for which it had been destined. "And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He

rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and

sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made." It is upon this

original institution of the Sabbath as a day of holy rest that our observance of the Lord's day is finally

based, the change in the precise day - from the seventh to the first of the week - having been occasioned by

the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which not only the first, but also the new creation was finally

completed. (See Isaiah 65:17)

Of all His works God only "created man in His own image: in the image of God created He him." This

expression refers not merely to the intelligence with which God endowed, and the immortality with which He

gifted man, but also to the perfect moral and spiritual nature which man at the first possessed. And all his

surroundings were in accordance with his happy state. God "put him into the garden of Eden4 to dress it

and to keep it," and gave him a congenial companion in Eve, whom Adam recognized as bone of his bones,

and flesh of his flesh. Thus as God had, by setting apart the Sabbath day, indicated worship as the proper

relationship between man and his Creator, so He also laid in Paradise the foundation of civil society by the

institution of marriage and of the family. (Comp. Mark 10:6, 9)

It now only remained to test man's obedience to God, and to prepare him for yet higher and greater

privileges than those which he already enjoyed. But evil was already in this world of ours, for Satan and his

angels had rebelled against God. The scriptural account of man's trial is exceedingly brief and simple. We are

told: that "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" had been placed "in the midst of the garden," and of

the fruit of this tree God forbade Adam to eat, on pain of death. On the other hand, there was also "the tree

of life" in the garden, probably as symbol and pledge of a higher life, which we should have inherited if our

first parents had continued obedient to God. The issue of this trial came only too soon. The tempter, under

the form of a serpent, approached Eve. He denied the threatenings of God, and deceived her as to the real

consequences of eating the forbidden fruit. This, followed by the enticement of her own senses, led Eve first

to eat, and then to induce her husband to do likewise. Their sin had its immediate consequence. They had

aimed to be "as gods," and, instead of absolutely submitting themselves to the command of the Lord, acted

independently of Him. And now their eyes were indeed opened, as the tempter had promised, "to know

good and evil;" but only in their own guilty knowledge of sin, which immediately prompted the wish to hide

themselves from the presence of God. Thus, their alienation and departure from God, the condemning voice

of their conscience, and their sorrow and shame gave evidence that the Divine threatening had already been

accomplished: "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." The sentence of death which God

now pronounced on our first parents extended both to their bodily and their spiritual nature - to their mortal

and immortal part. In the day he sinned man died in body, soul, and spirit. And because Adam, as the head

of his race, represented the whole; and as through him we should all have entered upon a very high and

happy state of being, if he had remained obedient, so now the consequences of his disobedience have

extended to us all; and as "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin," so "death passed upon

all men, for that all have sinned." Nay, even "creation itself," which had been placed under his dominion,

was made through his fall "subject to vanity," and came under the curse, as God said to Adam: "Cursed is

the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it

bring forth to thee."

God, in His infinite mercy, did not leave man to perish in his sin. He was indeed driven forth from Paradise,

for which he was no longer fit. But, before that, God had pronounced the curse upon his tempter, Satan, and

had given man the precious promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent; that

is, that our blessed Savior, "born of a woman," should redeem us from the power of sin and of death,

through His own obedience, death, and resurrection. And even the labor of his hands, to which man was

now doomed, was in the circumstances a boon.

Therefore, when our first parents left the garden of Eden, it was not without hope, nor into outer darkness.

They carried with them the promise of a Redeemer, the assurance of the final defeat of the great enemy, as

well as the Divine institution of a Sabbath on which to worship, and of the marriage-bond by which to be