The purpose of the Serpent in the garden was to withdraw Eve from the condition in which-the Lord God had put her. She was to sacrifice that, and get advancement from him. She consented; and at once as a " chaste virgin " she was ruined.
The church, like the Eve of Gen. 2, should be what the hand of God has made her. The cross has brought her nigh to God, but estranged her from the world. And when the principles of the world propose to cultivate and advance the Church, and such proposal is listened to, we see again, 0-ainI what of old we saw in Gen. 3 the mystic Eve has lost her virgin purity.
The Serpent would fain give man a garden again. And a happier garden it shall be than God once gave him. He shall have every tree in it. The world shall be a wise world, a religious world, a cultivated world, a delightful place, and still advancing. The man of benevolence, the man of morals, the religious and the intellectual man, the man of refined pleasures, all will find their home in it. And this shall be the world's oneness. And all who desire their fellow-creatures' happiness, and the common rest, after so many centuries of confusion and trouble, will surely not refuse to join this honorable and happy confederacy.
Nothing will withstand all this but " the love of the truth -nothing but faith in that word which gathers a sinner to Jesus and His blood, and the hopes of a poor world-wearied believer to Jesus and his kingdom. Come what may to you, beloved, though it be moral or refined or religious -in its bearing, it is " unrighteousness," if it be not of "the truth." (2 Thess. 2) (J. G. B.)