The fall. 66 circumstances supposed; and no other could be imagined conformable to truth. Plato, probably gathering this fact from tradition, but certainly adopting it, from whatever source he derived it, as amongst the features of that state of primeval innocence which he imagines to be the golden age, describes the first inhabitants of the world in similar language. They lived," said he, "naked and exposeduncovered to the seasons, for no storms were there! (yvvos de nai αστρωτοι θυραυλοντες τα πολλα ενεμοντο.) The earth was then also represented as producing spontaneously all necessary things; a renewal of which Virgil anticipates in the latter days, in the eclogue Pollio, and in language taken partly from the prophetic descriptions of the future reign of the Messiah; known to him, possibly, through the Greek translation; and certainly from the fables of the poets relative to the golden age, which he expects to be revived, and which we now see sprang from tradition, flowing from this primeval state. That he refers to those delineations of the golden age is evident, when he describes his hero as one -quo ferrea primum Desinet, ac toto surget gens aurea mundo "by whom the iron years shall cease, and the golden age arise upon all the world;"-and as one of its principal features, he supposes 66 -omnis feret omnia tellus; Non rastros patietur humus, non vinea falcem every land shall produce all necessary things; the ground shall not endure the harrow, nor shall the vine need the pruning-hook. Inspired by his subject, he seems to have caught the spirit of prophecy, while he details also the ancient representations of man's original state At tibi prima, puer, nullo munuscula cultu, -nec magnos metuent armenta leones. "The earth shall pour before thee, sweet boy, without culture, her smiling first-fruits: the timid herds shall not fear the formidable lions." The golden age, so conceived, is evidently borrowed from the paradisaical state. Such was the primeval state of man.-He named the various animals as they were summoned before him, by some kind of immediate intuition, without which it would also be difficult to aecount for the origin of speech. He received the partner of his life and fortunes in the way which has been described; who proved, alas! the companion not only of his weal, but of his woe. His habitation was paradise; his occupation to "dress the garden, and to keep it;" his food was the spontaneous bounty of the earth; his prohibition, one only law-that, of a single tree in Eden "he should not eat." The prohibition was a test of obedience—the penalty was death. The test was conformable to the simplicity of man's original state; and it is difficult to conceive what other test could have been applied to a moral agent in such a situation. It must be a test addressed to the senses, for to it alone could temptation attach. In all its simplicity, it was a covenant acknowledging the sovereignty of the Creator and the allegiance of the creature; demanding the seal of obedience, involving the happiness or misery of the subject, and attaching to it penalties and rewards. In proportion to the simplicity of the law was the criminality of the breach of it; its violation was an impeachment of divine truth, a suspicion of the wisdom and goodness of God;-a defiance of his authority, a dissatisfaction with their state, an ambition to surpass it: the breach of a positive law, with all its obligations, and an open renunciation of their allegiance to the Creator. We have ventured these remarks upon the facts about to be stated, because their simplicity has been objected against the Mosaic History, by those who have not considered that the spirit of disobedience did not depend upon the extent of the actual offence, and that the act must of necessity conform to the simplicity of the state in which the moral agents were placed. History The history of this melancholy transaction cannot be better given Mosaic than in the words of Moses.-"Now the serpent was more subtle of the Fall. 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. 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 wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and gave unto her husband with her, and he did eat."-Such is the history-which we cannot conceive to be allegorical for reasons already assigned; the simplicity of which accords, as we have shown, with the primeval state of man; and if it be rejected, we have no history whatever of what we were, or the way in which we became what we are. The serpent, described only by his subtlety, was originally a very different animal from what he now is and he is still, in some countries, a very beautiful one. Some species of serpents bred in Arabia and Egypt have an unusual brilliancy, and are of a golden colour, reflecting the sun-beams with amazing splendour. The fiery, flying serpents, which are supposed to have been of this order, are called by Moses by the same name (in Num. xxi. 6.) as is applied to the highest orders of angelical existences-seraphim ()—an appellation which would never have been selected to describe celestial beings, had not the creature Speech of the serpent. Trees-of life and itself been transcendently beautiful. The serpent could be no more than the organ of an invisible agent; and we have here the first intimation of a spiritual being fallen from rectitude, becoming the tempter of innocence; having involved others in his ruin, desirous to augment his victims; and subsequently spoken of in the Scriptures under the form in which he seduced our first parents. That the serpent should speak is a difficulty which has induced some to suppose, that all animals had originally the gift of speech; others, that no speaking took place, but that the motions of the animal indicated his intentions; and others, that he spake, and accounted for it as the virtue of the tree which he recommended, and of which he professed to have eaten. Moses said he spake: to the rest we can say nothing, since it is not for us to supply what the history has left untold. As to the trees, it is probable, that the one was planted as the knowledge. preservative of man's immortality; its fruit being designed to invigorate him, and ward off decay: the other, being the test of his allegiance, in allusion to that, and to the consequences of his disobedience, was denominated "the tree of knowledge of good and evil." Sentence. Consequences. Tradition. Man transgressed-and felt the first consciousness of guilt. Summoned by his Creator, he could not deny his offence; but he endeavoured to transfer the blame to the woman, by whom it was cast upon the serpent; both excusing themselves by referring to the organ of their rebellion, neither denying the fact. Sentence was passed upon the serpent, that he should be degraded from the rank which he held in the creation, whatever it was, and become a grovelling reptile; upon the woman, that the pangs of child-bearing should be entailed upon her, and her posterity: upon the man, that he should be driven from paradise, exposed to hardship, earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, and labour upon the soil which was cursed for his sake; upon both, that they should die, and return to their dust. Such was the fall; of the consequences of which they became immediately sensible in various ways. Shame took possession of them; their bodies no longer were guarded against the elements, which now changed; they needed a covering, and received it, from interwoven leaves and the skins of beasts. They were expelled from Eden, and forbidden ever to return; a fiery guard of cherubim was placed to guard the hallowed spot, and its original possessors became (what men have ever since been) pilgrims upon the earth. The principal features of this disastrous event are preserved in tradition. Plato represents them in his Symposiacs. "Porus being drunk with nectar, enters the garden of Jupiter, is circumvented by Penia, and thence cast out.' This fable is mentioned by Origen, as referring to the fall. The deterioration of human affairs, is generally stated by the ancients, in the golden age yielding first to that of silver, finally to that of iron. The history of Adam and Eve, of the tree, of the serpent, of the circumstances of the fall, is blended with Grecian ceremonies; the very name of Eve being preserved in their observances, and the symbol of the serpent employed in their mysteries. It is even to be traced amidst the traditions of Peru, and of the Philippine Isles; thus penetrating the idolatrous recesses of the new world.1 The historian does not determine the residence of the first parents of the human race, after they were expelled paradise-it is probable that they would not wander far from a spot so endeared to them by recollections at once pleasing and painful; and tradition seems to fix their earliest abode somewhere in India. The first-born of Adam was Cain-the second, probably about a Cain and year later, Abel. The name of the first, possession, indicates the Abel. fond expectations of the mother-that of the second, vanity, seems A.M. 2. to intimate some early disappointment of her hopes. The youths B.C. 4003. grew up to manhood; they chose their occupations; the one was a husbandman, the other a shepherd. How long they lived together before the fatal catastrophe which rendered the one the first victim of death, and the other a murderer, cannot be decided: it may be inferred, that several years had elapsed before this event, since Cain expressed apprehensions subsequently, which implied some considerable population on the earth. The brothers brought an offering each to God; the one appears to be an acknowledgment of the Creator, in the presentation of the fruits of the earth; the other a sacrifice, offered as the apostle assures us, in faith, and therefore acceptable, and looking forward to the great atonement which should eventually be made for sin.2 The characters of these brothers were very different. In the gracious expostulations of the Deity with Cain, and in the express testimony of St. John, connected with that of St. Paul, we are assured of what the tenour of the history would have allowed us fairly to infer, that the one was righteous, and the other wicked; Abel obtaining the witness of God in his favour. The offering of Cain was rejected, while that of his brother was regarded with approbation. The bad passions of this wicked man became infuriated; and were written in dark and legible characters upon his countenance. A conference between God and this rebel took place. Who shall say in what way it was conducted? for who can tell the inconceivable and innumerable channels of access which the Father of Spirits has to the spirits which he created? It seems to have been by an audible voice; it appears as though Deity had not yet left off conversing with his fallen creature immediately. Every appeal was made to his reason, and to his conscience; and every appeal was in vain. He was told of the equality of divine dispensa 1 See the testimonies of Maimonides, Sanchoniathon, Plutarch; collected by Le Pluche, Grotius, and others. 2 Magee on the Atonement. Sentence of Cain. tions; of the equity of the divine character; his pretensions as the first-born were allowed, and the homage of his brother guaranteed; the unreasonableness of his displeasure was stated; and of the perilous circumstances in which his untamed passions placed him, he was admonished. All proved unavailing. Sin had "conceived," and it "brought forth death." Smothering in his own dark bosom his malignant design, Cain invited his brother Abel into the field; and when they were distant from human habitations, assaulted and slew him. This was the first appearance of man's last enemy; and could mortality assume a more terrific shape than murder? Murder by the hand of a brother? We must not trust ourselves to detail all the emotions which we cannot but associate with this transaction. What family became fatherless in consequence of this fratricide, the historian has not said—his narrative is brief, and he hastens on to events more nearly approaching his own times: but it is not likely that Abel should have been unmarried, or his marriage unfruitful, although the history is silent on these particulars; especially as it is evident the world had no inconsiderable population at that time. This atrocious crime could not be concealed. The eye of God was alike upon the murderer and his victim; the earth drank, for the first time, human blood; but not before its voice had pierced the heavens. The murderer was sentenced to quit for ever the domestic circle which he had diminished, and the advantages of society, whose laws, written upon the heart, he had broken; and to wander a vagabond over the face of the earth, rendered, as to the spots which he had been accustomed to cultivate, barren; hated, feared, and shunned by all. A dreadful sentence; and felt deeply by the fratricide.— His apprehensions were excited lest he should meet the retribution of death for his crime: and this fear, while it speaks to the multiplied population of the earth, appears to us to imply posterity from Abel, who would of course be most likely to visit the blood of their parent upon the head of his murderer. We will only stop to remark, that supposing this to have taken place about the 130th year of the world (and that longevity of which we are about to speak demands this concession, since Adam begat Seth, the son next to Abel, at that time); and granting that Adam and Eve had no other children than Cain and Abel, excepting two daughters as their wives, a considerable population will have arisen in that space from these connections. It has been calculated, that "supposing them to have been married in the 19th year of the world, they might easily have had eight children, both male and female, in the 25th year. In the 50th year, there might proceed from them, in a right line, 64 persons. In the 74th year, there could be 572; in the 98th year, 4096; and in the 122d year, 32,768." If the "other children born (during that time) of Cain and Abel be added, their children, and the children of their children," the calculator supposes that "in the 122d year, |