Scripture Readings

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Is Genesi9 Figurative The Serpent ? 'woman First Seduced ? Adam Next Effects Of Forbidden Fruit Gospel Of Eden Woman's Curse ? Eve, Its Meahino: ? Flasiino Sword ? CherUbim. It has been assumed by certain commentators on the Scripture, especially of what is called the German school, that the serpent hero is purely figurative, and was not the literal reptile so called, and so universally known. Now, it seems to me that there is an unanswerable objection to any such hypothesis; for, if the serpent was figurative, Adam was figurative; Eve was figurative, and sin too must be figurative, the fall must be figurative, and the whole must be an allegory and a myth. But since this cannot be conceded, for reasons that need not now be recapitulated, it follows that the serpent here spoken of was the reptile known to us all, and strictly so called. That this serpent was in the first instance an extremely beautiful object, and, as here described, the most subtle, that is, the most suitable, from its superiority to other animals, to be made the vehicle of the designs and the assaults of Satan; ? this is what those who take the literal view of the subject have almost universally concluded. But a great deterioration has passed upon the serpent. Some think it moved upright with great dignity and majesty. We know there is vast diflerence in the comparative intelligence of animals, and Satan was sure to select the ablest. Who does not know that the dog is more intelligent than the cat, thatthe horse is more intelligent than the ox ? And it may have been that at the head of all the brute creation in intelligence, making the nearest approximation to the human race, yet at an impassable distance, was the serpent. It has been urged as an objection to the strict histori...