistake, nothing which could leave room for the question, Am I obeying or not?
It was distinct beyond the possibility of mistake.
4. It was a visible prohibition. It was connected with something
both visible and tangible. It was not inward, but outward. It was not a thing
of faith, but of sight. Everything about it was palpable and open-the tree, the
fruit, the place, the threat, the consequences.
5. It was an easy prohibition. Man could not say it was hard to
keep. He was only to refrain from eating one fruit. Being a negative, not a
positive requirement, it reduced obedience to its lowest form and easiest
terms. Hence man’s sin was the greater. He was wholly inexcusable.
6. It was enforced by a most solemn penalty. It began with a
declaration of God’s will, and it ended with the proclamation of the penalty--death.
How much this expression includes has been often disputed. There is no need of
this. In the day that man ate of the tree he came under condemnation; he became
a death-doomed man; the sentence went forth against him. This death brought
with it all manner of infinite ills and woes. It brought with it or included in
it, condemnation, wrath, misery, separation from God; all endless; all
immediate; all irreversible, had not free love come in; had “grace not reigned
through righteousness, unto eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The
sentence was, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” But “where sin abounded,
grace did much more abound.” (H. Bonar, D. D.)
The first law
The first word God spake to man was a blessing; the second word
was a law. We might have anticipated this. It seems the natural expression of
the relationship which exists between the Creator and His creature. The
commandment given was a very simple one, “Thou shalt not eat of the tree of
knowledge.” We are almost involuntarily reminded of the words of Naaman’s
servant--“My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest
thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, ‘Wash, and
be clean’?” Doubtless, in this morning of creation, Adam’s soul, filled to
overflowing with gladness, was ready to break forth, and say, “What shall I
render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?” No thank offering could
have seemed too great for God, no tribute of love too costly. The language of
his worship could only be, “Of thine own, I give thee.” And yet it was a little
thing which God asked of man, for” to obey is better than sacrifice.” Think,
how great, how abounding was the provision for Adam; how narrow the
prohibition. It was a small thing that God demanded; but a great ruin was
involved in the withholding of obedience. We wonder to see how slight was the
thread to which a world’s destinies were suspended. Blind fools we are, slow to
learn the lesson taught in every page of the Bible, and in every dispensation
of personal providence, that there is nothing trivial with God. He makes great
matters to turn on imperceptible hinges. We have no spiritual microscope
wherewith to read that fine writing of the eternal finger of God upon every
grain of ocean sand, and every glittering mote in the sunbeam, telling us of “a
purpose under the heaven.” Curious men have striven hard to discover what the
forbidden tree of knowledge was: they would fain study the physiology of that
“fruit, which brought death into our world”; but surely, there was no physical
quality in that tree to enlighten the mind; it received its name, because by
eating it, in transgression of God’s law, man obtained the bitter knowledge of
evil as an antagonist of good: the act of feeding upon its fruit taught him
that there was misery as well as blessedness, darkness as well as light, evil
as well as good. God called the tree according to His foreknowledge; Adam only
saw the fitness of the name, when, having eaten, his eyes were opened, and he
knew his ruin. There is one thing which calls, I think, for particular
attention in the first law. It is, that there was no independent intrinsic evil
in the forbidden act; it was evil only because God’s law stood against it. If
God had spoken of intrinsic evil to Adam (I use the word intrinsic, because I
know no better word to express my meaning, evil, per se) he would not
have understood that which was said. If God had said, Thou shalt not kill, or
Thou shalt not lie, Adam would have been utterly unable to comprehend the
words. He had not yet learnt the nature of evil. God took an act that was in
itself perfectly innocent, and by forbidding it, He made it sin in Adam. I
trust I shall not be mistaken here. I do not say, God made Adam to sin; but I
say, God’s law prohibiting an action, caused that action to be sinful in His
creature. This is, indeed, a great lesson for us, and one which we are very
unwilling to learn. God’s law is as sovereign as His love. It is not necessary
that a thing should be essential evil to meet with His disapprobation; it is
enough that His will is against it. Behold, then, the severity of God, and fear
before Him. There is no such thing as good by His law condemned. There is no
such thing as evil by His law commanded. (The Protoplast.)
The limitation
There need not, I think, be any reasonable difficulty in finding
out the meaning of these trees. Make the statement historical, or make it
parabolical, and it comes much to the same thing. It means that there is a
permanent line separating obedience from disobedience; that all created life is
limited; and that whoever breaketh through a hedge a serpent shall bite him.
These trees were not traps set to catch the man; they were necessities of the
case. They showed him where to stop. Wonderful, truly, that if he touched the
tree of mystery he should die I Yes, and it is grandly and solemnly true. It is
so with life. Let life alone if you would live. Receive it as a mystery, and it
will bless you; degrade it, abuse it, and it will slay you in great wrath. It
is the same with light. Pluck the sun, and you will be lost in darkness; let
the sun alone in his far-off ministry, and you shall never want day and summer.
It is the same with music. Open the organ, that you may read its secret, and it
will fall into silence; touch it on the appointed keys, and it will never tire
in answering your sympathetic appeals. It is so difficult to be satisfied with
the little we have and the little we know. We want to see over the hedge. We
long to withdraw the screen that is everywhere trembling around us. We torture
these little pulses of ours to tell us what they are, and how they were set
a-ticking in their warm prisons. No man ever saw his own heart! There it is,
knocking in his side, as if it wanted to come out; but if you let it out, it
can return to its work no more! It seems to be only the skin that covers the
pulse, but, though seemingly so near, it is really so far! “In the day that
thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” said the Almighty. This is not a
threat. It is not a defiance or a challenge. It is a revelation; it is a
warning! When you tell your child not to touch the fire or it will be burned,
you do not threaten the child: you warn it in love, and solely for its own
good. Foolish would the child be if it asked why there should be any fire; and
foolish are we, with high aggravations, when we ask why God should have set the
tree of life and the tree of knowledge in Eden. These trees are in every
family. Yes; they are in every family, because they are in every heart! How
near is death. One act and we cease to live. This is true, physically, morally,
socially: one act--one step between us and death! (J. Parker, D. D.)
The missionary trees
A good man in Berkshire had a cherry orchard. He bethought himself
what he could do for the missionary cause, and at length selected two cherry
trees, the fruit of which he would devote himself most sacredly to the cause of
missions. When his friends occasionally visited him, he allowed them the full
range of his orchard. “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat,” said
he, “but of these two trees ye shall not eat--they belong to God.” The fruit
was carefully kept separate, was brought to market, and the proceeds remitted
to the Church Missionary Society. (Word and Work.)
Verses 18-25
I will make him an help meet for him
The creation of woman
I.
WOMAN
WAS BROUGHT TO MAN IN ORDER THAT SHE MIGHT RELIEVE HIS SOLITUDE BY INTELLIGENT
COMPANIONSHIP.
II. WOMAN WAS
BROUGHT TO MAN THAT SHE MIGHT BE HIS HELPMEET IN THE STRUGGLES OF LIFE.
1. To develop his intellectual thinkings.
2. To culture his moral sympathies.
3. To aid him in the daily needs of life.
4. To join him in his worship of God.
III. WOMAN WAS
BROUGHT TO MAN THAT SHE MIGHT RECEIVE HIS LOVE, PROTECTION, AND CARE. LESSONS:
1. The Divine compassion for a lonely man.
2. That marriage is to furnish man with true companionship of soul.
3. That marriage is to aid man in all the exigencies of life. (J.
S.Exell, M. A.)
The creation of woman
1. The occasion.
2. The resolution.
3. The preparation.
4. The presentation. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Loneliness is not good
1. For intellectual
development.
2. For moral culture.
3. For true enjoyment. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Loneliness not good
1. For man’s comfort.
2. For man’s employment.
3. For posterity. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
The woman a help
1. For assistance in family
government.
2. For the comfort of society.
3. For the continuance of the race. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Complete solitude
I. ADAM’S
LONELINESS WAS COMPLETE.
II. This complete
loneliness was A MARK OF IMPERFECTNESS OF LIFE.
III. This complete
loneliness, marking an imperfect life, was THOROUGHLY UNIQUE. (Urijah R.
Thomas.)
Genesis of woman
I. EXPLANATION OF
THE PASSAGE.
1. A Divine parable.
2. Panorama of emergent woman. It is the golden hour for Divine
instruction; for it is in dreams, in visions of the night, when deep sleep
falleth upon men, that God openeth their ear, and sealeth up their instruction
(Job 33:15-16). Wrapped in his deep sleep,
Eden’s dreamer beholds the vision of his second self. He sees his Maker taking
from out of him one of his own ribs, forming it into a woman, and presenting
her in all her glorious beauty to himself, to be to him henceforth that blessed
mate for whom he has unconsciously sighed. And so his God has in very truth
given to His beloved in his sleep (Psalms 127:2). Nor is it altogether a
dream. Awaking from his sleep, he beholds still standing by him the fair
blissful vision. Instinctively recognizing the community of nature, he joyously
exclaims; “This, now, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this shall be
called woman, Isha because from man, Ish, was she taken.”
II. MORAL MEANING.
1. Woman’s formal inferiority to man. Woman, in the matter of
outward, formal, scenic authority, is to yield to man. For every kind of
organization, whatever it may be, political, military, financial,
ecclesiastical, domestic, must have some kind of nominal head, or index
finger--e.g., king, president, general, chairman, bishop, pastor,
husband. Look at grand old fatherland. According to her theory of Government,
England must have a monarch. And who sits on England’s throne today? A woman--a
pure, noble, true-hearted woman. But, because Victoria wears a crown as her
nation’s emblazoned figurehead, does it necessarily follow that she is
intellectually superior to the Disraeli who holds her helm of state; or morally
superior to the Spurgeon who preaches that there is another Sovereign, even one
Jesus? Quite so is it with woman in her relation to man. According to Holy
Scripture, she is subordinate to him. But this subordination implies in no
sense whatever any essential inferiority. Woman is man’s peer in all essential
capacities--in capacities of sensibility, intellect, moral worth, humanhood.
Woman is man’s inferior simply in the matter of scenic, symbolic, formal
authority.
2. Woman’s essential equality. Man and woman, considered in their
essence, are a unity. But, observe, unity implies complexity; that is to say,
unity implies likeness and unlikeness, sameness and difference, community and
diversity.
3. Marriage a Divine institution.
4. The earthly marriage a type of the heavenly. (G. D. Boardman.)
God’s provision for man’s needs
I. GOD KNOWS AND
CONSIDERS ALL OUR WANTS, AND OUT OR HIS OWN GOODNESS MAKES PROVISION TO SUPPLY
THEM. And this--
1. He must do, or else we should often perish.
2. And it is fit He should do so to magnify His free mercies. Let
God’s dealing with us move us to deal in like manner with our brethren,
considering the poor and needy (Psalms 41:1) after the example of the
disciples of Antioch (Acts 11:29).
II. GOD’S
PROVIDENCE AND ABUNDANT GOODNESS FAILS US NOT TILL IT HATH SUPPLIED US WITH ALL
THAT WE NEED THAT IS FIT FOR US. Let it quiet all our hearts in the
consideration of our present condition, when our inordinate lusts provoke us
sometimes to causeless complaints and murmurings upon supposed but mistaken
grounds. Whereas--
1. Either we have that which we conceive we want, as Hagar wept for
want of water when she saw not the well which was fast by her Genesis 21:19). Or--
2. That which we want would do us hurt and no good if we had it, as
the Israelites found by experience when they murmured for want of flesh Numbers 11:33).
III. A SOLITARY
LIFE IS AN UNCOMFORTABLE AND AN UNPROFITABLE LIFE. From whence, then, came the
affecting and admiring of a monastical life which crosseth--
1. The very law of nature by which men are inclined to society;
and--
2. God’s ordinance who hath appointed us--
(a) Deprives God of His honour;
(b) Men, and the Church especially, both of that increase of an holy
seed, which they might have of the fruit of their bodies, of the comfort of
their fellowship, the service of love which they owe, and of the examples of
their godly lives;
(c) Themselves in present, of many sweet comforts and needful helps,
and hereafter of the increase of their reward enlarged according to the
proportion of their present improving of their talents in advancing God’s
honour, and seeking and procuring the good of His children.
IV. GOD TAKES NOT
NOTICE OF OUR WANTS AS AN IDLE SPECTATORS BUT, AS A FAITHFUL HELPER, PUTS FORTH
HIS HAND TO HELP US IN WHAT WE NEED. Let us do likewise--observe, take pity,
and relieve.
1. Otherwise our brethren have no benefit by us if we express our
compassion in words only, and not in deeds (James 2:16), but provelike clouds and
wind without rain (Proverbs 25:14).
2. We make our own thoughts or words evidences against ourselves
when we know what our brother needs and help him not, and provoke God to
neglect us as we neglect Him. See what He threateneth in such a case Proverbs 24:11-12).
V. GOD MAKES
NOTHING BUT FOR SOME NECESSARY USE AND UNTO SOME PROFITABLE END.
VI. A WIFE IS NOT
GOOD TILL IT BE NOT GOOD TO BE WITHOUT A WIFE. VII. A MAN MAY, AND IT IS GOD’S
WILL THAT HE SHOULD, BE THE BETTER FOR HIS WIFE.
1. Woe be to those foolish wives that pluck down the house which
they should build (Proverbs 14:1), proving moths in their
husband’s estates by their idleness and wastefulness; and thorns in their
sides, vexing those whom they should comfort, with their continual dropping;
perverting those whom they should advise.
2. Let every man labour to be the better for his wife, and to that
end--
VIII. IT IS ONLY GOD
HIMSELF THAT MUST SUPPLY US WITH THAT WHICH WE STAND IN NEED OF.
IX. NOTHING MOVES
GOD TO TAKE COMPASSION ON US, TO SUPPLY US IN WHAT WE NEED, BUT HIS OWN BOUNTY
AND GOODNESS.
X. A WIFE IS BUT
AN HELPER TO HER HUSBAND. Not his guide, for she was created for the man, not
the man for her (1 Corinthians 11:9), and that too,
inferior unto him, both in dignity, and usually in abilities. So that she is
truly and worthily called the weaker vessel (1 Peter 3:7).
XI. A WIFE CANNOT
BE A GOOD WIFE UNLESS SHE BE A MEET AND A FIT WIFE. Answerable, if it may be--
1. In blood and parentage (see 1 Samuel 23:1-29.).
2. In estate.
3. Education.
4. Especially in the temper of her disposition.
5. But above all the rest, in religion; seeing there can be no
fellowship of righteousness with unrighteousness, nor of light with darkness (2 Corinthians 6:14). Least of all
between married persons. (J. White, M. A.)
God’s provision to remedy man’s loneliness
God has always been thinking what would be for the man’s good.
How, then, does God propose to meet loneliness? By making another man? Why,
when He made a man to keep Cain company, Cain killed him! It would seem to be
one of the deepest laws of human nature that man must kill man, and that the
only chance of keeping society together is by the marvellous influence of
woman. For man to be alone means suicide; for two men to be together means
homicide; woman alone can keep society moving and healthful. The woman and the little
child are the saviours of social order at this day all over the world. For
woman to be alone is as bad as for man to be alone. Safety is in contrast, and
in mutual complement. Reverence for womanhood will save any civilization from
decay. Beautiful and very tender is this notion of throwing man into a deep
sleep to take a rib from him as the starting point of a blessed companionship.
So much is always being done for us when we are in states of unconsciousness!
We do not get our best blessings by our own fussiness and clever contrivance:
they come we know not how. They are sweet surprises; they are born of the
spirit, and are as untraceable as the veerings of the wind. This is the course
of true love, and of marriages that are made in heaven. You cannot by
searching, and advertising, and scheming find out a companion for the lonely
soul. She will come upon you unconsciously. You will know her by a mark in the
forehead which none but yourself can read. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The creation of woman
I. The Creator’s
care of man, and His fatherly concern for his comfort.
1. God’s pity for his solitude.
2. His resolve to provide society for him.
II. The creatures’
subjection to man, and his dominion over them. God brought the animals to Adam
that he might name them, and so give a proof of--
1. His knowledge.
2. His power.
III. The creatures’
insufficiency to be a happiness for man. Observe--
1. The dignity and excellency of human nature.
2. The vanity of the things of this world. (M. Henry, D. D.)
Eve
Let us speak of--
I. The woman.
1. Her creation.
2. The purpose God had in view in creating her.
II. The wonderful
institution by which man and woman are made one. It is wonderful that this
institution should be found so early in human history.
III. The glorious
union of which this institution is a type. Adam is a type of Christ; and since
Christ was the spouse of the Church, then Eve was a type of the Church. And our
conclusion therefore is that the marriage of Adam and Eve, and the marriage
institute altogether, is typical of the union between Christ and the Church. (T.
W. Richards, M. A.)
Lessons
1. How it is not said by God
that it was not good for Adam to be alone, but for man to be alone; thereby in
wisdom enlarging the good of marriage to man in general, that is, to some of
all sorts, and not tying it to Adam alone, or to any sort only. Again, in
saying it is not good, you see what the Lord regardeth in His actions and
works, to wit, goodness and profit to the users, how good it may be, how
comfortable: which is a good lesson for all such as regard in their deeds,
their wills, their pleasures. Sis volo, sic iubeo, So will I, so command
I not respecting at all the good of any other. Shall sinful flesh disdain to do
what the Lord of lords doth? He, though He have all power and authority, yet
will not do only according to that, but He looketh how good it may be that He
doth; and shall sinful flesh, dust and earth, upon a little authority be so
proud, that their will must rule all actions?
2. Mark it with all your heart, how God doth consider before ever
man see the want himself, what may be good for man, and entereth into purpose
to make for him, and prepare for him what yet he wanted and had need of,
saying, “Let us make man a helper like himself.” Oh, how may we cleave and
cling to the providence of this God in all comfort of our minds, that thus
thinketh of what may be good for us before ever we think of it ourselves, and
not only thinketh of it, but provideth it and prepareth it for us, saying in
all matters as in this, Yet my servant such an one wanteth such a help, it is
not good for him to be without it; come, therefore, let us prepare it for him,
etc.
3. That woman is honoured with the title of a helper, not only
showeth the goodness of the institution, as was noted before, but teacheth also
how dear and beloved she should be to her husband, for whose good she was
ordained and given. Who will not cherish, foster, and love what is given him
for a help, not by man, but by God Himself? Her help chiefly consisteth in
three things, in bearing him children, the comforts of his life, and stays of
his age, which he cannot have without her. In keeping his body holy to the Lord
from filthy pollution which the Lord abhorreth. The apostle so teaching when he
speaketh thus, “For the avoiding of fornication, let every man have his own
wife.” And, thirdly, in governing his house, children, and family, and many
ways tending his own person both in sickness and health. These all and everyone
are great helps, and therefore the woman justly to be regarded for them.
4. But whereupon was woman made? Surely not of an outward but of an
inward part of man, that she might be dear to him even as his inwards. Not of
the head of man, lest she should be proud and look for superiority. Not of the
foot of man, lest she should be contemned and used as for his inferior; but of
his side, that she might be used as his fellow, cleaving to his side as an
inseparable companion of all his haps whilst they two live. And as the rib
receiveth strength from the breast of man, so doth the woman from her husband:
his counsel is her strength, his breast should she account of to be ruled and
governed by in all her ways, and seek to please him and ease him from all
griefs as she any way can, knowing ever that she is most weak without her
husband’s breast, from which cometh all her strength and good comfort at all
times. No creature had his mate made of his own flesh but man, and therefore no
creature under heaven should be like man in the love of his mate, but man above
them all.
5. It is, if you mark it, not only said that God made woman, but
that He brought her to man: and thereby we are taught, that marriage is not
every meeting of man and woman together upon their own heads, but when God
bringeth them together, either to other: and God bringeth not together, except
in His fear they meet with consent of parents and such as are interested in
them. (Bp. Babington.)
God’s ordinance of marriage
Let us pay particular attention to this language. Probably we have
imagined the statement to mean that God would provide for man one who should be
a helper to him, and whose nature and character would be suitable to his. Well,
the words do mean this; but they mean also something more. Correctly rendered
they would run thus: “I will make him a help as over against him”; or, “so as
to meet him”: that is to say, “I will create for him one who shall tally and
correspond with him as his counterpart.” And the expression seems to point to
that oneness in diversity, to that moral, intellectual, and spiritual
adaptation of one to the other,--which exists between the woman and the man.
Why were the man and the woman not created apart, as the animals were, and
afterwards brought together? Because Adam was to be the inclusive head of the
human race: all were to be derived from him; he was to be the fountain from
which every stream should flow. Therefore it was necessary that woman should
not have an independent, but a derived existence--an existence derived from the
federal head of the human race. As St. Paul says, “Man is the image and glory
of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman;
but the woman of the man.”
I. Now in
commenting upon the passage, let us take this as the thought which rises first
before the mind--THAT IT WERE WELL IF THE RELATION BETWEEN THE TWO SEXES, AND
EVERYTHING BEARING UPON THE MARRIAGE TIE, WERE LOOKED UPON AS BEING SOMEWHAT
SERIOUS MATTERS. Of course no sensible man would speak in an unnaturally solemn
tone about them. He would throw bright and cheerful colours upon the subject of
courtship and marriage. He knows that this entrance into life ought to be
characterized by joyousness. But yet, underlying the joyousness, there should
be, we venture to think, for Christian people, a sense of seriousness and
responsibility. Young women, for instance, should understand and value the
influence which they exert in the world; whereas, too often, in their
intercourse with the other sex, they condone worthlessness of character for the
sake of showy and attractive qualities. And as to men, if they would see the
relation of the sexes in the light which this narrative of Genesis throws upon
it, the), would be more characterized than perhaps they are by chivalrous
respect for womankind. They would honour a woman because she is a woman.
II. Our second
thought CONNECTS ITSELF WITH THE SUBJECT OF WHAT IS COMMONLY CALLED “WOMEN’S
RIGHTS.” Now let us see our way clear in this matter. We do not suppose that
the great end of woman is to get married: many say so and think so; but so do
not we. Still less do we wish to be understood as implying that a woman is
justified in regarding herself, or that others are justified in regarding her,
as having in any considerable degree failed of the object of her existence, if
circumstances should lead her to remain in a single condition. Yet whilst
holding the view of the essential and independent dignity of womanhood, we
lament over that mismanagement of human affairs, which necessitates in so many
human beings a life of celibacy; and we trace up to the fact of the immense and
most disproportionate preponderance of women in our modern civilization, the
existence of many of the evils which are sapping the foundations of our social
prosperity. “Well,” you may say, “there is the fact: you cannot alter it.” No:
I know that we cannot alter it; but we can try to make the best of it.
Recognizing that there are, and that as matters now stand there ever must be
amongst us large numbers of unmarried women, we would do all we could to make
it possible for them, or at least for many of them (for some do not require
it), to attain to a position of independence by means of their own honest
exertions. This, at the very least, is our duty. But do we fulfil it? Of course
we do not. I need not say that in the case of the educated classes, and in the
case of those who come immediately below them, the way to independent
subsistence for women is barred and blocked up by innumerable obstacles, that
the sleepless dragon of popular prejudice guards most of the avenues of access
to the golden fruit of honourable success, and that those few women who, as the
pioneers of the advance of their sex, contrive by persistent energy to break
through the circle of iron that encompasses them, are only too likely to
acquire an unattractive and unfeminine hardness, from the very strength of the
effort which enables them to force their way. There is something here which is
wrong, and wants amending. Our social arrangements necessitate celibacy for
hundreds of thousands who, probably, would not embrace that condition by
choice. And then we frown upon their efforts if they struggle to
maintain--might they be permitted to do so--an independent foothold upon our
common earth. One last thing more let me say, and this of the same general
character with what I have already ventured to advance. I have no manner of
sympathy with the cackle and clatter we sometimes hear about the relative
excellencies of the two sexes--about the superiority of one or the inferiority
of the other. To me the idea that a woman wants only a “clear stage and no
favour,” wants training, and education, and suitable circumstances, in order to
develop as big a brain and as vigorous a muscle as man, and so to be able to
cope with him in the struggle of life--to me such a thought is unutterably
repulsive. The great charm of a woman is that she is diverse from man: not a
man in a lower stage of development. She is the complement of the man: her
nature, her disposition, her powers, supply what is lacking in his. The two
together make a completed orb: apart they are only segments of the circle. But
in order to stand in this relation to each other, it is obvious that they must
not be alike, but diverse. I believe with our great modern poet, that “woman is
not undeveloped man, but diverse.” Nay, and I believe that the sexual
differences of character, and disposition, and faculty, and nature generally
which exist upon earth, will be found--of course in a certain modified form--to
exist in the kingdom of heaven. (G. Calthrop, M. A.)
Eve
God does nothing without a purpose: and therefore “the rib, which
the Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman.” We can readily understand
that, had Eve been builded of the earth as Adam was, there would have been a
relationship between them which was never intended. They might have been
regarded as bearing towards each other in some degree the tie of a brother and
sister, springing from the earth as the parent of both. But the love that was
to exist between them was not designed to be the love of relationship, not the
love of consanguinity, not the love of a brother and sister. Adam was to love
Eve as being essentially a part of himself, as a friend that sticketh closer
than a brother, as one that originated in himself, and actually derived her
existence from his own body. And the great purpose which the Almighty had in
view in this formation of woman was the institution of marriage. So that you
are not to regard the formation of Eve simply as a creation of the woman, just
as the formation of Adam was the creation of the man; but you must consider it
as the production of Adam’s wife, and as having involved in it the Divine
purpose of the institution of marriage. And then you see at once why the
peculiar process of creation was employed in taking the rib of Adam. And all
this shows us and teaches us that marriage is a Divine institution of no
ordinary import, and that its vows and obligations are to be regarded as in a
high degree sacred. It should never be entered upon inconsiderately, nor should
its festivity ever go on to such extent as to blot out its sacred character. If
we fail to recognize its Divine appointment, and give it not the reverence
which it claims by virtue of its Divinity, how shall we look for the Divine blessing?
It should be all love--love from the beginning to the close of the compact;
like the ring, which belongs to our ceremony, having no end, emblematic of
eternal love. And this is a mystical love: it is not the love which nature
plants and nourishes wherever she has established kinsmanship, or where she has
joined soul to soul in the bonds of friendship. It is a mystic love, which
takes its stand upon Divine institution, and can be traced only to the recorded
circumstance of creation--“The rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made
He a woman.” And it strikes us as a wonderful thing, that this institution
should be found so early and so prominently placed among the brief records of
creation. We should, perhaps, have rather expected that it would have had its
position among the Levitical appointments. It behoves us, then, to inquire
whether there was any special purpose of the Almighty, whether there was any
hidden mystery involved in the institution. There appears to be something so
remarkable in the creation of the woman, and there is something so expressive
in Adam’s remark: “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”; and the
appointment is altogether so wonderful, that there must be some meaning in the
history beyond that which appears upon the surface, and beyond that which our
remarks have hitherto included. Now, we know that in many particulars Adam was
a type of Christ our Redeemer. “Husbands,” says the apostle, “love your wives,
even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it.” And, after
speaking and exhorting concerning marriage, he quotes the very words employed
by Adam at its first institution, and adds, “This is a great mystery, but I
speak concerning Christ and the Church.” If, then, Adam was the type of Christ,
and Christ is the spouse of the Church, it follows as a logical deduction that
Eve was a type of the Church. And our conclusion therefore is this, that the
marriage of Adam and Eve, and the marriage institute altogether, is typical and
emblematical of the union between Christ and His Church. And thus, in the very
first page almost of the Bible (and there is hardly a page or a letter that has
not reference to the same wonderful subject), we find redemption hinted at, and
a Redeemer pointed out, and a Church suggested. Here is the gospel, here is the
glad tidings of mediation in the very alpha of Divine revelation, and it is
never lost sight of, even to the omega. And here, then, we arrive at the deep
mystery of the marriage institute: here we learn why its appointment is such a
prominent feature in the concise history of creation. If, then, we have
reasoned correctly, and Eve be thus a type of the Church, then it would prove a
matter of profitable investigation to observe how the position and the
directions of Adam and Eve apply in their fulfilment to Christ and the Church.
But we can only hint at these things, and leave this wonderful subject for
private meditation. There can be no question but that the opening of Adam’s
side for the formation of Eve had had reference to that opening of the side of
the second Adam for the formation of His Church, which took place upon the
cross at Calvary; for the Church, the ransomed of Sion, owes all its existence
and all its salvation to the water and the blood which issued upon the spear
stroke of the soldier, and without which, we are told, there could have been no
remission. And this opening of the side also was effected during a deep sleep;
for, when the soldiers came to Him, they found that He was dead already: it was
a deep sleep, the deep sleep of death. Let us, then, be true to ourselves and
to our profession; so that, after having taken upon us the vows of marriage to
Christ, we may never be spoken of as a wicked and adulterous generation. (T.
W. Richards, M. A.)
The family: its scriptural ideal and its modern assailants
I. THE FOUNDATION
OF THE FAMILY IN NATURE.
II. THE IDEAL OF
THE FAMILY. The family is one of nature’s combinations, being composed of
several constituent parts; and it shows the same properties as are usually
found in the other combinations of nature. In such combinations we find two
things: first, a natural affinity or attraction of the parts to each other; and
second, harmony and repose when the combination is effected, as if some
invisible cement has been made use of to bind the whole into one. Harsh,
frictional combinations are foreign to nature. The oxygen and hydrogen that
combine to form water have a natural affinity to each other, and the product is
so beautifully harmonious that no one could have fancied beforehand that water
was not a simple substance. The most striking instance of harmonious
combination in nature is that of light, where the seven colours of the rainbow
give birth to a product in which the faintest trace of discord can never be found.
Nature, in arranging her forces, makes a similar provision in that combination
which we call the family. The intention of nature, or rather of the Creator,
seems obvious here, although that intention is often frustrated by the
perversity of man. In the first place, a natural affinity draws the man and
woman together. There is not only the natural affinity of the sexes, but there
is the individual attraction between one man and one woman, the desire to be
closely related to each other, which is the true and natural foundation of
marriage. It would be a very low view of the marriage relation that would make
it flow from instinct alone. Man is surely much more than an animal. Has he not
a spiritual nature that allies him to the higher orders of being, as really as
his animal nature allies him to the lower? And when one human being is drawn to
another with a view to the closest relation it is possible to form, surely this
is not merely an attraction of the animal; the higher nature has a share in it
too. We speak, at present, of what seems to be the purpose of the institution.
We say that the law of affinity that governs all nature’s combinations leads us
to expect that the foundation of marriage should lie in an affinity or
attraction, not of one part of man’s nature merely, and not of the lower part
of it merely, but of the whole. And when we turn to the Bible we find this view
amply confirmed, for it is said, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and
his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh.”
There must be some attraction of the higher nature to draw a man from his
father and mother, to whom his best affections would naturally induce him to
cling. In other words, true marriage has its foundation in the attractive power
of love. And as love is its foundation, so also it is the cement designed to
bind the two beings into unity, and give rise to that harmony which we have
seen to characterize all nature’s combinations. Differences of temperament,
varieties of taste, diversities of will, diverse forms of natural weakness and
natural temptation tend naturally to friction and discord. What provision is
there in nature to counteract this tendency and secure harmony? Love is the
moral cement of nature. By its magi¢ power, different temperaments become the
complements of each other, opposing tastes find a method of reconciliation, and
even contradictory wills, by learning to take and give, to bear and forbear,
become like one. Perhaps it will be asked, Are you serious in affirming that
marriage should always be founded on mutual love? Is not such an idea utterly
Utopian? It may be: but Utopianism is not always the opposite of truth or of
duty. If we were to lay it down as a proper rule of life that men should always
speak the truth, it would seem utterly impracticable and Utopian; and yet it is
a right and proper rule. When we speak of love we do not mean necessarily the
state of ecstatic fervour which is commonly delineated in novels and which is
sometimes found in actual life. That real affinity of hearts to each other
which is the true foundation of marriage, may be, and often is, much more calm
and undemonstrative. There is another important element that enters into the
idea of a complete family, and in connection with which, too, provision is made
in nature for harmonious combination with the other elements--namely, children.
It is not difficult to see, either in theory or in practice, that children may
very readily become a most discordant element. To bring about the needful and
desirable harmony, the parents are furnished with two things, strength and
affection. They have strength of body if not also of mind to enforce what they
deem right; but the employment of sheer strength would only stir up the spirit
of rebellion, and while producing a temporary submission, make the discord
deeper in the end. Hence love, parental love, is supplied, to make the
application of strength more smooth and more effective. The two must work
together, otherwise evil ensues. Thus we see how, in the case of families, the
great law of nature is exemplified which aims at making all combinations
harmonious and efficient. If in the case of any family the combination is
discordant, it is because the working out of the plan is abused in the hands of
frail human beings. For it is a painful fact in this world’s history that
nothing so often frustrates the plans of providence as the intervention of man.
When Divine arrangements fall to be carried into effect by the blind forces of
nature, they are carried out with precision and certainty; but when they are
dependent on the intervention of man, bungling and defeat are too often the
result.
III. THE PURPOSE OF
THE FAMILY.
1. As regards the fellowship of husband and wife. It is to be
remarked that the reason which is given in the second chapter of Genesis why
God made woman is, that He might furnish the man with a suitable companion; it
is not till afterwards that she is named Eve, in token of her motherhood,
“because she was the mother of all living.” Scripture views the relation of the
married man and woman, therefore, as having an important end to serve in the
Divine purpose, even apart from the continuation of the race. Man and woman
come into this remarkable relation of unity in order to promote each other’s welfare.
True, there is often discord instead of unity. But unity is certainly attained
in quite a sufficient number of cases to vindicate the wisdom of the
arrangement. One thing is very certain: if this unity be not realized, the
relation of husband and wife, instead of being beneficial, must be irksome and
even disastrous to both. To be forced to live, eat, sleep, and worship
together, while their hearts are at open discord, is simply awful. On the other
hand, where there is substantial unity, the necessary interlacing of all the
events of their life makes the unity the greater, and invests the relation with
a more tender interest and a profounder sanctity. To bear the same name: to
spend their days and nights in the same house and chamber; to share the same
worldly goods; to be parents of the same children; to be partners of one
another’s joys and sorrows, cares and anxieties, perplexities and deliverances;
to look to one another for counsel and cheer; to mingle their prayers and
thanksgivings as none else can; to look back along the line of their lives, and
think of all they have shared; to look forward, and think of the inevitable
parting that is coming, and then of the reunion which faith expects; who shall
deny that such experiences are fitted not only to deepen the unity which lies
at the foundation of the relation, but to elevate the tone of life, purify the
character, and sweeten the current of existence, as no other earthly influences
can? Where the two are one flesh, there must be no contact with other flesh.
And here, too, nature provides an abundant reward for those who are faithful to
her order. Nothing keeps the fountain of conjugal love so pure and fresh as
absolute faithfulness to the marriage bond. Even in pagan nations, there have
been beautiful instances of a happy unity and the highest esteem between man
and wife. Joseph Cook, in his Boston lectures, finds much in this connection to
vindicate marriage on natural grounds. He instances the case of the wife of
Phocion, the great reformer, who, when her husband was refused burial in Attic
soil, went by night to burn the body, brought back his bones to Athens, buried
them beneath her hearth, and blessed the place that thus afforded protection to
the remains of a good and great man, until the Athenians, returning to their
right minds, should restore them to the sepulchre of his fathers. More striking
is the story told by Cyrus of Panthea, the wife of Abradatus. She loved her
husband with a supreme affection. When taken captive by Cyrus, he asked her where
her home was. “On the bosom of my husband,” was in substance her reply; and
when offered a dazzling position at the Court of Cyrus, she besought them to
send her swiftly home. “If ever there was a woman that regarded her husband
more than her own soul, she was that woman.” Encouraging him to fight for Cyrus
to show his gratitude, she sent him with her blessing to the battle in which he
fell. Again she had offers of this world’s glory; again her purpose was
declared to be with her husband. “I cannot justify Panthea in everything,” says
Mr. Cook. “She had been brought up to the stern opinions which justified
suicide. She told her maid to cover her in the same mantle with her husband.
Then she smote herself; put her head upon his breast, and fell asleep. Great
nature is in that! You wish me to teach what science proclaims respecting
family life. I must ask you to go back to the deepest springs of human
experience. These women, Phocion’s wife and the wife of Abradatus are sisters
to us all, helpers to every age. They are crystalline water bursting up from
the innermost rifts of human nature and society, and one in its purity with
that rain which falls on all the hills, and is the real source, after all, of
every one of these crystalline springs.” Even under Paganism there were thus
influences strong enough to realize in at least some instances the true unity
of husband and wife, and show to the world what kind of relation it was
designed to be. Christianity has brought new influences into the field. A new pattern
has been furnished of conjugal unity, and a new force for developing conjugal
love (Ephesians 5:25; Ephesians 5:30).
2. The relation of parents and children. Now let us observe that the
provision of nature for the bringing up of children is to place them under the
charge of their two parents, both possessed of affection towards them, though
in somewhat different proportions, and this provision for their upbringing is
most essential. An essential desideratum for a child is moral training. Is this
too hard and too heavy a task for parents? So it is affirmed by those who
disparage the family institute, and who would gather children into barracks or
other large establishments, where they would be brought up by the wisest and
most experienced of the race, under the best conditions of efficient training.
To commit such work to parents of average character, is objected to on two
grounds; first, because where it is attempted, the work will be done ill, in
consequence of the folly and ignorance of the parents; and second, because in a
vast multitude of cases, it will not be attempted at all. That the
qualifications needed for the right upbringing of children are within the reach
of the ordinary run of parents, is sufficiently clear from the fact, that many
a parent, in the humblest ranks of life, has discharged the duty with admirable
success. When Dr. Livingstone composed a simple epitaph to be placed on the
tombstone of his father and mother, the one thing which he desired to
commemorate was the gratitude of their children to God for poor and pious
parents. He refused to change the expression into “poor but pious,” because he
believed in the beneficial influences of poverty, in the nobility of character
which it had fostered in them, and in the good he had got from it himself. Had
he been brought up in luxury and splendour he would not have learned the habits
that enabled him to open Africa at a cost of painful endurance and unflinching
perseverance seldom equalled in the annals of mankind. It is not great
intellect nor ample means that enables a parent to give a good upbringing to
his children, but conscientious devotion to duty, the spirit of love, and a
good example. These are qualities within the reach of every class. Much stress
is to be laid on the last point--the good example. In estimating the moral
value of the family as a whole, we must not lose sight of the influence which
the children often have on the parents. “What I learned from my children” might
often be the subject of as interesting a narrative as “What I learned from my
parents.” What father has not found occasion to search deeper into truth from
the strange questions which children so often put respecting things which older
minds are apt to take for granted? The present writer, in his early ministry,
had once occasion to hear the spiritual history of an afflicted woman, who was
lying in bed, awaiting the last messenger. “For many years,” she said, “I did
not see that I was a sinner, I did not think that I had seriously broken any of
the commandments of God.
But I had the misfortune to have an only son who ran away from me,
and never wrote to me, or seemed to care to hear of me or from me. Then it
flashed upon me that I had been just as unmindful of my heavenly Father, as my
son had been of me. Though I had not been guilty of open sins, I had utterly
neglected my duty to my heavenly Father. The words came into my mind, ‘The ox
knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib; but Israel doth not know, My
people doth not consider.’ I got a new light on the whole of my life; I saw
myself to be a great sinner; and I got no rest until I came to the cross, and was
there sprinkled with the blood that cleanseth from all sin.” The presence of
children in a house softens the heart, makes it more human and sympathetic. It
brings men down from the stiff and serious attitude of business. It evokes the
gentler and the more playful elements of our nature. It keeps the heart young
and its affections fresh. But more powerful than anything yet noticed, is the
effect on a right-minded man of the thought of his children in reference to his
own temptations and dangers. There are evil pleasures whose attraction might
prove too strong for some men, if the thought of their children did not come to
check them. What would they think if these children were to do the same?
3. We note then, next, the relation of brothers and sisters. In a
well-regulated family this is a very important factor. The ideal of the
Christian home suggests the thought of Milton’s Comus, where pure-minded
brothers, admiring a dear sister’s purity, are concerned lest, alone in the
world, she should fall in the way of any of those bloated monsters that would
drag even an angel into their filthy sty. But apart from this painful subject,
what a blessed provision we have for the spread of mutual benefit in the
contrasted qualities of brothers and sisters attached to each other, and deeply
interested in each other’s welfare! A great charm in the relation of brothers
and sisters comes from the difference in their ages. The power to help on the
part of the older is designed to develop the sense of responsibility, and when duly
exercised, gives them some share in the parental government, and facilitates
the work of the parents themselves. Moreover, there is a development of that
tender spirit which intercourse with the weak stirs in the hearts of the
strong.
4. In many families, besides brothers and sisters, there are also
servants.
5. The friends and acquaintances of a family extend the horizon of
interest, affection, and sympathy. (W. G. Blaikie, D. D.)
Marriage
I. THE MARRIAGE
TIE. This is really what it comes to. It is needless to discuss the question
whether marriage ought to be dissoluble not only on the ground of adultery, but
on that of cruelty, or of habitual drunkenness, or of insanity. The opponents
of marriage as it now is, would be satisfied with no such enactments. The
contract of marriage must be brought down to the level of a contract between
partners in business, and the one must be rendered voidable precisely in the
same way as the other. Is this, let us ask, apart altogether from Scripture, a
fair or reasonable method of treating the contract of marriage?
1. Does it not overlook the very delicate and solemn nature of the
relation established in marriage between man and wife? That contract is indeed
without a parallel. It places the parties in a relation of intimacy and
delicacy unapproached in any other.
2. This view of marriage subverts the provision of nature for the
welfare of the young. What is to become of the children when a marriage is
broken up on the ground that the father and mother are tired of each other?
3. An arrangement which would terminate the union of husband and
wife whenever they happened to tire of it, would greatly discourage the
exercise of forbearance toward each other when differences unfortunately did
arise.
4. Such a policy would, moreover, leave little opportunity for
repentance and reconciliation. Once the tie was severed, severed it must
remain. But it may be contended, that what is called the arrangement of nature
is a faulty arrangement, and in practice gives rise to evils so great that in
order to remedy them you must have recourse to easy divorces. Are we to exalt
into “a plan of nature,” an arrangement which is so painfully fruitful of
contention and misery? Yes, it is still the plan of nature; but it is the plan
of nature perverted, frustrated, made abortive by some evil habit or vile
indulgence which hinders the intention of nature from being fulfilled, as
really and as wholly as a nail driven into the works of a watch hinders it from
indicating the proper time. First among these perverting influences we must
place the habit of drunkenness. Hitherto we have been dealing with the
objection on grounds common to the Secularist and the Christian. But we cannot
leave the subject without examining it also on the ground of Scripture. Let us
remember that, according to Scripture, marriage and the family constitution
were instituted while the human race was yet unfallen, and while the relation
between God and man existed in all its fulness of blessing. The Fall did not
abrogate the institution, but it made a great change in the conditions under
which it existed. Discord ensued between man and God, discord in man’s own soul
between passion and conscience, discord in his social relations, discord
between man and wife. Admitting, then, that in a vast number of cases marriage
is the parent of discord and misery, which of two policies is the more worthy
of support with a view to remedy this grievous evil? Are we to change the
marriage bond as it has hitherto been, make the relation of married persons
slack and easy, tie the knot so loosely that a very slight pull will undo it,
and place what has hitherto been the most sacred of human obligations at the
mercy of the whim of either party? Or shall we try to get this relation
penetrated by the love of Christ, to bring the spirit of forbearance and
forgiveness to bear on actual divergences, to exalt men’s sense of the dignity
and sacredness of the conjugal relation,--symbol as it is of the union of
Christ and His Church; shall we try to quicken the consciences of parents in
regard to the welfare of their children, to induce them to extend their view
beyond the horizon of the present life, and to think of the momentous
consequences for evermore of faithfulness on the one hand and neglect on the other?
II. THE NURTURE OF
CHILDREN. Another common objection to the family has reference to the best
arrangement for bringing up children to be orderly, respectable, and useful
citizens. We say it is family life. But in how many instances is the upbringing
they get in their homes worse than useless--an education of blows and curses,
of drunkenness and debauchery, ofsin and misery. In such cases, no doubt, you
must supersede the family. But this is an extreme remedy, applicable only to
the very worst case. And before this course is resorted to, every effort should
be made to stimulate the sense of parental responsibility. To many it appears
not only a simpler but a more efficient remedy for the evils of parental
neglect, to take neglected children wholesale from their parents and bring them
up elsewhere. But to make a promiscuous practice of this would be to do
infinite harm. When Dr. Guthrie instituted his Ragged Schools, he provided no
sleeping accommodation for his children; at night they returned to their parents;
because of all things he was most anxious to preserve the interest of the
parents in their children, and the interest of the children in their parents.
We are not warranted to separate the children wholly from their parents except
under two conditions: first, When it is certain that the children would he
ruined if they should continue to live with them; and, second, when the parents
are willing to give them up, let us say for emigration. (W. G. Blaikie, D.
D.)
Meaning of wife
And now let us see whether the word “wife” has not a lesson. It
literally means a weaver. The wife is the person who weaves. Before our great
cotton and cloth factories arose, one of the principal employments in every
house was the fabrication of clothing: every family made its own. The wool was
spun into thread by the girls, who were therefore called spinsters; the thread
was woven into cloth by their mother, who, accordingly was called the weaver,
or the wife; and another remnant of this old truth we discover in the word
“heirloom,” applied to any old piece of furniture which has come down to us
from our ancestors, and which, though it may be a chair or bed, shows that a
loom was once an important article in every house. Thus the word “wife” means
weaver: and, as Trench well remarks, “in the word itself is wrapped up a hint
of earnest, indoor, stay-at-home occupations, as being fitted for her who bears
this name.” (Dictionary of Illustrations.)
Woman, a helpmeet
Joshua Reynolds met Flaxman the day after his marriage, and said:
“You are a happy man, but you are ruined for an artist.” He told his bride of
it in great despondency. “I wanted to be a great artist.” “And, John,” said
Annie, with the fire in her eye, “a great artist you shall be!” He always said
that was what made an artist of him. There was a young man in Switzerland,
engaged in observing and classifying the Hymenoptera of his native land,
when he was suddenly smitten with blindness. The calamity was so hopeless that
marriage was absolutely forbidden by the father of his beloved. She waited,
like a dutiful child, until she was twenty-one years of age; then, without
concealment, and, in great sorrow, but honouring her father in disobeying him,
she married the scientist, and immediately persuaded him to resume his studies.
She carried on his experiments under his direction. She soon became more
skilful than he had ever been in watching the operation of the curious
creatures. And he became more exact in his generalization, in consequence of
being shut up to his own reflections. The result was a work which astonished
the world, and remains a classic and the first authority on the subject--the
immortal treasure of Huber on bees! What will not the faithful love of a wife
accomplish! God in heaven looks down upon nothing on earth so like the paradise
above as trustful and helpful married love.
Society in the family
“Family society,” says Henry, “if that be agreeable, is a redress
sufficient for the grievance of solitude. He that has a good God, a good heart,
and a good wife to converse with, and yet complains that he wants conversation,
would not have been easy and content in paradise, for Adam himself had no
more.”
Verse 19
That was the name thereof
The naming of the animals by Adam
1.
The
man was thus to be made conscious of his lordship over the animal tribes.
2. In token of his relations to them, respectively, he was to give
them their respective names.
3. His knowledge of animal nature, (in which he had been created),
is at once to be developed, under the special teaching of God.
4. His organs of speech are to be put in exercise.
5. His knowledge of language (Divinely imparted), is to be developed
in the use of terms for naming the several classes--under the Divine
instruction and guidance.
6. It would seem, from the connection, that the man was to be made
sensible of his social need as he should see the animals passing before him in
pairs. (M. W. Jacobus.)
Language a Divine gift
The man was created in knowledge, after the Divine image, and thus
was endowed with powers of perception and discrimination, by which he could
know the habits, characters, and uses of the several species, both of animals
and of fowls, yet not without Divine teaching in the matter, and in the use of
terms. The names which he gave them were appointed to be their names by which
they should be known--and they were, doubtless, significant--as was the name of
Eve, (Genesis 2:23), Genesis 3:20. Language itself could not
so early have been a human invention, but a revelation. (M. W. Jacobus.)
Observations
I. GOD’S MERCIES
ARE, OR SHOULD BE, PRECIOUS UNTO US WHEN WE CAN NEITHER BE WITHOUT THEM, NOR
HAVE THEM FROM ANY OTHER BUT FROM HIMSELF. That the necessity of creating a
woman to be Adam’s helper might be the more clearly discovered unto him, He
brings before him the creatures, that out of his own judgment himself might
conclude how unit any of them were to be his companions or helpers.
II. WE MUST KNOW
THE UNSERVICEABLENESS OF OTHER THINGS, THAT WE MAY KNOW AND APPROVE THE
PROFITABLENESS OF THAT WHICH IS TRULY GOOD.
III. GOD CAN ORDER
AND DISPOSE OF THE CREATURES TO DO WHAT, AND TO BE WHERE HE APPOINTS THEM.
IV. MAN MAY
LAWFULLY USE THAT POWER OVER THE CREATURES WHICH GOD HIMSELF HATH PUT INTO HIS
HAND.
V. GOD IS PLEASED
TO HONOUR MEN SO FAR AS TO EMPLOY THEM IN MANY THINGS WHICH OF RIGHT BELONG
UNTO AND MIGHT BE DONE BY HIMSELF ALONE.
1. To encourage men to His service in honouring them so far as to
make them His fellow workers.
2. To unite men the more in love, one to another.
3. To increase their reward hereafter, by the faithful employment of
their talents for the advantage of their Master from whom they received them, Matthew 25:21; Matthew 25:23. (J. White, M. A.)
Intuition
God now proceeds to show man the exact point where the void lay.
Adam had been made to feel that void, but God’s object is to place him in
circumstances such as shall lead him step by step to the seat of the unsatisfied
longing within. Accordingly, God brings before him all the creatures which He
had made, that Adam, in his choice, may have the whole range of creation. Adam
surveys them all. He sees by instinctive wisdom the nature and properties of
each, so that he can affix names to all in turn. His knowledge is large and
full; it has come direct from God, just as his own being had come. It is not
discovery, it is not learning, it is not experience, it is not memory, it is
intuition. By intuition he knew what the wisest king in after ages only knew by
searching. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
The first act of man’s sovereignty over the animals
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 forever. 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
inquire 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. To “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; but God, by inviting him to perform
it, made him governor over the works of His hands, and placed all under his
feet Psalms 8:7). 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 organization, 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 “has made man’s mouth, and who maketh dumb” Exodus 4:11). 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.” (M. M. Kalisch, Ph. D.)
The origin of language
Was it an invention? So some have taught. Was it the issue of a
convention? So some have taught. Was it an imitation of the sounds of nature?
So some have taught. Was it a direct gift from heaven? So some have taught.
Most erudite men have pondered the problem; and yet all speculation here is
quite afloat. And so we fall back on the childlike, pictorial language of
time’s most hoary archive: “Jehovah God formed out of the soil every beast of
the field and every fowl of the heavens: and He brought them to the man to see
what he would call them: and whatever the man should call every living being,
that should be the name thereof; and the man gave names to all cattle, and to
the fowl of the heavens, and to every beast of the field.” It was man’s first
recorded act. Observe: it was an act of perception, discrimination,
description. The animals were arrayed before him; and animals suggest all the
phenomena of life. And the vision of moving life stirred up within him the
latent capacity of speech. In brief, it was the origin of humanity’s
vocabulary. As such, it is a profoundly philosophical account. For nouns, i.e.,
names, are the rudiments of language, the very A B C’s of speech. Such is
the theory of the genesis of language according to Moses. Can your Max Mullers
and Wedgwoods and Whitneys give a more philosophical theory? (G. D.Boardman.)
Two-fold use of language
This indicates to us a two-fold use of language. First, it serves
to register things and events in the apprehension and the memory. Man has a
singular power of conferring with himself. This he carries on by means of
language in some form or other. He bears some resemblance to his Maker even in
the complexity of his spiritual nature. He is at once speaker and hearer, and
yet at the same time he is consciously one. Secondly, it is a medium of
intelligent communication between spirits, who cannot read one another’s
thoughts by immediate intuition. The first of these uses seems to have preceded
the second in the case of Adam, who was the former of the first language. The
reflecting reader can tell what varied powers of reason are involved in the use
of language, and to what an extent the mind of man was developed, when he
proceeded to name the several classes of birds and beasts. He was evidently fitted
for the highest enjoyments of social intercourse. (Prof. J. G. Murphy.)
Verse 21-22
The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam
The first sleep
How profound is the mystery of sleep! It is one of those riddles
of familiar life of which we know so little; about which thought will occupy
itself and fancy speculate.
Sleep has been beautifully spoken of by the Germans as the “twin brother of
death”; and really the more earnestly we regard the subject, the more we see
the likeness which has given rise to the observation. But sleep was born in the
garden of paradise, ere its beauty faded and its glory grew dim; death sprung
into existence amid the gloom and sorrow of a darkened world. Sleep came to man
as a blessing: death as a curse. Strong as is the resemblance, there are points
where it fails; but, since the Fall, sleep has become more like death; since
the resurrection of Christ, death has become more like sleep. We who have
sinned--in our sleep “die daily”; we who are redeemed--in our death “sleep in
Christ.” I think we have every reason to receive the words of the text as a
record of the first sleep. Whether, as the nights of Eden came round in their
starry and cloudless beauty, they brought to the first man the repose of sleep,
alternating with his pleasant occupation of keeping and dressing the garden, I
cannot tell; but I think the first sleep was not of this character; it has
something special and peculiar in it, occurring by the direct interposition of
the Creator. “The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he
slept.” What a blessed sleep it proved! The first sleep has been succeeded by
the troubled, diseased, and pain-fraught slumbers of a fallen race; and for us
the mystery is mingled with fearfulness. I purpose to say a few words on the
four kinds of sleep which naturally suggest themselves to the mind while musing
on the subject of somnolency.
I. THE DEEP, OR
DREAMLESS SLEEP, of which the first sleep was peculiarly the type and pattern.
The physical condition of this sleep appears to be simply this, that the
senses, tired from use, or acted upon by some influence from without, refuse to
do their office, and cease to give to the soul intelligence of the external
world. It is remarkable to think how, in such a sleep, all those functions of
the body which are necessary to it as an organic structure, and which are
generally performed without the soul’s recognition, or particular notice, such
as the pulsation of the heart, the circulation of the blood, the digestion of
our food, go on uninterruptedly: but just those parts of our system which are
the especial channels of communication between outward things and the
reasoning, immaterial essence are affected. Surely there is a fearfulness in
sleep. The soul, unconscious of its fleshly companion, exists in some strange
state of suspension, hid in the hollow of its Creator’s hand, and overshadowed
by His covering wings. It is not with the present world of realities; nor with
the past world of memory; nor with the future world of promise; but, held in
life by the Preserver of men, and compassed about with Divine power, it waits
the body’s fitness to be used again. Such a state, indeed, is inconceivable; we
can only refer the fact to the infinite and wonder working operation of God. It
is the current supposition that the dreamless sleep is common at the present
day. I have long had my doubts, however, whether since the Fall, men have ever
slept this sleep. So completely do I look upon dreaming as one of the strongest
physical effects of the Fall, I am inclined to think it always accompanies
slumber, except when vision takes its place; and that what we imagine to be a
dreamless sleep is only one in which our dreams are unremembered when we wake.
This is somewhat confirmed by the fact of forgotten dreams being suddenly
recalled to the mind, by some circumstance occurring hours or days after. It is
very seldom indeed that we retain a recollection of what we have dreamed,
immediately on awaking: the recall to the mind of the impressions it has
received in sleep is generally incidental, and brought about by some connection
with waking thoughts.
II. THE SLEEP OF
DREAMS. It is no uncommon thing to pursue a long and connected train of thought
in sleep. The Bible is full of instances of God’s speaking by this mode to His
servants; and although we live in the days of gospel light, and not in the days
of Urim and Thummim, dream and vision, shall we positively affirm that God
never now by the instrumentality of dreams communicates warning and strength to
His Church? Shall we altogether slight and scorn the testimony of John Newton
concerning his dream of the ring? I think not. And yet let us not be idle,
superstitious observers of dreams, they are but the “divers vanities” of a
fallen nature. If they weigh with us and depress our minds, let us carry them
to God; if they afford us comfort in a time of sorrow, let us bless Him who
useth the weak and the dishonourable things of this world to show forth His
praise.
III. THE MESMERIC,
OR ARTIFICIAL SLEEP.
IV. THE TRANCE, OR
SLEEP OF VISION. (The Protoplast.)
Observations
I. EVEN SLEEP AND
QUIET REST ARE GIVEN BY GOD HIMSELF, AND THEREFORE ARE TO BE ACKNOWLEDGED AS
HIS BLESSINGS.
II. THOUGH GOD BE
PLEASED TO MANIFEST HIS WORKS TO MEN, THAT THEY MAY BEHOLD THEM YET THE MANNER
HOW THEY ARE WROUGHT IS USUALLY HIDDEN FROM THEIR EYES.
III. GOD TAKES CARE
OF US, AND PROVIDES FOR US, EVEN WHILE WE SLEEP, AND THINK NOT ON OUR OWN AFFAIRS.
And this as--
1. He can do because He neither slumbers nor sleeps (Psalms 121:3-4). So,
2. He doth--
IV. GOD DELIGHTS
TO VARY HIS WAYS IN ALL HIS OPERATIONS. Matter is sometimes rude and
unprepared, sometimes fitted for the effect to be produced, as seeds to produce
herbs and plants. And so are His ways of working sometimes by means, sometimes
without: sometimes by means agreeable, otherwise by contraries. All this He
doth to manifest--
1. His infinite wisdom (Psalms 104:24).
2. His almighty power, appearing in this, that He ties Himself to no
means nor manner of working, but brings to pass anything by what way He
pleaseth; so that the effect appears not to depend upon any means, but only
upon the power of Him that worketh all in all.
3. That He may entice us by such variety, to search into His ways as
His works are sought out by those that have pleasure therein (Psalms 3:2).
V. GOD’S WAYS AND
WORKS ARE ORDINARILY FULL OF HOLY INSTRUCTIONS.
VI. THE WIFE MUST
BE NEITHER HER HUSBAND’S LORD NOR VASSAL.
VII. A WIFE IS, OR
SHOULD BE, A STRONG HELPER TO HER HUSBAND.
VIII. GOD REQUIRES
NOTHING OF US, NOR DOTH ANYTHING UNTO US, THAT MAY HURT US, OR UNDO US. Let
nothing be grievous unto us that God either commands or lays upon us;
remembering--
1. That He may do with His own what He will.
2. And yet He hates nothing which He hath made.
3. And He can and will not fail to restore unto us abundantly,
whatsoever we seem to lose, either in doing, or suffering by His appointment,
that He may be no man’s debtor.
IX. GOD TAKES
NOTHING FROM US BUT HE TAKES CARE TO RECOMPENSE IT UNTO US, SOME WAY OR OTHER.
X. IT IS USUAL
WITH GOD TO LEAVE WITH US NEAR AND LIVELY REMEMBRANCES BOTH OF HIS MERCIES TO
US AND OF OUR DUTIES. (J. White, M. A.)
Observations
I. GOD CAN CHANGE
ANYTHING INTO WHAT FORM HE PLEASETH.
II. GOD IS EXACT
AND PERFECT IN ALL THE WORKS THAT HE UNDERTAKES.
III. WOMEN, AS WELL
AS MEN ARE GOD’S OWN WORKMANSHIP.
IV. GOD HATH
ALLOWED BUT ONE WIFE TO ONE MAN.
V. THOUGH ALL
THINGS BE MADE FOR MAN, YET HE CAN HAVE NO INTEREST IN ANYTHING UNTIL GOD
HIMSELF BESTOW IT ON HIM. Yea, when God hath put men’s estates into their
hands, yet our Saviour directs us to beg our allowance out of them from God,
for the portion of every day.
1. Because all that we have or use is God’s, who only sends them to
us for our use, reserving the propriety of all to Himself.
2. That we may use all according to His direction, and not according
to our own lusts.
3. That we may upon the better grounds expect His blessing upon that
which we use, without which it cannot profit us.
VI. EVERY CHILD OF
GOD MUST DESIRE TO RECEIVE HIS WIFE FROM GOD’S HAND.
1. By making choice of such a person, as is of His family, with whom
He may converse as an heir with him of the grace of life.
2. Labouring to gain her by warrantable ways, prayer, advice, and
mediation of godly friends, holy conferences, and godly propositions, not by
carnal allurements, deceitfulness, enticements, or violent importunities.
3. And aiming at a right end therein, rather our increase in piety,
and the propagation of an holy seed, than the advancing ourselves in our
outward estates: remembering--
1. That God only (who looks not as man on the outward appearance,
bit seeth the heart) is able to direct us in our choice.
2. That it lays upon us a strong engagement to make an holy use of
marriage, when we thus lay the foundation of it in His fear.
3. That it sweetens all the crosses which we may meet with in a
married life; being assured, that if they fall upon us by His hand, they shall
by Him be so sanctified unto us, that they as all things else, shall work
together to our good. (J. White, M. A.)
Observations
I. GOD’S
BLESSINGS OUGHT TO BE ENTERTAINED AND EMBRACED BY US WITH A HOLY REJOICING AND
THANKFULNESS. This rejoicing must be--
1. In God, and not in ourselves; not so much that it is well with
us, as that God’s honour, in His mercy and truth, is manifested and advanced
thereby.
2. And performed with fear and trembling (Psalm if. 11); and
infinite abasement of ourselves before Him, upon the apprehension of our own
unworthiness, of so great favours, after David’s example (2 Samuel 7:18). And--
3. May be publicly testified when God’s favours are eminent and
public, and especially when the Church is any way concerned in them: whence
David, being a public person, promiseth a public thanksgiving in the
congregation for those mercies, which though they lighted on Him, yet redounded
to the benefit of his people also.
II. WE MAY AND
SHALL KNOW AS MUCH OF GOD’S WAYS AND WORKS AS CONCERNS US, FOR THE DIRECTING
AND QUICKENING OF US UNTO OUR DUTIES. As--
1. That they are the works of His own hand (Psalms 64:9).
2. And those wrought in righteousness, mercy, and truth.
3. And for His only glory (Proverbs 16:4); and for our good, unto
which all things work together (Romans 8:28); that men may fear, and
trust in Him (Psalms 64:10).
III. IT IS CONSENT
THAT MUST MAKE THE MARRIAGE BETWEEN MAN AND WIFE.
IV. EVEN THE BEST AMONGST
MEN NEED TO BE MINDED BOTH OF THEIR DUTY AND CONDITION EVERY WAY. (J. White,
M. A.)
I. THE POSITION
AND DESTINY OF WOMAN.
Woman
1. Her position is inferior and subordinate. If the Scripture speaks
plainly on any point, it most unequivocally asserts the superiority of man over
the woman, both in his nature and in the sphere which by Divine appointment he
is to occupy. How strange, then, it is, that our day should have given birth to
so many schemes for raising her to the level of him, unto whom the supremacy
has been so distinctly given. Even in innocence we have seen that woman was not
man’s equal: Eve, in her unsullied purity, was content to take a lower place
than Adam, and to serve him according to God’s ordinance. Experience confirms
the truth stated in the Word of God--the inferiority of the female character.
That woman’s physical strength is less than that of man, is almost universally
acknowledged. In all cases where power and daring are required, the work is
given to man. From scenes of terror and danger woman instinctively shrinks, and
man instinctively shields her. If it be said that the historic page records
instances of her passing through them with undaunted mien; if the name of a
Joan of Arc be cited as a witness to disprove my statement, I only answer, that
the exception proves the rule. Is it not equally true, that woman’s mental
strength is less than that of man? Should it be urged, again, that the name of
a De Stael, a De Genlis, or a Somerville certifies the possibility of the highest
masculine mind being enshrined in a female form--if I admitted this--I would
say, again, the exception proves the rule: but while I do not deny that a woman
of the noblest and most exalted intellect may be superior to men of ordinary
talent around her, I do not hesitate to say she is inferior, in her greatness,
to a man of the highest genius. Compare woman at her best estate, with man at
his best estate, and the disparity will tell itself strikingly. There has been
no Isaac Newton in the ranks of the weaker sex. According to the woman’s
nature, God has appointed her position in the world. She is “not to teach”; she
is “not to usurp authority over the man”; she is to be in “subjection,” and
“under obedience.”
2. Her destiny is to occupy the next rank to him who was made “a
little lower than the angels”; to share with him the government of the animal
world; to stand by his side in all the life of the present; to give herself
unto him, with all her powers, and all her affections; to sacrifice herself for
him, with her peculiar devotedness and concentration of purpose; to draw near
unto him when the society of his fellow man would be insupportable; and to
speak to him when the voice of his fellow man would be jarring and discordant;
to sympathize with him in the hour of sorrow; to cheer him in the hour of
sickness; to re-animate him in the hour of listlessness; to aid him in the hour
of difficulty; to encourage him in the hour of temptation: to be, in fact, his
companion, his comfort, his cooperator, his friend. But, moreover, this
destiny, under a dispensation of redemption, is to participate with him the
blessings and privileges of the New Covenant--to share with him the duties and
hopes of an inner and spiritual life; to receive with him the gift of immortality;
to hold with him the title deeds of an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled,
and that fadeth not away, reserved in the eternal heaven. Surely there is
nothing necessarily degrading in such a lot! All the ignominy and misery
attached to it have been the effect of the woman’s sin, and the woman’s curse.
We may say, in conclusion, using the apostle’s words, “Neither is the man
without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.”
II. THE
PREPARATION NECESSARY FOR WOMAN’S WORK.
1. As a most important self-discipline, I would mention, first, that
progressive cultivation of the mind which is carried on when the time for
compulsory study is passed. There has been no mistake so fatal to the elevation
of female character as the idea, that when the rubicon of the eighteenth year
is crossed, a life of so-called pleasure, that is, a life of idleness and
dissipation, is to succeed a life of mental application.
2. A woman’s preparation for her office is greatly brought about by
an experience of suffering. Sorrow, sanctified and sacred sorrow, gives the
finest touches to her character. It produces in her that exquisite refinement
of feeling, that acute susceptibility, that deep sympathy, for which woman is
so distinguished.
III. Woman’s WORK
itself. After all I have written, will it be thought strange if I say, that its
nature may be expressed in one comprehensive word--ministration! It must be
remembered that we are not considering woman in her direct relations to God as
His creature, but in her direct relations to man as his help. In this point of
view, her work may be regarded as consisting in ministration to man. In mental
ministration, or a service unto his mind. In corporeal ministration, or a
service unto his body. In spiritual ministration, or a service unto his spirit.
1. Mental ministration. Woman, as we have seen, meets man, not upon
the footing of a passive slave, but of an intelligent assistant. It is her
office to share his intellectual pursuits, and to aid him in his researches
after natural knowledge and scientific truth. How is she to do this? By
bringing her mind to bear upon his; by laying its treasures before him; by
entering with appreciation and interest into the details of the discoveries of
his genius, or even of the speculations of his imagination; by communicating to
him her thoughts on the high and mysterious subjects which engage his
attention.
2. Corporeal ministration. It is a woman’s province to provide for
man the trifles of life, things which contribute greatly to his comfort, and
which are yet unworthy to engage much of his time and attention. The
constitution of her nature is such, that household arrangements do not have
with her that harassing effect on the mind, which is so peculiarly felt by one
who would devote himself wholly to higher and more important matters. It is her
office then to surround man with little luxuries; to give him little pleasures;
to let him feel that he has cared for nothing, and yet has wanted nothing in
the domestic economy of each successive day.
3. Spiritual ministration. Woman, as redeemed from the Fall, is a
fellow heir with man of the grace of life. She is to walk with him in that
narrow path which leads to the heavenly land, and much of her companion’s
progress therein depends instrumentally upon her own. Many a man has been
hindered in the perfecting of holiness by the burden of a woman who has
forgotten to do him service in the best and highest sense. The task of a
Christian female is a very glorious one. She is to be the “help” of the servant
of God. Living with man, and bound to him by some close tie, it is her part to
assist him in the devotion of all his energies to his Creator’s glory; to aid
him in his renunciation of the world, by showing that she is contented with the
lot of God’s children; to aid him in his liberality to those who are in need by
proving that she looks upon money given unto the poor as lent to the Lord, and
that she is willing to wait for the redemption of His bond; to aid him in the
establishment of righteous authority in his household, by respecting his rule
herself; to aid him in his obedience to duty’s call, even when it leads him
into the midst of danger, by counting his life less dear to her than his
fulfilment of the will of God.
IV. The RECOMPENSE
attending woman’s work. A few brief words will suffice for this last division
of our subject. The highest recompense of woman consists in the honour and the
joy of being employed for God, in the way of His own appointment. The
creature’s blessedness is connected with the consciousness of filling the place
assigned by Jehovah’s unerring wisdom, and of fulfilling His holy will. In
proportion to a woman’s greatness of mind, will be her satisfaction in the
thought that she is occupying the station which God intended for her, and that
she is accomplishing the service to which He has called her. Moreover, the work
of ministration is its own reward. In drawing a woman out of self, in bringing
her into sympathetic union with another; in giving her occupation and interest
all the days of her life on earth; it is itself a means of happiness. Still God
has permitted a further recompense to wait upon a female’s fulfilment of her
sacred office. For a married woman there is a peculiarly rich and sweet reward.
It is beautifully set before us by Solomon, as a husband’s trust, and a
husband’s praise. “The heart of her husband cloth safely trust in her” (Proverbs 31:11). (The Protoplast.)
A wedding sermon
God’s bringing Eve to Adam implieth five things:--
1. His permission, allowance, and grant, for that Adam might
thankfully acknowledge the benefit as coming from God, God Himself brought her.
This bringing was the full bestowing her upon him, that they should live together
as man and wife.
2. His institution and appointment of marriage as the means of
propagating mankind.
3. For the greater solemnity and comely order of marriage. Adam did
not take her of his own head, but God brought her to him. This honour and special
favour God vouchsafeth mankind above all other creatures; He Himself, in His
own person, maketh the match, and bringeth them together.
4. To dispense His blessing to them. The woman was created on the
sixth day, as appeareth (Genesis 1:1-31); and it is said that when
He had “created them male and female, He blessed them” (verse 28). He doth
enlarge things here, and explaineth what there He had touched briefly. When He
had made the woman, He brought her to the man, and blessed them both together;
showing thereby that when any enter into this estate, they should take God’s
blessing along with them, upon whose favour the comfort of this relation doth
wholly depend.
5. For a pattern of providence in all after times. It is worth the
observing, that Christ reasoning against polygamy, from Genesis 2:24, compared with Matthew 19:1-30. God having abundance of
the spirit, as the prophet speaks Malachi 2:15), brought the woman to one
man, though there was more cause of giving Adam many wives for the speedier
peopling of the world, than there could be to any of his posterity. The point
which I shall insist on is this:--That marriages are then holily entered into,
when the parties take one another out of God’s hands.
I. I will show
you in what sense they are said to take one another out of God’s hands.
II. Why this is so
necessary to be observed.
I. For the first,
THEY TAKE ONE ANOTHER OUT OF GOD’S HANDS TWO WAYS.
1. When His directions are observed.
2. When His providence is owned and acknowledged.
3. When His directions in His word are observed; and so--
2. When His providence is owned and acknowledged. It is the duty of
them that fear God to own Him upon all occasions, especially in such a
business. Heathens would not begin such a business without a sacrifice. There
is a special providence about marriages. God claimeth the power of match-making
to Himself, more than He doth of ordering any other affairs of men--“Riches and
honours are an inheritance from our fathers; but a goodwife is from the Lord” (Proverbs 19:14).
II. WHY IS THIS SO
NECESSARY A DUTY? It doth in a great measure appear from what is said already.
But farther--
1. It will be a great engagement upon us to give God all the glory
of the comfort we have in such a relation, when you do more sensibly and
explicitly take one another out of God’s hands.
2. That we may carry ourselves more holily in our relations, it is
good to see God’s hand in them. Every relation is a new talent wherewith God
intrusteth us to trade for His glory; and to that end we must make conscience
to use it.
3. That we may more patiently bear the crosses incident to this
state of life if God call us to them. They that launch forth into the world,
sail in a troublesome and tempestuous sea, and cannot expect but to meet with a
storm before they come to the end of their voyage. The married life hath its
comforts, and also its encumbrances and sorrows. Now it will sweeten all our
crosses incident to this condition, when we remember we did not rashly enter
into it by our own choice, but were led by the fair directure and fair
invitation of God’s providence; we need not much be troubled at what overtaketh
us in the way of our duty, and the relations to which we are called. That hand
that sent the trouble will sanctify it, or He will overrule things so that they
shall work for our good. If God call us into this estate, He will support us in
it.
4. We may with the more confidence apply ourselves to God, and
depend on Him for a blessing upon a wife of God’s choosing, or a husband of
God’s choosing. We have access to the throne of grace with more hope, because
we have given up ourselves to His direction--“In all thy ways acknowledge Him,
and He shall direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:6).
5. It is a help to make us more ready to part with one another when
God willeth it. It is the apostle’s direction--“The time is short, it remains
that those that have wives be as though they had none” (1 Corinthians 7:29); not so as to be
defective in our love to them and care over them; no, there is rather to be an
excess than a defect here--“Be thou ravished always with her love” (Proverbs 5:19); but as to a preparation
of heart to keep or lose, if God should see fit, to be contented to part with a
dear yoke fellow, or at least with an humble submission and acquiescence, when
God’s will is declared; and somewhat of this must be mingled with
all our rejoicings, some thoughts of the vanity of the creature. APPLICATION.
I. Let us seek
God by earnest prayer when any such matter is in hand. It is a contempt of God,
and a kind of laying Him aside, when we dare undertake anything without His
leave, counsel, and blessing; and these are the things we are to seek in
prayer.
1. His leave. Adam had no interest in Eve till God brought her to
him, and bestowed her on him. Every one of us must get a grant of God of all
that he hath; the Lord He possesseth the house that we dwell in, the clothes we
wear, the food we eat; and so, in the use of all other comforts, we must have a
license from God, and take His leave. God is said to have given David the wives
that he had into his bosom.
2. His counsel and direction when the case is doubtful and our
thoughts are uncertain--“Lean not to thy own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). We scarce know duties,
certainly we cannot foresee events; therefore a man that maketh his bosom his
oracle, his wit his counsellor, will choose a mischief to himself, instead of a
comfort and a blessing. Therefore we ought chiefly, and first of all, to
consult with God, and seek His direction, for He seeth the heart, and foreseeth
events.
3. We ask His blessing. God doth not only foresee the event, but
orders it; by His wisdom He foreseeth it, and by His powerful providence He
bringeth it to pass. Therefore God, that hath the disposal of all events, when
our direction is over, is to be sought unto for a blessing; for every comfort
cometh the sooner when it is sought in prayer; and whatever God’s purposes be,
that is our duty.
II. Advice to
persons that are entering into this relation.
1. Negatively. See that God be no loser by the marriage.
2. Positively. Be sure that God be a gainer. These are the two
proffers I have to make to you.
1. Negatively. Let not God be a loser; He never intended to give you
gifts to His own wrong. Now that will be--
2. Positively. Let God be a gainer.
A preparative to marriage
Well might Paul say (Hebrews 13:4), “marriage is honourable”;
for God hath honoured it Himself. It is honourable for the author, honourable
for the time, and honourable for the place. Whereas all other ordinances were
appointed of God by the hands of men, or the hands of angels (Acts 12:7; Hebrews 2:2), marriage was ordained by
God Himself, which cannot err. No man nor angel brought the wife to the
husband, but God Himself (Genesis 2:12); so marriage hath more
honour of God in this than all other ordinances of God beside, because He
solemnized it Himself. Then it is honourable for the time; for it was the first
ordinance that God instituted, even the first thing which He did, after man and
woman were created, and that in the state of innocency, before either had
sinned: like the finest flower, which will not thrive but in a clean ground.
Then it is honourable for the place; for whereas all other ordinances were
instituted out of paradise, marriage was instituted in paradise, in the
happiest place, to signify haw happy they are that marry in the Lord. As God
the Father honoured marriage, so did God the Son, which is called “the Seed of
the woman” (Genesis 3:15); therefore marriage was so
honoured among women because of this seed, that when Elizabeth brought forth a
son (Luke 1:25), she said that “God had taken
away her rebuke,” counting it the honour of women to bear children, and, by
consequence, the honour of women to be married; for the children which are born
out of marriage are the dishonour of women, and called by the shameful name of
bastards (Deuteronomy 23:2). As Christ honoured
marriage with His birth, so He honoured it with His miracles; for the first
miracle which Christ did, He wrought at a marriage in Cana, where He turned the
water into wine (John 2:8). As He honoured it with
miracles, so He honoured it with praises; for He compareth the kingdom of God
to a wedding (Matthew 22:2); and He compareth holiness
to a wedding garment (Genesis 2:11); and in the 5th of
Canticles He is wedded Himself (Song of Solomon 5:9). We read in
Scripture of three marriages of Christ. The first was when Christ and our
nature met together. The second is, when Christ and our soul join together. The
third is, the union of Christ and His Church. These are Christ’s three wives.
As Christ honoured marriage, so do Christ’s disciples; for John calleth the
conjunction of Christ and the faithful a marriage (Revelation 19:7). And in Revelation 21:9, the Church hath the name
of a bride, whereas heresy is called an harlot (Revelation 17:1). Now it must needs be,
that marriage, which was ordained of such an excellent Author, and in such a
happy place, and of such an ancient time, and after such a notable order, must
likewise have special causes for the ordinance of it. Therefore the Holy Ghost
doth show us three causes of this union. One is, the propagation of children, signified
in that when Moses saith “He created them male and female” (Genesis 2:22), not both male nor both
female, but one male and the other female; as if He created them fit to propagate
other. And, therefore, when He had created them so, to show that propagation of
children is one end of marriage, He said unto them, “Increase and multiply” (Genesis 1:28); that is, bring forth
children, as other creatures bring forth their kind. The second cause is to
avoid fornication. This Paul signifieth when he saith, “For the avoiding of
fornication, let every man have his own wife” (1 Corinthians 7:8). The third cause
is to avoid the inconvenience of solitariness, signified in these words, “It is
not good for man to be alone”; as though He had said, This life would be
miserable and irksome, and unpleasant to man, if the Lord had not given him a
wife to company his troubles. If it be not good for man to be alone, then it is
good for man to have a fellow; therefore, as God created a pair of all other
kinds, so He created a pair of this kind. We say that one is none, because he
cannot be fewer than one, he cannot be less than one, he cannot be weaker than
one, and therefore the wise man saith, “Woe to him that is alone” (Ecclesiastes 4:10), that is, he which is
alone shall have woe. Thoughts and cares and fears will come to him because he
hath none to comfort him, as thieves steal in when the house is empty; like a
turtle which hath lost his mate; like one leg when the other is cut off; like
one wing when the other is clipped; so had the man been, if the woman had not
been joined to him; therefore for mutual society God coupled two together, that
the infinite troubles which lie upon us in the world might be eased with the
comfort and help one of another, and that the poor in the world might have some
comfort as well as the rich; for “the poor man,” saith Solomon, “is forsaken of
his own brethren” (Proverbs 19:7); yet God hath provided one
comfort for him, like Jonathan’s armour bearer, that shall never forsake him (1 Samuel 14:7), that is, another
self, which is the only commodity (as I may term it) wherein the poor do match
the rich; without which some persons should have no helper, no comfort, no
friend at all. In Matthew 22:1-46, Christ showeth that
before parties married, they were wont to put on fair and new garments, which
were called wedding garments; a warning unto all which put on wedding garments
to put on truth and holiness too, which so precisely is resembled by that
garment more than other. Yet the chiefest point is behind, that is, our duties.
The duties of marriage may be reduced to the duties of man and wife, one toward
another, and their duties towards their children, and their duty toward their
servants. For themselves, saith one, they must think themselves like to birds:
the one is the cock, and the other is the hen; the cock flieth abroad to bring
in, and the dam sitteth upon the nest to keep all at home. So God hath made the
man to travel abroad, and the woman to keep home; and so their nature, and
their wit, and their strength are fitted accordingly; for the man’s pleasure is
most abroad, and the woman’s within. In every state there is some one virtue
which belongeth to that calling more than other; as justice unto magistrates,
and knowledge unto preachers, and fortitude unto soldiers; so love is the
marriage virtue which sings music to their whole life. Wedlock is made of two
loves, which I may call the first love and the after love. As every man is
taught to love God before he be bid to love his neighbour, so they must love
God before they can love one another. To show the love which should be between
man and wife, marriage is called conjugium, which signifieth a knitting
or joining together; showing, that unless there be a joining of hearts, and a
knitting of affections together, it is not marriage in deed, but in show and
name, and they shall dwell in a house like two poisons in a stomach, and one
shall ever be sick of another. Therefore, first, that they may love, and keep
love one with another, it is necessary that they both love God, and as their
love increaseth toward Him, so it shall increase each to other. To begin this
concord well, it is necessary to learn one another’s natures, and one another’s
affections, and one another’s infirmities, because ye must be helpers, and ye
cannot help unless you know the disease. Thus much of their duties in general;
now to their several offices. The man may spell his duty out of his name, for
he is called “the head” (Ephesians 5:23), to show that as the eye,
the tongue, and the ear are in the head to direct the whole body, so the man
should be stored with wisdom, and understanding, and knowledge, and discretion,
to direct his whole family; for it is not right that the worse should rule the
better, but the better should rule the worse, as the best rules all. The
husband saith that his wife must obey him, because he is her better; therefore
if he let her be better than himself, he seems to free her from her obedience,
and binds himself to obey her. His first duty is called hearting, that is,
hearty affection. As they are hand-fasted, so they must be heart-fasted; for
the eye, and the tongue, and the hand will be her enemies if the heart be not
her friend. As Christ draweth all the commandments to love, so may I draw all
their duties to love,, which is the heart’s gift to the bride at her marriage.
First, he must choose his love, and then he must love his choice. This is the
oil which maketh all things easy. His next duty to love, is a fruit of his
love; that is, to let all things be common between them which were private
before. The man and wife are partners, like two oars in a boat; therefore he
must divide offices, and affairs, and goods with her, causing her to be feared,
and reverenced, and obeyed of her children and servants, like himself, for she
is an under officer in his commonweal, and therefore she must be assisted and
borne out like his deputy; as the prince standeth with his magistrates for his own
quiet, because they are the legs which bear him up. Lastly, he must tender her
as much as all her friends, because he hath taken her from her friends, and
covenanted to tender her for them all. To show how he should tender her, Peter
saith, “Honour the woman as the weaker vessel” (1 Peter 3:7). As we do not handle
glasses like pots, because they are weaker vessels, but touch them nicely and
softly for fear of cracks, so a man must entreat his wife with gentleness and
softness, not expecting that wisdom, nor that faith, nor that patience, nor
that strength in the weaker vessel, which should be in the stronger; but think
when he takes a wife he takes a vineyard, not grapes, but a vineyard to bear
him grapes; therefore he must sow it, and dress it, and water it, and fence it,
and think it a good vineyard, if at last it brings forth grapes. So he must not
look to find a wife without a fault, but think that she is committed to him to
reclaim her from her faults; for all are defective. And if he find the proverb
true, that in space cometh grace, he must rejoice as much at his wife when she
amendeth, as the husbandman rejoiceth when his vineyard beginneth to fructify.
So much for husbands. Likewise the woman may learn her duty of her names. They
are called goodwives, as goodwife A and goodwife B. Every wife is called a good
wife; therefore if they be not good wives, their names do belie them, and they
are not worth their titles, but answer to a wrong name, as players do upon a
stage. This name pleaseth them well. But besides this, a wife is called a yoke
fellow (Philippians 4:3), to show that she should
help her husband to bear his yoke, that is, his grief must be her grief; and
whether it be the yoke of poverty, or the yoke of envy, or the yoke of
sickness, or the yoke of imprisonment, she must submit her neck to bear it
patiently with him, or else she is not his yoke fellow, but his yoke; as though
she were inflicted upon him for a penalty, like to Job’s wife, whom the devil
left to torment him when he took away all he had beside (Job 2:9). Beside a yoke fellow, she is
called a helper (Genesis 2:18), to help him in his
business, to help him in his labours, to help him in his troubles, to help him
in his sickness, like a woman physician, sometime with her strength, and
sometime with her counsel; for sometime as God confoundeth the wise by the
foolish, and the strong by the weak (1 Corinthians 1:27), so He teacheth
the wise by the foolish, and helpeth the strong by the weak. Beside a helper,
she is called a comforter too; and therefore the man is bid rejoice in his wife
(Proverbs 5:18); which is as much to say,
that wives must be the rejoicing of their husbands, even like David’s harp to
comfort 1 Samuel 16:23). Lastly, we call the
wife huswife, that is, housewife; not a street wife, like Tamar (Genesis 38:14); nor a field wife, like
Dinah (Genesis 34:2); but a housewife, to show
that a good wife keeps her house; and therefore Paul biddeth Titus to exhort
women that they be “chaste, and keeping at home” (Titus 2:5). Presently after “chaste” he
saith “keeping at home,” as though home were chastity’s keeper. As it becometh
her to keep home, so it becometh her to keep silence, and always speak the best
of her head. Others seek their honour in triumph, but she must seek her honour
in reverence; for it becometh not any woman to set light by her husband, nor to
publish his infirmities. For they say, That is an evil bird that defileth her
own nest; and if a wife use her husband so, how may a husband use his wife?
Because this is the quality of that sex, to overthwart, and upbraid, and sue
the preeminence of their husbands, therefore the philosophers could not tell
how to define a wife, but call her the contrary to a husband, as though nothing
were so cross and contrary to a man as a wife. This is not Scripture, but no slander
to many. As David exalted the love of women above all other loves (2 Samuel 1:26), so Solomon mounteth
the envy of women above all other envies (Proverbs 21:19). Stubborn, sullen,
taunting, gainsaying, out-facing, with such a bitter humour, that one would
think they were molten out of the salt pillar into which Lot’s wife was
transformed (Genesis 19:28). We say not all are alike,
but this sect hath many disciples, Doth the rib that is in man’s side fret or
gall him? No more then should she which is made of the rib (Genesis 2:20). Though a woman be wise,
and painful, and have many good parts, yet if she be a shrew, her troublesome
jarring in the end will make her honest behaviour unpleasant, as her
overpinching at last causeth her good housewifery to be evil spoken of.
Therefore, although she be a wife, yet sometimes she must observe the servant’s
lesson: “Not answering again” (Titus 2:9), and hold her peace to keep
the peace. Therefore they which keep silence are well said to hold their peace,
because silence oftentimes doth keep the peace when words would break it. To
her silence and patience she must add the acceptable obedience which makes a
woman rule while she is ruled. This is the wife’s tribute to her husband; for
she is not called his head, but he is called her head. Thus we have shadowed
the man’s duty to his wife, and the woman’s to her husband. After their duties
one to another, they must learn their duties to their family. One compareth the
master of the house to the seraphim, which came and kindled the prophet’s zeal;
so he should go from wife to servants, and from servants to children, and
kindle in them the zeal of God, longing to teach his knowledge, as a nurse to
empty her breasts. Another saith that a master in his family hath all the
offices of Christ, for he must rule, and teach, and pray; rule like a king, and
teach like a prophet, and pray like a priest (Revelation 5:10). To show how a godly man
should behave himself in his household, when the Holy Ghost speaketh of the
conversation of any housekeeper, lightly he saith, that “the man believed with
all his household” (Acts 16:34; Acts 18:8). As Peter being converted,
must convert his brethren; so the master being converted, must convert his
servants. Lastly, we put the duty towards children, because they come last to
their hands. In Latin children are called pignora, that is, pledges; as
if I should say, a pledge of the husband’s love to the wife, and a pledge of
the wife’s love toward the husband; for there is nothing which doth so knit
love between the man and the wife as the fruit of the womb. The first duty is
the mother’s, that is, to nurse her child at her own breasts, as Sarah did Genesis 21:7); and therefore Isaiah
joined the nurse’s name and the mother’s name both in one, and called them
“nursing mothers”; showing that mothers should be the nurses. The next duty is,
“Catechize a child in his youth, and he will remember it when he is old” (Proverbs 22:6). This is the right
blessing which fathers and mothers give to their children, when they cause God
to bless them too. If these duties be performed in marriage then I need not
speak of divorcement, which is the rod of marriage, and divideth them which
were one flesh, as if the body and soul were parted asunder. But because all
perform not their wedlock vows, therefore He which appointed marriage hath
appointed divorcement, as it were taking our privilege from us when we abuse
it. As God hath ordained remedies for every disease, so He hath ordained a
remedy for the disease of marriage. The disease of marriage is adultery, and
the medicine hereof is divorcement. Moses licensed them to depart for hardness
of heart Matthew 19:8); but Christ licenseth them
to depart for no cause but adultery. If they might be separated for discord,
some would make a commodity of strife; but now they are not best to be
contentious, for this law will hold their noses together, till weariness make
them leave struggling; like two spaniels which are coupled in a chain, at last
they learn to go together, because they may not go asunder. As nothing might
part friends, but “if thine eye offend thee, pull it out” (Matthew 5:32); that is, thy friend be a
tempter; so nothing may dissolve marriage but fornication (Matthew 19:9), which is the breach of
marriage, for marriage is ordained to avoid fornication (1 Corinthians 7:9), and therefore if
the condition be broken, the obligation is void. (H. Smith.)
Why the creation of woman was deferred to this precise juncture in
human history
First, man’s original unity is the counterpart of the unity of
God. He was to be made in the image of God, and after His likeness. If the male
and the female had been created at once, an essential feature of the Divine
likeness would have been wanting. But, as in the Absolute One there is no
duality, whether in sex or in any other respect, so is there none in the
original form and constitution of man. Hence we learn the absurdity of those
who import into their notions of the deity the distinction of sex, and all the
alliances which are involved in a race of gods. Secondly, the natural unity of
the first pair, and of the race descended from them, is established by the
primary creation of an individual, from whom is derived, by a second creative
process, the first woman. The race of man is thus a perfect unity, flowing from
a single centre of human life. Thirdly, two remarkable events occur in the
experience of man before the formation of the woman; his instalment in the
garden as its owner, keeper, and dresser; and his review of the animals as
their rational superior, to whom they yield an instinctive homage. By the
former he is prepared to provide for the sustenance and comfort of his wife. By
the latter, he becomes aware of his power to protect her. Still farther, by the
interview with his Maker in the garden he came to understand language; and by
the inspection of the animals to employ it himself. Speech implies the exercise
of the susceptive and conceptive powers of the understanding. Thus Adam was
qualified to hold intelligent converse with a being like himself. He was
competent to be the instructor of his wife in words and things. Again, he had
met with his superior in his Creator, his inferiors in the animals; and he was
now to meet his equal in the woman. And lastly, by the Divine command his moral
sense had been brought into play, the theory of moral obligation had been
revealed to his mind, and he was therefore prepared to deal with a moral being
like himself, to understand and respect the rights of another, to do unto
another as he would have another do to him. It was especially necessary that
the sense of right should grow up in his breast, to keep in due check that
might in which he excelled, before the weaker and gentler sex was called into
being, and entrusted to his charge. (Prof. J. G. Murphy.)
Feminine solace
Washington Irving likens such a woman to the vine. As the vine,
which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and been lifted by it
in sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling
round it with its caressing tendrils, and bind up its shattered boughs; so it
is beautifully ordered by Providence that woman should be man’s stay and solace
when smitten with sudden calamity--binding up the broken heart.
“‘Tis
woman’s to bind up the broken heart,
And
soften the bending spirit’s smart;
And
to light in this world of sin and pain,
The
lamp of love, and of joy again.”
Wife help
Guelph, the Duke of Bavaria, was besieged in his castle, and
compelled to capitulate to the Emperor Conrad. His lady demanded for herself
and the other ladies safe conduct to a place of safety, with whatever they
could carry. This was granted; and to the astonishment of all, the ladies
appeared, carrying their husbands on their backs. Thus wives aided their
husbands: and never in the gayest moods in tournament or court did those fair
dames look more lovely.
Woman
Hargrave says that women are the poetry of the world in the same
sense as the stars are the poetry of heaven. Clear, light-giving harmonies,
women are the terrestrial planets that rule the destinies of mankind.
The word “woman”
In English, the qualification “wo,” placed before “man,” indicates
merely a difference of sex. In Latin, she is called the muller, a word
derived from mollior--softer, more tender. In Hebrew ish signifies
“man,” and the addition of a terminal vowel makes it isha--a woman. In
all three of these languages, the words used are also applied to a “wife.” In
Turkish, however, the name karu--woman--is never applied to a wife; she is
called ev, which signifies “house”; while the Armenians call her undanik,
or the keeper at home, a word which includes the children; they also call
the wife gin, i.e., a woman. (Things not Generally Known)
Verse 24
Cleave unto his wife
Marriage
I.
THE
NATURE AND END OF MARRIAGE. It is a vow of perpetual and indissoluble
friendship.
1. It has long been observed that friendship is to be confined to
one: or that, to use the words of the axiom, “He that hath friends, has no
friend.” That ardour of kindness, that unbounded confidence, that unsuspecting
security which friendship requires, cannot be extended beyond a single object.
2. It is remarked, that friendship amongst equals is the most
lasting, and perhaps there are few causes to which more unhappy marriages are
to be ascribed than a disproportion between the original condition of the two
persons.
3. Strict friendship is to have the same desires and the same
aversions. Whoever is to choose a friend is to consider first the resemblance
or the dissimilitude of tempers. How necessary this caution is to be urged as
preparatory to marriage, the misery of those who neglect it sufficiently
evinces.
4. Friends, says the proverbial observation, “have everything in
common.” This is likewise implied in the marriage covenant. Matrimony admits of
no separate possessions, no incommunicable interests.
5. There is yet another precept equally relating to friendship and
to marriage, a precept which, in either case, can never be too strongly
inculcated, or too scrupulously observed; “Contract friendship only with the
good.” Virtue is the first quality to be considered in the choice of a friend,
and yet more in a fixed and irrevocable choice.
II. BY WHAT MEANS
THE END OF MARRIAGE IS TO BE ATTAINED. The duties, by the practice of which a
married life is to be made happy, are the same with those of friendship, but
exalted to higher perfection. Love must be more ardent, and confidence without
limits. It is therefore necessary on each part to deserve that confidence by
the most unshaken fidelity, and to preserve their love unextinguished by
continual acts of tenderness: not only to detest all real, but seeming
offences: and to avoid suspicion and guilt, with almost equal solicitude. (John
Taylor, LL. D.)
Marriage
I. MARRIAGE OF
MAN AND WOMAN IS AN ORDINANCE OF GOD HIMSELF. And is therefore called the
covenant of God (Proverbs 2:17). By which He is said to
join the married persons together (Matthew 19:6). Of which conjunction
especially the apostle speaks, when he warns every man to walk as God hath
called him (1 Corinthians 7:17). Neither in
reason can it be otherwise; seeing--
1. We are God’s and not our own; and therefore none of us having
power over his own person, can be disposed of otherwise than He directs (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
2. We bring forth children unto God (Malachi 2:15). Which He therefore calls
His own (Ezekiel 16:21), as born unto Him.
II. MARRIED
PERSONS MUST BE WHOLLY AND ENTIRELY ONE TO ANOTHER. According to the form of
that stipulation mentioned (Hosea 3:3), which extends unto all
conjugal duties only. One may love other friends, but only his wife with a
conjugal love and affection, rejoicing in her alone Proverbs 5:18-19); dwelling with her as
an inseparable companion; advising and jointly labouring with her for upholding
and governing of the family (1 Corinthians 7:3) and the like--in
those the married persons must be wholly one to another. But so that they also,
as well as others, must still hold themselves obliged to those general duties
of love, due reverence, and service, unto all other persons, according to their
several relations.
III. MARRIED
PERSONS ARE NOT ONLY TO REFRAIN THEMSELVES FROM ALL OTHERS, BUT RESIDES TO
ADHERE AND CLEAVE FIRMLY ONE TO ANOTHER. (J. White, M. A.)
The unity of husband and wife
Husband and wife should be like two candles burning together, which
make the house more lightsome; or like two fragrant flowers bound up in one
nosegay, that augment its sweetness; or like two well-tuned instruments, which,
sounding together, make the more melodious music. Husband and wife--what are
they but as two springs meeting, and so joining their streams that they make
but one current? (W. Secker.)
Two hallowed institutions
Two hallowed institutions have descended to us from the days of
primeval innocence, the wedding and the Sabbath. The former indicates communion
of the purest and most perfect kind between equals of the same class. The
latter implies communion of the highest and holiest kind between the Creator
and the intelligent creature. The two combined, import communion with each
other in communion with God. Wedded union is the sum and type of every social
tie. It gives rise and scope to all the nameless joys of home. It is the native
field for the cultivation of all the social virtues. It provides for the due
framing and checking of the overgrowth of interest in self, and for the gentle
training and fostering of a growing interest in others. It unfolds the graces
and charms of mutual love, and imparts to the susceptible heart all the peace
and joy, all the light and fire, all the frankness and life of conscious and
constant purity and goodwill. Friendship, brotherly kindness and love, are
still hopeful and sacred names among mankind. Sabbath keeping lifts the wedded
pair, the brethren, the friends, the one-minded, up to communion with God. The
joy of achievement is a feeling common to God and man. The commemoration of the
auspicious beginning of a holy and happy existence will live in man while
memory lasts. The anticipation also of joyful repose after the end of a work
well done will gild the future while hope survives. Thus the idea of the
Sabbath spans the whole of man’s existence. History and prophecy commingle in
its peaceful meditations, and both are linked with God. God is; He is the
author of all being and the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. This is
the noble lesson of the Sabbath. Each seventh day is well spent in attending to
the realization of these great thoughts. (Prof. J. G. Murphy.)
Verse 25
Not ashamed
Nakedness without shame
There they stood, just as they came from the hands of God.
They did not need to blush; they felt no shame. It is sin that has connected
nakedness and shame together. No sin, no shame. There is no blush upon an
angel’s brow. Unfallen man had the unashamed nakedness of innocence; but with
the Fall this has passed away, not to be returned to, even under redemption,
but to be replaced by something higher, the glorious raiment of a righteousness
that is unfading and divine. Unfallen man needed no covering, and asked for
none; but fallen man, under the bitter consciousness of the unworthy and
unseemly condition to which sin has reduced him, as unfit for God, or angels,
or man to look upon, cries out for covering--covering such as will hide his
shame even from the eye of God. Hence He who undertook to provide this
covering, must bear the shame. And He has borne it--all the shame of hanging
naked on the cross; the shame of a sinner; the shame of being made the song of
the drunkard; the shame of being despised and rejected of men; the shame of
being treated as an outcast, one unfit for either God or man to look
upon--unfit not only to live, but even to die within the gates of the holy city
(Hebrews 13:11-12). All that shame has He
borne for us, that we might inherit His glory. He stooped to the place of shame
below, that we might obtain the place of honour in the better paradise above.
Thus walked our first parents amid the groves of a paradise that had not then
been lost. Thus dwelt they in its bowers as a home, and worshipped in it as a
sanctuary. (H. Bonar, D. D.)
What was man’s glory is now his shame
That very state of body which was, in Adam and Eve, their highest
glory, would be, in us, should we be seen in that state, our deepest shame. It
was the very glory of man, and would have continued to be so, had he remained
in his original innocency, that while all the other animals had need of hairs,
feathers, and scales, etc., to cover their unsightliness, man alone was created
with that dignity and beauty of body, that he could appear, uncovered, in the
glory of his created nakedness. But all this glory is lost. We are now
compelled, not only for necessary protection, but for the sake of avoiding the
deepest turpitude, to cover our bodies with more study and care than any other
animals of God’s creation. For they all come into the world covered by nature.
(M. Lather.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》