When the earth was quite finished and ready, then God the Father said to God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and He made a body out of the dust of the earth, and into this body He breathed. And the Breath of God was Life, and man became a living soul, with a life quite different from the life of birds and beasts, and a soul which would not die, but would live for ever.

Then God told man whom He had made in His own image, and whom He had made a living soul, and only a little lower than the angels, that he was to be master of the earth, and master of all the living things of the earth, and that He had given him fruit and vegetables for food; while every green herb He had given for food to beast, and fowl, and creeping thing.

When the Lord God had said and done all this, He gave to the man, Adam, a beautiful place or garden to live in, called Eden; and He told him to take care of it, and to tend the trees, and plants, and flowers, for God never meant man to be idle.

In this garden grew every good and pleasant tree, and it was was watered by a noble river. All this God gave to Adam that he might live there and be happy.

But when God placed Adam in the garden of Eden, He gave him one strict command. There grew in the midst of the garden a certain tree, of which He told him he must not eat the fruit. This tree was called the tree of the knowledge

of good and evil. God said, In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Adam was all alone in this pleasant garden; he had no friend or companion of his own kind. And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone, I will make him an help meet for him.

Then God showed him all the animals, to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

Still Adam had no companion fit for him who was made in the image of God, therefore God now made him one.

He caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep; and while he slept He took out one of his ribs, and caused it to become a living woman: and when Adam awoke God gave him his companion, and blessed them, and bade them be happy and love one another.

The work of creation was now finished, and all was good and perfect. God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made.

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.

THE FALL OF MAN.

N the beautiful garden in which the Lord God had placed them, Adam and his wife Eve must have been very happy, for they were innocent.

To be innocent means to be without sin. Like everything that God had made, they were very good. They had no evil tempers, spoke no unkind words; they were sinless, obedient children of God, so they were very happy.

God used to walk in the garden, and they knew He was their best Friend, Who had given them this pleasant home, and Who wished them to enjoy it.

Whenever they saw the tree which God had told them not to touch, they never even wished to touch it; for the wish to disobey God would have been sin, and they were as yet sinless.

It was only a very little thing which God had required of them, just to leave untasted the fruit of that one tree, when He had given them everything besides in the whole garden.

But into the garden there came a wicked being, called the Devil. Now the devil, who is called Satan, hated the good God and every good thing; and when he saw the earth that it was fair and good, and when he saw the man and woman sinless, he wished to spoil God's, beautiful creation by making the man and woman sin.

And so one day Satan changed

himself into a serpent, and went and talked to Eve.

He asked her a question; he pretended that he wished to know whether God had really said that she and Adam might not eat of the fruit of every tree in the garden.

Eve answered that they might eat the fruit of every tree excepting one, which was the tree in the midst of the garden: of that tree alone they might not eat, for God had said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

Then the devil said that God had not spoken truth, and had only forbidden them to eat of the tree because He did not wish them to be wise like Himself; for that the fruit of that tree was able to make them very wise indeed.

Eve listened to what the devil said, and then she looked at the tree. She saw that it was pleasant to the eyes. The fruit looked tempting, and it seemed to be a tree to be desired to make one wise; so she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gare also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

This was sin.

By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.

In what manner death followed sin you will now hear.

Sin, if it made Adam and Eve wiser, did not make them happier.

They had now lost much of their loving trust in God, and they were no longer contented, as they had been before they had doubted Him and disobeyed Him.

They thought now, too, that God should have clothed them;

therefore they made themselves clothing by sewing together some leaves of the fig-tree. Sin had quite changed them, and very quickly.

The day of that first sin passed on, and it was evening, when Adam and Eve heard a sound which they had once delighted to hear, but which now only made them afraid and made them wish to hide themselves among the trees. The sound of which they were afraid was the voice of God, their best Friend. They knew that He was walking in the garden, and would presently meet them; and they dared not show themselves.

But it was of no use to try to hide from God. He called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And Adam was obliged to come forth from his hidingplace, and tell God that he had heard His voice, but that he was afraid to come before Him because he was not clothed.

Then God asked him what made him think of that. He had always until then been quite content, and had never wished for anything more than his Maker had done for him; therefore God asked him whether he had now been disobedient, and eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The Lord God, Who sees and knows everything, had seen Adam and Eve eat the fruit, and knew all about it; still, He required Adam, as He will one day require of each of us, to give Him an exact account of what he had done. And just as in the Day of Judg

ment we shall be obliged to answer God quite truly, Adam was obliged to answer Him quite truly that day in Eden.

He confessed that he had eaten the fruit.

But sin had made him selfish and ungenerous as well as disobedient, and in answering God he tried to throw the blame upon another. He did not merely say, I did eat; he said, The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

It seemed almost as if, in saying 'the woman whom Thou gavest to be with me,' Adam were even blaming God for giving him Eve to be with him. This would be a wicked thought; but sin quickly leads on to sin.

When Adam had replied, then God turned to Eve, that she might answer also.

What is this, He said, that thou hast done?

Then Eve had also to confess; and she also threw the blame upon another. The serpent, she said, beguiled me, and I did eat.

God then turned to the serpent, and to the devil who was in the serpent. He did not ask the devil to speak for himself. He cursed him at once, and pronounced punishment upon him.

He told the serpent, which was the creature into which the devil had entered, that evil should from that day forth be upon serpents more than upon any other creature upon earth, and that they should for ever grovel in the dust. And He told the devil, who was in the

serpent, that as he had ruined man, a Man should some day conquer him; and that he should never be friends with man, but that there should be enmity for ever between them.

The Man, Who was some day to conquer the devil, was the Lord Jesus Christ, Who was to become Man as well as God, and to live upon this earth, and to take away the power of the devil by dying upon the Cross for our sin, and to rise again from the grave.

Thus, even in His anger against sin, God from the first thought about forgiveness and deliverance.

When He had spoken the punishment of the devil, who had caused. them to sin, God told Adam and Eve that they must be punished also. They had neither of them, as we see, been able to save themselves by blaming another. God says, The soul that sinneth, it shall die.

To the woman God said that she should have many sorrows and troubles, and He bade her be humble and obey her husband. And then he turned to Adam, and pronounced upon him a heavy punishment, which was for both man and woman.

God began His sentence against Adam by showing him that the very excuse which he had made for himself, only made his sin appear the worse; He told him that, because he had done what Eve tempted him to do, instead of what his Maker had commanded, eating of the fruit which the woman had offered him, when he knew

that God had said, Thou shalt not eat of it, evil should befall the ground out of which grew the things which were his food. Also, to get food, he must now work hard and in weariness, and that instead of only pleasant things growing out of the ground, thorns and thistles should grow now, and would cost him toil and trouble.

Then came the most solemn words of all: which showed to Adam and Eve that the devil had deceived them, and that they should surely die. The hard work and weariness, and toil and trouble, must last, God said, until man went back again to the ground out of which he had been made: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Thus into the world entered death by sin; and thus, as God had warned them, in the day that they ate of the forbidden fruit they did surely die. Their lives did not indeed end on that very day; but they came under the power of death.

The punishment which God pronounced against Adam and Eve, was not for that one man and woman alone: it was also for every man and woman afterwards; because now that they had become sinful, every one else would be sinful also. Instead of very good, as God had made it, man's nature now became very bad. bad. Every little child would now come sinful into a sinful world.

When the Lord God had finished speaking to Adam and Eve, He clothed them, making them coats