open to us; His heart asks but to save us. We fly to Thee, O Saviour! and we implore

Thee to put no bounds to Thy grace, until we see re-appearing in us all the features of Thine image, "righteousness, and true holiness."

MEDITATION II.

THE TEMPTATION.

GEN. III. 1–5.

"Now the serpent was more subtil than

any beast of the field, which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden : but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die. For God doth know, that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened: and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

In our preceding meditation we considered man as he came forth from the hands of his Maker, and then we cast a glance at his present condition. This comparison discovered to us an abyss between these two states. What has created this abyss? Had the Bible

left this question unanswered, the world would be but an inexplicable enigma, evil a frightful mystery, the afflictions of man an accusation against providence, and redemption a work incomprehensible and without an object. But Moses is about to give us, in a few words, the solution of this great question, the key to all the revelations of God. The third chapter of Genesis is, as it were, the vestibule of a vast and majestic edifice which God has been erecting, for ages, for our salvation. Whosoever has not entered into the meaning and spirit of this chapter, is only acquainted with the exterior of this building.

My brethren, let us summon up all our faith in the eternal truth of the word of God, and let us enter, without fearing the difficulties which we shall meet with in our way, into this edifice, where are inscribed, with the first sins and the first woes of man, the solution of his destiny, and the hope of his redemption. The subject of our meditation this day shall be the Temptation. To introduce you into the subject, by removing some difficulties connected with it, and explaining the external circumstances of it; and to show you the temptation, first. in an insidious question of the

D

enemy, which shakes the confidence of the woman, and then in a denial of the truth of God; such shall be the order of our ideas.

Adam was happy in Eden, surrounded with all the gifts of nature that could adorn his abode and spread in it abundance and joy. Innocence and peace reigned in his heart; the blessing and the love of his God rested both upon him and upon the woman whom God had given him for a companion. A pure love united them; they exercised a gentle sway over the works of God; they found pleasure in cultivating the different plants and trees which spread over Eden their cooling shade, their opening beauty, and their delicious fruits. Here is the "tree of life," to which God has attached, as to a visible symbol, the assurance of their immortality, a pledge of their eternal communion with the living God. There is "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," which is to be an approving witness of their fidelity, if they continue in their obedience, but also the fatali instrument which shall teach them to know the bitterness of evil, if they fall into sin. It is to this tree God attaches a command, which is to place man in a state of dependence and

responsibility; he is forbidden to eat of its fruit. Obedience to the command is the good of which man is to acquire a consciousness by the object itself to which the divine order is attached; disobedience is the evil, in like manner, to be known by the mysterious tree, which, on that account, is called "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” In the simplicity of his innocence, man knew as little the nature of good as of evil. He could only acquire the knowledge of them in two ways either by observing the order of his God, which gave him the consciousness of his. obedience, or by violating that order, which gave him the knowledge of evil by a sad contrast with good.

But this was not the only reason why God. gave His creature a command, or rather a prohibition, to observe. God owes it to His eternal sovereignty to place all His intelligent creatures in a state of dependence and responsibility. God wills an established order in the moral, as well as in the physical world. Further, God wills, as we see in every page of His word, that His creatures should render him a free obedience, a worship of the heart, which would be destroyed by the ab