CHAPTER I.The Paradise Home in Eden.

WOMEN IN WHITE RAIMENT.CHAPTER I.The Paradise Home in Eden.

WOMEN IN WHITE RAIMENT.

Man’s First Home a Garden—Eve the Isha—The Scene of the Temptation—Hiding from God—Refusing to Confess, Judgment is Pronounced—The Sad Results of Sin—Eve Believed the Promise.

Perhapsthere never lived a woman who has been “talked about” so much as this first woman in White Raiment, for who has not said, If Eve had not been beguiled into a violation of the one commandment by partaking of the fruit of the forbidden tree, we would all be as happy and sinless as was she and her husband before that act of disobedience. But we shall miss the great lesson Eve’s experience intended to convey if we fail to recognize that God put humanity on probation, and the fact of the first temptation is the symbol of every temptation; the fact of the first fall is the symbol of every transgression; the great mistake that lay in the first sin is the symbol of every effect of sin.

After the Lord God had formed man, we read that He “planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man.” What pen could describe the garden of the Lord’s planting? There were splashing fountains. There were woodbine, and honeysuckles, and morning-glories climbing over the wall, and daisies, and buttercups, and strawberries in the grass. There were paths with mountain mosses, bordered with pearls and diamonds. Here and there cooling streams sparkled in the sunlight or made sweet music as they fell over ledges and rippled away under the overstretching shadows of palm trees or fig orchards, and theirthreads of silver finally lost amid the fruitage of orange groves. Trees and shrubs of infinite variety added their beauty to the many picturesque scenes everywhere spread out. In the midst of the overhanging foliage were all the bright birds of heaven, and they stirred the air with infinite chirp and carol. Never since have such skies looked down through such leaves into such waters. Never has river wave had such curve and sheen and bank as adorned the Pison, the Havilah, the Gihon and the Hiddekel, even the pebbles being bdellium and onyx stone. What fruits, with no curculio to sting the rind! What flowers, with no slug to gnaw the root! What atmosphere, with no frost to chill and with no heat to consume! Bright colors tangled in the grass. Perfume filled the air. Music thrilled the sky. Great scenes of gladness and love and joy spread out in every direction.

We know not how long, perhaps ever since this man had been created in the “image” of his God, he had wandered through this Eden home, had watched the brilliant pageantry of wings and scales and clouds, and may have noticed that the robins fly the air in twos, and that the fish swim the waters in twos, and that the lions walk the fields in twos, and as he saw the merry, abounding life of his subject creatures, every one perfectly fitted to its environment, and each mated with another of the same instincts and methods of living, he felt the isolation of his own self-involved being, and, possibly, a shadow of loneliness may have crept into his face, and God saw it. And so He said, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” So “He caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam,” as if by allegory to teach all ages that the greatest of earthly blessings is sound sleep.

When he awoke, a most beautiful being, the crowning glory of creation, stood beside him, looking at him with heaven in her eyes, her exquisite form draped with perfect feminine grace and strength. As Adam looked into the face of this immaculate daughter of God, this Woman in White Raiment, he said, “This is now bone of my bones, and fleshof my flesh. She shall be called Woman” (Hebrew Isha), because God had clothed in separate flesh the gentler and more conscientious part of Adam’s nature, that it might share the work and bliss of Paradise.

How long that first married pair lived in Paradise we are not informed. The story of their disastrous disobedience is given in as few words as possible. Eve may have sauntered out one beautiful morning and as she looked up at the fruit of the various trees of the garden must have recognized “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” and doubtless she had heard Adam say that this was the forbidden tree, and possibly may have cautioned her, “For,” said he, the Lord had said, “in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” As she looked up at the tree and saw the beautiful fruit hanging on the branches, she may have admired its bright, fresh color without any thought of evil in her heart. It is the characteristic of woman to admire the beautiful. Indeed her finer feelings can better appreciate than man, the blendings of color and shadings that combine to give expression to the beautiful.

But it was Satan’s moment. We do not know how long he had been in hiding among the recesses of the garden waiting for just such an opportunity. Quickly he entered a serpent, which, it is declared, “was more subtle than any beast of the field,” and came up to Eve as she admired the tree and its fruit, and in most questioning surprise said, “Yea hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” The query is very cautiously made, expressing great surprise: Yea, truly, can it be possible? The query, with its questioning surprise, had in it now a yes, and now a no, according to the connection. This is the first striking feature in the beginning of the temptation. The temptation of Christ, in the wilderness, was very similar to this. Satan twice challenged our Lord on the point of his divine Sonship: “If thou be the Son of God.” As if he had said, “You claim to be the Son of God, I doubt it, and challenge the claim. If you are, prove it by doing what I suggest.”This was also a blow at the confession of God Himself, “This is My beloved Son.” So here, Satan, in the most cautious manner, would excite doubt in the mind of Eve. Then the expression also aims to awaken mistrust at the goodness and wisdom of God, and so weaken the force of the temptation. As if he had said, “What, not eat of every tree of the garden? I doubt it. Such a prohibition seems unreasonable.”

Here Eve would assure the tempter that she was not mistaken in regard to the prohibition. “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.” Notice the Italic words are added by Eve to the command of God concerning the tree. No doubt, as she stood there admiring the tree, the monitor of her heart kept saying, “Don’t touch it, don’t touch it,” and, in her guileless simplicity, she adds the words to the prohibition. And yet by this very addition does her first wavering disguise itself under the form of an overdoing obedience. The first failure is her not observing the point of the temptation, and allowing herself to be drawn into an argument with the tempter; the second, that she makes the prohibition stronger than it really is, and thus lets it appear that to her, too, the prohibition seems too strict; the third that she weakens the prohibition by reducing it to the lesser caution. God had said, “Thou shalt surely die.” She reduces it to “lest ye die,” thus making the motive of obedience to be predominantly the fear of death.

Her tempter, who could quote Scripture to our Lord in his second temptation, after he had failed in the first, was quick to take up the woman’s rendering of the prohibition, and makes answer, “Ye shall not surely die!” What an advance over the first suggestion, “Yea, hath God said.” No doubt he had noted her wavering, and, instead of turning promptly away from the author of her wavering, saw her disposed to inform him of what God had said concerning this “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” and he promptly steps out from the area of cautious craft into that of a reckless denialof the truth of God’s prohibition, and a malicious suspicion of its object. Eve had not repeated the words of the prohibition, and of the penalty, in its double or intensive form, but Satan repeats it, in blasphemous mockery, as though he had heard it in some other way, and stoutly denies the truth of the threatening, that is, the doubt becomes unbelief.

The way, however, is not prepared for the unbelief without first arousing a feeling of distrust in respect to God’s love, His righteousness, and even His power. So the tempter denies all evil consequences as arising from the forbidden enjoyment, whilst, on the contrary, he promises the best and most glorious results from the same. “Instead of your eyes closing in death,” he said, “they shall be opened.” The tempter would have the woman believe that, in eating of the fruit, she would become wonderfully enlightened, and, at the same time, raised to a divine glory—“shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And so, in like manner, is every sin a false and senseless belief in the salutary effects of sin.

We tremble for Eve at this point of her interview with her tempter. It is an awful moment, a moment in which her own happiness and that of her husband’s and all the generations of earth are in the balances.

“And when the woman saw.” She was now looking at the tree and its fruit from a far different standpoint from that in the morning. She beheld it now with a look made false by the distorted application of God’s prohibition by her tempter. In fact, she had become enchanted by the distorted construction put upon God’s plain commandment. The satanic promises seemed to have driven the threatening of that prohibition out of her thought. Now she beholds the tree with other eyes. Three times, it is said, how charming the tree appeared to her.

But where has Adam been all this time? Doubtless he was busy with his duties, for God had set him “to dress and to keep” the garden in which he had been placed. He may have seen Eve passing down one of the beautiful paths of the garden in her morning walk, beguiled by the splash ofthe fountains, the song of the birds, and the beauty of the flowers at her feet. He may have observed her stay longer than usual, and so turned aside from his duties to see what had become of her, and following down the path over which he had last seen her disappear among the trees and shrubbery of the garden, soon came to the place where “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” stood, and then, from the lips of his own pure, sweet wife, learned what had taken place. Possibly she was holding the very fruit of which she had said, “neither shall ye touch it,” in her hands, admiring its beauty and wondering how it tasted. And, while examining the fruit, she told her husband what had passed between her and her tempter, and as she finished her story she said, “I do not think there can be any harm in my just breaking the rind of it, to see how it looks inside.” Prompted by womanly curiosity, she broke open the fruit, and, before she was really conscious, she “did eat!” “Why, how nice!” she exclaimed, at the same time handing the other half to her husband. As a good gardener, he would naturally share the curiosity of his wife to taste this fruit, “and he did eat!”

The next statement we have, “And the eyes of them both were opened.” But how were they opened? Each of them had two good eyes before eating the fruit; in fact, Eve had been admiring the fruit as it hung among the branches of the tree, and as she had turned it over in her hands. Before they tasted they saw with their natural eyes. Now they see with a higher knowledge of sense—there is added a con-sense—a conscience or self-consciousness. In the relation between the antecedent here and what followed there evidently lies a terrible irony. The promise of the tempter becomes half fulfilled, though, indeed, in a sadly different sense from what they had supposed. They had attained, in consequence, to a moral insight. Self-consciousness was awakened with their knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil. It belongs to the very beginning of moral cognition and development.

How strange it all is. Eden full of trees, fruits of every kind, luscious and satisfying, but, excited by false and wicked statements in respect to the prohibition of the fruit of one tree, she straightway desires to taste for herself, and that curiosity blasted her and blasted all nations. And thousands in every generation, inspired by unhealthful inquisitiveness, have tried to look through the keyhole of God’s mysteries—mysteries that were barred and bolted from all human inspection—and they have wrenched their whole moral nature out of joint by trying to pluck fruit from branches beyond their reach.

We may also learn that fruits which are sweet to the taste may afterward produce great agony. Forbidden fruit for Eve was so pleasant she invited her husband also to take of it; but her banishment from paradise and years of sorrow and wretchedness and woe paid for that luxury.

Sometimes people plead for just one indulgence in sin. There can be no harm to go to this or that forbidden place just once. Doubtless that one Edenic transgression did not seem to be much, but it struck a blow which to this day makes the earth stagger. To find out the consequences of that one sin you would have to compel the world to throw open all its prison doors and display the crime, throw open all its hospitals and display the disease, throw open all the insane asylums and show the wretchedness, open all the sepulchres and show the dead, open all the doors of the lost world and show the damned. That one Edenic transgression stretched chords of misery across the heart of the world and struck them with dolorous wailing, and it has seated the plagues upon the air and the shipwrecks upon the tempest, and fastened, like a leech, famine to the heart of the sick and dying nations. Beautiful at the start, horrible at the last. Oh, how many have experienced it! Beware of entertaining temptations to first sins! Turn away and flee for thy life to the sure and only Refuge—Christ Jesus.

In the cool of the day, as the evening hours drew on, Adam and Eve “heard the voice of the Lord God walkingin the garden.” They were used to hearing that voice walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Eden had become a dear spot to the heart of their Father, and doubtless He often came down to converse with them. So now He seeks companionship with the majestic human masterpieces of His creation. And why should he not?

But, passing strange! instead of running to Him out of their Eden home, as doubtless they had been wont to do, “Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.” This act, no doubt, was prompted by self-consciousness and the shame and guilt which it brought. So we clearly see that sin separates from God. They had pronounced judgment upon their transgression by their very conduct. Instead of meeting God as they had been doing, a feeling of distrust and servile fear entered their hearts, and a sense of the loss of their spiritual purity, together with the false notion that they can hide themselves from God. And so it has come to pass that ever since the first transgression men have been hiding from God, running away from his presence.

“And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?” The Lord is the first to break the silence; the first to seek erring humanity. Not for His own sake does God direct this inquiry, for He knew where Adam was, but that Adam might take courage and open his mouth in confession—it was an invitation to tell the whole sad story. But, instead, he multiplies the difficulties by his answer, “I was afraid, because I was naked.” That is to say, Adam, instead of confessing the sin, sought to hide behind its consequences, and his disobedience behind his feeling of shame. His answer to the interrogation is far from the real cause of the change that had come over his conduct, which was sin, and made his consciousness of nakedness to be the reason. To still make Adam see the true reason for his hiding, God farther asked, “Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat?” Observe this question is so framed as tocontain in it the eating and the tree from which he ate, and could have been answered with, “Yes!” How easy God made it for Adam to confess. But, alas! How far from it. He answered, “The woman whom thou gavest unto me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat.” How deep the root of sin had taken hold upon Adam’s heart. What does he say in this answer? Why this, he acknowledged the guilt, but indirectly charges God as the author of the calamity. Eve is referred to as “the woman” who is the author of his sin, and, since she was given to him by the hand of the Lord, therefore it is the Lord’s fault, for if He had not given her to Adam, he would not have partaken of the forbidden tree! How passing strange is all this. And yet that is just what men are doing after six thousand years of experience with sin. Instead of breaking away from it, they say, God put it before them, and they could not resist the temptation to sin. The loss of love that comes out in this interposing of the wife is, moreover, particularly observable in this, that he grudges to call her Eve (Isha—married) or my wife.

Failing to return unto God by way of confession, the Lord next deals with Adam in judgment. “Cursed is the ground for thy sake ... thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.” The very soil he had been sent to cultivate, and to carry forward in a normal unfolding, to imperishable life and spiritual glory, is now cursed for his sake, and therewith changed to that of hostility to him. Referring to the curse upon mankind, in consequence of the fall, Hugh MacMillan has called attention to the remarkable fact that weeds, the curse of the cultivator, accompany civilization. “There is one peculiarity about weeds which is very remarkable,” says this writer, “namely, that they only appear on ground which either by cultivation or for some other purpose, has been disturbed by man. They are never found truly wild, in woods or hills, or uncultivated wastes far away from human dwellings. They never grow on virgin soil, where human beings have never been. No weeds exist in those parts of the earth that are uninhabited, orwhere man is only a passing visitant.” And what is true of mother earth is in a sense true of the human heart. The youthful mind no sooner awakes to thought and reason, than it gives evidence of abundance of weeds. In surprise the mother asks where the little one has learned disobedience and questions how so young a mind can assert such strong opposition to wholesome discipline.

And now, lest a worse calamity should fall on Adam and his wife, by stretching forth their hands “and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever,” God “drove out the man” from Eden, and placed “cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” The act of driving Adam and Eve out of Eden has always been looked upon as a harsh measure. If, however, we stop to reflect what awful consequences would have followed the rash act of eating of the tree of life, we shall see that it was an act of mercy. For, after placing himself under the law of sin, what endless sorrow would have come upon the race, if men could not be removed by death. Think of such human monsters as history has time and again produced. Men and women degraded by thousands of years in sin would indeed be dangerous characters. So God cut off this possibility by guarding the tree of life.

But there came a great change over all life. Beasts that before were harmless and full of play put forth claw and sting and tooth and tusk. Birds whet their beak for prey, clouds troop in the sky, sharp thorns shoot up through the soft grass, blastings are on the leaves. All the chords of that great harmony are snapped. Upon the brightest home this world ever saw our first parents turned their back and led forth on a path of sorrow the broken-hearted myriads of a ruined race.

THE ACCEPTED OFFERING.

When Eve looked into the face of her first-born, she remembered the words of the Lord, in His judgment upon Satan, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shalt bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel,” and, misunderstanding the meaning of the promise, she called him Cain, meaning, “I have gotten a man from the Lord,” mistaking him for the Redeemer. But how bitter must have been her disappointment as she saw the child grow up, saw his characteristics manifest themselves in acts of hatefulness and revenge. However, but little is said of Cain and his younger brother Abel, until they bring their offerings to the Lord. We read that Abel was a “keeper of sheep,” and Cain was a “tiller of the ground.” While it is not stated, we must believethese brothers knew what was, and what was not, an acceptable offering to the Lord, that Cain could easily have exchanged his fruits of the soil for a lamb of Abel’s flock. Evidently Cain was lacking in that fine moral insight which would lead him to have respect as to the nature of the sacrifice necessary to atone for sin. There must be the shed blood of the victim, for, “without shedding of blood,” there is no remission. Either Cain did not regard himself a sinner, or, if he did, he thought one sacrifice as good as another, and so he brings “of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.” God could not accept this act of disobedience. Because his offering was rejected, and seeing Abel’s offering accepted, Cain rose up and slew his brother. He failed to shed the blood of a lamb for his sin, but was quick to shed the blood of his brother, and thereby add to his sin. But what a crushing blow was this to the hopes of the mother heart who had supposed that her first-born was the promised “seed.” How she must have broken down under her sorrow, as she saw the blood dripping from Cain’s fingers, and that, too, the blood of his own brother. And sadder still as she looked upon the face of death for the first time. However she might have understood the lying words of her tempter, “Ye shall not surely die,” she now sees in the lifeless body of her second child, the awful reality of death. And when the first grave was made, how she must have daily wept over the precious mound, not only over this her first experience in bitter bereavement, but also over the circumstances under which it was brought about, and as she plants the flowers on the tomb, she fancies she hears the blood of the innocent victim continually crying unto heaven to be avenged. Oh, the bitter, bitter fruits of disobedience, who can know to what misery they bring us?

And then also observe Cain’s conduct in this awful crime. God’s arraignment of this fratricide was analogous to that of Adam and Eve. But Cain evades every acknowledgment of it. He not only tells a barefaced falsehood, but in a most impudent manner asks, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”What a fearful advance on the timid explanations of Adam’s transgression as he spoke to the Lord out of his hiding place. How men should tremble at the very thought of sin.

But the sorrowing Eve took heart once more in the birth of Seth, “for,” said she, “God hath appointed another seed instead of Abel.” So hope in the heart, like the perpetual altar fires in the sacrifices of the temple, seemed to sing a sweet song of comfort, and every child born seemed to outweigh the bitter disappointments in the realization of the promised Redeemer.

With this hope in the heart of Eve, and this beautiful language upon her lips, the Scripture account closes. How long she lived after the birth of Seth we are not informed, but of this we are assured, she believed God in His promise of the Messiah. That she misunderstood when that promise was to be realized, is quite evident, but there is every reason to believe she died in the faith of its ultimate realization, for she judged God to be righteous in the promise.

What is the lesson the loss of Paradise has for us? Plainly this: The perverted use of things good in themselves. Eve saw that the tree was pleasant to the eyes. From that day to this there have been women who would throw their health, their home happiness, their chance of training their children for God, their life, their honor, their hope of heaven, into a cauldron out of which might be brought something pleasant to the eyes. Eyes are good, useful and necessary, but we need to make a covenant with them not to see more than is good for our souls.

After she saw, she “desired.” This would seem to imply that the real source of all sin is in the spirit of our own desires. The last of the Ten Commandments strikes down to the very tap-root of all evil, “Thou shalt not covet.” All sin commences with the kindling of desire. The apostle James gives us the pedigree, “Every man is tempted when he is turned away of his own lust and enticed; then, when lust and desire hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, andsin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” The secret of victory, therefore, is not to allow the mind and heart to dwell for a moment upon any forbidden thing. The whole modern life is terribly fitted to stimulate unholy desire. The little child is taught from infancy to covet the vain and glittering attractions of the world—dress, equipage, pleasure, praise, fashion, display and a thousand worldly allurements. The city bill boards are covered with nude harlots. There are no less than 200,000 houses for these social outcasts in our fair land. These open gateways to immorality, where the virtue of the nation is ground out, are not only guarded by police force, but young girls by the 100,000 a year are stolen from country homes by the paid agents, and sold into these open dens of vice and crime, where these poor girls die in a short time, the average length of this life of sin being only five years. And still the people have not a word to say for the suppression of these crime-breeding dens of vice, but legalize and protect them by law to the ruin of our homes. These are the things that are eating out the spiritual life of the nation, and for that reason many do not want to retain the thought of God in their hearts. Hence the responsibilities of life are pressing upon us. As you have seen the child trundling its little hoop by touching it on both sides alternately to keep it from either extreme, so God teaches us both with warning and with promise, as our spiritual condition requires. Sometimes it is warning we need, and He shouts in our ear the solemn admonition, as a mother would cry to her babe in wild alarm if in danger of falling over the precipice. But, again, when we are in danger of being too much depressed, He speaks to us with notes of encouragement and promise, and tells us there is no real danger of our failing utterly, and that He will never suffer us to be tempted above what we are able. And so we hear Him saying on one hand, “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall;” but immediately after adding on the other side, “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will,with the temptation, make a way of escape that ye may be able to bear it.”

“Fear not! When temptations try theeTrust the Saviour’s loving care;No temptation will come nigh theeMore than thou has strength to bear.“Fail not! In the hour of testing,Christ is pledged to bring thee throughIn His arms securely restingThere thou shalt thy strength renew.”

“Fear not! When temptations try theeTrust the Saviour’s loving care;No temptation will come nigh theeMore than thou has strength to bear.

“Fear not! When temptations try thee

Trust the Saviour’s loving care;

No temptation will come nigh thee

More than thou has strength to bear.

“Fail not! In the hour of testing,Christ is pledged to bring thee throughIn His arms securely restingThere thou shalt thy strength renew.”

“Fail not! In the hour of testing,

Christ is pledged to bring thee through

In His arms securely resting

There thou shalt thy strength renew.”

We are also impressed with the influence woman has for good or evil. What we need as a nation is consecrated womanhood. When at last we come to calculate the forces that decide the destiny of nations, it will be found that the mightiest and grandest influence came from home, where the wife cheered up despondency and fatigue and sorrow by her own sympathy, and the mother trained her child for heaven, starting the little feet on the path to the celestial city, and the sisters, by their gentleness, refined the manners of the brother, and the daughters were diligent in their kindness to the aged, throwing wreaths of blessing on the road that led father and mother down the steep of years. God bless our homes. And may the home on earth be the vestibule of our home in heaven.

Back to Index Next