Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

ening sky, then the morning twilight, then the concentration of light more and more, and at length the glorious rising!

There is, through all the years and centuries of Judaism, a gradual development of the Messianic Hope. The patriarchs knew more of Him than our first parents, the tribes more than the patriarchs. Then through the law, the prophets, and the psalms, there was ever increasing light shed upon the Shiloh of their hopes, whom having not seen they loved; till they saw the glorious perfection of their ideal in the Incarnate God-heaven and earth, God and man, united in the divine babe of Bethlehem.

The Advent did not all take place at His birth; that was only the flower of a previous growth. The Advent began in Paradise. We have its beginning in the First Promise. Let us look more closely at this Promise.

Satan had invaded Paradise, the abode of holiness and peace. Our first parents had listened to his whispers, and yielded to his temptations. They fell!

What Satan had promised them they now had-the knowledge of good and evil. Good they had known before-what a 'blessed knowledge! Evil they now knew-alas! how bitter the acquisition !

What a sad spectacle they now present-naked, guilty, and ashamed! They thought of God, and were troubled. They gazed at one another as companions in sin and in sorrow; while Satan looked on with hellish satisfaction.

God appears! His voice is heard in the garden! at other times so sweet and welcome, but now full of terror as the voice of a Judge. "And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden." It is a vain hope,

that seeks to hide from God!

God. "Where art thou?"

Adam"I heard thy voice in the garden and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself."

God. "Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat?" Here is the dreadful secret! There is sin in the world! Though Adam puts the fault upon the woman, and the woman upon the serpent yet there is sin in all-sin and death! The penalty has been incurred, and the sentence must be pronounced.

Eternal Justice begins with the deceiver. The tempter is worse than the tempted. His sentence is one without hope.

Shall God now go on in the same way to sentence our first parents? No. He hesitates! Mercy steps in, and prevails over Justice. He speaks a promise first.

Mark the wonderfully significant fact. Between the sentence of the serpent, and that of our parents, stands the first promise! Before the sentence of Justice, stands the promise of mercy-the gospel before the law. "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." Thus, in the sentence of the ser

pent, smiles the promise of mercy to our first parents. Grace holds, as ever afterwards, its evangelical place as older than the law and the penalty.

True, God then goes on to sentence the guilty pair also. So it must be justice requires it. But they can bear it now. When one is in the covenant of grace he can hear the law and yet live. The hope inspired in the promise keeps them from sinking under it into despair. They are not led by the law to the gospel, but by the gospel to the law. In the stern countenance of the Judge, they see the loving lineaments of a covenant father's face. This is now their "only comfort in life and in death." Over the dreadful gloom of the curse, there arises the dawn of the blessed Advent of Him, who shall bruise the serpent's head, and deliver man from the curse and penalty of the law. When sin came in, grace came in much more and earlier. But paradise is lost! abode.

They must be expelled from that holy

"In either hand the hastening angel caught
Our lingering parents, and to the eastern gate
Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast
To the subjected plain; then disappeared.

They, looking back, all th' eastern side beheld

Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,

Wav'd over by that flaming brand, the gate

With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms:

Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon.
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow
Through Eden took their solitary way!"

One star still shone-the

The world was dark, but not all dark. first promise-the same star which, long after, glowed into a Sun over Bethlehem. This promise, though very general, and by them but little understood, was still a promise, and all was not dark. On it they fixed their steadfast eyes, waiting in faith until it should unfold itself to them with clearer consolations.

Let us follow our first parents into the desert, natural and spiritual, outside of Eden. Being companions in woe, they no doubt often conferred together as to their prospects. The transactiens of Paradise were reviewed. The import of the promise was considered. It became an interesting inquiry: What is this promise to us? What may we look for-what may we hope for, from it?

Let us suppose them, after a day of toil under the reign of the curse, sitting together meditatiug upon their condition and prospects. A careful review of the whole transaction-the fall, the sentence, and the promise-would show them in it a dark and a bright side. Their hearts would painfully alternate between hope and fear.

In their meditations, their sense of guilt would naturally cause them first, and most intensely, to dwell upon the dark side of the picture. In considering the promise closely, they would meet with discouragements from several considerations.

1. They would see in God's words, rather a threat against the serpent, than a promise to them.

God was speaking to and against the serpent, in the first promise, and it contains part of Satan's curse. "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise they head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." Alas! they would exclaim, in the darkness of their fears, it is no promise at all. It speaks evil to the serpent, it is true, but it speaks no good to us. 2. They would see also, on close examination, that if it contained good, it was rather to their seed than to them.

There should, it is true, be enmity between the woman and Satan ; but this would do her no good: on her part this enmity was already felt, for she no doubt hated her deceiver, and yet her condition was not bettered by that-she was nevertheless out of Paradise, and under the curse.

What was still worse, the enmity on the part of the serpent toward them might be rather a source of apprehension and fear, than of hope. To have him for an enemy who had already exercised over them such a fearful power for evil, was a thing to be dreaded and not desired.

If this enmity was to be regarded in this unpleasant light in reference to them, it must bode the same danger to their seed. Thus, what seemed at first a promise for good, seemed now rather to augur evil to them and their seed.

"It shall bruise thy head" was encouraging to the seed, but not to them. If this should for a moment inspire hopes, these hopes were again dashed to the ground by the declaration made in reference to the serpent-"Thou shalt bruise his heel." This seemed to betoken no good-it declared rather the perpetuation of a strife between the serpent and the seed, in which mutual injury should be sustained-the head of the one, and the heel of the other should be bruised. Yea, it seemed, in figurative style, to represent that, after the first assault, the seed should fly before the serpent, while it, though with bruised head, should, while pursuing, wound the heel of the seed.

3. What would still farther darken their hopes is this: That God, after having given them what seemed a promise, still proceeded to pronounce the curse upon them.

Was not this an evidence of His continued displeasure against them an evidence that their sin was neither forgotten nor forgiven? If He intended good toward them, would He send them from His presence with a curse? It might, again they thought, contain good for their seed, but not for them. Besides all this, the curse seemed to them a hopeless one; for it was to continue on them "all the days of their life," till they "return unto the ground"-till they die! This was, it seemed, the very thing the threat included-if they eat they shall die. The curse, then, seemed to imply that the full force of the threat should fall upon them, press upon them, all the days of their life, even till they returned to the ground whence they had been taken.

Then, too, they were ejected from the garden; and this for the very reason that they should not take of the tree of life and live forever. Was it not plain, then, that they should die, and not live; and that whatever good the promise might have in store for their seed, it seemed to have no joy for them.

More than all, there were the blazing swords of the cherubim over the gate of Eden lost, which must have seemed to them as the defiant arm of the Almighty held out against them.

Alas! such was the dark side of the picture-such were the cheerless sentiments which their guilty fears would read in the first promise. Thus ever is it natural for the guilty to see frowns instead of favor!

Did they, however, discover in it nothing of hopeful import? Certainly not as much as we do now, with the light of future and clearer revelations reflected back upon it; yet enough to keep them from despair, and furnish them with a basis for faith, hope, love, and salvation. It was a light that shone into a dark place, toward which they looked, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in their hearts.

Let us inquire for a moment how much of the light of the Advent shone upon our first parents--how much they could, and did gather from this promise concerning the coming hope, the seed of the woman, in whom must rest their salvation, and the salvation of the world.

1. They could be assured that there was a possibility of salvation, from the promise that there should be a seed in the world standing in opposition to the serpent.

Satan should have a seed-there would generations of devilish and ungodly men; but there should also be a seed who should be good, and who should stand over against them in enmity.

These two generations should of course both spring from the first pair; but should divide on the point of holiness and sin, as was actually the case in subsequent history.

Here was, therefore, the promise of a holy generation, which implied the presence of God with them in a gracious and saving way. Here was the plainest principle of Christianity at once brought out the separation of a covenant people from sin, and standing in opposition to Satan and his adherents in the world. There should be good in the world-good against evil. There should be a development of these two in the world. Here was hope!

2. This holy generation should obtain the ascendency by the victory over Satan of ONE, who should be emphatically "the seed." The seed shall brise the serpent's head-it shall strike a blow at the centre of Satanic power, so that it shall be first bruised and enfeebled, and at length destroyed.

They were led to expect, from this promise, that one would appear in their posterity, who would overcome the evil wrought by the temptations of Satan in the fall. This hope they warmly cherished, and they expected it to be almost immediately realized. Hence as soon as they begat their first-born, Eve exclaimed with

joy: "I have gotten a man from the Lord." They called him Cain, which means, "possession;" by which they evidently meant to say: We are now possessed of "the seed" of promise. The expression means more than "I have gotten a man from the Lord:" it means, as it is in German, "I have gotten a man, the Lord." Henry says; "It may indeed read, 'I have gotten a man, the Lord: God-man.'

So much were their hearts taken up in "the man, the Lord," that when the second son was born they called him Abel, which means "vanity," "emptiness," the direct opposite of Cain, "possession." They considered him as perfect nothing in comparison with him whom they believed to be the child of the promise.

They were disappointed in both of their first hopes; for Cain became wicked, and Abel was slain. A dark season was again upon them. Yet they still hope on; and when Seth was born, she exclaimed: "God hath appointed me another seed, instead of Abel, whom Cain slew."

In this way was the faith of our first parents allured from one to the other as the seed. They believed in a Saviour to come. They hoped for Him to the end. They trusted in the promise. They saw, in faith, their seed with His foot upon the head of the serpent.

This faith of our first parents in the coming seed, was a faith with practical power to separate them from sin, and to commit them devoutly to the side of the pious generation.

This we learn incidentally thus: We have seen that they were much taken with Cain at his birth. But as Cain soon showed proclivity to evil, they withdrew their hopes and affections from him, and placed them on Abel, whom they at first despised. This is also evident from the remark made at the birth of Seth, the third son. They say not, God has appointed us another seed instead of Cain; but He has appointed us another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew; showing that the hopes which they had at first set on Cain, they had afterwards hopefully transferred to Abel. The piety of Abel, even against their first impressions in favor of Cain, drew their hearts toward him. This shows that their faith and hope in the seed was such as affected their hearts in favor of piety and holiness.

3. They also gathered, either from this promise, or from other hints of revelation, that "the seed" and Saviour, while he would be human as the seed of the woman, would also be more than human as the sent of God.

They could judge that the One who would be able to put His foot on Satan's head, and bruise it, must be above man They felt that the power of evil, as it had overcome them, as it was now mighty in them, and as it reigned around them, was a power above them, and stronger than they. They felt, therefore, that the seed, while He was human, must also be super-human.

That this was their idea is evident from Eve's expression at the birth of Cain: "I have gotten the man, the Lord: the God-man." Here is much of the deep substance of the gospel. For salvation

« ZurückWeiter »