1. And the heaven and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh 2 day God finished his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his 3 work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it: because that in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made. 4 These are the generations of the heaven and of the earth when they were created, in the day 5 that the LORD God made earth and heaven. And no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon 6 the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground; but there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

2. God finished his work.** The rest of the seventh day puts an end to the creative activity, properly so called. The Sabbath, which puts an end to the Divine work in Nature, gives a solemn confirmation to the truth already set forth in the repeated words, “and God said,"—the truth that the earth is the work of an intelligent and self governing Being, who does all things by measure, who sets before Himself, while working, a definite object to be attained, and who, as soon as that object is attained, sets at rest again those productive forces which He had put in motion. Godel.—Since the beginning of this day no new creation has taken place. God rests as the Creator of the visible universe. The forces of nature are in that admirable equilibrium which we now behold, and which is necessary to our existence. No more mountains or continents are formed, no new species of plants or animals are created. Nature goes on steadily in its wonted path. All movement, all progress has passed into the realm of mankind, which is now accomplishing its task. The morning of the seventh is not followed by any evening. The day is still open. When the evening shall come the last hour of humanity will strike. Guyad.

“Now begins the seventh day, the day of rest, or the sabbath of the earth”—the day now in progress which has not yet reached its evening, in which God’s “work is one of love to man, the redemption;” the creation of “the new man, born anew of the Spirit, in the heart of the natural man.” Parallel with the week of Creation, man, a being of a few short years, has his week; and, by God’s appointment, as well as Nature’s need, his seventh day of rest—“of rest from daily toil, but of activity in the higher world of the spirit.” Dana.—God’s work of elevating, raising, of making the high in due progression succeed the low, still goes on. But that work is now the fitting and preparing imperfect man for a perfect future state. God’s seventh day’s work is the work of Redemption. Read in this light his reason vouchsafed to man for the institution of the Sabbath is found to yield a meaning of peculiar breadth and emphasis. It seems to say, God rests on his Sabbath from his creative labors, in order that by his Sabbath day’s work he may save and elevate you; rest ye also on your Sabbaths, that through your co-operation with him in this great work ye may be elevated and saved. Hugh Miller.

Providence is creation continued. The government of the world is as much of God as the giving of it a being. Creation was a work that ended in six days, but providence is a work that never ends; thus God always worketh, though always at rest. Caryl.—From the first moment of creation unto this hour God has continued His supervision of the works of His hand. He has put forth no creative energy since He brought man into being; but at the end of the world, in the changes that shall produce a new heaven and a new earth, God will resume that creative activity which is now in suspense. Until then He rests. J. P. T.—When the last man has been born and has arrived at the crisis of his destiny, then may we expect a new creation, another putting forth of the divine energy, to prepare the skies above and the earth beneath for a new stage of man’s history, in which he will appear as a race no longer in process of development, but completed in number, confirmed in moral character, transformed in physical constitution, and so adapted for a new scene of existence. Meanwhile, the interval between the creation now recorded and that prognosticated in subsequent revelations from heaven (Is. 65 : 17 ; 2 Pet. 3 : 13 ; Rev. 21 : 1) is the long Sabbath of the Almighty, so far as this world is concerned. M.

He rested. In these chapters of creation, God is said to hover, to speak, to see and examine, to give names, to approve of his works, to deliberate with himself, to rest, and to repose himself. By these phrases the biblical text loses nothing of its grandeur, and gains immeasurably in distinctness and perspicuity; it describes Divine manifestation for human beings and in a human medium. Kol.—The Holy Scripture knows nothing of a God who in eternal, immovable unchangeableness views all things, past, present, and future, just in the same way, but One who after creating the world, with man its king, partakes by means of His love in the joy and pain of His creation, yet without diminution of His eternal blessedness. Gerl.

On the seventh day. The seventh day is distinguished from all the preceding days by being itself the subject of the narrative. In the absence of any work on this day, the Eternal is occupied with the day itself, and does four things in reference to it. First, he ceased from his work which he had made. Secondly, he rested. By this was indicated that his undertaking was accomplished. Thirdly, he blessed the seventh day. Blessing results in the bestowment of some good on the object blessed. The only good that can be bestowed on a portion of time is to dedicate it to a noble use, a peculiar enjoyment. Accordingly, in the fourth place, he hallowed it or set it apart to a holy rest. M.—To “bless” a day was to set it apart to be a blessing; but there was no sense in which God could make any one portion of duration more of a blessing to Himself than another. He being always self contained and infinite in his blessings. To “hallow” the day was to dedicate it to some sacred, moral, and beneficial use; but of course God could not have made one period of time more holy than another to Himself. The sanctifying must have had reference to its use by and for others. This sacred day is God’s day, which man should decole to Him in some special or uncommon way, turning aside from the common occupations of life to a separate peculiar observance of this portion of time. Hence this grand day of the Almighty, this on-going day, this day which, dating from the creation of Man as an intellectual creature, shall continue till the world and the present course of time shall close, is the type of the Sabbath, the Rest-day for the creatures of God. J. P. T.

God gave the Sabbath his first ordinance to man while he stood the father and representative of the whole human race; therefore the Sabbath is not for one nation, for one time, or for one place. It is the fair type of Heaven’s eternal day—of the state of endless blessedness and glory, where human souls, having fully regained the divine image and become united to the Centre and Source of all perfection and excellence, shall rest in God unutterably happy through the immeasurable progress of duration. Of this consummation, every returning Sabbath should at once be a type, a remembrancer, and a foretaste to all who are taught of God. A. C.—With the Sabbath begins the sacred history of man—the day on which he stood forth to bless God, and, in company with Eve, entered on his divine calling upon earth. The creation without the creation festival, the world’s unrest without rest in God, is altogether vain and transitory. The sacred day appointed, blessed, consecrated by God, is that from which the blessing and sanctification of the world and time, of human life and human society, proceed. Nor is anything more needed than the recognition of its original appointment and sacred destination, for our receiving the full impression of its sanctity. How was it possible for the first man ever to forget it? From the very beginning was it written upon his heart, Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it. Sartorius.

The three elements of Sabbath blessing are, bodily and mental rest, family union and fellowship, and religious meditation and worship, including the highest moral culture and spiritual satisfaction. The rest is to be for the body’s sake, and, therefore, must be such rest as is consistent with a good measure of sober bodily refreshment and enjoyment. The rest is for the sake of family intercourse and union, and must therefore be so defined and measured as to be in consistency with the conditions of family union, and, in a right sense, of family festivity, including in the scope of the word family, servants as well as children. Above all, the rest is to be for the sake of, that which is the highest privilege and enjoyment of the day, spiritual meditation and fellowship and Divine worship. Man’s spirit cannot be refreshed, exalted, sublimed, without worship. Without worship, man’s heart cannot be at rest. Without faith and worship, man’s intellect cannot be satisfied. And in proportion as man becomes more completely developed, as he grows into a more thoughtful moral being, with higher aspirations, and in fuller sympathy with the “powers of the world to come,” must worship become more and more the necessity, the solace, the strength, the law, of his inmost being. Thus understanding the Sabbath law, all is brought into harmony; bodily and mental rest, family union and intercourse, Divine worship. The rest is in order to the family fellowship and the holy worship. The family fellowship is sanctified by worship; the family union is crowned by united worship in the “great congregation,” and around the family altar. Ripp.

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 good-will. 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. M.

Summaries: Facts and Proofs.

The Sabbath is, by Divine law, a day of rest, in order that it may be a day of bodily and spiritual refreshment and of devout worship. The rest of the sacred day is needful for man as man—for his physical well-being, his intellectual health and energy, his family union and happiness, and his moral culture—and therefore ought by human law to be enforced, on the basis of its prescription for man’s benefit by the Divine law. The rest of the Sabbath is also requisite, in order to a right and worthy use and enjoyment of the spiritual duties and privileges proper to the day, so that its meaning and blessing, as a day of worship, can only be truly brought out when it is a day of rest. Thus the Divine commandment to sanctify the Sabbath as a day of rest justifies itself on the ground of our human relations and necessities, proves itself to be the guardian of human rights; and, at the same time, in its care for what belongs to our humanity, merely as such, secures also the needful opportunity, while it exhibits the proper motives, for the highest, that is the truly religious and Christian, enjoyment of the day. Thus rest and worship, humanity and religion, man’s rights and God’s rights, are indissolubly joined together; and provision is made for guarding and honoring all these at once in the observance of that law of the Decalogue which stands as the link between the first and the second tables. Ripp.

The law of the Sabbath is fundamental, imperative, and perpetual, like the marriage relation—the two great unchanged and unchangeable institutions saved to man from the ruin of Paradise. The necessity of the Sabbath continues parallel with the necessity of the family. The one can no more be abrogated without involving the moral disorder, degeneracy, and degradation of society, than the other. The Sabbath was made for man in the same high sense that the family was made for man. It is a colossal institution, wide as humanity, perpetual as time, and deeply rooted in the constitution of man’s nature. Peck.—The other signal institution of primeval man was that one which lies at the foundation of all outer worship of God and all organized beneficence toward man, the bulwark of society, the supplement of the home, the universal refiner and civilizer, the guaranty of social order and friendly relationship, the institution whereby all other human institutions are preserved and made effective—the seventh sacred day. It clearly is recorded as a part of the preparation of the world for man. Man’s whole nature, physical, intellectual, social, moral and spiritual, has been proved over and over to coincide with the Saviour’s declaration, “the Sabbath was made for man.” S. C. B.

We are not poorer, but richer, because we have, through many ages, rested from our labors one day in seven. That day is not lost. While industry is suspended, while the plough lies in the furrow, 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, is repairing and winding up, so that he returns to his labors on the Monday with clearer intellect, with livelier spirits, with renewed corporeal vigor. Macauley.

As really, if not as obviously, do mankind need the Sabbath rest, as that of night. Its physical benefits, which candid men universally admit, are best secured when it is most sacredly kept in accordance with its higher ends. As piety is conducive to morality, so is the spiritual Sabbath to the physical. The better we become acquainted with human nature, the more significant are the words, “the Sabbath was made for man.” We can accept the declaration in Genesis as meaning no less than that a weekly day of hallowed rest enters into the plan of creation. Incorporated into the creation-narrative, and exhibiting the divine example, it indicates to man the divine will—the lesson that, in the natural and moral economy which the Creator has established, there is a necessity created, and a provision made, for a Sabbath. Smythe.—The ground of obligation lay in the divine act; the rule of duty was exhibited in the divine example; for these were disclosed to men from the first for the express purpose of leading them to know and do what is agreeable to the will of God. If such means were not sufficient to speak with clearness and authority to men’s consciences, then it may be affirmed that the first race of mankind were free from all authoritative direction and control whatever. We hold by the truthfulness and natural import of the divine record. And doing this, we are shut up to the conclusion that it was at first designed and appointed by God that mankind should sanctify every returning seventh day, as a season of comparative rest from worldly labor, of spiritual contemplation and religious employment, that so they might cease from their own works and enter into the rest of God. P. F.—That the observance of a Sabbath is thus founded in reasons permanent and general, may be properly inferred from two further considerations. It was written by the finger of God upon one of those tables of stone all whose other contents have this character of universality and perpetuity. Each of these commands constitutes one of the laws the Spirit of Christ is to write upon the heart. The circumstances accompanying the annunciation of the Fourth Commandment and the position assigned to it, approve it as occupying in the mind of the divine Legislator a place of lasting consequence and authority. And further, no theory of the Sabbath as a merely Jewish institution fairly embraces these words: “Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy . . . for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath-day and hallowed it.” Smyth.

The points which the friends of the Sabbath accept and regard as established are the following: 1. That the Sabbath was given to our first parents in Eden, and that it was intended for the race. 2. That we find unmistakable indications of the Sabbath, both in the Scriptures and in heathen literature, between the original command and the giving of the Law. 3. That when the Law was given, the command to hallow the Sabbath was made conspicuous, as one of the ten commandments. It has the same rank as the other commandments, all of which are moral in their character and universally binding. 4. That during the subsequent history of the Jews the Sabbath is referred to by the prophets in a way to show that they classed it with the other commandments, and that they regarded its observance as intimately connected with the prosperity of the nation. 5. That at the time of our Saviour the Sabbath was observed with great strictness; the people assembled regularly for public worship, and Moses and the prophets were read in the synagogues every Sabbath-day. Also, this worship was attended by our Saviour, and while He reproved the superstitious observances and over-scrupulousness that had crept in, he yet recognized the Sabbath as a divine institution, and as “made for man.” 6. That after the resurrection of Christ the day was changed, and the Christian Sabbath, with substantially the same ends, has been perpetuated till the present time.

The Sabbath authenticates itself as from God in various ways: 1. Regarding man as sinful, taking him as we now find him in every country where the Sabbath is unknown, the very conception of a holy Sabbath would have been impossible. There could have been nothing within him or without him to suggest it. 2. Regarding men as selfish, the rich and the powerful would never have originated an institution, or consented to it, which would not only free laborers and dependents and slaves from labor one seventh of the time, but would require that time for the service of another. 3. As the Sabbath corresponds with no cycle or natural division of time, it must have been impossible for any man, or number of men, to single out one day, and set it apart authoritatively. Man could neither have decided rightly the proportion of time to be set apart, nor have guarded the sanctity of the day by penalties. If the division of time into weeks were wholly unknown, it would be impossible that it should be introduced by man. 4. Man could not have so associated the Sabbath with the grandest ideas made known by revelation, or possible to thought, as the creation of the world, the resurrection of Christ, the outpouring of the Spirit, and the rest of a holy heaven. He could not have made it span the arch from the beginning till the consummation of all things. 5. The Sabbath authenticates its divine origin not only as it thus blends with the highest ideas and interests of man as connected with the past and the future, but by its analogy with the works of God as simple and at the same time touching the interests of the present life at so many points. In this it is like the air and the water, which seem so simple, yet subserve so many uses.

As thus impossible to have been originated by man, as connected with the creation of the world, with the resurrection of Christ, with the outpouring of the Spirit, and with the rest of heaven; being analogous to nature, and promoting every interest of time, we say that the religious Sabbath comes to man bearing its own credentials as from God. M. H.

4-6. A condensed description, including the three main stages of the six days’ creation. “When no plant was yet in the earth” refers to the first and second and dawn of the third day. “No herb yet grown” to the third, fourth, and fifth days, when there was no rain or human culture. But from the earth, still saturated with moisture, a mist went up and watered the garden where man was placed to dress and keep it. Bicks.—This paragraph forms the introduction to the history of man, and is by no means a second record of creation; but it shows, in supplementing the first chapter, how the earth was prepared for a habitation for man—a sphere for his activity, and a place for the revelation of God to man. O.

4. The word “generations,” toledoth, which occurs for the first time in this verse, meets us again continually at the head of every principal section of the Book of Genesis. Thus 5:1, we have “the book (or account) of the generations of Adam,” in which the descendants of Adam are traced to Noah. From 6:9 we have the generations of Noah, where the history of Noah and his sons is given. In 10:1 we come upon the generations of the sons of Noah, where the genealogical table and the history of the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japhet are recorded. Ch. 11:10-26 gives us the generations of Shem. Ch. 11:27 begins the generations of Terah, the father of Abram; 25:12, the generations of Ishmael; 25:19, the generations of Isaac; 36:1, the generations of Esau; 37:2, the generations of Jacob, which are continued to the end of the book. The application of the word here is very appropriate. The primary creation of all things had just been recorded; the sacred writer is about to describe more in detail the results of creation. And as the history of a man’s family is called the “book of his generations,” so the history of the world’s productions is called “the generations of the heavens and the earth.” E. H. B.—Probabilities favor the supposition of previously written documents, these probabilities arising mainly from the strong presumption that such genealogical records as abound in Genesis, coupled so largely with numbers, would be put in writing before the age of Moses. Men who had the knowledge of writing would certainly appreciate its utility for the preservation of such facts as these. And further; the very use of the word “generations” here in the sense of history, and much more still the statement (Gen. 5:1), “This is the book of the generations of Adam,” raise this presumption nearly or quite to a certainty. In making up the historical portions of the Scriptures it seems rational to assume that the Lord moved “holy men of old” to put in writing such facts falling under their personal observation and immediate knowledge as he deemed useful for these sacred records. The divine policy seems to have been (in this case as in miracles) never to introduce the supernatural, the miraculous, to do what the natural might accomplish equally well. On this principle inspired men were moved of God to use their own eyes and minds in writing

Scripture history in all cases when the facts came within their certain knowledge. There were facts, like these of the creation, which fell under no human eye, and which therefore do not come under this principle. Some form of direct revelation from God is to be assumed here. H. C.

Heaven and earth. While astronomy tells us of the extent of creation, geology informs us of its antiquity; and the impression induced by surveying unnumbered worlds is scarcely more solemn or grand than that which we derive from reviewing unnumbered ages. We pass from the abysses of space only to be lost in the abysses of duration, and we are transported by the retrospect into depths of the past, where all reckoning fails us, and the lapse of centuries is reduced to undiscernible insignificance. King.

The first expression, “the heaven and the earth,” comprehends all created things, the universe; the second, “earth and heaven,” takes in only the earth and that portion of the universe immediately connected with it. The historian first asserts that God is the creator of all created things, then narrates the manner in which this earth was prepared for man’s abode by the same Almighty Being, so as to leave no room for the eternity of matter, nor yet for two Creators, one of the high and holy spiritual world, the other of this lower material world. McCaul.

The earth. Continents, islands, headlands, all conformed themselves to the great design for man’s development and trial; as though in God’s book all the members of the great scheme were written while as yet there was none of them. Nor is there any end of wonders, of knowledge and wisdom open to the discovery of man, if he will but patiently trace the great design. In the hot, damp periods, while the beds of coal were forming, who could have told in these the purposes of the Creator? The metals and metallic oxides injected into the veins of the rocks, or mingled with earthy substances—who could have seen in these any significance beyond chance, or sport, or caprice? Yet without the waterfalls, caused by the upheavings or irregular deposits of earth; without the coal, the iron, the silver, the copper, the gold, where would have been the arts, the commerce, the development, the history of man! Nothing appears to have been left out of the Lord’s plan! Nothing undesigned! Nothing without amazing foresight, and amazing reach of wisdom! Yet had beings like us stood by at any of these periods, what could they have comprehended of the wonders of Jehovah’s works that were transpiring before their eyes? Review.

Geology shows us how, among the “many mansions,” a “place” was here “prepared” for man—framed, finished, and furnished specially for his needs, before he was introduced. Chemistry tells of the perilous secret of the air, health wrought out of poisons, and these kept in diffusion by a special and beautiful contrivance. Botany tells us of the cereal—the “herb bearing seed”—given peculiarly to man, never originating in the wild state, and kept only by his hand. Paleontology and physiology show and explain the significance of the order of succession, in which the higher forms subject the earlier and lower to their use. The comparative studies of nature and man show how, in the former, ores have been hidden, seas interposed, contrivances introduced, mysteries obtruded, penalties imposed, as if by beckoning, by challenging, and by whip and spur, to bring man onward to his true destiny. J. B. Thomas.

Whence do these chapters come? There they stand and ever continue to stand, often as it has been attempted to explain them away; and there they will remain until the end of the world, until the conclusion of God’s kingdom on earth joins hands with the beginning, and the light of the beginning will again be recognized in the light of the end, and the light of the end in the light of the beginning, that God may be all in all. Staib.

8. And the LORD God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there he put the man whom 9 he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree 10 of the knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and 11 from thence it was parted, and became four heads. The name of the first is Pishon: that is 12 it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land 13 is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: 14 the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth in front 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 16 it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest 17 freely eat: 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.

Unlike other ancient historians, Moses has no fabulous ages. There is in his clear, con- sistent, unmatched record, no uncertainty, no fable, no conjecture, no chasm. By its sure and steady light we are conducted through the long night of ages, back to the very threshold of creation, and placed beside the first human pair in the garden of Eden. E. C. W.

8. The Lord God. Elohim, of whom Gen. 1 speaks as the God of the universe, be- comes, in the second and third chapters, Je- hovah, or the God of salvation He becomes such when He plants and prepares the garden of Eden to be the dwelling-place of man, and the starting-point in his history. K.—We live in Messiah’s world. The divine Personage who is here called the LORD God, and who spoke to Adam in the garden, was the angel Jehovah, who afterward appeared to the patriarchs, led the Israelites through the wilderness, taber- naoled among men in the form of a man, is still the head of his Church, and will again appear to the world. The angel Jehovah commences a new dispensation, which, when it has passed through its three forms, Patriarchal, Levitical, and Christian, will be terminated by reviving and perfecting the primeval happiness of man- kind, in that future Paradise, of which the gar- den of Eden was but an emblem. G. T.

A garden in Eden. The site of Paradise is to be sought for in Babylonia. Eden, as we learn from the cuneiform records, was the an- cient name of the “field” or plain of Babylonia, where the first living creatures had been created. Sayce.—The Garden here described, connected as it is with the well-known names of the Euphrates and Tigris, can hardly be other than a definite area, unknown indeed to us and prob- ably undiscoverable but certainly in the East, and agreeing in general with what appears to have been the starting-point of the history of the human race. We have on the whole two general classes of opinion: the one which places the site of Paradise near the Persian Gulf; the other, placing it somewhere in the highlands of Armenia. H. W. P.

11-14. Of the four rivers mentioned as con- nected with it, two still bear the same names, the Hiddekel or Tigris, and the Euphrates. Near the sources of these streams the other two greatest rivers of Western Asia have their rise; the Kizil-Ermak, anciently Halys, flowing into the Black Sea, possibly the same as the Pison; and the Araxes, which, joined by the Kur or Cyrus, flows into the Caspian, and may have been the Gihon. There can be little reasonable doubt that Eden was situated in the highlands of Armenia, in Asia Minor, somewhere near the sources of these four rivers. W. G. B.—We can at least say that somewhere in this region of Armenia eastward, perhaps on the southern slope of the Taurus, though some would prefer a somewhat more southerly site, it certainly is not unscriptural to find the home of our first parents, as well as (in this general region) of the second set of progenitors of the race. S. C. B.

15. Put the man into the garden. The first human pair have their first earthly want met by their Maker in a home—a quiet, beautiful spot in which trees of beauty for the eve and of nutritious fruitage for subsistence supplied some pleasing occupation for the mind and wholesome labor for the hand; where, happy in each other’s love and blessed with the freest communion with their Maker, not a thing was lacking to fill their cup of joy. If it might only last—and for this, nothing more was needful save that their moral nature should be cultured, their faith and love and obedience strengthened up to the point of being thoroughly, fully confirmed: then their lot would have been most blessed. As a requisite means for such culture, God subjected their faith and obedience to one gentle test—to one point of moral trial. To have endured this successfully would have made them morally stronger and have drawn them yet nearer in love and trust to their Great Father. H. C.—The Bible account of the origin of religion is that man began his journey on this globe not as a deserted orphan, turned adrift to seek God as best he could, but in communion with the Father of spirits. God talked with him, and he could talk with God. God marked for him the path of duty, and it lay in his choice to walk in it, or to wander from it. E. R. Conder.

The happiness of our first parents in Paradise must have far exceeded anything which we can now imagine. Formed in the image of God, with all their faculties perfect and their appetites in subjection, undisturbed by care, and as yet unassailed by temptation, they walked with God as a man walketh with his friend, and enjoyed communion with heaven, though their abode was upon earth. Bash.—It is apparent, from the account of Moses, that the first man in the state of integrity was (as we have heard Tertullian expressing it) “the intimate friend of God,” that he should “bear heavenly things,” and sustain the approaches of the majestic presence of God without any regret or starting back; that he could maintain a conference or discourse with God (as we have heard Basil speaking) in the same tongue or language. It is likewise evident from the same history, that Adam in the state of integrity had a knowledge of certain things unaccountable upon any other hypothesis but this, that his mind was irradiated with a divine illumination. Ball.—We cannot doubt that the Mediator of this Revelation was the Son of God. Ere sin entered into God’s fair universe, and while as yet was no estrangement between Him and any of His creatures, and so no need as yet of atonement and reconciliation, there was, for all this, need of One who should stand between the uncreated and the created life; One who, Himself uncreated and divine, could yet enter into relation with created life as existing through, in, and for Him; One in whom the creature could see, and through whom the creature could know, as much as its capacity could bear and contain of God. Medd.

Setting aside all that is purely imaginative, we know that man, in Paradise, was a stranger to disease, deformity, and pain: that the perfect organism of his body made existence a delight, and brought no shadow or depression upon the soul. The mind of man was clear and true. Unlike irrational animals impelled by blind instinct, man was capable of understanding the will of his Maker. When we add that man was originally holy, we do not intend that his holiness was created in the same manner as the faculties of his mind, or that it was involuntary, like the natural instincts and appetites; but simply this, that all his thoughts, affections, and actions were right: that his obedience was perfect—that there was no conflict between the several parts of his nature—that the voluntary obedience of man was so complete, that he was the very image of his Maker—his holy affections, responding unto the holy affections of God. A “golden age” indeed was that when the human conscience spake approvingly, without one impeachment, without one compunction of remorse; man rejoicing in his own conscious innocence, and God pronouncing this his last and greatest work superlatively good. . . . Last of all was worship of the Creator, and God’s benediction. The worship of God by sinless man!—not with mediatory rites and sacrifices, not by smoking altars and bleeding beasts, not by typical sacraments and priestly intercessions; but by direct, immediate, personal, sensible communion. With no shame on his cheek, no fear in his soul, man stood erect before his Maker in all the confidence and joy of perfect innocence. Then was it that God abode with man as with his child, smiling upon him morning, noon, and night, and walking with him amid the bowers of Eden. W. Adams.

All through the course of the creation, at intervals the narrative has pictured the Creator himself as having a benevolent joy in the perfection of that which He had brought into being. But in Man the narrative presents the Creator as the Father producing a child in His own image, after His likeness; and then with a Father’s thoughtful care, providing for every want of his compound nature, for his physical comfort and enjoyment, for the gratification of his tastes and his sense of beauty; for his affec tions and his social nature through the medium of the Family, and of that society which must grow out of the Family; and for his spiritual communing with Himself, the Father of spirits, in that beatific intercourse which was the privilege and joy of man at the beginning. In all these arrangements, designed to be perpetual, we behold the love and the care of God. Wherever these arrangements have failed of their beneficent purposes, it has been solely through the perversity of man; and just so far as man shall return to the original design of the Creator, in the institutions of the Family and of the Sabbath, in the maintenance of pure domestic love and pure spiritual worship, will human society be advanced in integrity and blessedness, and once more approximate to that Paradise which was the glory of its beginning and the realization of which in the hereafter will be that golden age toward which all poetry and prophecy direct our hopes. J. P. T.

To dress it and to keep it. No sooner was man created than occupation was found for his whole nature,—body, mind, tongue, soul, and conscience; for even in his state of innocence and holiness, improvement and development were to be gained by exercise. His body was to be exercised, in dressing and keeping a garden; his mind, in studying the animals around him, and the other works of God; his tongue, or power of speech, in conversation and devotion; his soul, in loving his earthly companion, and in loving, praising, and exalting his God; and his conscience, in obeying God’s commandments. W. G. B.

In the midst of a Nature, the forces of which are henceforth under discipline, man begins his proper work. He asserts his claims as the heir of this beautiful domain, and endeavors to take possession of it by the twofold labor of knowledge and action; he ‘dresses the garden,’ according to the Scriptural expression; he distinguishes between different objects, and exercises his powers in giving them names; he sets before himself aims, and finds means for their attainment; he modifies things in conformity with his wishes and his needs; he develops the inexhaustible resources of his intelligence and his will,—those twin-sisters, the loyal agents of all our activity. At the same time his feelings awake; his heart opens to the sweet affections of family life, and to the pure enjoyments of nature. It is the drama of the soul’s life which is now beginning. What will be its end? Godet.

The garden has not only its fruit trees, but it has also its flowers. It always presupposes that there are human beings to enjoy it as well as to take care of it. The idea of God’s planting the garden, carries with it the thought that he was fashioning it for something higher than animals; that he was enclosing a choice spot for a creature who could enjoy whatever was comely and pleasant. It was therefore an acknowledgment that when he made the garden, this world was to be given over in its dominion to a higher intelligence than was found among the highest grade of created animals.

The ordinance of labor was established at that time. God took man and put him in the garden ’to dress it and to keep it.’ This ordinance of the Lord has sometimes been connected with the curse, but that is a very different kind of labor. ‘God worketh hitherto and I work,’ said Christ. There always was and always must have been the ground and the necessity for the ordinance of work. Billinger.—The blessedness of God is in unwearied and beneficent action; and man, made in his image, was immediately assigned an occupation. Man’s first employment was to till that very earth out of which he sprung, and in the bosom of which he is to find his grave. Work and labor are not synonyms. With the latter we associate difficulty—sometimes hard and depressing drudgery—man’s work at first was pleasant only, restraining and pruning the exuberance of nature’s spontaneous growth; sin has changed that easy occupation for the sweat of the face, and the bending of the back. W. Adams.

That which was man’s storehouse was also his workhouse; his pleasure was his task: paradise served not only to feed his senses but to exercise his hands. If happiness had consisted in doing nothing, man had not been employed; all his delights could not have made him happy in an idle life. Man, therefore, is no sooner made than he is set to work: neither greatness nor perfection can privilege a folded hand; he must labor, because he was happy; how much more we, that we may be! This first labor of his was, as without necessity, so without pains, without weariness; how much more cheerfully we go about our businesses, so much nearer we come to our paradise. Bp. II.—Paradise itself was not a place of exemption from work. We were none of us sent into the world to be idle. He that made us these 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 on. If either a high extraction, or a great estate, or a large dominion, or perfect innocency, or a genius for pure contemplation, or a small family, could have given a man a writ of ease, Adam had not been set to work; but he that gave us being has given us business, to serve him and our generation, and to work out our salvation; if we do not mind our business, we are unworthy of our being and maintenance. Secular employments will very well consist with a state of innocency, and a life of communion with God. The sons and heirs of heaven, while they are here 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 are as truly serving him in it as when they are upon their knees. H.

The Test.

16. Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat.

If there is to be an education of the human race, one of the first acts of the Divine Educator will be, to provoke a struggle between duty and pleasure, between conscious will and blind instinct. This is the meaning of that primeval trial to which man was subjected. What a crisis was here! If the conscious will, supported by the sense of duty, triumphed over natural inclination, then it would see opening before it a career of new conflicts and victories. But if inclination triumphed, man’s will was reduced to slavery; and deprived of the free disposal of himself, he would under the dominion of the flesh fall lower and lower. This crisis was then at once inevitable and decisive. It was for man, whatever might happen, the transition from a merely natural life to historic development. Godet.

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. A command implies a superior whose right it is to command, and an inferior whose duty it is to obey. The only ultimate and absolute ground of supremacy is creating, and of inferiority, being created. This is man’s first lesson in morals. It calls up in his breast the sense of duty, of right, of responsibility. M.—Human character as such, whether innocent or fallen, is made for moral government, for obedience to the law of a superior, and for the acknowledgment of the rights of equals, as well as for the reciprocation of benevolence; so that display of divine justice or righteousness and of divine goodness or kindness would be needed for the education of the race as much if unfallen, as in its present fallen condition. Woolsey.

The command has two clauses,—a permissive and a prohibitive. “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat.” This displays in conspicuous terms the benignity of the Creator. “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat.” This signalizes the absolute right of the Creator over all the trees, and over man himself. One tree only is withheld, which, whatever were its qualities, was at all events not necessary to the well-being of man. All the others that were likely for sight and good for food, including the tree of life, are made over to him by free grant. M.—The vast freedom granted to him proved the goodness of the Creator; the one exception taught him that he was to live under a law; and that law was enforced by a practical penalty, of which he was mercifully warned. We must not regard the prohibition merely as a test of obedience, nor the penalty as arbitrary. The knowledge forbidden to him was of a kind which would corrupt his nature—so corrupt it as to make him unfit, as well as unworthy, to live forever. P. S.—It is quite evident that this knowledge could not be any physical effect of the tree, seeing its fruit was forbidden. It is obvious also that evil is as yet known in this fair world only as the negative of good. Hence the tree is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because by the command concerning it man comes to this knowledge. M.

“He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much, and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much;” because it is a property of the moral law that its infraction is not measured by the extent of the transgression, but by the intent of the transgressor. The smallness of the test is an evidence of the delicacy of the poise with which God has adjusted the law to man’s moral constitution. Bittinger.—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. As the law must be laid down before man proceeds to an act of appropriation, the matter of reserve and consequent test of obedience is the fruit of a tree. Only by this can man at present learn the lessons of morality. To devise any other means, not arising from the actual state of things in which man was placed, would have been arbitrary and unreasonable. The immediate sphere of obedience lies in the circumstances in which he actually stands. These afforded no occasion for any other command than that which is given. Adam had no father, or mother, or neighbor, male or female, and therefore the second table of the law could not apply. But he had a relation to his Maker, and legislation on this could not be postponed. The command assumes the kindest, most intelligible, and convenient form for the mind of primeval man. M. —The principle of conscious obedience to the divine will is the first step in moral progress, and the essential element of true happiness. Consequently the conscious recognition of that will is the first condition of man’s development as a moral being, and of his continued progress in holiness and happiness. Hence a test was required to awaken that conscious recognition, and to give occasion for the exercise of his freedom of choice and action. A test of obedience is, therefore, an expression of the truest love and care; and the more simple the test the better it serves the purpose intended by the love that appoints it. Hence numerous acts of obedience were not made the test. One act was forbidden; all else was allowed. Of the principle of obedience no test could have been more simple and direct, or more easily apprehended; and hence it was a perfect test. T. J. C.

There the tree stood before their eyes in the midst of the garden—every sight of it suggesting their Great Father’s word—not to be eaten at all on penalty of death. Every time they put down the temptation to eat of it they will become stronger in their spirit of obedience and more happy in God. It was a means of continual culture in holiness, ever leading onward and upward into deeper communion with God and more assured and joyous submission to his will, more strength of purpose in obedience, more delight in whatever self-denial obedience might involve. Surely it is not too much to say that they might make this means of moral culture a priceless blessing to their souls. How could paradise meet the greatest of all their wants—the want of their new-born souls—without this one provision for proving and invigorating their loving obedience to their God? Need we then raise the question—What was God’s purpose in this prohibition? The answer is at hand—To accomplish precisely this result; to give the first human pair a test of obedience which should be naturally a means of moral culture and of growth in holiness.

It was a natural necessity of their moral nature that this question of obeying God, always and everywhere, should come to issue. As surely as they were moral beings, capable of knowing duty and of doing it, born into being with susceptibilities to happiness which sometimes must be virtuously denied at the demand of

God and of the greater good, so surely they must meet this trial sooner or later, in one form or another, until they become so strong in their holy purpose, so fixed in the spirit of love and obedience to God that temptation to sin is of course spurned away and duty is done forevermore without a question. Moral trial, therefore, if not in this precise form, yet in some analogous form, is the necessary means of developing moral strength and confirmed holiness; is therefore the natural pathway to the blessedness of heaven. Thus, with no wavering of doubt, we may vindicate God’s ways toward man in this first great moral trial brought on our race. H. C.

Adam’s trial consisted in the exercise of his faith and dependence on God, and the proper subordination of his sensual appetite to his spiritual affections. His trial was, whether he would so far believe and depend on God as to look forward to the complete attainment of spiritual perfection in conformity with the divine plan, and in obedience to the divine command; or seek an happiness for himself, independent of his Creator, by applying for it to a tempting object of temporal gratification. In short, the grand trial was, what it ever hath been, and what it ever will be till the present world shall cease to exist, a trial between flesh and spirit, between earth and heaven; whether things visible or invisible, things suited to the animal or spiritual condition of the original man, should have the preference with him; in a word, whether Adam would walk by sight, or by faith. Daubeny.

All agree that the object of the sacred writer was to describe the first probation of human nature. A special act of obedience was presented, and the conditions of probation were simply these: obey, and retain all the pleasures and rewards of innocence; disobey, and there shall follow the pangs of remorse, and the displeasure of God. Obey, and live; disobey, and die. The thing to be observed is, that obedience—obedience alone, nothing but obedience—describes the original probation of man. There is no mixture of mercy, of forgiveness, in the terms of it. Mercy is a gratuity offered to guilt.* Nothing of this was proposed to original innocence, for it was not needed while innocence was retained. It matters not at all whether the interdicted act be in itself great or small, vast or trivial—it was a test of obedience.

Observe the favorable auspices of this original probation. There was no propensity in man’s nature to evil. There was no derangement in his constitution inclining him to sin. Body and soul were absolutely perfect in their organization. There was no proclivity, no bias, in the wrong direction. Man was the very likeness of his Maker, with no more disposition or inclination to evil than in the holy nature of God. The terms of the probation were definitely understood. This is essential to all fairness and equity when the principle of obedience is to be tested. Acts which proceed from ignorance or accident are not to be confounded with the intelligent and purposed infraction of positive injunctions.

When serpent subtlety suggested the first temptation to the mind of Eve, she quickly repelled it, on the ground that the act to which she was solicited was forbidden by the express interdict of the Creator; thus proving that the first condition of legal probation was complied with, in that the test of obedience was well and perfectly understood. The circumstances of the probation were in all other respects eminently auspicious. The liberty allowed was the very largest. There was no pressure of want to necessitate transgression. All the delights of Eden were at the command of its innocent tenants. The amplest range of enjoyment was afforded; all created things were at their disposal, save that one, which it was their pleasure to avoid, because obedience to their Maker was a delight. Infidelity may scoff at the trivial nature of the act interdicted; but the obvious reply is, that acts are not to be measured by their own littleness or largeness, or the brevity of the time in which they are performed, but by their relations—the smallest serving as a test as well as the largest. With the mention of these several circumstances, we cannot conceive how human nature could have been tested, as to the principle of obedience, on conditions more hopeful, more auspicious, more equitable, than it actually was in Eden. W. Adams.

17. In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Heb., dying thou shalt die. Implying by the utmost emphasis of expression the absolute certainty of the punishment denounced. The threatening we suppose to have embraced all the evils spiritual, temporal, and eternal, which we learn elsewhere to be included in term death as a punishment for sin. The meaning is not that temporal death should be inflicted the literal day on which the offence was committed, but on the day of his eating he was to become dead in trespasses and sins; the seeds of decay and dissolution were to become sown in his body, which should thenceforth become mortal, and finally be brought down to the grave; and he should be made liable to what is usually understood by the pains of eternal death in another world. Adam, indeed, might not at the time have understood the full import of this dreadful sentence, having had no experience of anything which would enable him to do so; but we are taught by the actual result what sense to affix to the terms. Bush.

What kind of death God here means, we must gather from the kind of life forfeited. It was in every respect a happy one: the life embraced equally body and soul. In man’s soul prevailed right knowledge, and a proper moderation of all desires; his bodily powers were perfect, and so he was entirely free from death. His life on earth, indeed, would only have been a temporal one; but he would have passed on to heaven without pain or dying. Under the word death is comprehended all that is miserable; and to this Adam by his fall became subject. As soon as the judgment was pronounced on him, Adam came under the dominion of death, until grace, which followed thereon, brought the means of salvation. Calvin.

Man is represented as from the first placed in direct moral relations with his Maker. A specially prepared home, work, the Sabbath, marriage, and a positive command the test of obedience, bless and test his life. Disobedience is represented as putting him, as it needs must, in a sadly altered relation to God. He is called to account, found guilty, sentenced to the loss of Eden, made subject to death. No explanation is given of that awful word. Nevertheless, man retains his highest privilege, direct converse with his Maker. We see God reasoning even with Cain when his mind is dull with discontent and murderous jealousy, seeking to win him to repentance, and cheering him as Adam and Eve were cheered after their transgression, with words of grace and promise. E. R. Conder.

18. AND the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an 19 help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them: 20 and whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And the man gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but 21 for man there was not found an help meet for him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh 22 instead thereof: and the rib, which the LORD God had taken from the man, made he a woman, 23 and brought her unto the man. And the man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh 24 of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be 25 one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

In the first chapters of Genesis lie the foundations of all the life of the world: marriage and family, labor and raiment, city and state, civilization and art, the relation of man to nature and the world of spirit, nations, languages, religions, etc. There are rich and fruitful hints also for ethics. Auberlen.—Dear, oldest, and eternal traditions of my race, ye are kernel and germ of its most hidden history! Without you, mankind would be what so much else is, a book without title, without first leaves and explanation; with you, our family acquires foundation, stem, and root, back to God. And they are all taken in so simple, child-like a tone, from the mouth of the first tradition among the trees of the eastern land, and are set forth by Moses so true, and one by one as if he found them there, the echo of eternal times. Herder.

18. Not good. Above, it is said, “God saw all that He had made, and, behold, it was very good:” here it is not good, for no other reason than because all was not yet completed. Gerl.

19,20. The man gave names. At his creation Adam was a man in the vigor of physical and mental life. He was taught of God, and not left to gather by slow experience all that he wanted to know. Language must have been supernaturally imparted to him. He had no means of acquiring it but from God. From the same source he must have derived the knowledge he possessed of the properties of the objects and beings around him. Kit.—In the naming of the animals by the first man we have not only the primary truth of his superiority to them, but a further indication that the gift of speech was not the slow growth of ages, but an endowment of man from the first, just as much as any of his other powers or properties. Duse-son.—The paramount thing is certainly the naming of the animals. It was that he might name them that they were brought to the man. What is subsequently said implies that as he thus grew familiar with the life around him Adam became conscious how much alone he himself was. All that we observe of the divine method in dealing with mankind suggests that God would teach man to speak by putting him in the way of making and using a language for himself. The direct divine gift would be in the faculty of language. J. A. Smith.

Scripture obviously and unequivocally asserts the divine institution of language. It is not necessary to suppose that Adam was endued with a full and perfect knowledge of the several creatures, so as to impose names truly expressive of their natures. It is sufficient if we suppose the use of language taught him with respect to such things as were necessary, and that he was then left to the exercise of his own faculties for further improvement upon this foundation. But that the terms of worship and adoration were among those which were first communicated, we can entertain little doubt. In addition to the proof from Scripture, it should be remembered that the laws given by God to the first pair, respecting food and marriage, together with the other discoveries of his will recorded in the beginning of Genesis, were communicated through the medium of language; and that the man and the woman are there expressly stated to have conversed with God, and with each other. Besides, in what sense could it be said, that a meet companion for the man was formed, if there were not given to both the power of communicating their thoughts by appropriate speech? Further, the diversity of tongues occasioning the confusion of Babel, and the miraculous gift of speech to the apostles on the day of Pentecost, may render a similar exercise of divine power in the case of our first parents more readily admissible: for surely such supernatural interference was not less called for in the last instance, than in either of the two former. The writer of Ecclesiasticus affirms: When the Lord created man, he imparted to him understanding: and speech, an interpretation of the cogitations thereof (Ecclus. 17:5). Magee.

As far as we can trace back the footsteps of man, even on the lowest strata of history, we see that the divine gift of a sound and sober intellect belonged to him from the very first. The earliest work of art wrought by the human mind, —more ancient than any literary document, and prior even to the first whisperings of tradition, —the human language, forms an uninterrupted chain from the first dawn of history down to our own times. We still speak the language of the first ancestors of our race, and this attests from the very first the presence of a rational mind, of an artist as great, at least, as his work. Max Müller.

In the department of language, nature was found supplying man with images of the moral, the spiritual, and the Divine. Everything in creation represents a thought of God, for it must have been thought of by him. Nature is a great system of Divine thoughts eternalized, and externalizing themselves in things. Man came therefore to find that things, as the exponents of a universal mind, were here before him; and here to be the vehicles of his own thoughts—the exponents of his own mind. Whatever the subject which might occupy his thoughts, he found Nature had so spoken on the theme before him as to provide the very prototypes of the words he wanted. As a poet, a world of impressive images lay around him; if he reasoned, analogies crowded to his aid; if he theorized, prolific suggestions met his eye; if he worshipped, the finite and the visible referred him to the Infinite invisible. With the new ideas of Revelation, came a new demand on the materials of language. Besides the new words which would be thus called into existence, language would be exalted by the secondary or derivative sense in which it would be now extensively employed. That man was already in possession of a portion of natural knowledge was pre-supposed in the very fact of his being capable of receiving supernatural additions to it; for to that previous knowledge of Nature the supernatural must appeal, and on it must be grafted. Names, besides being descriptive of the natural qualities and uses of objects, extended their illustrative power to Divine things. Spiritual ideas had to be translated into human language; and thus terms which, before, had only a natural meaning, acquired a metaphorical and theological value also. Ruach, for example, signifying breath, came to mean also life, soul, spirit, Spirit of God; sor, light, was extended to mean knowledge, and security as resulting from knowledge, and happiness as flowing from both. Thus language was progressively moulded and enriched by Revelation. J. H.

21,22. All that he saw were fit to be his servants, none to be his companions. The same God, that finds the want, supplies it. Rather than man’s innocency shall want an outward comfort, God will begin a new creation: not out of the earth, which was the matter of man; not out of the inferior creatures, which were the servants of man; but out of himself, for dearness, for equality. As man knew not while he was made, so shall he not know while his other self is made out of him: that the comfort might be greater, which was seen before it was expected. If the woman should have been made, not without the pain or will of the man, she might have been upbraided with her dependence and obligation. Now she owes nothing but to her creator: the rib of Adam sleeping can challenge no more of her than the earth can of him. Bp. H.

The act, by which the woman comes into existence, is directly ascribed to the original Maker. A part of the man is taken for the purpose, which can be spared without interfering with the integrity of his nature. It manifestly does not constitute a woman by the mere act of separation, as we are told that the Lord God built it into a woman. And thus, in accordance with the account in the foregoing chapter, we have, first, the single man created, the full representative and potential fountain of the race, and then, out of this one, in the way now described, we have the male and the female created. The original unity of man constitutes the strict unity of the race. The construction of the rib into a woman establishes the individuality of man’s person before, as well as after, the removal of the rib. The selection of a rib to form into a woman constitutes her, in an eminent sense, a helpmeet for him, in company with him, on a footing of equality with him. At the same time, the after building of the part into a woman determines the distinct personality and individuality of the woman. Thus we perceive that the entire race, even the very first mother of it, has its essential unit and representative in the first man. M.

He to whom all modes are the same, chose one which should serve vividly to impress upon the minds of man and woman, their peculiarly intimate relation to each other. In other creatures there was no natural connection between the pairs in the very act of creation. The sexes were in them created independently of each other. But in the man the union was to be of peculiar solemnity and significance; it was even to set forth, as by a symbol, the union between Christ and his church. The fact of her derivation from man—a part of himself, separated, to be in another form reunited to him, was calculated to indicate and to originate an especial tenderness in their nuptial state, and its indissoluble character. Kit.—In the case of the animals, both sexes could be created side by side; in the case of man, however, where marriage is intended to be a communion of soul in the service of God—where the education and training of the fruits of marriage for God’s service and kingdom, the ordering and governance of the house and of the earth, formed a main part of the task imposed—there must the origin of the woman point to the indissoluble union by which two persons become one until their life’s end. The woman was taken out of the man (and out of that part of him which lay nearest to his heart), in order to show that this union of soul in love extended to the unity of the flesh likewise—embraced all, both within and without, and, as a Divine ordinance, was indissoluble. Gerl.

Adam was first formed, then Eve, and she was made of the man, and for the man (1 Cor. 11 : 8, 9), all which are urged there as reasons for the subjection and reverence which wives owe to their own husbands. Yet man being made last of the creatures, as the best and most excellent of all, Eve’s being made after Adam, and out of him, puts an honor upon that sex, as the glory of the man (1 Cor. 11 : 7). If man is the head, she is the crown; a crown to her husband, the crown of the visible creation. The man was dust refined, but the woman was dust double-refined, one remove further from the earth. . . . The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to top him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved. H.

22. *Brought her unto the man. Led, conducted, that is, presented her to the man. Compare the Latin phrase ducere uxorem, to tend, i.e. to marry, a wife. The word implies the formal solemn bestowment of her in the bonds of the marriage covenant, which is hence called “the covenant of God” (Prov. 2 : 17), implying that he is the author of this sacred institution. Bush.

Luther observes with point: God who was the author of marriage was also the first who led in a bride. Adam recognized her not merely as a fellow-being and helpmeet for him, but as flesh of his flesh, as a creature intimately related to him in every part of his nature, by the identity of her own, and consequently connected with him by unity of mind and heart. God had made her out of him and for him, and had brought her to him. C. G. B.—God himself made the espousals between them, and joined them together in marriage. And by creating and joining together but one man and one woman in the beginning, intended that mankind should be so propagated, and not by polygamy. Patrick.

The marriage relation instituted by God in the state of innocence through the creation of the woman, the second human being, represented to Adam several important truths. It indicated to him, in the first place, that this was the most intimate relation possible among mankind; that it constituted a unity, in fact, to which there was no parallel in creation. Secondly, the medium whereby man’s wants, as recognized by the creator himself, should be supplied, and that defect in creation described as “not good for him” remedied, and the noblest of God’s creatures raised to the sphere to which he was designed, so that they might be no obstacle to the Divine approval pronouncing the entire work “very good.” This point was more fully brought out in the promises which succeeded the fall, and the bearing of which, in this respect, was recognized by Adam when “he called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” At the same time he was conscious of his own divinely determined and declared superiority, not only as the head of creation in general, but also of the woman (1 Cor. 11 : 3). This appears from the fact that he bestowed upon her a name as he had previously on the inferior creatures around him. D. M.

Marriage is honorable, but this surely was the most honorable marriage that ever was, in which God himself had all along an immediate hand. Marriages (they say) are made in heaven: we are sure this was; for the man, the woman, the match, were all God’s own work: he, by his power, made them both, and now, by his ordinance, made them one. This was a marriage made in perfect innocency, and so was never any marriage since. H.—Marriage is a word and an institution which sin has so far associated with low instinct, with ideas of barter, convenience, and advantage, that some effort of the imagination is requisite to conceive of its heavenly original, its paradisiacal prototype, which secured to man the exercise of his most joyful sympathies, society so blessed, confidence so complete, that between the two whom God had placed in Eden there was but one heart. W. A.

Christianity has exalted marriage to the highest dignity, and crowned it with the most sacred beauty: it is the symbol of the union of Christ and his Church; and the consummation of hope, purity, and joy in heaven is typified under “the marriage-supper of the Lamb.” Marriage is the festival of love, and as such should be attended with all that represents beauty and felicity: it is the festival of joy; and as such should be a time of pre-eminent joyousness to all who assist in its solemnities. But it is also a festival of consecration; and it should be hallowed with the word of God and prayer. J. P. T.

24. Leave father and mother.** These are the words of Moses, and also of God; but not Adam’s. They would be more correctly expressed,—“Therefore may a man leave his father and mother, but he shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh.” There will be times and circumstances when a man is permitted, nay, is commanded, to leave his father and mother; but his wife is he never permitted to leave—they both shall be one. This is not said of the woman, because she already by her marriage has left father and mother. Gerl.—According to this passage, marriage, that primitive form of human society from which all other forms of society arise, and for which man gives up the others, did not spring from the blind sway of natural impulse, but from divine institution. Its original form is monogamy; and the fact that the bond of matrimony is represented as stronger than that moral relation between parents and children, which is placed so high in the Old Testament, indicates that it forms not simply a bodily union, but also a spiritual oneness. O.—The foundation of this new constitution was laid in the divinely instituted union of husband and wife. “Have ye not read that he who made them at the beginning made them a male and a female (as intending to prevent both polygamy and divorce), and said (as the formal authentication of the great law of marriage already inserted in the constitution of human nature), for this cause (or, on account of entering into the married state) shall a man leave his father and mother (the nearest relation he had previously sustained), and cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh; wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh.” A union this so intimate, that every other is to yield to it; so sacred, that the Divine Proclamation concerning it is, “What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder;” so indissoluble, that nothing is to separate it but that which separates the soul from the body; so spiritual in its ultimate relation and aims, as to find its antitype only in that divine union which, as the fruit of redemption, is to survive every other, and to obtain its consummation in heaven. The will of God was clearly indicated respecting the number to be united in marriage, by the creation, at first, of one man and one woman. But the continued balance of the number of the sexes, age after age, notwithstanding their perpetual increase, was an ever-increasing confirmation of the same law. As time advanced, too, the evils resulting from polygamy would furnish still further and stronger corroboration of the law. J. H.—By the terms of the command, a man shall cleave to his wife (not wives) only. Bush.

Two facts of perpetual significance were established by the creation of Woman,—the fact of sex, and the fact of the interdependence of the sexes. The Creator chose to create Woman as the medium for the increase of the race; and thus the distinction of Sex is permanently established in the race itself. And with this distinction comes in the condition and the feeling of interdependence,—neither sex complete without the other, neither able to dispense with the other. J. P. T.—Neither sex alone is the standard of human nature. Each is to receive an impress from the distinctive excellences of the other, and to impart the spirit of its own. Each is to the other the image of distinct aspects of the Divine character; and, by being disentangled and drawn out from the inner circle of self, and made to find excellence and happiness in the love of the other, they are trained to look away together for their highest good to a union with that Objective Excellence, of which their own union is the sacred type and the mysterious pledge. J. H.

The equality of the sexes is not sameness of endowments and adaptations, but equality with

differentia. The attributes of sex belong to the soul as well as to the body, so that in their intellectual and spiritual natures, much as they possess in common, the Man and the Woman are also the complement each of the other; and in the distribution of these complementary qualities Woman certainly has no cause to envy her partner. Her delicate and beautiful presence, her graces and charms of person and manner, her intuitive affinities for the true, the pure, and the good, her divine faculty of counsel, her all-pervading, all controlling influence—these are prerogatives which Woman has no right to vacate by reducing herself to a mere tool of productive industry, a numerical factor of political economy. The delicate laws of her physical organization, the more subtle and beautiful laws of her social and moral influence alike forbid this uncrowning of her Womanhood. J. P. T.—The account of the creation of the first pair impresses this thought, that as regards authority, rule, public duties, the position of the woman is secondary. Constituted as she is, delicate, susceptible, shrinking from rude contact and strife,—she is unfit for leadership and public station. But by her perceptions and moral insight, her sympathies and affections, she is marvellously fitted to influence, to mould, to guide. Cudy.

True human love makes the outgoings of two lives one. The one side for the other has no need for self-forgetfulness; every movement of the heart in either is taken up and shared by the other, and even an involuntary anticipation of the wishes of the one turns also the other in the same direction. No pleasure is separately enjoyed, no pain separately experienced; equal delight and equal endeavor occupy both minds. Conscious of solely belonging to each other, husband and wife will so worthily endure even the days of adversity that, when those days shall have passed, they will rejoice in having lived to see them. Schleiermacher.—Human love is only worthy of itself when it has realized its ideal, the true harmony of souls. When it fulfils its true mission, when it is manifested as the very flower of a nature in which the moral was meant to predominate, it tends to blend in one, not simply two organisms, but two individuals, who know how to combine respect with tenderness. Love does not abandon itself to the mere play of the sensations; it gives itself freely, and forever, to be the sharer, not only of joy, but of sorrow; hence it is not consumed by its own flame. Since it was not born of sensation, it lives on, when the senses are dulled; and it has indeed a deathless life. De

Pressense.—Christian love in marriage is exemplified only when by mutual endeavor both sides are quickened increasingly in spirit; when every hindrance to spiritual influence in the nature of the one is more and more restrained and diminished by the agency of the other; when their mutual love is hallowed by their common higher love to the Saviour; when this love is confirmed and proved by experience, and both advance toward the common goal of sanctification, then we have an illustration of the heavenly side of Christian marriage. Schleiermacher.

Love can be kept forever beautiful and blessed as at the first, by giving it constant utterance in word and act. The more it is allowed to flow out in delicate attentions and noble service, the stronger and more satisfying and more blessed it will be. The house becomes home only when love drops its heavenly manna in it fresh every day, and the true marriage vow is made not for once at the altar, but by loving words and helpful service and delicate attentions to the end. Aikman.

25. Were not ashamed.** Shame implies a sense of guilt, which they had not, and an exposedness to the searching eye of a condemning judge, from which they were equally free. With the sentence terminates all we know of primeval innocence. May we surmise from it that the first pair spent at least the Sabbath, if not some days, or weeks, or years, in a state of integrity? M.—An evidence of the purity and innocence of that state wherein our first parents were created. They needed no clothes for defence against cold or heat, for neither could be injurious to them; they needed none for ornament; nay, they needed none for decency, they had no reason to be ashamed. They knew not what shame was, so the Chaldee reads it. Blushing is now the color of virtue, but it was not then the color of innocence. They that had no sin in their conscience, might well have no shame in their faces, though they had no clothes to their backs. H.—Clothes are the ensigns of our sin and covers of our shame. To be proud of them is as great a folly as for a beggar to be proud of his rags or a thief of his halter. As the prisoner looking on his irons thinketh on his theft, so we looking on our garments, should think on our sins. Trapp.

Unity of the Race.

The human race is essentially one. The microscopic expert is summoned to examine the blood stain, not to determine whether it comes from African or Caucasian veins, which he cannot tell, but whether it be the blood of man; for Paul’s word is true, not figuratively only, but literally, that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men.” Eve is so called because she is the “mother of all living.” Eve sprang from the side of Adam, but he sprang from no living form. The race is isolated from the lower groups by the inflow of the breath of God, by permanently upright form and articulate speech and by subjection to a moral economy; and thus it stands apart, one and superior. J. B. Thomas.

In one respect there is a striking difference between the account of the human and that of the vegetable and animal creations. The two latter are spoken of generically as races, without the least reference to any individual progenitor or progenitors. But it is distinctly said that God made, not men, not a race or races, but two individuals. He made them “in his own image,” and this remarkable expression, whatever be its depth of meaning, makes an ineffaceable distinction between the human and all lower species upon the earth. From the word Adam alone, we could not have determined with certainty that the account was not generic. But the particulars which are given respecting the female, her origin and established relation to the man, stamp upon the narrative a character of individuality which is unmistakable. The entire departure here from the language used in respect to other races puts the meaning beyond all doubt. If any fact in creation is clearly revealed, if there is any one placed beyond all cavil, beyond all room for any honest difference of interpretation, it is that the origin of the present human race was from one single pair. T. L.

In bodily structure, in language, in tradition, and in intellectual, moral, and religious character, we find abundant evidence to prove unity of race; and there is the amplest confirmation of it in the character and extent of the Gospel or Christian-scheme. It assumes unity, and it comes with a free, full, universal message. The Great Teacher and Redeemer drew no distinction: “Go ye therefore, and teach ALL nations.” W. Fraser.—All races have the same anatomical structure; the same physical organs; and what is far more, the same intellectual and moral nature. Everywhere they exhibit the common effects of the fall of Adam; the same depravity of moral nature; the same common need of redemption by Christ. These are cardinal traits and tests. The Scriptures imply with the strongest form of implication that the Adam of Genesis is the father—the one only father— of the whole human race. The narrative of the creation; of the fall; and of the first promise of redemption—all imply this. Paul implies it in those passages in which he compares the ruin of the race through the one man Adam with the salvation provided for the race through the greater second Man, Jesus Christ. The strong passages are Rom. 5:12-19 and 1 Cor. 15:21, 22. H. C.

And as in Adam all die, so Christ is the spiritual head of all saved from the sin and death, no matter of what race. The universal Headship of the one finds proper and only counterpart in the universal Headship of the other. The salvation of Christ was parallel with the depravity of Adam. If any portion of the race is cut off from its relation to Adam, then also are they from any relation to Christ. If we close against any nation or tribe the pathway that leads them back to Eden and Adam, we close at the same time the pathway that leads to Calvary and Jesus and the cross. S. R.

Admitted by Science. We are now assuredly allowed by Mr. Darwin and his disciples to maintain that the unity of the human race, proclaimed by Genesis, is no longer open to any insuperable scientific objection. Godet.—On this point of the unity of man’s origin, those who bow to the authority of the most ancient and the most venerable traditions, and those who accept the most imposing and popular of modern scientific theories, are found standing on common ground, and accepting the same result. Argyll.—I cannot see any good ground whatever, or even any tenable sort of evidence, for believing that there is more than one species of man. Huxley.—As far as I know, there has been no nation upon the earth, which, if it possessed any traditions on the origin of mankind, did not derive the human race from one pair, if not from one person. Max Müller.

Professor Cabell closes an exhaustive examination of the whole subject with the words: “The unity of the human race must be considered a fundamental and an accepted truth. Every department of knowledge has been searched for evidence, and all respond with an uniform testimony. The physical structure, constitution, and habits of the race—the mode in which it is produced, in which it exists, in which it perishes—everything that touches its mere animal existence, demonstrates the absolute certainty of its unity, so that no other generalization of physiology is more clear and more sure. Rising one step, to the highest manifestation of man’s physical organization—his use of language and the power of connected speech