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man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God."* In his Epistle to the Ephesians he again alludes, and that still more clearly, to the relation in which Eve stood to Adam, when he says, in order to enforce the duty of the wife's subjection to her husband-" For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church : and he is the Saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing." And again, in the same chapter, for the purpose of enforcing the duty of tenderness in husbands towards their wives, he adds: "So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies: he that loveth his wife, loveth himself; for no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but loveth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." He then further quotes the words of Adam, founded on Eve's derivation of existence from himself, "They twain shall be one flesh:" to which he adds, "This is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the church."+

The state of subjection in which Eve was placed from the beginning, was intended for her protection and comfort; and had she not ventured to act independently of her appointed

* 1 Cor. xi. 3. + Chap. v. 23, 24.

Ver. 28-33.

All

director and guide, she would have escaped the fatal snare into which she was drawn. In a state of grace, after the fall, the continuance of that subjection was required of her: and in this case, as in all others, duty and privilege are inseparable. Adam was to be her prophet, to instruct her; her priest, to offer sacrifice for her sin; and her king, to govern, guide, and support her. this was favour shown her; and when it is added that in all this, the state of the church of which she was a type, in its relation to the promised seed of the woman, was shadowed forth, it is evident that the Divine procedure towards her was full of compassion, and that the Redeemer who addressed her, was what he is afterwards declared to be," full of grace and truth."

The sentence on the man follows that of the woman, is of the same gracious character, and leads the mind to the same blessed issue. In this also we have letter and spirit; of which we may say, what the Apostle has said of the Law and Gospel, that "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”* The letter memorializes the evil of sin; but the spirit intimates redemption from it. The sentence is thus expressed: "And unto Adam He said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of

* 2 Cor. iii. 6.

it: 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, and thou shalt eat the fruit of the field. In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

The curse on the soil of the earth, ascribed to Adam's transgression as its cause, was literally fulfilled before the flood, and has been more fully executed since the deterioration produced by that awful judgment.* The wide deserts with which our earth abounds, its spontaneous production of noxious weeds, the necessity of culture to its fruitfulness in what is essential to the life and comfort of man;-all this, with a thousand other circumstances, tends to prove the veracity of the Divine threatening, is a standing

*Howard in his Script. Hist. p. 554. quoted by Mr. Faber in his Hora Mosaicæ, vol. i. p. 351. says

"With Messrs. Wallerius, De Luc, and Whitehurst, it appears to me, that the axis and poles of the earth must have been, before the deluge, perpendicular to the equator." After giving his reasons for this hypothesis, the author adds, "So lang as the poles of the earth were perpendicular to the equator, and that its course varied not from that line, the days and nights were equal throughout the year; perpetual spring reigned all over the globe, and its temperature was every where moderate. After the change, God finds it necessary to forewarn Noah, that he must expect successive changes of seasons, and vicissitudes of heat and cold, such as he had never yet experienced."

+ See Dr. Adam Clarke's note on the passage.

memorial of God's hatred of sin, and a never failing proof that it cannot go unpunished. Every thistle preaches to man the doctrine of the Fall: every thorn while it pierces his hand, should remind him of the apostacy of the first Adam, and of his grace who was crowned with thorns that we might be crowned with everlasting glory.

It was not thus in Paradise. This seems to be intimated in an implied contrast between its fruits growing without human toil, and "the herb of the field” by which man was in future to be supported in life. The prophetic descriptions of the millennial earth, whether they are to be understood figuratively or as realities, confirm this supposed change in the soil, the climate, and the productions of our globe. In these descriptions there is a manifest allusion to the curse upon the ground, inflicted for the first transgression. "Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign which shall not be cut off."

It appears, then, that the Scripture plainly alludes to the sterility of the earth occasioned by the fall, as symbolic of the state of the human heart produced by the same catastrophe; and to renewed fertility in the carth as symbolic of that spiritual change which Divine grace produces in the soul.

This allusion is, indeed, so frequent as to preclude the necessity of an extensive proof of the use made of it by the Spirit of inspiration. Our Lord's Parable of the Sower,* and St. Paul's awful account of the state of Apostates, may suffice as specimens of such allusions.

But allusion is not sufficient to prove that the curse pronounced on the ground for man's sake, and the toil and labour which would be necessary to its cultivation, were intended to convey information of a corresponding state of the fallen heart, and of corresponding difficulties in its spiritual cultivation. There is, however, an important prediction in this book of Genesis, which seems to justify this opinion.

There was a succession of prophets, or persons inspired by God to elucidate the first grand prophecy, reaching from the Fall to the Flood. Adam, Enoch, Lamech, and Noah, in consequence of the longevity which then prevailed, filled up this long interval of time; and they were all endowed with a prophetic character. In proceeding with the chapter before us, we shall find a prediction of the first man. St. Jude has preserved a prophecy of Enoch, and Moses one of his grand-son Lamech. It is to this prediction of Lamech that I refer as illustrating the

† Heb. vi. 7,

* Matth. xiii.
See the following Letter.

8.

§ Gen. v. 28, 29, 30.

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