ther shall a man put on a woman's garment; for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.'

Of skins. That the beasts whose skins were allotted for a covering to our first parents on this occasion had been slain, it is natural to suppose; and there were no purposes for which they could have been slain, except those of food, of sacrifice, or of clothing. That they were not slain for food is evident from the fact that the grant of animal food was not made till the days of Noah, ch. 9. 3. Neither can it be admitted that they were slain merely for clothing; since it cannot be supposed that Adam would immediately after the sentence of the divine displeasure, have dared to kill God's creatures without his permission. Nor is it likely that God should order them to be slain solely for their skins, when man could have been supplied with garments made of other materials. It follows then that they must have been slain with a view to sacrifice. This alone supplies an adequate reason. The whole of the animal (as the primitive offerings were probably all holocausts) would here be devoted to the use of religion, except the skin, which would be employed for purposes of clothing. And even this might not be without its moral and religious ends; for while Adam and Eve thought only of a covering for their bodies, God pointed out to them a covering for their souls. They were despoiled of their original righteousness, and they needed a robe to cover their naked souls, that they might again stand before God 'without spot or blemish.' We undoubtedly see then in this incident the first institution of animal sacrifices; for that such a rite should have originated in mere human device cannot be maintained with any show of reason. How should it have entered into the mind of man to imagine that the blood of a beast could make satisfaction to God for sin? What

conceivable connection is there, apart from divine appointment, between the blood of a brute animal and the sins of a human being? Indeed there was much more reason to think that God would have been displeased with the unauthorized destruction of his creatures, than that he would so accept it as to forgive iniquity on account of it. Such an offering without a divine warrant would have been at best a mere act of superstitions will-wor ship, for which no one could have promised himself acceptance; for what superstition can be more gross than to believe without any authority for so doing, that God will transfer the sins of the sacrificer to the sacrifice, and that thus the sacrificer himself shall be pardoned? The very pagans themselves judged more rationally, for they are unanimous in ascribing the origin of sacrifice to a divine command. The divine acceptance therefore of the offerings must be regarded as a demonstration of a divine institution designed to prefigure the great atoning sacrifice, and that they were now appointed for the express purpose of directing the view of fallen man to the future propitiatory sacrifice which Christ should offer to God upon the cross. And how well such a symbolical rite was adapted to the end may be judged of from the following remarks by the Rev. J. P. Smith in his Treatise on Atonement and Sacrifice. "The selection, presentation, and immolation of the unoffending animal, the regard paid to its blood, its consumption by fire, the solemn ceremonies which accompanied, and the particular confession and supplications of the worshipper,-must have powerfully impressed the ideas of sin and guilt, the desert of punishment, the substitution of the innocent, and the pardon of the transgressor. When men were accustomed to symbolical actions, such a signification would be more readily apprehended and more

i ver. 5. Like Isa. 19. 12. & 47. 12, 13. Jer. 22. 23.

solemnly felt than under our circumstances and habits. The refinements of advanced society and the general use of letters, have made us far less sensible to the language of living signs than the ruder children of nature have always been How much more must the impressions on the heart have been increased, when the first sacrifice was offered; when the parents of our race, recent from their guilty fall, were abased by the divine rebuke, driven from their blissful seat, and filled with dismay at the threatening of DEATH!-a threatening piercing their souls, but of the nature and effects of which they could form but a vague idea. But when directed by stern authority to apply some instrument of death to the lamb which, with endearing innocence, had sported around them, they heard its unexpected cries, they beheld the appalling sight of streaming blood and struggling agonies and life's last throes --they gazed upon the breathless body, --and they were told, THIS IS DEATH; how stricken must they have been with horror such as no description could ever paint! And how would their horror be aggravated to think that they themselves were the guilty authors of so much misery to the beings around them? It is easy then to perceive with what important and salutary lessons the rite of sacrifice was fraught.'-For some farther views on the subject of sacrifices, see note on ch. 4. 3, 4.

22. Behold the man is become as one of us. The usual interpretation put upon this passage has been to consider it as an ironical mode of upbraiding Adam with the issue of his transgression; as an indignant taunt at his credulity in trusting to the tempter's prom

k ch. 2. 9.

ise; q. d. 'Behold, all ye angels the fruit of man's rashness! See how he has obtained the object of his ambition! See what he has gained by listening to the voice of the serpent! Sec the pitch of divinity to which he has raised himself by his newly-acquired knowledge of good and evil!' It is by some objected to this that it attributes to the Most High an unbecoming levity at the awful period when he was determining the fate of his fallen creatures. But as this kind of holy sarcasm is sometimes employed in the Scriptures, there is perhaps no insuperable objection to this view of the meaning of the text. But a preferable inter pretation we think is, to take the words as implying what the man had aimed and attempted to become, rather than what he actually had become. This is entirely agreeable to the Hebrew idiom by which an action is said to be done when it is merely attempted or proposed to be done. (See note on Gen. 37. 21.) This construction too is perhaps more in accordance with our natural sense of the gravity and solemnity of the whole proceeding, and makes the expression one rather of commiseration than of taunting reproach. the correctness of this interpretation cannot be positively affirmed.And now, lest he put forth his hand, &c. It will be observed that the sentence is defective, and is to be supplied in some such way as this;-'And now care is to be taken lest,' or 'Now he must be driven forth lest,' &c. The clause omitted is plainly hinted at in the commencement of the next verse, 'Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden.'- -T And take also of the tree of life, and live for ever. That

Still

is, in the hope, the vain hope, of living for ever. If it be asked how Adam would have sinned by eating of the fruit of the tree of life, which had not been prohibited, the proper answer is, that the sin would have consisted rather in the purpose than in the act-the purpose in this way to counteract and render null and void the sentence of death which he had incurred. Yet even in this he would have been disappointed, for the tree was intended merely as a sacramental pledge of the continuance of a happy life as long as he remained obedient, but was not, that we can learn, endowed with any remedial virtue to restore life when once lost. The language, it must be acknowledged, seems to imply, that, had man tasted of the tree of life, even after his rebellion, he would have lived for ever, and that he was expelled from Paradise to prevent such a consequence. But this, as appears from several considerations, is an erroneous view of the text. When the first pair violated the divine command, they immediately became mortal, subject to infirmity and death, agreeably to the penalty, 'in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.' This was the original doom, and therefore they could not avoid the penalty, and become immortal by eating of the tree of life after their transgression. The sentence incurred by their sin, would unavoidably take effect in the time appointed by the Almighty, whatever attempt the fallen pair had made to reverse it. They had forfeited life and could not avoid the punishment of their guilt. They were expelled from Paradise, then, not because their eating of the tree of life would have rendered them immortal, but because it was proper that having forfeited the thing signified

1 ch. 4. 2. & 9. 20.

they should henceforth be debarred from the sign. Thus viewed the exclusion is perhaps to be considered as an act of mercy, inasmuch as it cut the offenders off from the liability again to incur the divine displeasure by a renewed act of sin.

23. Sent him forth from the garden. The original denotes something more than a gentle dismission. It is the term used in speaking of the divorce of a wife from her husband, which implies a violent separation. So here, as appears from the ensuing verse, it is probably to be understood as signifying a stern and angry ejection.--¶ To till the ground from whence he was taken. Referring either to the element from which he was formed, or to the ground without the precincts of paradise; for he was created without those limits and afterwards 'taken' and placed within them. The original term for 'till' is the word usually rendered to 'serve,' and denotes all that servile work which should be requisite to procure a subsistence, and which makes man, as it were, à servant to the earth. Thus Eccl. 5. 9, 'The profit of the earth is for all; the king himself is served by the field (Heb. is servant to the field).”. His tilling the ground, however, would be compensated by his increased enjoyment of its fruits, and his converse with the earth would naturally be improved to keep him humble and remind him of his latter end. Thus the curse was in a measure overruled to be a blessing in more respects than one. The diminished fruitfulness of the earth has a merciful tendency to restrain the progress of sin, for if the whole earth were like the plains of Sodom in fertility, which are compared to the garden of God (Gen. 13. 10), its inhabitants would be very apt to be as Sodom and Gomorrha