EXPOSITORY REMARKS ON GENESIS.

No. VII.

HAVING already on a former occasion considered what sin is as a transgression of the Law, (see chap. iii. 16, 17.), we shall pass over the consummation of our first father's offence, and proceed to investigate the nature of the sentence pronounced upon him. And first we read, that the ground was cursed for his sake. Happily for Adam, and for all of us his posterity, the curse attached to the person of the wily serpent, (verse 14.) was not denounced in like manner upon his human victims, but was transferred for their sakes to the brute earth, which received in their stead the maledictions of the Lord. Nevertheless this mitigated curse, which aptly expressed that man was not to be the joint partaker of the serpent's doom, was yet to be productive to him of innumerable sorrows. For, from henceforth, the earth, pregnant with noxious weeds, was to mock the expectation of the husbandman, and yielding her nourishment to the spontaneous growth of useless herbs, would need the continued efforts of painful labour to force from her otherwise sterile surface, food for the sustenance of man. And the thorns and thistles spoken of in our text, have too surely a reference to earthbred plagues of every varied kind, and must not be limited to the noxious production of the vegetable APRIL, 1844.

X

world. The whole of the material earth, with all its various elements, at the first in perfect harmony, but now disordered by reason of sin, would in one form or other, wage unceasing war with man. The sun would now smite him by day, and the moon by night, (Psalm cxxvi. 6.), or else the sun would refuse the earth the benign influence of his genial fructifying rays. Boisterous and blighting winds would

make desolate the sea and land. Now the hurricane would put forth its strength, dislodge man and beast from their coverts, and with relentless fury sweep vegetation from the earth; or in its stead blasts less obviously terrific would exert an influence as really baneful, for not only would vegetable life sicken beneath them, but man too would imbibe their poison. But how enumerate the varied natural evils which were now to be multiplied upon the earth, cursed for man's sake! How tell of the potent adversaries who were now to appear in league against him. All inanimate nature, as if infected with its master's sin, was to bear witness to the disorder which that sin had introduced into a world once so fair and good; and the different orders of living creatures, all at first so gently submissive and docile to their master's will, and so well pleased to yield him service, were now to share in that master's fall, and to be wrought upon in common with himself by the apostate spirits who had usurped the sovereignty of the earth. Disorder and rebellion were to be from henceforth primary laws of being under the new government of the God of this world. The inferior creatures would now rise up against their master man, even as man had risen up against his Master God. The Lord would indeed restrain them, so that

their insubordination should not be complete; and to that end, He would in great mercy (seeing that the reign of Love was at an end) put the fear and dread of man into the hearts of the inferior creatures: (chap. ix. 2.) but even with this check, how often would the fierce passions of the infuriated beast cause him to break through the restraints imposed on him by his earthly lord, and prove him to be too strong for human coercion. Also the new foes who should now go forth from time to time as the great army of the Lord of hosts, to avenge the cause of the sovereign Lawgiver and His insulted law, (Joel i. 1-7, 10-12; ii. 2—11, 18-20, 25.), although in themselves apparently so insignificant as to be incapable of entering into contest with the highlyendowed being, man, should nevertheless occasion him unnumbered evils, and such as he should not be able to overcome, save through the aid of an arm more mighty than his own. For when the Lord should commission the myriads of man's lilliputian adversaries to devour the produce of the earth, and command the locust to consume what the palmerworm had left uneaten, and then the canker-worm to follow upon the locust's track, and the caterpillar to complete the ruin, (Joel i. 4.), how would man, however gifted, oppose himself to these invaders, or by what art or skill of his would he prevent the trackless deserts from pouring forth their myrmidons? But now what says the unbelieving naturalist to these things, and what account does he give us of the probable purpose for which countless orders of mischievous living creatures are propagated in the earth? He rejects the idea of the fall of man, and believes that all things continue as they were from

the first creation of the world, nor does any surprize seem to affect his mind, when he perceives the providential provision that is made in every department of the physical world for man's annoyance and serious injury. He may indeed tell us, as he often does, that one species of mischievous creature keeps another species, which would be yet more hurtful, in check, and that in this way the apparently useless living animals have still their appointed salutary office; but this is in fact no solution at all of what ought to be a most perplexing phenomenon to every thoughtful mind; and that it is not so, is only to be accounted for on the supposition, that the important connexion of the moral and physical world, is not a matter of interest with the merely scientific observers of nature, and in fact that they do not acknowledge any such connexion. Truly to the thinking philosophic mind, destitute of the aid of revelation, it ought to be a perplexing mystery, that so many contrarieties in the order of the divine creation and providence should be found manifesting themselves in every department of nature; that on the one hand the Creator should appear evidently bent upon the enjoyment of His creature man, but on the other resolved to compass his annoyance; that at one time God fills the hungry with the abundance of all good things, but at another refuses him the scantiest pittance; to-day gives him reason to rejoice in the prospect of a fruitful season, and to-morrow destroys his budding hopes by one or other of his ministers of physical destruction. For it is evident that the Lord has a purpose of loving-kindness towards His creature, or else He would have subjected him to unmingled evil. It cannot therefore be inferred, that

God is ill-affected to him, because of human suffering. God could not want the power to effect the misery of man, but this He does not effect, and therefore we are sure does not desire it. But still He subjects His creature to innumerable sorrows, and prepares for him in His providence woes from which there can be no escape. And why this alternation of good and evil, why this commingled mercy and judgment? This question ought to be asked by every thoughtful mind, but satisfactorily answered it never can be, but by him who is convinced that the Mosaic account of the creation is the true one, and that the varied evils with which the world is pregnant, and which it is ever bringing forth, owe their first origin to man's apostacy from God.

And did God say to Adam, "cursed is the ground for thy sake," having an eye to the vindication of His own righteous law, and that the universe of His intelligent creatures might be admonished, that it was an evil and bitter thing for the creature to depart from the allegiance due to his Creator? Did God introduce disorder into the very vitals of this earth, and cause her various elements to become distempered, that all might know that He would punish sin? Did He infect the once balmy air with pestilential vapors, and change the refreshing gales into sweeping hurricanes, and urge on the blasts laden with snow and clogged with ice, to prove Himself the avenger of transgression? And did He give the inferior creatures a permission to rebel against their rebellious lord, and even the little winged insects liberty to mock the ruler who had defied the King of kings, that all might learn, that "the King immortal, eternal, invisible," "the blessed and only Potentate,"