Time and Trials: From Innocence to Government
Frederick William Grant
Table of Contents
Times and Trials: Part 1: The Time of Innocence
A time so different from anything we ourselves have known as is the primitive time of innocence in Eden, there is necessarily difficulty in realizing or interpreting aright. Innocence we have lost, and can never regain. Nor is there anything really like it to be found in such a state as that of childhood, which, speaking comparatively only, we call the age of innocence. Much of what we deem this is, in fact, but immaturity; and Adam was not immature, but a man with all the faculties of manhood fresh and vigorous in him, as come, in a perfection nowhere now seen, out of the hand of his Creator.
Indeed theologians, realizing this, have imagined a moral, or spiritual perfection in him for which scripture gives no warrant. It is the "new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." On the other hand, it is said, that "God made man upright," which is in contrast with the craft implied in the "many inventions" they have since "sought out."
Let us look briefly at the whole scripture account (confined as it is to little more than one chapter of the book of Genesis) of man's creation, and of the condition in which he was placed in Eden, the "garden of delight."
The first words are: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
" So God created man"—and here the words fall into a rhythmic measure, the first poetry of scripture, as if God were rejoicing over the creature He had made—" So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him: male and female created he them."
The second and briefer, yet more detailed, account, is in, chapter 2.
"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul."
We must not expect to have man's inner nature, however, fully revealed in this initial revelation as to him. The language is pictorial and figurative largely, according to the usual character of the Old Testament. More is hidden than is openly declared. Plainly "of the earth, earthy," as the first man is, "the dust of the earth" is not all he is. Formed, as to his bodily frame, of this, God "breathes into his nostrils," communicating thus something from Himself, by virtue of which he becomes a living soul. Not even does this expression, "a living soul," give the full reality of what he is. The beast also is, and has, a living soul—"everything wherein there is a living soul" is the description in Gen. 1:30 of "every beast of the earth, and every fowl of the air, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." "Likeness" to God cannot be affirmed of such an one as this, for God is not “soul”, but “spirit”, and the "Father of spirits." Man is thus alone in relationship to God, as possessing not only soul, but also spirit; that "spirit of man" which "knoweth the things of a man," and is his real distinction from the beasts that, as having no link with God or God's eternity, are "beasts that perish."
“Spirit”, thus, in man is linked with “soul”. An intelligent and moral nature, which is implied in this, furnishes the affections of the heart (or soul) with objects suited to its own proper character, and lifts it thus, as it were, into its own sphere of being. Man is not a more developed beast, although he has an animal nature which resembles the beast's. He belongs to another and higher order of life, and to this the language of chapter 1 will be found to correspond in a manner all the more significant that it is not interpreted to us there, but left for the general voice of scripture to interpret.
It has been made a question of late whether the word used for “creation” necessarily means that. Yet in the first verse of the chapter where we are told that "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," the bringing out of nothing must be certainly intended. After this (with the exceptions to be just now noticed) the word “created” is exchanged for “made”: and the whole six days' work is characteristically a “making”, as in the words of the fourth commandment; a making which is of such importance in the sight of God, that it is said in chapter 2:3, that He "created to make" it. Thus it stands rightly in the margin of our Bibles, and in the Latin Vulgate, although few ancient or modern interpreters seem to have understood it; “creation”, or the bringing out of nothing, being thus distinguished from the “making” out of existing materials. We find that there are but two distinct acts of creation in the six days' work: the first where the “living creature”, or “soul”, is introduced; the second, where man is. Thus soul and spirit are distinguished from all modifications of previous existences. They are “creations”, the calling into being of that which before had none: creations, successively of higher character, until in man at last we find "the offspring of God."
But in man spirit has its links with lower and preceding forms. He is a living soul, as the beast is; and this soul is the seat, not only of those affections in which it corresponds to what we call ordinarily the “heart”, but also of the instincts, senses, and appetites. The adjective of soul (for which in English we have no corresponding term) is in the New Testament, in our Authorized Version, translated twice “sensual”. The same word also, both in Hebrew and Greek, stands for “soul” and “life”, thus marking the soul, in distinction from the spirit, as the source of this to the body. In man thus, as a “living soul”, spirit, or mind, is made dependent upon the soul, or senses, for its proper furnishing; and thus the body also becomes, in this present condition of things, a necessity to the spirit, and, if it be not in a fit state, a drag upon it—at the best a limit beyond which it cannot pass. Men "out of the body" are called “spirits”, and not souls; and the body in resurrection is a spiritual body, henceforth imposing no limit.
But this link with the body is a matter of great interest in another connection. Before man was in being, a class of spiritual existences had been created—purely such; and of these many had already fallen away from God. Pride, too, is said to have been "the condemnation of the devil." Hence the tender care and wisdom of God are seen in this hedging about the new spiritual creature with restrictions which manifestly tend to "hide pride from man" in this his probationary state. Probation seems to be the rule, and so (as we may infer) the necessity, for moral beings; but the goodness of God is shown in thus fencing man round, as far as possible, with witnesses to him of creature imperfection, perpetual preachers of humility and self-distrust.
The necessities of this mysteriously compounded nature were another argument in the same direction. In Eden man had his wants, as out of it. Hunger was his, and thirst, although no distress could result from these, but rather new sources of enjoyment—all the trees of the garden ministering to his need. Sleep he needed for the recruiting of a frame which would otherwise have been exhausted by the putting forth of its own energies; nay, the immortal life, which was his conditionally, another tree was made to minister. He was not taught that it was his by the mere fact of what he was. He had it not as what was essential in his being, but rather the opposite, a thing foreign to him naturally, communicated by the virtues of that wondrous tree which was perpetually to sustain the wasting bodily frame.
All this was thus to him constant witness of his creature condition; on the other hand, the constant witness of divine goodness which met all this need with superabundant resources, so that appetite should be but the occasion of enjoyment, and no want be for a moment known. This was Eden, man's garden of delight—for us type of a greater—where all, as God pronounced Himself, was “good”, and no evil at all existed, nor could exist, save as man introduced it; no hand but his own could mar this beauteous picture. To all but himself it was a citadel impregnably guarded from assault.
But this leads us on to consider what was the prohibition, and what the nature of the temptation, to which man yielded.
One thing alone was prohibited to man, lord of all else—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As to this the command was precise, and the penalty assured "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." One prohibition thus served, or should have served, to keep in the mind of one who; as the image of God, was otherwise uncontrolled master of this fair domain, that he too had a Master. “Duty”, as it is the thought of which man alone, and not the beast, is capable, must be necessary to his proper development as man. The moral faculties must have a field provided for their exercise, for man assuredly was from the first a moral being—that is, a being capable of discerning good and evil. I say capable; for the actual discernment plainly came afterward, when, and when alone, evil was there to be discerned. As yet there was none, and therefore while good was present everywhere, and its enjoyment not denied, the knowledge of even good was not as yet discriminative—was not discernment—when as yet that from which it had to be discerned was not within the field of vision. We are not to suppose a moral incapacity in innocent man which would have put him outside the pale of morality, and rendered a fall impossible, by leaving nothing from which to fall. Neither must we suppose a mind into which the thought of evil had ever yet entered. When solicited by the fruit in the hand of his already fallen companion, "Adam was not deceived; but the woman, being deceived, was in the transgression." He, at least, with his eyes open thus far—although not yet having eaten of the tree of that fatal "knowledge"—became a transgressor. In whatever sense the eating of the forbidden fruit opened the eyes of both of them, it created no moral capacity which was not there before, implied in the very nature of a spiritual being, such as was Adam by the gift of his Creator.
Righteousness and holiness are another matter. Scripture does not affirm these of the first man. These, in the creature, represent a character which could only be the outcome of spontaneous rejection of the evil, when in sight. This character was not, and could not, yet be found in Adam, when evil there was none in that garden of delight, planted by the hand of God Himself for the object of His care and goodness. And herein the meaning of all that we call 'probation' lies. Probation was permitted, nay, necessitated, not alone by the tree forbidden, or the tempter's assault, but by the very constitution of a moral being—a being who apprehends, and deliberates, and wills. F. W. G.
(To be continued.)
Times and Trials: Part 2. The Trial of Innocence
(Continued.)
Among all creation beside, there was found no help meet for Adam. God makes all the creatures pass before him that he may see this for himself,—a fact which we shall see has its significance for the after-history. Adam gives names to all, as their superior, and in the full intelligence of what they are; but for Adam himself there is found no help meet.
Yet, that "it is not good for the man to be alone," is the word of His Creator as to him. Looking at the circumstances of the fall, he who has learned to suspect God everywhere may suspect Him here. He provides in the woman one whom scripture itself pronounces inferior naturally in wisdom to the man, but on the other hand supplementing him otherwise. The rib out of which she is made is taken from the breast; and if man be the head of humanity, woman is its heart. Even spite of the fall, this still is clear and unmistakable; and man's heart is correspondingly drawn out and developed by her. The awful perversion of this now shows but the fact the more: and the perversion of the best thing commonly produces the worst. For Adam, where all was yet right, here was not only a spiritual being with whom was possible that interchange of thought and feeling which our whole being craves, but also an object for the heart. Pledge of his Creator's love was this fair gift, in whom love sensibly ministered to him, and drew out his own, redeeming him from self-occupation as from isolation: surely it was not,—" is not good for the man to be alone," and the help provided was a "help meet for him."
If unbelief still object that by the woman sin came in, and that inferiority of wisdom exposed her to the enemy: she was "beguiled" and ate,—Adam too ate, though he was not beguiled. The woman's strength did not, and does not, lie in wisdom, but in heart: and the instincts of the true heart are as divine a safeguard as the highest wisdom. It was here—as it is easy to see by the record itself—the woman failed, not where she was weakest but where she was strongest. And with her, as still and ever, the failing heart deceived the head. There is an immense assumption, growing more and more every day, of the power of the mind to keep and even to set right the man morally. It is a mistake most easy of exposure. For are the keenest intellects necessarily the most upright and trustworthy of men? Or is there any ascertained proportion between the development of mind and heart? The skepticism that scoffs at divine things revealed to babes is but the pride of intellect, not knowledge. It is itself the fruit and evidence of the fall.
Enough of this for the present, then. Along with all other provision for his blessing we must rank this—too little thought of—that Adam was to be taught mastery also, even in a scene where moral evil was not. He was to "replenish the earth and subdue it;" to "dress and keep" even the "garden of delight." The dominion over the lower creatures he was also evidently to maintain, making them to recognize habitually the place of lordship over them which was his. All this implies much in the way of moral education for one in whose perfect manhood the moral and mental faculties acted in harmony yet, with no breach or dislocation.
Surely we can see in all this a kindly and fruitful training of Adam himself, as in a scene where evil threatened, though it had not come. The full and harmonious play of every spiritual and bodily faculty was provided for, that the man himself, to use language antiquated now, might "play the man;" language truer in its application to him than to any of his natural issue since the fall.
But to that fall itself we must now go on. Its brief but imperishable record is full of the deepest instruction for us, for every day of our life here; nay, who shall forbid to say for our life hereafter also? The lessons of time, we may be assured, will be the possession of eternity; of all that we gather here, no fragment will be lost forever. In this history we shall find, too, I doubt not, what we have been considering as to Adam abundantly confirmed.
First, then, as to the instrument in the temptation. Scripture leaves us in no possible doubt that the one who used in this case the actual serpent, was the one whom we too familiarly recognize as the leader in a previous irremediable fall, the fall of the angels. Thus he is called "a liar from the beginning," and "a murderer;" "that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan."
The use of the serpent here is noteworthy in another way from that in which it is generally taken. No doubt in the fact that it was "more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made" lay the secret of his selection of it. But why appear under such a form at all? For myself I cannot but connect it with the fact that Adam had before named every creature and found no help meet for him among them all. If evil, then, would approach, it was not permitted to do so save only under the form of one of these essentially inferior creatures, refused already as having help for man. It was a divine limit to the temptation itself. Man listening to the voice of a creature over whom he was to have dominion, and in whom there was recognized to be no help for him, was in fact man resigning his place of supremacy to the beast itself. In all this, not merely the coming of the enemy, but the mercy of God also may be surely seen.
Again, as to the form of the temptation itself. It was a question simply—apparently an innocent one—which entertained in the woman's mind, wrought all the ruin. Here again, surely the mercy of God was limiting the needful trial. Evil was here also not permitted to show itself openly. The tempter is allowed to use neither force nor allurement, nor to put positive evil before the woman at all until she has first encouraged it. "Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?"
Here was affected surprise, a suggestion of strangeness, no doubt, but no positive charge of wrong. Such an insinuation, if it were even that, a heart true to God need scarcely find much difficulty in repelling. This was in paradise, where all the wealth of blessing which the munificent hand of God had spread around her filled every sense with testimony of His love. Was reason demanded, or did intellect need to find the way through any difficult problem here? Assuredly not. A heart filled with divine goodness would be armor of proof in such a conflict as this. The effort of the enemy was just to make a question for the reason what ought to have been one of those clear perceptions not to be reasoned about, because the basis of all true reason. As a question for the mind the woman entertained it, and thus admitted a suspicion of the divine goodness which has been the key-note of man's condition ever since.
She thus, in fact, entered upon that forbidden path of discriminating between good and evil, which has resulted in a conscience of evil within, in the very heart of the fallen creature. Around was naught but goodness—goodness which they were not forbidden, but welcomed to enjoy. Everything here had but to be accepted; no question raised, no suspicion to be entertained. To raise the question was to fall. And this was the meaning of the forbidden tree, as it was the point to which Satan's question led. In the midst of a scene where was naught but goodness, there could be no question entertained where there was no suspicion. By entertaining the question, the woman showed that she had allowed the suspicion. Thus she fell.
How differently now we are situated is most plain. In a mingled scene where indeed divine goodness is not lacking, but where also the fruit of the fall, and Satan's work is everywhere, suspicion becomes continually a duty, and conscience a divine preservative. The knowledge of good and evil is no longer forbidden, but we have our "senses exercised to discern" these. Innocence is gone; but, thank God, who is supreme to make all things serve His holy purposes, righteousness and holiness are things possible, and, in the new creature, things attained.
If we look at the woman's answer to the serpent we shall easily find these workings of her soul. "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 you die."
Here is the wavering unsteadiness of a soul that has lost its balance, and flounders more in its endeavors to regain it. What tree had God put into’the midst' of the garden? According to the inspired account it was the tree of life. Prohibition—was that at the very heart of paradise? Did everything there radiate, so to speak, from the threatening of death? Alas, slight as the matter may seem, it tells where the woman's soul is. The first words we hear from her are words very intelligible to us, far gone as we are from innocency. For how easily with us does one prohibited thing blot out of our view a thousand blessings! Alas, we understand her but too well.
And her next words are even plainer. When had God said, "neither shall ye touch it"? The prohibition has got possession of her mind, and to justify herself as to her conception of it, she adds words of her own to God's words. A mere 'touch,' she represents to the devil, might be fatal to them. They might perchance be the innocent victims of misfortune, as it would seem according to her. Who can doubt how dark a shadow is now veiling God from her soul? All the more that her next words make doubtful the penalty, and as if it were the mere result of natural laws, as man now speak, rather than direct divine infliction: " lest ye die."
God's love is here suspected; God's truth is tampered with; God's authority is out of sight: so far on the swift road to ruin has the woman descended. The devil can be bolder now. Not "ye shall not surely die" is what he says, but "certainly ye shall not die;" and closes with one of those sayings of his in which a half truth becomes a total lie: "for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods," (or perhaps, 'as God') " knowing good and evil."
And there is no more tarrying as to the woman: her ear and her heart are gained completely. She sees with the devil's eyes, and is in full accord and fellowship with him, and the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life come in at once. "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wiser, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat."
Thus was the fall consummated. Conscience at once awoke when the sin of the heart had been perfected in act. "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons." But we are now in another scene from that with which we started, and a new age now begins even before Gen. 3 is closed. We shall therefore look at this in its place separately when we consider, if the Lord will, the dealings of God with man under the next economy.
F. W. G.
Christ came from the Father to make Him known to us as He knew Him; we come from Christ to make Him known as we know Him. This is true ministry, a happy and blessed thing, but serious in its character. "Peace unto you," said the Lord; "as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." What a mission! If even we are not apostles. J. N. D.
Times and Trials: Part 3. The Trial of Conscience in the Age Before the Flood
With Adam fallen- even from the first moment of his fall- we enter upon a new period. Sin and death, now come into the world, necessitate new dealings of God with man, if, indeed, judgment do not bring all to a sudden close. And this was not in His mind, who from the first had foreseen and provided for the rebellion of the creature. Judgment does indeed follow, such as God had previously announced; but that was no final one, but (as we shall easily see) one anticipative of the mercy to be shown, and which could be made to take itself the character of mercy. It is in confounding the provisional "death," threatened to and inflicted on Adam and his posterity, as the result of the primal sin, with the "second" and final "death" of the lake of fire, that much error and heresy of the present day finds apparent countenance, scripture being strained to establish what is a mere foregone conclusion in the minds of its interpreters, and what none can in fact deduce from its straightforward simplicity of statement.
"In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" is defined so clearly, in the Lord's words to fallen Adam, as to put its meaning, one would think, beyond serious question. "In the sweat of thy face 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." Gen. 3:19.
To read into this eternal judgment is to misread it thoroughly. The death announced, and which we know to be everywhere in the world, through the first man's sin, is in reality a thing which, in its very nature, necessitates the suspension of eternal judgment until it is taken out of the way. Not till the dead are raised will the white throne be set, and the dead- the wicked dead—be "judged, every man according to his works." And thus the resurrection of the unsaved dead is as much a "resurrection of judgment"- that is what it implies and necessitates- as the resurrection of the saved is similarly a "resurrection of life." The final judgment is thus in nowise the result of Adam's sin; it is that in which emphatically each suffers for his own. The second death and the first are in nowise to be confounded- they are incompatible and contrary things.
Nor can spiritual death, or "death in trespasses and sins," be possibly what God speaks of in His threatening to Adam. This is indeed the spiritual state which is the result of the fall; but the moral state of a criminal is a very different thing from the judgment upon the criminal. Man's depravity is what he is condemned for, not what he is sentenced to; and these things cannot be synonymous. "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return," is thus the only possible, as it is the divinely-given, interpretation of the announcement, “in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
Yet it is quite true, and to be pressed, that this death, coming not only upon the first sinners, but upon all their posterity- and surely by no mere arbitrary decree on God's part- marks the changed relation to Him of the now fallen creature. Everywhere does scripture recognize this, and in God's ordinances for His chosen people of old it comes fully out. Death is associated ever with
uncleanness and defilement. If a man die in a tent, all that come into the tent, and all that is in the tent, are unclean seven days. Every one touching a dead body, a bone, or a grave, is similarly deified. Nor must we look at this as merely symbolic teaching. The psalm of the wilderness is plain enough in its doctrine here: "For all our days are passed away in thy wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear so is thy wrath." (Psa. 90:9-11.)
Yes, if God had thus to turn to destruction the being over whom, as first created, He had rejoiced with unfeigned delight, surely the state of the creature it was, that was thus marked out, not a causeless change in God. Death was the stamp upon the creature fallen away from God; and every sign of its approach a standing admonition to him as a being thus under sentence- not final indeed, or there would be no use in the admonition, but still a sentence of condemnation, which cut him off from all pretension to righteousness, or natural claim to favor, and left him but the subject of mercy, and of mercy alone.
True, he may (alas! he does) resist and strive against the sentence graved upon his brow. He may condemn God, that he may himself be righteous. This changes nothing- no, not a hair of his head- from white to black, He may complain of himself as the victim of circumstances, impossible to be ‘clean’ as "born of a woman." He may plead that he did not give himself the evil nature that he carries with him, but conscience will not be satisfied with this. It will not excuse actual transgressions by any plea as to a fallen nature. We feel and know, every one of us, that we ought nevertheless to be masters of ourselves and of our nature, and that our responsibility has been in nowise destroyed or lessened by the fall. So in the day of judgment also God will render to every man, not according to his nature, but his deeds, and upon this ground is the whole world brought in "guilty before God."
Death thus, while introduced by one man's sin, "passes upon all men, for that all have sinned." Were there one man, in the full sense, righteous before God, he might successfully plead exemption from the common doom; but "there is none righteous, no, not one;" and death remains universally a sentence gone forth against man as man, the constant witness against self-righteousness on his part, the constant witness of his need of mercy- absolute, sovereign mercy.
The sorrow of all this is thus God's appeal to man; the trouble to which he is born, as sparks fly upward, becomes the discipline of holy but merciful government. It is of this that God speaks to the man and the woman when He first appears to them in the garden; to the woman, of the sorrow of conception, and subjection to the rule of her husband; to the man, of the cursed ground, and of its thorns and thistles, with the toil of labor, till he return to the dust. With them, let us notice, He makes no new terms- no other covenant is proposed to them. As helpless and hopeless otherwise, they are made simply to listen to what God announces He will do- to the message of a deliverance He will raise up to them in the woman's Seed. It is to faith in One to come they are invited, in the midst of the ruin they have brought upon themselves. No new trial is proposed. They are left under the salutary government of God, to realize what and where they are before Him, and to embrace the mercy wrapped up for them in the bud of that first promise.
For promise indeed it is, while it comes in the shape of threatening to the serpent; a promise, whose broken echoes the traditions of the nations have prolonged, even to our own day. Scripture, which cannot be broken, has alone given us the very words, in their original simplicity and grandeur- the " Let there be light" of a new creative period, exceeding the former as antitype, its typic "shadow." The words are for us to-day, to vindicate their imperishable nature, fresh for our souls as the day when they were uttered: "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."
It is the character of the new period we are occupied with, and for this have only to do with certain features of this promise. It is plain enough that Another is here given as the Conqueror of the serpent, the enemy of man, but whose "seed" nevertheless (as the near future would painfully reveal) would be found among men. This Conqueror is also the woman's seed, and not the man's. It is no restoration of Adam's forfeited headship, but a new and mysterious beginning, wherein divine power takes up the frailty and mutability of the creature, which has its fullest expression in the woman, to demonstrate divine grace, while not without cost is the victory over the enemy achieved: in bruising the serpent's head the Conqueror has His own heel bruised.
Thus does the divine purpose begin to be disclosed, asking no aid from, and making no condition with, the fallen creature. From the first it is seen that all help is laid upon Another, One in whom, though born of a woman, power from God is found; who suffers, and in suffering overcomes; and manifestly in behalf of those of whom He is the kinsman.
Although, then, the Lord's address to the woman afterward speaks of nothing but pain and humiliation, and to the man himself of toil, and suffering, and death, yet we read immediately upon this that "Adam called his wife's name Eve [or ‘Life’] because she was the mother of all living." Life he apprehends, according to the divine announcement, to be in the woman connected by grace with her victorious Seed; weakness and evil in her thus met and triumphed over, while the headship of the first man is set aside. Adam bows, then, to this sentence, while in faith he receives the mercy, and it is upon this that we find God significantly replacing the inadequate apron of fig-leaves, the first human manufacture, with the coats of skins, the fruit of death itself, now made to minister to their need, and by divine gift, not human acquisition. We may thus very clearly see how God accepts the faith of Adam, and in thus clothing, how the shame of our moral nakedness is put away forever, clothed, in divine mercy, with Christ Himself, as the fruit of His death for us.
How much of this Adam and his wife might apprehend is another question, and it is one impossible, perhaps, for us to answer, Instead of unsafe speculation, therefore, it will be better to pass on to that in which, according to scripture itself, the faith of one of their children is expressed: for "by faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain; and by it he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts," The use of sacrifice thus demands our attention, no solitary example merely of which we have in the case of a few early patriarchs, but a thing which we find, in whatever perverted forms, pervading all religious creeds from the beginning. That- unnatural as it is- it could have rooted itself thus deeply in the minds of men, shows its manifest divine institution, as well as the depth and universality of a common conviction to which it appealed.
Nature could never have dictated it. Cain's way was nature's dictation, but not Abel's. How could it be supposed that, admitting man's sinfulness, and its desert, the death of an innocent victim could atone for the guilty, or that the blood of bulls and goats could put away sin? Looked at as the product of reason merely, such reasoning were utter folly. Connected with the bruised heel of the Seed of the woman, and perhaps with the skins which clothed the first transgressors, a voluntary Sufferer might be seen, whose suffering and death should indeed have efficacy on man's behalf. And thus we gain the assurance of a real view which faith had, and which was offered to faith, of vicarious atonement, as linking itself with the suffering Conqueror of the first prophecy, even as we are assured of Abel that his "gifts" had in some way a value in them which God could accept on his behalf, pronouncing him righteous on their account. With Cain also it would seem as if we must read God's expostulation, "and if thou doest not well, a sin-offering coucheth at the door;" thus prescribing a way in which faith, on the part of a poor sinner, might approach Him with confidence. The way of sacrifice was thus openly proclaimed as the way of acceptance; repentance and faith as what, on man's part, this implied, if really apprehended; no legal conditions, no covenant of works, were in anywise imposed, God starts with that which He has now, and once for all, returned to: His first thought is His last- His own thought, in fact, all through, though man's necessity might require, as we shall see, apparent departure from it. Man's necessity is indeed his perversity, and nothing else, which, refusing in self-confidence God's simple way of grace, compelled Him to allow them the experiment of their own way. But for sixteen centuries, at least, God abides by what He has said at the beginning. Having made known to man His way of acceptance and approach to Him, He waits to see how man's conscience will respond to the sentence upon him- his heart to the grace, which has provided for his need. Alas His next word has to be a threat of near and approaching judgment. "My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh; but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years." F. W. G.
(To be continued, the Lord willing.)
Times and Trials: Part 4. The Trial of Conscience in the Age Before the Flood
We see that, after the fall, God purposed no new trial to man whatever. He revealed the coming of that Seed of the woman who should bruise the serpent's head. He instituted sacrifice, and thus not obscurely intimated the way of blessing and acceptance for man. He declared actually His acceptance of believing Abel, and to Cain the ground of his rejection and the remedy that still remained. But He gave no law; He urged man to no fatal use of his own efforts to work out righteousness. Conscience was to be the teacher of that need which they had as those outside of Eden, whose closed gate was a perpetual witness, as were also the sorrow and death which sin had introduced into the world; while repentance-the truthful acknowledgment of their condition—would be as ever the way out of it, by faith in that which on God's part met it all.
The only test for man was this necessary one, whether conscience would have force to bring him thus to himself and to God. Alas, as to this we know the result. The figure prominent in the antediluvian world is one in whose person the world, at every period, finds its awful representative. "The way of Cain," as Jude may assure us, has survived the flood, and been followed by the mass through the many generations thence to the present time. It is, of course, the exact opposite of God's way; as its first originator stands before us as the first of that seed of the serpent ever in enmity to the woman's Seed. He is thus the incarnation of Satanic opposition to the counsel of God. Abel approaches God by sacrifice, the appointed foreshadowing of Him in whom the conflict between good and evil would find its decisive issue; Cain, rejecting sacrifice, brings as an offering the fruit of his own labor. Here begins, with him, the self-assertion which required so many ages of trial to beat down,- a "ministration of death" and "condemnation." It is man himself who raises the question of his ability to meet God and merit acceptance at His hands; and the question being raised must be fully and with long patience entertained, and conclusively settled.
Towards Cain himself, who at once shows how murder can lurk under the specious form of righteousness, this patience is exercised. He abuses it to build a city in defiance of his doom of vagabondage-a city which his sons adorn with arts and appliances, which, like man's first invention, are made to cover from themselves the shame of their nakedness. Adam wove his girdle out of fig leaves; Cain's sons weave all nature into a web for the awful purpose of self-deception, forcing it into unwilling revolt against God, and idolatrous usurping of its Maker's place. As with their first father, so with these imitators of his apostasy and not his faith, conscience but drives them to hide from the insupportable presence of God, under the cover of His own handiwork. They are pioneers of progress, which, with all its mighty results in the ages since, has never sufficed to lift off the curse from the earth, or take the sting from death, or satisfy the craving heart of man, or deliver from the corruption that is in the world through lust. It has built up luxury, has added burdens to the already burdened, has kindled wars, which come of the "lusts which war in the members." The last of Cain's family is but Tubal-Cain-"Cain's issue." Its Lamech, "the strong man," with his two wives (first of polygamists) and his argument for impunity because of the long-suffering patience, of which Cain had been the subject-shows us clearly and conclusively the moral result.
But Cain and his seed do not fill the whole scene here. The forefront they do; and history at the beginning, like all history since, has little to tell of outside their doings. Yet there is a remnant, beginning with one who, by divine appointment, takes the place of martyred Abel. His son's name, Enos (in a day when names still had meaning), tells us of his acceptance of the humbling reality of man's condition-Enos, "frail man." And "then," we read, "men began to call on the name of Jehovah." God gets His place when man takes his. And so it ever is.
Here, then, a new beginning, as it were, is found; and the divine record, leaving out Cain and his apostate race, gives us now a fresh genealogy, in which we are once more told how "In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth." Of the men of this generation it is but noted that they lived and died, although now first we find-what is wanting as to Cain's race-every year of their unobtrusive lives noted before God. Divine interest is shown in what for man has none, and contributes nothing to the world's history.
When, indeed, we come to Enoch, seventh from Adam, God can keep silence no longer: "And Enoch walked with God three hundred years and Enoch walked with God; and he was not: for God took him." Precious and emphatic commendation of Enoch! Solemn and decisive judgment as to the ruin of all on earth; for the one who walks with God He takes from the earth. How plain an intimation that this pious seed is not as yet to fill the earth! Nay, surely a very clear one that that seed itself begins to fail. This Enoch-walk is rare as it is precious. Indeed we know that but two generations later Noah stands the solitary representative of it upon earth. Even in Noah's father, Lamech, though he speaks piously of God, we can detect deterioration. Is he not, even in his name, sadly linked with Cain's race: another Lamech, a "strong man;" not an Enos, taking his place in self-humiliation before God. It is striking, also, that like his Cainite namesake, he too has his memorable saying. And though at first sight they may seem quite diverse, and in some sense really are, there is yet, spite of all, a striking similarity. For if the Cainite Lamech prophesies impunity to himself for his wrong doing, from the false argument as to God's long-suffering; the Sethite no less, upon the very eve of judgment, speaks of comfort to a generation soon to be swept away by the flood. "And he called his [son's] name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed."
There was truth in this. It was of Noah's day that we read: "And the Lord smelled a sweet savor; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake." Lamech's prophecy was true then as to the "comfort " God had in store for man; false only as to the application to a generation, the survivors of whom were cut off by the judgment that preceded the blessing.
If we go on to the next chapter, the marks of fatal declension are yet more manifest. However we may interpret the "sons of God" of the first paragraph there, it is abundantly evident that Seth's line, as a whole, are no longer exempt from the universal corruption. God declares His Spirit shall not always strive with man, and fixes the limit of present patience to a hundred and twenty years.
Yet it is just here that the world's mighty ones are found, and giants appear upon the earth, men whose fame survives their awful judgment. God on His part saw "that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that every imagination of the thought of his heart was only evil, and that continually. And it repented Jehovah that he had made man upon the earth, and it grieved him at his heart."
When at last all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth, and Noah alone is found walking with God, the flood closed the time of His longsuffering; and the earth emerging from its baptism, bears upon its surface but eight living persons, as the nucleus of a new world. F. W. G. (Concluded)
Times and Trials: Part 5. The Trial by Human Government
The failure is on two sides, that of the governed and that of the governors alike, for both are men. On the part of those in authority is found weakness, the want of self-government, as in Noah, which exposes it to the contempt of those who need most the display of power; or as in Nimrod, the abuse of this, tyranny and oppression. Babel ends this scene in a general revolt against the source of all power- against God- the issue of which is to bring down judgment and stamp the whole scene, even outwardly, with the brand of "confusion."
The failure begins with Noah, and this is the occasion of Ham's sin and the curse upon his posterity. The break-up of government is primarily the fault of those to whom God has committed the authority, with the responsibility, of government. God would be with His own institution necessarily to maintain it, if only those to whom it was entrusted did not betray their trust. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" But then subjection to Him is the secret of subordination on the part of the governed. When man gave up his supremacy over the beast, then the beast rose up against him. He had sunk down to their level practically by giving up God- for the beast knows not God. "Being in honor and abiding not, he is like the beasts that perish." (Psa. 49:12) Thus, long after this, Nebuchadnezzar is driven to the beasts, until he should know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men. His own account is very striking "And at the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me; and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him that liveth forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation.... At the same time my reason returned unto me; and for the glory of my kingdom mine honor and brightness returned unto me; and my counselors and my lords sought unto me; and I was established in my kingdom, and excellent majesty was added unto me." (Dan. 4:34, 36)
Noah's departure from God was not what Nebuchadnezzar had been; but it was as real if not so manifest. We have in him the beginning,—the root, and not the full ripe fruit. A root is not manifest; but it is what the other springs from. Noah's failure is easily read as the unguarded enjoyment of blessings away from the restraining presence of Him whose gifts they are. But this is the very secret of a departure, the limit of which is then only with God and not with man. The soul has lost its anchorage, and cannot choose but drift. Noah is drunk, loses his garment and is naked. In many points it is the Eden-scene repeated. This nakedness is matter of contempt to those who are themselves wholly away from God, and who use it to their own worse shame and ruin. From this family of Ham comes, later, Nimrod, "the rebel"; and the beginning of his kingdom is Babel.
The order is instructive and important. God's thought for man is weakness, dependence, subjection, but so blessing. To realize this they are to be scattered abroad upon the earth. But of all things the pride of man refuses the acknowledgment of weakness, as his will resents subjection. Power and a name he covets. "Union is strength " is his watchword. "And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." Gen. 1:4
Now God's thought for man is a city too. Faith looks for a "city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." Cain's city was not original with him, nor is God's thought caught from man's. It is itself the original; only that it must wait for another scene for its accomplishment. For He cannot build in a storm-vexed and shifting scene, such as the present; and the anticipation of God's time is unbelief, not faith. Man's union is thus confederacy, a compact of selfish wills, of which the cross is the outcome: "Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us."
Meanwhile God is digging deep, in the sense of emptiness and nothingness and guilt, Christ as the foundation of a city whose walls shall be salvation, and whose gates praise; where union shall be communion with the Father and the Son, and thus accord with all things that serve God. Jerusalem shall be therefore "the possession of peace." The outcome of man's confederacy- judgment only stamping it with its true character- is Babel, "confusion." And this is the beginning of his empire, who is the type of the great final "rebel," who crushing all lesser wills into his own, shall be at the same time the "lawless one" and the iron despot.
This "man's day" will come to an end, and the kingdom of Christ be seen to be the only refuge; all other kingdoms but its shadow, this the substance. The perfect Man must come—Himself the perfectly obedient One,- in whom shall be no failure; no degradation of power, and no lack of it: whose of right the throne is. Till then the trial of government, however this may be needful (and therefore "the powers that be are ordained of God," and "he is the minister of God to thee for good"), becomes only one of the things that manifest more and more man's hopeless ruin. He who could not maintain himself in blessing cannot recover himself; nor is there redemption for him in his brother's hand. F. W. G.